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, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders has rolled back
Speaker 1: big portions of her state's child labor protections. We have
Speaker 1: a great show today. NPRS David Fulkenflick stops by to
Speaker 1: talk to us about the latest leaks in the Fox
Speaker 1: News dominion lawsuit. Then we'll talk to former Senator Doug
Speaker 1: Jones about how Dems can regain ground in the South.
Speaker 1: But first we have the host of the Laurence O'Donnell Show,
Speaker 1: MSNBC's Laurence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Laurence O'Donnell. Oh,
Speaker 1: great to be back with my new microphone that I'm
Speaker 1: so proud of that I bought Jeff for this conversation. Yes,
Speaker 1: we love that. Very excited. I want to talk to
Speaker 1: you first about the dominion filing because this is not
Speaker 1: your first rodeo and you have been in this business,
Speaker 1: the business of politics and then the business of media.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of us suspected that this was happening,
Speaker 1: but were you just shocked that there were like actual
Speaker 1: text messages documenting these things. No, I would have been
Speaker 1: shocked if there was a shred of evidence of a
Speaker 1: shred of decency there, including in the you know, Brett
Speaker 1: Bayer department, which has always been corrupt. But you know,
Speaker 1: the news media has never wanted to believe that there's
Speaker 1: this impostor. It's not a cancer on the business. It's
Speaker 1: just an imposter. You know. It's like the Wrestling Channel said,
Speaker 1: he called itself Wrestling News, and the news media just
Speaker 1: all it's news. It's been a fraud from the first day.
Speaker 1: I remember before they opened their doors. I remember walking
Speaker 1: down sixth Avenue and hearing from someone that, oh, you know,
Speaker 1: Rupert Murdock's going to start a Republican TV channel. I,
Speaker 1: because I'm brilliant about these things, said, well, no one's
Speaker 1: gonna watch that. And you know, because Republican TV channel
Speaker 1: to me sounded like more boring than c SPAN at
Speaker 1: the time, because the Republican Party was Bob Dole and
Speaker 1: you know that stuff. But you know, here we are.
Speaker 1: It's always been what it is, and it's and the
Speaker 1: It just horrifies me that people keep using the word
Speaker 1: that Rupert Murdoch ordered them to use when he filled
Speaker 1: out the corporate papers titling the business Fox News. That
Speaker 1: is a classic case of what the Senator I worked for,
Speaker 1: Daniel Patrick moynahan, would call semantic infiltration, and that is
Speaker 1: infiltrating your language to force you to say what I
Speaker 1: want you to say. And so there are these attempts
Speaker 1: to do that in politics in various ways, with phrases
Speaker 1: like pro life. I'm going to call myself pro life,
Speaker 1: therefore you have to and the news business obeys those commands.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I have not put the word news
Speaker 1: after the word Fox in many years because it's just
Speaker 1: a lie and the whole thing is a fraud, and
Speaker 1: everybody working there, there's not a single person working there
Speaker 1: is in the news business. There never has been. Yeah, No,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's right. And I just want
Speaker 1: to get back to what you said about Brett Bair,
Speaker 1: because they had this distinction that there was a news
Speaker 1: side and an entertainment side. But what's very clear from
Speaker 1: this is that's not true. Yeah, I know Brett Bair
Speaker 1: was horrified that Fox called Arizona first, and he was
Speaker 1: horrified that they lost viewers because of it. That's never
Speaker 1: happened in any of the real news divisions around there.
Speaker 1: I can confess to you this may come as a
Speaker 1: shock if I pull back the curtain a little bit,
Speaker 1: but I personally, I won't speak for others at MSNBC,
Speaker 1: but I personally was deeply disappointed when we realized Donald
Speaker 1: Trump was going to win the Electoral College. And I
Speaker 1: realized that about a half an hour before other people,
Speaker 1: because I was sitting there with Steve Schmidt and James Carville.
Speaker 1: We had our own little studio and we would do
Speaker 1: our own little cut in and for twenty minutes at
Speaker 1: a time, we were not on TV, and those two
Speaker 1: guys were doing way more than the decision desk does.
Speaker 1: They were texting and calling people they know in such
Speaker 1: and such a county in North Carolina. And I would
Speaker 1: hear James Carville talking to someone in North Carolina and say, well,
Speaker 1: if we lose that, then we're going to lose Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: And he's and all he's getting is a report from
Speaker 1: one particular district in North Carolina that he knows mirrors
Speaker 1: Wisconsin and all that. So so I kind of knew
Speaker 1: the tragedy unfolding about a half an hour before everybody else,
Speaker 1: And there wasn't a moment where it crossed my mind, well,
Speaker 1: we can't as a network go out there and say
Speaker 1: Donald Trump won. We can't do that. You know, It's like, no, sorry,
Speaker 1: never crossed my mind. I think that's a really good point,
Speaker 1: is that there they tried to shape the news to
Speaker 1: fit the narrative. But I'm curious. It seems like the
Speaker 1: larger problem that Fox ends up having, and you see
Speaker 1: in these filings, is that they have given their listeners
Speaker 1: viewers so much of what they want that they have
Speaker 1: sort of been unable to shape reality to what these
Speaker 1: people needed to hear. And so there is this sort
Speaker 1: of almost I mean, I feel like it's like something
Speaker 1: from a sci fi novel where they realize that they
Speaker 1: can no longer shape reality to meet the demand. They
Speaker 1: are continuing to deliver exactly what they believe that audience wants.
Speaker 1: Here's the funny thing about it. You know when they
Speaker 1: talk about, oh, we watched our ratings collapse that week. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a rough week for Fox. But here's the
Speaker 1: way it goes. And everybody knows this, and everyone knew
Speaker 1: this ahead of time, and it would have been true
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, you know, with George w Bush,
Speaker 1: and it was true in two thousand and eight, you
Speaker 1: know one Obama won. So if the Republican wins the presidency,
Speaker 1: the MSNBC ratings are going to drop because there's going
Speaker 1: to be a depression in a majority of that audience. Okay,
Speaker 1: then they don't want to they don't want to consume
Speaker 1: this stuff anymore. And if the Democrats win the presidency,
Speaker 1: there was always a drop, always, every time, a drop
Speaker 1: in the Fox ratings that week, okay, And it didn't
Speaker 1: mean Fox wasn't going to make billions of dollars. It
Speaker 1: meant there was this kind of moment, you know, the
Speaker 1: super Bowl is over and the fans are not watching
Speaker 1: football the next week. That's just the way it works.
Speaker 1: And so their panic about losing audience is just so
Speaker 1: despicable on every level, including the money level, because they
Speaker 1: were all all going to remain very, very rich. Fox
Speaker 1: was going to continue to make billions, and they are
Speaker 1: panicking over this relatively slight and totally predictable and temporary
Speaker 1: drop in ratings. It's so interesting though, because they sort
Speaker 1: of can't ride with it. But I also do think
Speaker 1: it ended up being What I think is pretty interesting
Speaker 1: is that they ended up this choice they made, which
Speaker 1: they clearly made a choice. They knew what they were doing.
Speaker 1: Clear they knew that the twenty twenty election was free
Speaker 1: and fair. They did it because they just didn't have
Speaker 1: a hold on the market. They did it because they
Speaker 1: thought it was their job. It's a Republican party operation
Speaker 1: and the doctrine of the Republican party in the twenty
Speaker 1: first century, and this was not always the case, but
Speaker 1: by the twenty first century what it became, Republicanism simply
Speaker 1: became we hate liberals. Right, It's nothing else. There's no policy,
Speaker 1: there's no balance the budget, there's no eliminate the deficit.
Speaker 1: There's there's no policy at all except tax cuts. And
Speaker 1: we hate liberals. And we get our tax cuts by
Speaker 1: convincing people who are not rich, who also hate liberals,
Speaker 1: to vote for us. And that's the entire scheme. And
Speaker 1: that's Murdoch's entire scheme. He has no other objective except,
Speaker 1: you know, the demonization of liberals, and so that's the game.
Speaker 1: So they're going to do that, and they're going to
Speaker 1: do whatever is necessary to do that, and they're absolutely
Speaker 1: you know, limits, and I promise you there have never
Speaker 1: been limits There's never been a day at Fox, never
Speaker 1: a day where they had any kind of moral or
Speaker 1: ethical limit on what they might do or say. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all you're seeing if you see a difference between
Speaker 1: Sean Hannity nineteen ninety seven and Sean Hannity twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: and there is it is simply what is acceptable? What
Speaker 1: are the bounds of acceptability? And so those things change
Speaker 1: in every sphere of life. You know, over time, over
Speaker 1: a twenty year period, you know, what's acceptable to say
Speaker 1: contracts and expands in different kinds of ways. And so
Speaker 1: they're just playing within the zone that is now acceptable.
Speaker 1: And what's acceptable now in Republicanism is literally anything. It
Speaker 1: takes any anything to beat and destroy Liberals. So one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've been continually having a argument
Speaker 1: with even very smart Republicans but tend to be Republicans,
Speaker 1: is this idea that DeSantis is somehow less dangerous than Trump.
Speaker 1: Can you just debunk this? I mean, this just blows
Speaker 1: my mind, this idea that somehow someone who is much
Speaker 1: better at doing this is less dangerous than Trump. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't think there's any real evidence for that case
Speaker 1: that de Santis is less dangerous than Trump. I always
Speaker 1: when I was watching Trump, I was always thanking the
Speaker 1: luck of the draw every day. Just how lucky we
Speaker 1: are that he's an imbecile. We are so lucky that
Speaker 1: he is as deeply, profoundly and permanently stupid as he is,
Speaker 1: because he was just a couple of nachees smarter. You know,
Speaker 1: the things that he was trying to do could be
Speaker 1: done with better premeditation, like even for example, I'm going
Speaker 1: to need an attorney general. Well when re election comes,
Speaker 1: who's going to do anything for me in the Justice Department?
Speaker 1: He had, because he's stupid, reason to believe that Barr
Speaker 1: was that guy. And Barr was disgraceful, and Bar disgraced
Speaker 1: himself beyond what anyone who knew him could have imagined.
Speaker 1: But still there were going to be limits, you know
Speaker 1: for somebody who grew up in the law like Bill Barr.
Speaker 1: And Trump found those limits in November, you know, of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. If he had planned a year ahead of time,
Speaker 1: who is the idiot, the hack, the moral I want
Speaker 1: as attorney general? For that moment, he could have basically
Speaker 1: told Bill bar to quit right because you don't have
Speaker 1: to get this guy confirmed. You don't have to get
Speaker 1: him confirmed. As we saw with the crazy, you know
Speaker 1: lawyer from the Justice Department who he temporarily for a
Speaker 1: few hours made acting Attorney General. He could have gotten
Speaker 1: a guy like that in in a smoother way, and
Speaker 1: DeSantis would get that guy in in a smoother way.
Speaker 1: He would have premeditated it. Trump is this imbecile who
Speaker 1: is late with his homework every single time, right and so,
Speaker 1: and we're lucky, you know, we're very lucky because of that.
Speaker 1: DeSantis is the most premeditated of his kind I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Like he's way beyond, way beyond Trump and all of that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what I think too. I mean, the book banning
Speaker 1: the education stuff. I mean, let me just add one
Speaker 1: difference to DeSantis that could be a civilizing factor. Because
Speaker 1: Donald Trump did something that has never been done before
Speaker 1: in the history of the presidency. Every single person except
Speaker 1: Franklin Roosevelt in our recent time who won the presidency
Speaker 1: immediately tried to figure out, how do I get the
Speaker 1: voters who didn't vote for me? And the reason I
Speaker 1: say except Franklin Roosevelt is because his first election was
Speaker 1: a landslide and his second election was even bigger right
Speaker 1: and so, but everybody else is, you know, kind of
Speaker 1: squeaking in there. You know. JFK won the presidency by
Speaker 1: less than one percent of the vote. Eight years later,
Speaker 1: Richard Nixon wins the presidency by less than one percent
Speaker 1: of the vote. Both of them wanted to sound appealing
Speaker 1: to people who didn't vote for them. Everybody has done that.
Speaker 1: Ronald Reagan did that. Ronald Reagan won forty nine states
Speaker 1: in the electoral college in his reelection because after he
Speaker 1: got elected, and after he built a career as a
Speaker 1: right winger, the most extreme right winger in the party,
Speaker 1: every day of his presidency he was trying to appeal
Speaker 1: to what came to be called the Reagan Democrat. Trump
Speaker 1: gets elected, he doesn't. And all I did, I'm telling you,
Speaker 1: when he was elected, all I did was sit there
Speaker 1: and listen for what did he say today to the
Speaker 1: people who didn't vote for him? And there literally was
Speaker 1: not a sentence, not one day of the entire time.
Speaker 1: And that is why he didn't get reelected. If he
Speaker 1: wanted to get it to its most simplest point, that's
Speaker 1: why he didn't get reelected. The guy who came in
Speaker 1: second in the vote but got the electoral College. Anyway,
Speaker 1: that guy didn't try to convert any voters. Guess what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to him next time? He's gonna come
Speaker 1: in second again. And so to say this, I suspect
Speaker 1: I suspect may if he if he were to win
Speaker 1: the White House, he might spend four years trying to
Speaker 1: appeal to people who didn't vote for him and go
Speaker 1: from forty eight percent of the vote up to fifty
Speaker 1: one percent of the vote. Yeah. No, I think that's
Speaker 1: a really good point. I also think and by the way,
Speaker 1: and the way a Republican appeals to people who didn't
Speaker 1: vote for him is obviously not with Republican ideas. It
Speaker 1: is to soften the edges of Republican notions. You know,
Speaker 1: it's the compassionate conservative stuff that the Bushes would talk about,
Speaker 1: right well, and I also think it's sort of faking it,
Speaker 1: right It depends. I mean, you know, George H. W.
Speaker 1: Bush wasn't faking it in the sense that he did
Speaker 1: reach legislative compromises with Democrats in Congress, and that some
Speaker 1: of which were significant, you know, and he was condemned
Speaker 1: for it by Republicans. By Pat Buchanan, you know, by
Speaker 1: the lunatics. George W. Bush was very much concerned with
Speaker 1: what you thought of him, very much, and he was
Speaker 1: very much concerned about that, even if you didn't vote
Speaker 1: for him, And that is a civilizing influence on politicians.
Speaker 1: Trump has none of it, and in Florida, DeSantis has
Speaker 1: none of it. We'll see what would happen if he
Speaker 1: goes national. I wanted to stroll down on this for
Speaker 1: a minute. Don't you get the sense that DeSantis he
Speaker 1: lost a debate to Charlie Chris. I mean, don't you
Speaker 1: think there's a lot riding on someone who no one
Speaker 1: has ever really seen? No? I think, I actually think
Speaker 1: he's had a great deal of exposure for a presidential candidate,
Speaker 1: you know, way more than Jimmy Carter had as a governor.
Speaker 1: I mean, when Jimmy Carter announced that he was running
Speaker 1: for president, everybody outside of Georgia said, who no one,
Speaker 1: No one knew that name. The same thing with Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: people didn't know who that guy was. DeSantis's visibility as
Speaker 1: a governor is as high as I've ever seen for
Speaker 1: a governor who was not already a presidential candidate. You know,
Speaker 1: Michael Ducacus nobody knew how to say that word outside
Speaker 1: of Massachuset. It's you know, when he announced as a governor,
Speaker 1: and so he's gotten a tremendous amount of visibility. And
Speaker 1: you know, we're at the stage where debates have declined
Speaker 1: dramatically in how much they matter. If they mattered, Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: you know, would have gotten twenty percent of the vote.
Speaker 1: That's an old notion that we all used to have
Speaker 1: about how is this you know, candidate going to stand
Speaker 1: up in the debates? You know, in presidential debates, it's like, wow,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter very much. The biggest clown in the
Speaker 1: history of presidential debating, you know one the Republican nomination
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, and then you know went on from there. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it seemed to make no difference. Do you think that Biden,
Speaker 1: this is an anxiety I have that taking New Hampshire
Speaker 1: out of the lineup is going to hurt him in
Speaker 1: the general election. Not in the least. That's just a
Speaker 1: you know, it's a fetishistic thing that not a single
Speaker 1: voter in a single state cares about. You have to
Speaker 1: remember that most voters in America do not get a
Speaker 1: chance ever to participate in a presidential primary that has
Speaker 1: any impact whatsoever on the presidential election. That's the truth
Speaker 1: for most American voters, and their spirit as voters is
Speaker 1: not affected by it. I mean, I'd want someone to
Speaker 1: find me the voter in New Hampshire, you know, in
Speaker 1: November who says, yeah, I mean, I was gonna I'm
Speaker 1: gonna vote for Biden. But then you know when they
Speaker 1: just I mean, now, now, I've been to New Hampshire.
Speaker 1: I've been to New Hampshire every year of the New
Speaker 1: Hampshire primary for the last i don't know, way too
Speaker 1: long a time. They're not exactly thrilled to see you.
Speaker 1: You know, the people of New Hampshire, you know, the
Speaker 1: political fans of New Hampshire love it. They line up
Speaker 1: around the blocks to get into high school gymnasiums to
Speaker 1: see Barack Obama. And it's and it is quite exciting
Speaker 1: if you care about that. But you've got to understand
Speaker 1: you're looking at less than one percent of the population
Speaker 1: of New Hampshire, who ever bother to leave their sofas
Speaker 1: to go see one of these presential candidates. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: is a good point. Okay, here's my last prediction question.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry to do this to you. What can we
Speaker 1: just deal with all of your anxieties because I'm here,
Speaker 1: as we know, to help you through your anxieties. So
Speaker 1: that's we didentitely dealt with you New Hampshire. Ani, Well
Speaker 1: I have another one, so we're in good shape. Okay,
Speaker 1: and again, but I don't want to be wrong that
Speaker 1: the dominion court case will go. Do you think that
Speaker 1: they'll settle or you think they're gonna I mean, because
Speaker 1: if it goes, I mean, this is going to be
Speaker 1: a pretty big blockbuster. No, so the time to settle
Speaker 1: has passed. The reason you settle these lawsuits is that
Speaker 1: you don't want the damage to come out publicly. And
Speaker 1: so that's why Fox settled every bill O'Reilly lawsuit. You know,
Speaker 1: they settle all these things. Can you settle a lawsuit
Speaker 1: before Rupert Murdoch has to sit down and testify under oath?
Speaker 1: They didn't do it. Now, there's what people are neglecting
Speaker 1: to remember about a settlement is that both sides have
Speaker 1: to agree to it. So what we do not yet no,
Speaker 1: and we might someday know, is that Fox made an
Speaker 1: offer to Dominion and Dominion said no. And if your
Speaker 1: dominion I personally believe my legal approach to the case.
Speaker 1: Assuming they have twenty million dollars to spend on legal fees,
Speaker 1: which I guess they do, my approach would be do
Speaker 1: not settle under any circumstances, because winning the case in
Speaker 1: court is not important to Dominion's viability as a business. Well,
Speaker 1: they've already won what they needed to do to be
Speaker 1: viable as a business. They have proven in all this
Speaker 1: undergrowth testimony by Rupert and everybody else exactly the scope
Speaker 1: and shape of the lies told about Dominion by Fox.
Speaker 1: So Dominion as a business can go forward in the world,
Speaker 1: you know, marketing its services anywhere, and no one will
Speaker 1: ever have to say to them. But wait, you know,
Speaker 1: Fox said you guys are criminals, Like that's never gonna happen. Ever,
Speaker 1: as of today, that's all over. So the important thing
Speaker 1: is Dominion has won. It has won its reputation, and
Speaker 1: it has destroyed Fox's reputation. And the only way they
Speaker 1: could do that is get to this point where we're
Speaker 1: reading Rupert Murdoch's Undergrowth testimony on TV. And if they
Speaker 1: had settled, you know, six months ago for one hundred
Speaker 1: million dollars or three hundred million or five hundred million.
Speaker 1: We would know none of this, and so Dominion has
Speaker 1: had zero incentive to settle. That's the part people don't
Speaker 1: understand when they talk about settlement. I'm sure Fox would
Speaker 1: have loved to settle this a year ago for some
Speaker 1: number that they thought was reasonable, or even for a
Speaker 1: number they thought was unreasonable. But the jury verdict is tricky,
Speaker 1: and it may well be that, you know, Dominion doesn't
Speaker 1: quote win the case in court in the end, and
Speaker 1: I personally, if I'm on the dominion end of it,
Speaker 1: I don't care. I don't care. I already won. And
Speaker 1: if the jury and if the judge you know, make
Speaker 1: rulings that say, you know, this stuff lives within First
Speaker 1: Amendment protections, or if you know, Fox establish it gets
Speaker 1: a win like that from the Supreme Court that they
Speaker 1: sort of own in their way, I don't care. It
Speaker 1: doesn't change anything about what we know the facts to be.
Speaker 1: So my strong suspicion about the inside of this is
Speaker 1: if there was a settlement attempt by Fox, it was
Speaker 1: refused by Dominion. Yeah. So interesting. Thank you so much, Lawrence.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back a pleasure. Thank you. David
Speaker 1: folken Flick is a media correspondent at MPR. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, David. Thanks glad to join you. It's very
Speaker 1: thrilled to have you. I just want to talk to
Speaker 1: you about this continual drip, drip drip of the Fox
Speaker 1: News dominion filing. You will have been a media reporter
Speaker 1: for a while. You've written about the Murdochs, You've written
Speaker 1: books about the Murdochs. I mean, what is your hot
Speaker 1: take here? I wouldn't call it a drip drip so
Speaker 1: much as a sort of a series of avalanches, you know,
Speaker 1: in recent days. I think what is notable for somebody
Speaker 1: who's covered it closely? Z I have for coming up
Speaker 1: on twenty three years. You know the media and Fox
Speaker 1: has been a big and growing part of that. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really all part of covering media and politics as well.
Speaker 1: Right is how dark it is, how blunt it is,
Speaker 1: how blatant it is, and it is the degree to
Speaker 1: which decisions are made by business imperatives, and those business
Speaker 1: imperatives are ineluctably entangled in politics. And it's not just hey,
Speaker 1: we've got a pander to a right wing or a
Speaker 1: left wing audience. It's hey, we've got a tamper with
Speaker 1: what we present to our folks's reality. It's not just
Speaker 1: that we're Mother Jones and a left of center outfit
Speaker 1: that does some reporting, or the Washington Free Beacon or whatever.
Speaker 1: It's literally withholding the facts that you know to be
Speaker 1: true because you know that this is a money gusher
Speaker 1: and you don't want to turn off this bigot. In fact,
Speaker 1: this bigot has been drawing up a bit. Right after
Speaker 1: election night twenty twenty, and the original sin of Fox
Speaker 1: calling Arizona for Joe Biden on that night before any
Speaker 1: other broadcast network or cable network had done so. Trump
Speaker 1: voters who had been tuned into Fox to hope that
Speaker 1: they could celebrate, were like, not only celebrating, they're like, oh,
Speaker 1: screw you guys, with the guys bringing us this news.
Speaker 1: You guys are the ones doing this. And for days
Speaker 1: other news outlets did not, And you see intimations from
Speaker 1: people inside Fox saying, well, they're just doing that to
Speaker 1: hose us by leaving us hanging out there. But they
Speaker 1: were using different numbers because Fox, joined by the AP
Speaker 1: had bailed after the twenty sixteen presidential call was so problematic.
Speaker 1: That is, the polling data and everything else really just
Speaker 1: didn't capture what was happening in some of these key
Speaker 1: swing states. And so Fox kept telling reporters like me, oh,
Speaker 1: we've come up with better math, We've come up with
Speaker 1: a better way to do this, and they felt that
Speaker 1: they had had some success in the off elections of
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, and then they went all in. Now, that
Speaker 1: turned out to be a very close call, and in retrospect,
Speaker 1: one wouldn't have begrudged them not making the call, given
Speaker 1: how close it turned out to be. It was a
Speaker 1: razor thin you know, there's an interesting statistical argument to
Speaker 1: make about whether or not they were taking a little
Speaker 1: bit of a leap of faith with their new numbers.
Speaker 1: But they made the call and they trusted those their projections,
Speaker 1: and then you see Fox people. A civil war erupted
Speaker 1: within Fox as a result of that. So it was
Speaker 1: I surprised. No, So much of this is based on
Speaker 1: pairing what you see happen on the air with what
Speaker 1: people from inside Fox are telling you. As a result,
Speaker 1: I'm not really surprised. It's just so blatant. There's no
Speaker 1: code words, there's no sleight of hand happening, and you know,
Speaker 1: it really only occurred to me in recent days. How
Speaker 1: much of this, probably this incredibly rich documentary record that
Speaker 1: dominion is drawing on. We can talk about the merits
Speaker 1: of the case in a set, but how much of
Speaker 1: it's influenced by the fact that it's ocurring in the
Speaker 1: age of COVID and so people aren't having these conversations
Speaker 1: in person all that much. They're emailing and texting each
Speaker 1: other more than they probably would have, not that they
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like Tucker and Sean and Laura
Speaker 1: are always going out to drinks at night. You know,
Speaker 1: they can text if they want to text. It's not
Speaker 1: that I think they particularly like each other, but they
Speaker 1: have common interests in common grievances. And man, after that election,
Speaker 1: they are on it. They think that Fox hates them.
Speaker 1: They think that the news side hates them. They hate
Speaker 1: the reporters who work for them for pointing out false
Speaker 1: claims that are made on their shows on Fox and
Speaker 1: more publicly, it is absolutely civil war happening internally at
Speaker 1: that network. And it's it's a sight to behold and
Speaker 1: to lift up under the rock and see how things behave.
Speaker 1: And Molly, let's acknowledge that if NPR or the New
Speaker 1: York Times or CBS or CNN or anybody had all
Speaker 1: of its Somebody described this as being like an X ray.
Speaker 1: You know, this is more like three dMRI of all
Speaker 1: the organs at all the bones, a the muscles, right like,
Speaker 1: this is everything pretty much. It's really ugly. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's kind of shocking. Were you surprised that Tucker
Speaker 1: hated Trump so much or that he'd sent that text messager? Now?
Speaker 1: I mean, if he was thinking hard, given how often
Speaker 1: Dominion was sending notes saying the stuff isn't true, he
Speaker 1: might have thought, Wow, there might be a lawsuit in
Speaker 1: my future, and let's let's keep this. You know, let
Speaker 1: me not express this, but Tucker, it is very hard
Speaker 1: not to conclude that Tucker is a pretty cynical person.
Speaker 1: Does Tucker actually believed there was no violence on January six,
Speaker 1: twenty one the US Capital? Does Tucker actually think these
Speaker 1: were just a pleasant, peaceful protesters ambling perhaps a little
Speaker 1: too far past a velvet rope that they shouldn't have
Speaker 1: the fact that you can find people not committing violence
Speaker 1: at given moments of course the day, does that prove that?
Speaker 1: Sworn testimony, videotape convictions confessions, all these things that have
Speaker 1: happened from people who participated in those bloody events, that
Speaker 1: we will just have that a race from our minds. No,
Speaker 1: he's providing an hour where he can talk to the audience,
Speaker 1: to them what they want to hear. And there's a
Speaker 1: lot of misdirection. You know, he lows Trump. So what
Speaker 1: he does is he goes after Trump's enemies rather than
Speaker 1: having to go after you defend trumpet you know, Fox
Speaker 1: during the second Bush term in office, a second George W.
Speaker 1: Bush term obviously was kind of depressing to watch. It
Speaker 1: was not fun. They had to defend things like the
Speaker 1: war in a Rock which got increasingly ugly. They had
Speaker 1: defend Katrina, they had defend the collapse of the global like.
Speaker 1: There was a lot to defend, right, a lot more
Speaker 1: fun going after Obama. And so the thing about Trump
Speaker 1: was they kind of would have been happy to have
Speaker 1: Hillary to go after for another four years, right, That
Speaker 1: would have been fun for them. They could have replayed
Speaker 1: all the hits of the Clinton years, and instead they've
Speaker 1: got to defend Trump. But it turns out Trump is
Speaker 1: artificially stirring the passions of their audiences to keep watching
Speaker 1: because nobody knows what he's going to do next, and
Speaker 1: he keeps calling into Fox, and he keeps choosing them,
Speaker 1: and they just go along for the ride and hold
Speaker 1: on as best as they can. So that's what you know.
Speaker 1: Tucker is doing Tucker's counter programming. It's a TV thing
Speaker 1: and and they're letting him do it because they have
Speaker 1: no control. Right, he's too valuable. And also at this point,
Speaker 1: the hosts are running the asylum, right, I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're going to go to that analogy, I think you know,
Speaker 1: the common wisdom is that in some ways the inmates
Speaker 1: are running the asylum, that the viewers are that for
Speaker 1: a long time, Trump kind of was, you know, with
Speaker 1: his kitchen cabinet of Sean Hannity and Janine Perrow and
Speaker 1: lou Dobbs bar Romo and others right where he's literally
Speaker 1: pulling people into the administration off Fox from watching them
Speaker 1: do things. Pete Hedgesith was up for I'm not mistaken
Speaker 1: the Veterans Administration Secretary on the basis of what he
Speaker 1: says on Fox and Friends. That's a guy who doesn't
Speaker 1: wash his hands, right, that is true. He said that.
Speaker 1: I mean credit to his co host who was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's probably something I don't want to know. But there,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such an incredible situation to be and
Speaker 1: do you think that, I mean, who do you? You know?
Speaker 1: Lou Dobbs is now out right, and it seemed like
Speaker 1: he was kind of under the bus there by Rupert
Speaker 1: who said he never watches him. That was kind of
Speaker 1: great when he said he doesn't watch Fox Business Network,
Speaker 1: although he called it a channel. You know, it was like,
Speaker 1: you know, I can't imagine working for that network and
Speaker 1: feeling very great about that. But you know, there are
Speaker 1: a lot of them are in recent money to do,
Speaker 1: so so what are you going to do? Right? Dobbs
Speaker 1: was thrown over when not Dominion Voting Systems, but Smartmatic,
Speaker 1: an election software company that essentially had almost no involvement
Speaker 1: in the twenty twenty elections, filed suit on its own
Speaker 1: where Dobbs was out the next day and Fox is like, well, no,
Speaker 1: this is all previously a scheduled reshuffling and reconstruction and
Speaker 1: Dobbs basically was out in his ear and at the
Speaker 1: time it seemed implausible, too untrue, And now it just
Speaker 1: is very clear what occurred. And my experience in covering
Speaker 1: the Murdoch and various scandals over the years, of which
Speaker 1: there have been a decent number. They'll throw people over
Speaker 1: the back of the sled of the wolves at as
Speaker 1: low a level as possible, but as high a level
Speaker 1: as needed, and then if that doesn't go, they'll go
Speaker 1: up the ladder a little bit. And right now I
Speaker 1: think they're going to do anything because Fox has maintained
Speaker 1: and Murdoch said in his speaking under oath to lawyers
Speaker 1: that he saw no need to apologize. They were reporting,
Speaker 1: and this is an integral part of Fox's legal defense,
Speaker 1: they were reporting inherently newsworthy claims, Hey, the presidential elections
Speaker 1: were rigged by an inherently newsworthy person, Hey, the sitting
Speaker 1: president of the the United States, and people speaking on his behalf,
Speaker 1: and that if you were to cut that off, then
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, an MSNBC and everybody else will pay
Speaker 1: a real price journalistically as well. What, of course, Dominion says,
Speaker 1: and a lot of media lawyers I talked to say,
Speaker 1: is there isn't that analogy, because what Fox did is
Speaker 1: so egregious, and because we have not only the clarity
Speaker 1: which is legally needed that key folks knew that what
Speaker 1: they were putting on the air was untrue, and that
Speaker 1: the people presenting it weren't credible either, but also that
Speaker 1: they had a motive, which is, we have to win
Speaker 1: back these Trump voters as our viewers. And you don't
Speaker 1: actually need a motive proven in that way to win
Speaker 1: defamation in a lot of states. But my goodness, you
Speaker 1: certainly seem to have declared, and you know there's back
Speaker 1: and forth. We can talk about the legal merits, but
Speaker 1: as a supposed news operation, this is a business enterprise.
Speaker 1: Talking about the brand promise and the politics are a
Speaker 1: key element of it, and the journalism, although rupert of
Speaker 1: all people occasionally waves the flag in these private correspondences,
Speaker 1: is not just like a distant third, but like thirteenth
Speaker 1: out of three. So interesting? Do you think that they
Speaker 1: will go to trial? And also I have a question
Speaker 1: for you. This is because it's in Delaware, they can
Speaker 1: claim more damages right in the civil My understanding in
Speaker 1: this case from following it so far is that they
Speaker 1: are applying New York state law in terms of defamation,
Speaker 1: but they're applying Delaware state law in terms of the
Speaker 1: administration of the case and the flow of the case,
Speaker 1: and that gets into some pretty picking un areas. And
Speaker 1: I am not a member of the bar in either
Speaker 1: state or any state, and not playing one on TV
Speaker 1: or on this podcast, but I would say that, you know,
Speaker 1: the judge hasn't laughed these damages out of court. Fox
Speaker 1: has made a fairly muscular or at least rhetorically muscular
Speaker 1: argument that the extent of these damages. Dominion voting systems
Speaker 1: is asking for one point six billion dollars, but that's
Speaker 1: sort of a notional figure that they're clearly inflated in
Speaker 1: BS and Dominion is arguing, though, that we have reason
Speaker 1: to say this, and there's, you know, the question of
Speaker 1: reputational harm, there's the question of actual harm, and there's
Speaker 1: the question of punitive damages. So they feel that it
Speaker 1: all does that. So that's one world have to see.
Speaker 1: But you know, it's interesting that Fox is stressing all
Speaker 1: this stuff. It makes sense in the sense that they're saying,
Speaker 1: you have to prove you or hurt, and one way
Speaker 1: to prove reputational harm is financial harm, right, But that's
Speaker 1: really an appellate question. That's the kind of thing you're like,
Speaker 1: well we lost, now we've got to fight over how
Speaker 1: much we actually have to pay and then you appeal it.
Speaker 1: This is not uncommon. I don't want to be unfair
Speaker 1: to Fox. They already have a very strong appellet team
Speaker 1: in place, that is the people who will argue the appeals,
Speaker 1: which says to you that they don't have Iron Clan
Speaker 1: confidence they're going to win this thing. But when you
Speaker 1: have as much money as the Murdocks do and as
Speaker 1: Foxcorp does, you know you hire those people as a
Speaker 1: routine anyway, I mean, does Fox eventually say like this
Speaker 1: is too expensive or I mean Dominion clearly is going
Speaker 1: for blood. Right, There's clearly some ideological like you can't
Speaker 1: ruin USh ruin us kind of thing. I mean right,
Speaker 1: So Dominion wants to come out of this with a
Speaker 1: ton of money and preferably with some sort of prominent
Speaker 1: retraction and apology. The Murdochs want to come out of
Speaker 1: this without having to tell their audiences that they were
Speaker 1: not only that they were misled, but that they were
Speaker 1: intentionally misled and deceived and lied to. The Murdochs have
Speaker 1: shown in previous scandals I've covered. There was the tabloid
Speaker 1: scandals in Britain, and I started stopped counting after they
Speaker 1: exceeded I think it was two hundred million dollars in
Speaker 1: various things attached to that. It wasn't that they paid
Speaker 1: that out as illegal fee for the people they wronged exactly,
Speaker 1: but those were like a series of costs associated if
Speaker 1: I'm remembering it correctly to that, and it's been a while.
Speaker 1: They definitely paid more than two hundred million in the
Speaker 1: Fox sexual harassment scandal that largely but not entirely focused
Speaker 1: on Roger Ales, you know who they tossed out. Really
Speaker 1: the week basically that Donald Trump got the Republican national
Speaker 1: nomination for president in twenty sixteen, I was in Cleveland
Speaker 1: at the RNC intending to write a bunch of stories,
Speaker 1: and it was all Roger all the time, because these
Speaker 1: allocations came out, and it was just it was the
Speaker 1: biggest story on the floor, to be honest, beyond Trump.
Speaker 1: And they paid, you know, many hundreds of millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: You could argue close to a billion dollars for these
Speaker 1: various settlements and payoffs that involved this completely unsexy part
Speaker 1: of what's called News Corp, which is a Murdoch's publishing
Speaker 1: side and used to be all unified under the same umbrella.
Speaker 1: I think it's called something like News America, which was
Speaker 1: basically a supermarket marketing thing that back in the day
Speaker 1: made a ton of money where they placed ads and
Speaker 1: coupons and supermarkets. When you go through the aisles, you
Speaker 1: could pull off fifty cents here, and they have decals
Speaker 1: on the floor or whatever. And it turned out they
Speaker 1: did all kinds of things to basically run their competitors
Speaker 1: into the ground that probably violated the law, and so
Speaker 1: they paid hundreds of millions dollar there. So you know,
Speaker 1: if Murdoch could cut a check tomorrow and pay two
Speaker 1: hundred million dollars and just make this go away, I
Speaker 1: imagine that would be a tough but fine deal for
Speaker 1: them to strike. And I don't think that's what Dominion wants.
Speaker 1: I think they want to play to a higher pain threshold,
Speaker 1: both in terms of money and to make him confront
Speaker 1: what he did and the less that the Murdocks are
Speaker 1: willing to acknowledge the higher dollar figure I would imagine
Speaker 1: a settlement would take. But so far, you know, what
Speaker 1: I'm told is that there are no signs of any
Speaker 1: settlement talks happening, and that, to be honest, I think
Speaker 1: that's almost entirely on the dominion side, that the Fox
Speaker 1: Court would at least entertain the conversations. It's so interesting,
Speaker 1: even though they acknowledged doing nothing wrong so far, amazeing
Speaker 1: too soon to count Newsmax and OA n out de
Speaker 1: fine counting them out. They've been dropped by cable company
Speaker 1: as those two are sort of you know, they had
Speaker 1: this moment and it's and it's sort of been now
Speaker 1: kind of they've kind of fallen out of aber. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you think there's a world in which Fox loses
Speaker 1: those viewers and they go to Newsmax and o an.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you look at this completely stripped of morality,
Speaker 1: I think the biggest damage Fox could do to its
Speaker 1: business model is to reveal to its viewers the contempt
Speaker 1: in which they hold them. That is, they don't respect
Speaker 1: them truth. You can't handle the truth, right. That's their
Speaker 1: biggest damage outside of the question of their ratings. I
Speaker 1: think they're going to you know, it's almost like a
Speaker 1: seesaw where there's an inverse relationship between their reputation outside
Speaker 1: and the reputation with their audience, where they're going to
Speaker 1: just take a huge hit with establishment Washington, mainstream institutions,
Speaker 1: the news part of Fox, which is really shriveled and
Speaker 1: withered and lost some of its biggest figures. Chep Smith,
Speaker 1: Karl Cameron, their long time guy, walked away saying it
Speaker 1: was too much for him. Chris Wallace saying that the
Speaker 1: fever fantasies of January sixth by Tucker Carlson was a
Speaker 1: step too far for him. You know, these are a
Speaker 1: thing you're seeing. There are very few figures other than
Speaker 1: Brett Baer. You know Eric Shawn, you know as a
Speaker 1: reporter and some time anchor, but you know he has
Speaker 1: a quiet profile there. Right. They're just there's a diminishment.
Speaker 1: They got rid of Chris Stirewald and Bill Salmon, who
Speaker 1: were defenders of the decision desk and other things. They
Speaker 1: just they've really widowed down the muscle that they have
Speaker 1: on that side of things. And you can take issue
Speaker 1: with those guys too, but at least they were there, right. So,
Speaker 1: it seems to me that Newsmax and o N are
Speaker 1: unlikely to be major challengers to Fox unless it somehow
Speaker 1: breaks that brand promise that Ray Shaw and CEO Fox
Speaker 1: News CEO Suzanne Scott were so focused on. In the documents,
Speaker 1: that have been released and start backing away from this
Speaker 1: kind of culture grievance coverage and attending to the needs
Speaker 1: and the and the sensibilities and the fears of the
Speaker 1: Trump voter. Even if they're not pro Trump, which they
Speaker 1: aren't at the moment, they're really very run to santistish
Speaker 1: at the moment. So that's what I think the real
Speaker 1: issue is. I also think that their audience, if it fractures,
Speaker 1: will probably go to things that may not be as
Speaker 1: conventional TV. You know, you can go to whatever the
Speaker 1: newest bripe part is, you can go to the Daily Wire,
Speaker 1: you can go to other people who are going to
Speaker 1: mainline the stuff into your veins if you want, without
Speaker 1: the need to have any journalistic sensibilities at all. Thank
Speaker 1: you so much, David. That was really depressing. I do
Speaker 1: my best every little bit I can do to bring
Speaker 1: you down allies. You know, look, there are people inside
Speaker 1: Fox who think, hey, this is going to be a
Speaker 1: wake up call, and after we emerge from it, you know,
Speaker 1: Fox is going to have to revitalize its news coverage
Speaker 1: and what have you. But at the moment they're not
Speaker 1: saying anything like that because they're not able probably legally
Speaker 1: or willing from a moral standpoint to say what we
Speaker 1: did was wrong, and Dominion in its latest filings has
Speaker 1: made a point of that. To say, Fox has basically
Speaker 1: conceded the point because they haven't done anything to defend
Speaker 1: an affirmative argument for why any of this stuff had
Speaker 1: any validity or credibility to it. And that's just a
Speaker 1: very different way of looking at what Fox did. Ah,
Speaker 1: thank you so much, Thank thanks, Molly. Doug Jones is
Speaker 1: the former junior Senator from the state of Alabama. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Senator Doug Jones. Thank you, Molly. It's
Speaker 1: great to be with you. I really appreciate the opportunity here. First,
Speaker 1: I think we should talk about this weekend in Selma.
Speaker 1: Bloody Sunday weekend in Selma is always a very very
Speaker 1: special commemoration and that's the best way to put this
Speaker 1: as a commemoration. They have been doing this. The folks,
Speaker 1: the organizers down there, have done a wonderful job of
Speaker 1: having a jubilee every year on the first weekend in
Speaker 1: March that culminates in a recreation of the walk across
Speaker 1: the edmon Fettis Bridge. This year, President Biden came down
Speaker 1: gave a fabulous speech at the foot of the bridge.
Speaker 1: There was a great crowd, enthusiastic crowd. Molly. I think
Speaker 1: it's so important that we continue those types of recognitions
Speaker 1: and commemorations because you know, we have come so far
Speaker 1: and turn so many pages on the Jim Crow South,
Speaker 1: but we seem to be flipping some of those pages
Speaker 1: back right now with voter suppression and so many other
Speaker 1: laws that discriminate and make it more difficult for minority
Speaker 1: communities to really get the full benefit of this country.
Speaker 1: It's so important to remember where we've been so that
Speaker 1: we try to make sure we don't go there in
Speaker 1: the future. It's a fabulous weekend. It's quite a big
Speaker 1: deal for Biden to come down for that. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us a little bit about his thinking. It
Speaker 1: is a big deal. It's a big deal for any president.
Speaker 1: The president's usually come when it is a signature commemoration
Speaker 1: like the fiftieth or the forty fifth. President Obama was there,
Speaker 1: President Clinton came, when President Obama came, even former President
Speaker 1: George W. Bush came. But for this president to be
Speaker 1: there at the fifty eighth, which is not a signature
Speaker 1: event but just a commemoration. I think says a lot
Speaker 1: about him and where his heart is and where he
Speaker 1: wants to be and wants the country to be. He
Speaker 1: sees and understands troubably be as good as any president
Speaker 1: we've had, including President Obama, of where things are in
Speaker 1: this country right now, and that is why he has
Speaker 1: been appointing so many people of color, particularly women, black women,
Speaker 1: to the federal bench, why his administration is perhaps the
Speaker 1: most diverse of any administration in history. He sees that
Speaker 1: the country is becoming more diverse every day, and he
Speaker 1: is the president of that country, and he wants to
Speaker 1: celebrate that. But again, he also sees that there are
Speaker 1: proud boys out there, and there are oath keepers out there,
Speaker 1: and there are those who commit mass murders in Buffalo
Speaker 1: and other places around this country because of hate speech
Speaker 1: and race. He's got the bully pulpit. He's the leader
Speaker 1: of this country, and he wants people to understand the
Speaker 1: significance of what happened, but also the significance of where
Speaker 1: we are today as a country and where we need
Speaker 1: to be and going forward as a country. So I
Speaker 1: think his thinking is that this is Selma is the
Speaker 1: time and the place to be right now, probably before
Speaker 1: he kicks off his his presidential campaign, to showcase the
Speaker 1: countries and his commitment to diversity, to equity, to inclusion.
Speaker 1: You have sort of been very central to try to
Speaker 1: move the South out of you know, the sort of
Speaker 1: terrifying Jim Crow in apartheid. I mean, this is exactly
Speaker 1: called it like it is. That's what it was. That's
Speaker 1: what it was, and that's what it is. And how
Speaker 1: do you feel right now with America being where it
Speaker 1: is and also just the sort of larger landscape. Well, look,
Speaker 1: you know you have to qualify everything by saying America
Speaker 1: is not the Jim Crow days that I grew up
Speaker 1: in the fifties and sixties. Alabama is not the Jim
Speaker 1: Crow time Alabama to the South, the country is not
Speaker 1: the kind of country where lynchings take place as off
Speaker 1: and as they did a century ago. And we have
Speaker 1: come such a long way, however, we still have miles
Speaker 1: to go before we sleep. And I think people should
Speaker 1: recognize that and see that because if you look demographically
Speaker 1: at the country and where things are moving, we are
Speaker 1: becoming a more diverse country, and we've been becoming a
Speaker 1: more diverse country Moley every since we were founded. I mean,
Speaker 1: this country was always meant to be a multi culture,
Speaker 1: multiracial society, even though some people did not want to
Speaker 1: accept that. And so we're becoming more diverse from the
Speaker 1: moment that we declared our independence from Great Britain. As
Speaker 1: we move forward, though, while we're seeing so many people
Speaker 1: fighting these culture wars and playing on the fears of
Speaker 1: people across this country, and you see groups like the
Speaker 1: Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, and you see politicians
Speaker 1: like Donald Trump and others kind of whipping that into
Speaker 1: a frenzy. And it's not just Trump, by the way.
Speaker 1: This whole anti woke movement that you see going on
Speaker 1: in the magnifaction of the Republican Party really is troubling.
Speaker 1: It's really frightening. Do you think it's really anti woke
Speaker 1: or do you think it's really a kind of a
Speaker 1: bait and switch way of getting back into the sort
Speaker 1: of racism of the past. I'm not sure that it's that,
Speaker 1: except for this, If getting into the racism of the
Speaker 1: past helps the political future of people who want to
Speaker 1: run for president, want to run for the Senate, who
Speaker 1: want to run for governors, if that's what it takes.
Speaker 1: Then there are people that will damn sure do that.
Speaker 1: And that's what's frightening to me. They will take the
Speaker 1: country backwards for their own political purposes. I don't think
Speaker 1: that so many of those folks deep down are the racist,
Speaker 1: not the kind of racist like I grew up with,
Speaker 1: but they haven't their own form if they're doing things
Speaker 1: that perpetuate those racist kind of issues for their own
Speaker 1: political power. And I've said this for a long time.
Speaker 1: These are not people who are going to lynch folks.
Speaker 1: But there were people that Dangsher would put folks in
Speaker 1: the back of the bus if they thought that that
Speaker 1: would help their political career. And that's what we're seeing.
Speaker 1: That is what we're seeing across the board. Something happened
Speaker 1: in Alabama just recently, and this is I think typical
Speaker 1: of where we are in this I say typical, I
Speaker 1: don't know if it's typical or not, but we recently
Speaker 1: had a group of high school students in Tuscaloosa, Alabama
Speaker 1: that wanted to have a Black History Month program and
Speaker 1: the school administrators said, fine, you can do that. We're
Speaker 1: happy for you to do that, as long as you
Speaker 1: don't discuss anything that happened before nineteen seventy. I wish
Speaker 1: I was kidding about it, but I'm not. So these
Speaker 1: students walked out. Nothing happened before nineteen seventies, So that
Speaker 1: makes sense. No, of course, not everything started when I
Speaker 1: was sixteen years old in nineteen seven. Those students walked out,
Speaker 1: they were landed a little bit. But that's the kind
Speaker 1: of thing that we're having face across the country. So
Speaker 1: I don't think we're in a good place right now,
Speaker 1: and I think we've got to work through do that,
Speaker 1: and we've got to have some very serious conversations and
Speaker 1: dialogues about it. Dialogues and not monologues. Yes, for sure,
Speaker 1: quite interesting. So let me ask you, now, where do
Speaker 1: you feel, and you have this long time experience with
Speaker 1: civil rights and a long time experience of the Biden administration,
Speaker 1: what do you think the Biden administration should be doing
Speaker 1: next for voting rights, for civil rights, for the South
Speaker 1: in general. You know, I think the administration has done
Speaker 1: what they could do in terms of using the presidency
Speaker 1: and the bully pulpit to try to get certain changes
Speaker 1: to the voting rights bill across the finish line. We
Speaker 1: couldn't do that for a number of reasons in the
Speaker 1: last Congress. I think it will be more difficult in
Speaker 1: this Congress. And by the way, I think the Justice Department,
Speaker 1: in the Civil Rights Division and the folks like that
Speaker 1: are also taking very careful looks, you know, where we
Speaker 1: are with voting rights, and they're taking a very serious
Speaker 1: look at how to protect the rights of people with
Speaker 1: the laws that we have on the books. I'm hoping
Speaker 1: that going into twenty twenty four, they're also going to
Speaker 1: do an analysis of the Voting Rights Act and determine
Speaker 1: that they can also perhaps use the Voting Rights Act
Speaker 1: to potentially investigate and potentially prosecute people who refuse to
Speaker 1: certify duly constituted elections. I think the Voting Rights Act,
Speaker 1: and we've done some research my law firm on this,
Speaker 1: I think the Voting Rights Act can be used to
Speaker 1: make sure that free and fair votes are counted and
Speaker 1: that they're certified by the appropriate officials. I talked to
Speaker 1: some folks this weekend down in Selma about that. I think,
Speaker 1: given the dynamics that we have in the Congress right now,
Speaker 1: I think that the protection of the vote needs to
Speaker 1: be very strategic. It needs to be more of a
Speaker 1: rifle shot than a shotgun, and not a wish list.
Speaker 1: It needs to be the things that have I believe,
Speaker 1: and I believed this for some time, the possibility of
Speaker 1: passing right now. For so long, people Republicans especially bought
Speaker 1: at doing anything to establish standards for mail in voting,
Speaker 1: for early voting, that every state should be required to
Speaker 1: have some form of minimum standards and require the states
Speaker 1: to do something on early votes and mail in votes. Well,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, after the last election, you know,
Speaker 1: many Republicans were saying, you know, maybe this early voting
Speaker 1: is not so bad because they were losing elections because
Speaker 1: their folks weren't utilizing what they had any states, Well,
Speaker 1: let's take this opportunity to say, great, why don't two
Speaker 1: join us, and let's establish these minimum stand Instead of
Speaker 1: having a hodgepodge of laws across fifty states, let's require
Speaker 1: all states to do some form of early voting, some
Speaker 1: form of mail in voting, and have the uniform standards
Speaker 1: that can be enforced across the states. And as part
Speaker 1: of that, Molly and a lot of people, I know,
Speaker 1: a lot of your listeners probably don't want to hear this,
Speaker 1: but as part of that you're going to probably have
Speaker 1: to also do some form of national voter ID. But
Speaker 1: the key to that, in my opinion, has always been
Speaker 1: being able to require folks to be able to get
Speaker 1: those voters and the states to provide those voters, not
Speaker 1: just have one van like they've got in Alabama that
Speaker 1: you can call for and go to, but really make
Speaker 1: it an effort to get voter IDs out there that
Speaker 1: the state will do, and give a broad range of
Speaker 1: ideas that can be done. I think if we can
Speaker 1: be really strategic, that's what I would like to see
Speaker 1: the administration and my friends in the Senate and the
Speaker 1: House do, And let's get something pass to protect the
Speaker 1: right to vote, because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: we still there are still states and we still have
Speaker 1: trouble getting people to the vault. Wow, you really think
Speaker 1: a voter idea is the way to go on that?
Speaker 1: I think it has to be in order to get
Speaker 1: something packed. I think you've got to do something to
Speaker 1: get this pass. She gives them Republicans exactly everything about
Speaker 1: our democracy right now is a divided government. A form
Speaker 1: of national voter ID was part of the Freedom to
Speaker 1: Vote Act, and I know a lot of the civil
Speaker 1: Rights group, and a lot of my friends didn't particularly
Speaker 1: like that. They kind of bit their tongue, but it
Speaker 1: was there. It was necessary to even have that build
Speaker 1: to have a chance. I think we're going to have
Speaker 1: to look at that, and quite frankly, if you couple
Speaker 1: that with resources and requirements that would require the states
Speaker 1: to be able to get those voter IDs out there
Speaker 1: to people, the biggest issue in my view, Molly, what
Speaker 1: I've seen, the biggest issue is not the idea itself,
Speaker 1: it's getting the ID. And that's a real problem in Alabama.
Speaker 1: You know, when we have passed that voter ID, the
Speaker 1: photo ID, thing, first thing that a former governor did
Speaker 1: was shut down some of the DMBs in our black
Speaker 1: Belt area and they had Justice Department had to come
Speaker 1: in and ensum to get those things open back up
Speaker 1: its access to the ID. And if we can get
Speaker 1: resources and requirements that were to require the state to
Speaker 1: get those voter IDs out there, then the idea itself
Speaker 1: would be so much less of a problem, right I guess,
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know. I feel like voter ID
Speaker 1: is just a way to make it harder to vote.
Speaker 1: People have said that, and I agree with that, but
Speaker 1: If you've got access to an ID, it is not
Speaker 1: hard to pull it out at a poll. The problem
Speaker 1: that we've got with voter ID is not the idea
Speaker 1: itself in my view, except for access to it. Access
Speaker 1: to photo IDs is a problem, and I agree with that.
Speaker 1: That's why you've got to get folks and resources. In Alabama,
Speaker 1: for instance, now in order to vote absentee, you have
Speaker 1: to make a photo copy of your photo ID to
Speaker 1: mail in with your absentee ballot application. Now, not everybody
Speaker 1: in Alabama's got a damn printer, okay, and they're not
Speaker 1: going to go down the street to the local Tinkos
Speaker 1: or whatever the thing and make a copy of that.
Speaker 1: It's the barriers that keep put up around those photoids
Speaker 1: that are a huge problem, and access barriers of getting
Speaker 1: the photo IDs and the kind of photoids. Now, Alabama
Speaker 1: high school students that are state schools can't use their
Speaker 1: high school issued student ID card for some reason. I
Speaker 1: don't know why. It's a state Id's a state school,
Speaker 1: they can't use that. If we expand what is out
Speaker 1: there and the ability of states and requires states to
Speaker 1: provide those upon requests, then I think that the voter
Speaker 1: ID issue would not be as big a concern as
Speaker 1: it seems to be, and it is a concern, make
Speaker 1: no mistake. I don't want anybody out there to think
Speaker 1: that I'm not concerned about the voter ID issues. I
Speaker 1: think there's ways to solve it, and if we can
Speaker 1: work with people, I think we can solve that particular
Speaker 1: issue and give access to more people and get them
Speaker 1: out to the police. Very interesting, Doug Jones. I sort
Speaker 1: of disagree with you about the voter ID but I
Speaker 1: understand where you're coming from. I also just don't think
Speaker 1: of Republicans as being good faith negotiators. Well, that is
Speaker 1: a problem these days. I think there is some problem
Speaker 1: on both sides of the aisle of that, but I
Speaker 1: particularly when it comes to voting rights. I think that
Speaker 1: is especially true with folks on the other side of
Speaker 1: the aisle. Senator McConnell has made it very clear he
Speaker 1: does not want to see any kind of voting the
Speaker 1: rights legislation or whether it's the John Lewis Voting Rights
Speaker 1: Act or any others, the Freedom to Vote Act, He's
Speaker 1: made that very clear. So there's got to be an
Speaker 1: element of good faith. That doesn't mean we don't try.
Speaker 1: I think we've got to try, and I think we've
Speaker 1: got to continue to talk about it and how people
Speaker 1: like you and I talk about it. I just am curious,
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of stuff that Biden could just
Speaker 1: do unilaterally. Do you think he should do more of that,
Speaker 1: like through executive order? And I'm not sure what he
Speaker 1: can do unilaterally about voting right now. I mean, we've
Speaker 1: got the Voting Rights Act, and I think the Justice
Speaker 1: Department is there, but they're in lawsuits all over the place.
Speaker 1: They've got the Alabama Voting Rights Act case that's pending
Speaker 1: right now that I'm very worried about because we've got
Speaker 1: a Supreme Court that does not seem the Voting Rights Act.
Speaker 1: So I think that the president's hands are somewhat tied
Speaker 1: when it comes to voting since historically the federal government
Speaker 1: has conceeded most of that authority to the states, and
Speaker 1: it is only through the Voting Rights Act. And there
Speaker 1: may be some mothers I'm not a complete legal scholar
Speaker 1: even normal lawyer, that there may be some potential things
Speaker 1: that they can do, but I think it's limited as
Speaker 1: to what the president can do himself. And that's why
Speaker 1: he has done as much as he could do at
Speaker 1: every opportunity to use the bully pulpit of the presidency
Speaker 1: and get people engaged because this is a state issue. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: I think it needs to be a little bit more
Speaker 1: of a federal issue because we've got federal elections every
Speaker 1: two years. And by the way, you know, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of misinformation out there that he would think listening
Speaker 1: to people that the Constitution gives the states the sole
Speaker 1: right to manage elections. That's not the case. It does
Speaker 1: give states the right to do that, but then there's
Speaker 1: a qualifier to it that says that the Congress of
Speaker 1: the United States can step in and modify those and
Speaker 1: take some control. That's what the Voting Rights Act of
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty five did. Dub Jones, thank you so much, senitor.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll join us again. Would love to do
Speaker 1: it sometimes. Molly, thanks so much for having me. It's
Speaker 1: great to talk to you, Molly. Junk Fast, Jesse Cannon, Oh,
Speaker 1: anytime you have to see Matt taiebe in a public
Speaker 1: forum these days, it's just so depressing. It goes so bad.
Speaker 1: I think that Elon should have to buy him a
Speaker 1: horse after that performance. I'm just telling you, like, I
Speaker 1: understand that to hebe thought, this is gonna do something
Speaker 1: for him, But it's really embarrassing. It would take a
Speaker 1: lot to get me up in one of those hearings
Speaker 1: for a political party, but it would take a really
Speaker 1: a lot to get me about those hearings for someone
Speaker 1: as dumb as jacket list Jim Jordan. Magic. With the
Speaker 1: way Jim Jordan's been leading these things going, I think
Speaker 1: it's a good idea for me to show up, stay
Speaker 1: and not fake scurvy or something. Well, you know, these
Speaker 1: are all optional. I mean, these aren't even subpoena. I mean,
Speaker 1: these are like, you know, you have the honor of testifying.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know what to say about Matt Tihebi.
Speaker 1: He's clearly I don't know. You know, it's really depressing
Speaker 1: to see someone like this, who has done some good work,
Speaker 1: amazing journalism for decades before this right turn into a
Speaker 1: complete whatever that is, but a sycophat to a billionaire's bidding.
Speaker 1: He is our moment of fuckery today, and I think
Speaker 1: it's pretty well deserved. That's it for this episode of
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to
Speaker 1: your the best minds in politics makes sense of all
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Speaker 1: thanks for listening.