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. We have a show that will completely,
Speaker 1: totally and utterly blow your mind. Run for some things.
Speaker 1: Amanda Lippman will tell us about how they're preparing to
Speaker 1: win local races in twenty twenty four. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to the Washington Post Ben Terris about his new book,
Speaker 1: The Big Break, The Gamblers, Party, Animals and True Believers
Speaker 1: trying to win in Washington. Will America loses its mind?
Speaker 1: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
Speaker 1: The One, the Only, the Lincoln Projects, Rick Wilson. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, Good morning, Molly.
Speaker 3: How are you today?
Speaker 1: We're all just recovering from the White House Correspondence Dinner.
Speaker 3: I too, am recovering for the White House Correspondence Dinner.
Speaker 3: Our various witnesses to history and drama and amusements. We're
Speaker 3: well noted across a variety of media platforms. This week.
Speaker 1: We're not going to talk about Kelly and Conway.
Speaker 3: I'm not talking about Kelly and Conway.
Speaker 1: I am absolutely not talking about Kelly and Conway.
Speaker 3: I'm totally not going to mention Kelly and Conway's egregious behavior. Yes,
Speaker 3: I would never, as an eyewitness to her egregious behavior,
Speaker 3: mention her egregious behavior.
Speaker 1: I'm glad we've cleared that up. Yes, so now we
Speaker 1: will not talk about Kelly and Conway, but we will
Speaker 1: talk about this dead ceiling fuckery. Here we are. The
Speaker 1: Republicans have passed a budget. Can you pass a budget
Speaker 1: for not paying your bills?
Speaker 3: Well, not for long? I mean, this is like the
Speaker 3: guy who's out spending money on hookers and yachts, and
Speaker 3: he sits down in his kitchen and makes a perfectly
Speaker 3: rational budget on a spreadsheet, but leaves out the lines
Speaker 3: that say hookers and yachts.
Speaker 1: Here's the thing, Like if I called American Express right
Speaker 1: now and was like, look, man, April, I have something else.
Speaker 1: Can I just send you something else?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean? Is this even normal behavior to pass a
Speaker 1: budget for some money that you already No.
Speaker 3: It's really not. What they're doing here is they want
Speaker 3: to look away from the spending binge that happened under Trump,
Speaker 3: for which this debt ceiling is what we're paying for,
Speaker 3: and basically burn down the rest of the economy in
Speaker 3: the meantime so that they can score political points before
Speaker 3: for twenty four and beat Joe Biden. There is a
Speaker 3: profoundly nihilistic nature to today's Republican Party where they believe
Speaker 3: that they're going to win for the first time. And
Speaker 3: by the way, they got their ass handed to them
Speaker 3: on the debt ceiling shit back in nineteen ninety five,
Speaker 3: they got their ass handed to them on the debt
Speaker 3: ceiling in twenty eleven. It goes on and on. It's
Speaker 3: never a smart strategy politically speaking. But they believe that
Speaker 3: their audience now is so destructive and so profoundly shitty
Speaker 3: that they would accept the economic consequences if it was
Speaker 3: a chance to own the Libs and blame Joe Biden.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm not convinced that these Republicans even understand the
Speaker 1: consequences of their actions.
Speaker 3: Well, look, I will tell you McCarthy actually does understand it.
Speaker 3: He's been around long enough to see how badly it
Speaker 3: fucked the Republicans right in twenty eleven. And never forget
Speaker 3: Kevin McCarthy's best friend, his chief advisor, his number one
Speaker 3: bro is a lobbyist named Jeff Miller, whose clients include
Speaker 3: all kinds of major private equity people, Wall Street banks,
Speaker 3: hedge fund brows who all understand that once you blow
Speaker 3: up the full faith in credit of the American government
Speaker 3: and blow up our credit rating, their bottom lines taken
Speaker 3: immediate and consequential and really ugly strike against them. That
Speaker 3: is not where he wants to be or his clients
Speaker 3: want to be. And Kevin actually he's weak and he's stupid,
Speaker 3: but he's not completely like eating lead paint chips. This
Speaker 3: is a guy who understands that this hurt the Republicans
Speaker 3: in the past and can certainly hurt them again.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about right now where this goes. Because
Speaker 1: we saw Jenny Yellen saying that the government has money
Speaker 1: till we had heard July. She said June first, which
Speaker 1: seems bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know because at the time we're recording this,
Speaker 3: there are eight total days in which both the House
Speaker 3: and Senate are in session. They are a bajillion gajillion
Speaker 3: miles apart, and partly because Joe Biden's position is I
Speaker 3: would like a clean debt sailing limit like you guys
Speaker 3: voted for three times during Trump so we can get
Speaker 3: on with the business at hand. And their position is
Speaker 3: we want to burn it all down and live in
Speaker 3: the radioactive ruins while our children eat rats over open fires. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it is the nihilist versus the adult position once again,
Speaker 3: and this it should You can't underestimate the degree to
Speaker 3: which the Republican Party now is profoundly nihilistic about all
Speaker 3: these things. They understand at the grown up level how
Speaker 3: bad this is going to be. But there are some
Speaker 3: of them, like you know, Matt Gates and Margie Taylor
Speaker 3: Green and Paul Gosar and the rest of the weirdo
Speaker 3: caucus who think, wow, this will be fun man, this
Speaker 3: is going to be great, And people like Steve Bannon
Speaker 3: who think, yes, we will burn it all down and
Speaker 3: then I can replace with my authoritarian nationalism in the
Speaker 3: form of my best friend again, Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Right right, It's funny because it's like we just cannot
Speaker 1: move past this reality that the Republican Party has completely
Speaker 1: lost its mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, look, and the profound realization that a
Speaker 3: lot of us have had over the last few years
Speaker 3: is that there is no policy left. They've kept the
Speaker 3: branding of the old Republican policy, like we want to
Speaker 3: be fiscally responsible, they want to be fiscally responsible unless
Speaker 3: they're spending like a drunken sailor in the Philippines. They
Speaker 3: want to be fiscally responsible until it's to pay for
Speaker 3: things like infrastructure. When it was to do shit like
Speaker 3: Trump's wall, these guys were like blank check twenty four
Speaker 3: to seven. And now suddenly it's like, my god, I'm
Speaker 3: not going to spend that much money on cocon hookers.
Speaker 3: I've got to stop this right now, because well I
Speaker 3: feel guilty. No, they have no guilt, they have no shame.
Speaker 3: They are completely nihilist, and they are completely going to
Speaker 3: run the car over the cliff. And here's the problem
Speaker 3: for Kevin. Okay, here's why he's doing this. His deal
Speaker 3: to get through the after the fifteenth vote, his deal
Speaker 3: with Matt Gates and the Jihati caucus was that he
Speaker 3: would not vote for a clean debt ceiling. Ever, he
Speaker 3: would kill the debt ceiling and crash the economy before
Speaker 3: he'd vote for clean debt ceiling. And they are gonna
Speaker 3: take his job away if he votes for it. And
Speaker 3: here's the thing. He loves his job more than he
Speaker 3: loves anything else in the world. Right. He loves being
Speaker 3: speaker more than anything. He would be happy to be
Speaker 3: speaker in the radioactive ruins, eating rats over and open
Speaker 3: fire than to lose his job. He cannot, in his
Speaker 3: mind conceive of an action where where he had to
Speaker 3: be brave enough to say, fuck it, it's not worth
Speaker 3: keeping this job if I'm gonna crash the economy and
Speaker 3: destroy the country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is very republican circa twenty twenty three. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about Tucker Carlton, who got fired last week. Merry Christmas, rip, yes,
Speaker 1: thoughts and prayers out? Yeah, I mean I won't, but okay.
Speaker 3: Want to me and one for my who mees.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this for a second. Tucker Carlson
Speaker 1: is out. He has a non compete. I mean, we
Speaker 1: don't know that he has a non compete because I'm
Speaker 1: sure he's ND eight on it, but I think we
Speaker 1: can all assume that he has a non compete. Arena
Speaker 1: Braganti has a OPO file that she's not afraid to use.
Speaker 1: What happens now?
Speaker 3: So first off, let me address Arena Burganti because that
Speaker 3: is the most overpriced fucking stock in America. Why people
Speaker 3: are so chicken shit about her is astounding to me.
Speaker 1: Arena Callreck. Don't call me, okay please.
Speaker 3: Oh he's so mean, it is so fucking oh. Oh,
Speaker 3: you're gonna say shit about me in the New York Post.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the world is ending. You know, these
Speaker 3: people who live in this fucking bubble who are afraid
Speaker 3: of this woman, and guess what.
Speaker 1: Don't call me, Arena, call reck, call wreck.
Speaker 3: Everything in her fucking OPO file about Tucker Carlson would
Speaker 3: make him more money and get him more viewers. Fox
Speaker 3: is not the one in the catbird seat here. They've
Speaker 3: already started to crash out their ratings. And here's the thing.
Speaker 3: They think it's Bill O'Reilly, But the world has changed
Speaker 3: since twenty seventeen. They think, oh, well, we'll just disappear
Speaker 3: Bill O'Reilly or Megan Kelly or whoever, and they'll never
Speaker 3: be important again. Listen, that is not how it works.
Speaker 3: In twenty twenty three, the media landscape has profoundly and
Speaker 3: fundamentally changed. And so Tucker now legally and contractually, okay,
Speaker 3: that's the kind of shit that gets negotiated out by
Speaker 3: mediators and lawyers. Okay, But every time you see Tucker now,
Speaker 3: you can see these couple little video clips that have
Speaker 3: come out. You can see that this is a guy
Speaker 3: that's kind of struggling with the desire for relevance. Skin
Speaker 3: For Tucker, it's not about the money at this point.
Speaker 3: And I think there's a part of Tucker that he
Speaker 3: enjoys the show, voting transgressive things that he always has
Speaker 3: liked to do and be I was one of the
Speaker 3: first people out of the gate last week to say,
Speaker 3: you know, Tucker might want to hear this tune very frequently.
Speaker 3: Bum bum bum boom boo bom. Imagine for a moment
Speaker 3: the weird fucking scenario of Tucker Crosson entering in the
Speaker 3: Republican primary. I gotta tell you, first off, it sucks
Speaker 3: the remaining liquid out of the desiccated corpse of Ron
Speaker 3: DeSantis's political career, like right then and there, like Santa's
Speaker 3: just like turns into a husk and blows away in
Speaker 3: the dust, Ron in the wind? Oh is Ron okay?
Speaker 3: This idea of Tucker Crosson running for president, It's absurd,
Speaker 3: it's insane, it's cuckoo. Yes, And of course, you know
Speaker 3: what America would never do. We would never elect an adulterous, corrupt, venal,
Speaker 3: fucking scumbag idiot bewigged reality TV hosts real estate investment
Speaker 3: scammer named Donald Trump. Either. I don't think anything's impossible
Speaker 3: in my world anymore. I don't ever count on anything
Speaker 3: to not go fucking sideways in this country, and so
Speaker 3: you have to plan out. I mean, the worst thing
Speaker 3: you can do these days is ignore what the worst
Speaker 3: case scenario really is.
Speaker 1: We need to stop the tape here. So are you
Speaker 1: saying that Tucker Carlson's going to run for president?
Speaker 3: I'm not saying he's going to run for president. I'm
Speaker 3: saying you can't write off the possibility, because look, if
Speaker 3: you're Tucker right now, what do you get if you
Speaker 3: do a new streaming show or a new a new podcast.
Speaker 3: I mean, he's not going to do a podcast. He might,
Speaker 3: but it's not.
Speaker 1: I actually think he could. I mean, oh, he.
Speaker 3: Could be very successful. So okay, what's he gonna do?
Speaker 3: Go work for Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire get
Speaker 3: the fuck out of here, right, or or form his
Speaker 3: own streaming show. Maybe if Elon gives him a streaming
Speaker 3: channel on Twitter and somehow some fuck aery there. But
Speaker 3: he's done that now, He's been that guy for years now.
Speaker 3: I don't know how many years he had a show?
Speaker 3: What eight seven, eight years, right, whatever it was. If
Speaker 3: you're Tucker, now, why not go for the big troll.
Speaker 3: Why not go for the for the real transgression. Why
Speaker 3: not blow everything the fuck up and run for president.
Speaker 3: I'm not encouraging it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was gonna say, what is happening here?
Speaker 3: I'm also not going to write it off, because again,
Speaker 3: this is a country that has gotten fucked for the
Speaker 3: last eight years because we kept thinking the worst can't
Speaker 3: happen twenty sixteen. The time loop of twenty sixteen keeps
Speaker 3: coming back to bite us on the ass. Oh no,
Speaker 3: there's no way that Trump could ever beat a real
Speaker 3: conservative like Jeb Bush. There's no way that Ted Cruz
Speaker 3: will be defeated by Trump. Ted's a brilliant debate. There's
Speaker 3: no way Marco can be beaten. And then, of course
Speaker 3: Hillary will of course be president. I'm picking up my
Speaker 3: curtains for my office in the West Wing. I've heard
Speaker 3: that shit from one hundred fucking people. And then they'll
Speaker 3: rain Trump in. Don't worry, Paul Ryan and Mitch mcconaugh
Speaker 3: will get control of them, and they'll make him a
Speaker 3: normal president, and he could never ignore a horrible disease
Speaker 3: or all the shit I've been told over and over
Speaker 3: again in the last eight years about why the worst
Speaker 3: case scenario can't happen, and then it always fucking happens, right,
Speaker 3: I mean, the one time the worst case scenario didn't
Speaker 3: happen was in twenty twenty, and the consequences of not
Speaker 3: having Trump re elected we're still pretty damn dark.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You can't just say it won't happen, because, frankly, the
Speaker 3: barriers to entry for running for president are surprisingly fucking low.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think rfk's entire campaign is on Steve
Speaker 3: Bannon's credit card.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about RFK. So clearly Republicans have decided
Speaker 1: that they're going to support Marion Williamson and RFK in
Speaker 1: the hopes that that will somehow derail Biden.
Speaker 3: And No Labels.
Speaker 1: I feel like you don't want to talk about no Labels.
Speaker 3: No. Look, all these groups, okay, every single one of
Speaker 3: them are backed by a bunch of Republican billionaires. No
Speaker 3: labels Republican billionaires including Harlan Crowe, Steve Bannon, whatever, weird,
Speaker 3: like God knows what, Grifty Sugar Daddy bullshit he's got
Speaker 3: this time, but there seems to always be some random
Speaker 3: Chinese billionaire or Ecuadorian drug lord or whatever the fuck
Speaker 3: Steve Bannon gets his money from that he can somehow
Speaker 3: like con into say this is my secret plan and
Speaker 3: it works brilliantly. And bye. By the way, just a
Speaker 3: sidebar on Steve Bannon once more. You notice that Scabby
Speaker 3: was there with Donald Trump again this week. He was
Speaker 3: with Donald Trump again this week, like, oh, mister President,
Speaker 3: So you know you've got no labels. You've got Steve
Speaker 3: Bannon doing RFK Junior, You've got Mary and Williamson. I'm
Speaker 3: running because of whatever spirit guy told.
Speaker 1: Her to my cousin. I'm my first person. That's her
Speaker 1: spirit guy. Yes, continue, yes.
Speaker 3: And the absurdity of it is that Democrats should recognize
Speaker 3: what happens when you put third party candidates on the ballot.
Speaker 3: Now you're going to ask yourself, wow, was that really
Speaker 3: happened in America. I'm not going to say I've done it,
Speaker 3: but I am going to say that if you were
Speaker 3: to look at a bunch of races in the state
Speaker 3: of Florida where the Green Party candidates suddenly drew four
Speaker 3: or five percent away, from the Democrats. I mean I
Speaker 3: might know who did it. I might know the guys
Speaker 3: who did it.
Speaker 1: Right. No, And that's a good point. And I mean
Speaker 1: I think that's the danger of RFK.
Speaker 3: Republicans of the ship all the fucking time. Okay, Ralph
Speaker 3: Nader was a product basically that campaign basically was a
Speaker 3: Carl Roe flimflam. Yeah, Jesus, Democrats don't understand this. If
Speaker 3: I were the Democrats, I'm not saying I would do this,
Speaker 3: but I might consider possibility of doing this is go
Speaker 3: out in a bunch of states and register the fucking
Speaker 3: Maga Party on the ballot. Wait, explain the process of
Speaker 3: registering a political party in the States ranges from extremely
Speaker 3: difficult to extremely trivial. Right, That's what no labels to do.
Speaker 3: They're going to the states where they're going to hurt
Speaker 3: by the most, and a lot of those states also
Speaker 3: happen to have a pretty easy access to the ballot.
Speaker 3: So why wouldn't you go out and register the Maga
Speaker 3: Party in twenty states and you run some fucking moke
Speaker 3: for president? It's dirty politics, right, And people are like, oh,
Speaker 3: this isn't Marcus of Queensberry rules. The Marcus of Queensberry
Speaker 3: rules are all fine and good and they're lovely there
Speaker 3: and they're wonderful unless you're fighting somebody who wants to
Speaker 3: gut you and eat your fucking liver.
Speaker 1: And that's what the other team is doing right now, right,
Speaker 1: which Republicans do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's unbelievable.
Speaker 3: We're in a very consequential moment right now, Molly, and
Speaker 3: all the joking aside. I mean, the combination of the
Speaker 3: debt crisis which could blow up the economy, which is
Speaker 3: what they want, the re emergence of Trump as the
Speaker 3: main candidate and the Republican Party and giving him basically
Speaker 3: a longer time window to attack Joe Biden, the presence
Speaker 3: of these third party candidates and third party ballot lines.
Speaker 3: We're entering a time where everybody better take this seriously,
Speaker 3: because the twenty twenty four campaign is in full effect.
Speaker 3: It is in full swing right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're forever living in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: It is. I'm telling you. I keep calling it the
Speaker 3: time loop because I feel like I felt in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: All these people making, all these smart, well intentioned people
Speaker 3: who keep saying like I can't believe this is happening.
Speaker 3: You can't, it's happened before.
Speaker 1: But you do think that Biden can get reelected.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, And I have to say this weekend in DC,
Speaker 3: I detected from a lot of conversations with reporters before
Speaker 3: the event, Right, well, Biden's so old, he's not sharp,
Speaker 3: And I gotta tell you, he walked out into the
Speaker 3: event and he blew people the fuck away.
Speaker 1: Every time, you know, the anxiety that people have, and
Speaker 1: then every time he's great. Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, look, the speech writers got his tone perfectly, but
Speaker 3: that was only half of it he delivered. Yeah, he
Speaker 3: was sharp, he was witty, he was funny. He had
Speaker 3: good timing and cadence and pacing and all that stuff.
Speaker 3: And wrapping up with the dark Brandon joke of inverting
Speaker 3: a favorite Republican meme right and Republican talking point of
Speaker 3: inverting it and owning it was really spot on his
Speaker 3: performance in that room that night. A lot of people
Speaker 3: and folks I was talking to in both you know,
Speaker 3: the press and the political worlds were like, wow, I
Speaker 3: didn't I didn't know he still had it in him.
Speaker 1: So stupid They do that every time, though, every time
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, it's going to be so bad. I
Speaker 1: was getting texts from a political friend. Oh it's so late.
Speaker 1: Will he be okay? You know he's fine. He did
Speaker 1: this State of the Union like you can't fucking believe.
Speaker 3: He set the fucking hook for the State of the
Speaker 3: Union and reeled those fuckers in on Social Security. Nobody
Speaker 3: be included saw it coming.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Thank you Rick Wilson for joining us.
Speaker 3: You are more than welcome, ass always.
Speaker 1: Amanda Lipman is the co founder of Run for Something.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to fast Politics, Amanda Lipmn.
Speaker 4: Thanks for having me, Molly always fun.
Speaker 1: I am always delighted to have you. Tell us what
Speaker 1: you're working on right now.
Speaker 4: Okay, So Run for Something is doing two things right now.
Speaker 4: As a reminder of Run for Something recruits and supports young,
Speaker 4: diverse progressives run for local office all across the country.
Speaker 1: And brag to us about some of your successes.
Speaker 4: Some of our amazing successes include Representative Zoe zephyr Out
Speaker 4: in Montana, who is right now belief unbelievable. Senator Meghan
Speaker 4: Hunt in Nebraska, who has been leading some of the
Speaker 4: work to the abortione ban there, who's been currently under
Speaker 4: an ethics complaint because she has a trans kid and
Speaker 4: therefore has a conflict of interest.
Speaker 1: So they say, oh, that's right, I remember that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, books like Lena Hidalgo, the Harris County executive, who
Speaker 4: is unbelievable, a whole bunch of members of the New
Speaker 4: York State Legislature, Pennsylvania State Legislature, Representative Anna Escamani down
Speaker 4: in Florida, and Representative Fantry Striscoll who's the minority leader
Speaker 4: in the Florida State House, who are fighting truth and
Speaker 4: nail against Ron DeSantis, and nearly eight hundred others who
Speaker 4: all across the country are just getting shit done in
Speaker 4: this unbelievable way. So, in short, we're doing two big
Speaker 4: things right now. One, we are working with candidates for
Speaker 4: twenty twenty three elections. This is not an off year.
Speaker 4: There are more elections in twenty twenty three than there
Speaker 4: were in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Tell us what those elections look like.
Speaker 4: Okay, so we've got for share of some state legislative races,
Speaker 4: including critically in Virginia, we were trying to flip back
Speaker 4: a chamber and push some real accountability against the Republican governor.
Speaker 4: We also have tons of municipal races, school board races.
Speaker 4: There are something like twenty nine thousand school board seats
Speaker 4: up this year. Only half of those elections are in November.
Speaker 4: It's election day. We're recording this on Tuesday. It's election
Speaker 4: day today for ten run for Something candidates in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 4: and Indiana. So we're working with a bunch of folks
Speaker 4: running for local races this year. We are also proactively
Speaker 4: recruiting for twenty twenty four.
Speaker 1: Oh interesting, so tell us what that looks like.
Speaker 4: So we are running events to get people thinking we're
Speaker 4: running for office. We just did some really cool ones
Speaker 4: running for about school board races in Pennsylvania. We're doing
Speaker 4: some work in Arkansas to get more people talking about
Speaker 4: running for office. We're doing work in Texas and Wisconsin
Speaker 4: and Michigan as well as all other states to get
Speaker 4: people getting ready to get on the ballot. The earlier
Speaker 4: we can work with folks, the better. It allows us
Speaker 4: to really help people set up strong campaigns, to build
Speaker 4: out their staff in the right way, to raise money
Speaker 4: in the most efficient way possible, and to make sure
Speaker 4: that we are finding, you know, honestly the best possible
Speaker 4: folks to be on the ballot in a year where it's.
Speaker 1: Never mattered more. How many times does a woman need
Speaker 1: to be told to run for office? If you're listening
Speaker 1: to this podcast right now and you are a woman
Speaker 1: and you're thinking like maybe I should run for office,
Speaker 1: can you just talk about that for a minute.
Speaker 4: So it has been said that women need to be
Speaker 4: asked seven times to run for office, and the joke goes,
Speaker 4: you ask women seven times, a man is just going
Speaker 4: to tell you right and then ask you for money.
Speaker 4: But what we have found more broadly is that especially
Speaker 4: young women right now, are really eager to step up.
Speaker 4: They want to solve these problems that women and more
Speaker 4: broadly other people are facing, and they are fucking furious
Speaker 4: leadership that they don't feel like is fighting for them.
Speaker 1: So twenty twenty three, so it's these state races. What
Speaker 1: are the ones you really where you feel like Democrats
Speaker 1: could move the needle.
Speaker 4: Well, we've obviously got the Virginia State legislature, which will
Speaker 4: be critical, but we are also looking at count as
Speaker 4: school board races across the country. One thing that really
Speaker 4: keeps me up at night as a new parent, there
Speaker 4: is so much aggression coming from the far right. Any
Speaker 4: school board races in the form of Moms for Liberty
Speaker 4: in particular, but as well as Americans for Prosperity and
Speaker 4: a number of other organizations. When I say aggression, I
Speaker 4: mean like they're putting in money and time and effort
Speaker 4: into these races, but they're also making them very hostile.
Speaker 4: They're hard, They are progressing and attacking candidates and scaring
Speaker 4: people out of them, and that's a tactic.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to me what Moms for Liberty is
Speaker 1: and just a little bit about it?
Speaker 4: Yes, So, Moms for Liberty was an organization that came
Speaker 4: to be a base out of Florida. Is all both
Speaker 4: good and terrible things tend to be after In fact,
Speaker 4: one of the run for Something along we worked with
Speaker 4: down there of our county, Jennifer Jenkins ran and won
Speaker 4: against an incumbent school board member in her county. The
Speaker 4: school board member, after losing, was furious. One of the
Speaker 4: big issues in that race at the time was both
Speaker 4: equity and schools, as well as cold policies. Field recall
Speaker 4: this was a really hot topic around schools. After twenty
Speaker 4: twenty one twenty nine two, they decided that one of
Speaker 4: the things they wanted to do was create an organization
Speaker 4: to bring moms united against what has become an umbrella
Speaker 4: organization to push against LGBT equity and schools, against school safety,
Speaker 4: against diverse reading curriculums. They are working to ban books,
Speaker 4: They're working to shut down libraries, They're working to get
Speaker 4: teachers fired, and in many places there if they're explicitly
Speaker 4: or implicitly encouraging harassment against school board members and candidates
Speaker 4: who are against them. It is funded by Republican mega donors.
Speaker 4: The Florida State Republican Chair has a direct connection to it.
Speaker 1: Who is the Florida State Republican Chair.
Speaker 4: So there's this woman, Bridgitt Ziegler, who is the wife
Speaker 4: of one of the vice chairs of the Florida Republican Party.
Speaker 4: She is a co founder and former co director of
Speaker 4: Moms for Liberty, also a school board member. She also
Speaker 4: is running as part of the Leadership Institute, which is
Speaker 4: one of like the Koch Brothers funded conservative training programs
Speaker 4: that does basically what Run for Something does, but has
Speaker 4: been doing it for decades and.
Speaker 1: Has billions of dollars right.
Speaker 4: Of millions of dollars over thirty some odd years. Bridget
Speaker 4: runs their school board Leadership program. So they have been
Speaker 4: doing things like trainings for school board candidates. They had
Speaker 4: ted Cruz to potential school board candidates, and they've been
Speaker 4: working in partnership with Moms for Liberty. So it is
Speaker 4: a full Republican Party effort to take over school boards
Speaker 4: from the bottom up and to really put a button
Speaker 4: on this. Ralph Reid, who is one of the sort
Speaker 4: of infamous leaders of the quote unquote moral majority of
Speaker 4: far a Christian leader, has said, I would rather have
Speaker 4: a thousand school board members than a single president.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 2: It's powerful.
Speaker 4: Can make a difference.
Speaker 1: Yeah, wow. So the school board races really are where
Speaker 1: it's at. Talk to me about this Virginia Board of Delegates,
Speaker 1: because that I feel like we've been here before with Thisgia.
Speaker 4: With Virginia, we absolutely the Virginia State Legislature. We flipped it.
Speaker 4: We Democrats, but also run for something candidates in particular
Speaker 4: flip the Virginia State House.
Speaker 1: That's right. In twenty eighteen, right, well.
Speaker 4: Twenty seventeen we won to the five seats. We flipped it.
Speaker 4: In twenty nineteen, Republicans took it back. We have forty
Speaker 4: eight seats, they have fifty two. This is really really close.
Speaker 4: In the Virginia State Senate, Democrats have control, but we
Speaker 4: need to flip back the state House and we have
Speaker 4: an opportunity to do that this year, which is really exciting.
Speaker 4: So we're gonna be working with a bunch of candidates
Speaker 4: in Virginia to make sure that we are flipping as
Speaker 4: many of these seats as possible.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about this twenty twenty four recruitment effort. What
Speaker 1: are you looking for? Who do you need? What states
Speaker 1: tell us about your hope streams, et cetera.
Speaker 4: Well, we are looking everywhere. That what makes this work
Speaker 4: so fun, especially at this point in the cycle. The
Speaker 4: earliest filing deadlines for twenty twenty four, some of them
Speaker 4: haven't been sad yet but are likely to start hitting
Speaker 4: in as soon as December twenty twenty three. Historically, Texas
Speaker 4: campaign filing deadlines have been the December before the election year,
Speaker 4: so it's not too early to start thinking about these races.
Speaker 4: We are looking for especially young people, so for us,
Speaker 4: that's folks forty and under. We're especially looking for young women,
Speaker 4: young people of color, young LGBTQIA folks, but really anyone
Speaker 4: who doesn't see themselves reflected in leadership who is pissed
Speaker 4: about a problem or excited about a solution, and who
Speaker 4: sees a way for local office And for us, that's
Speaker 4: everything in state house, state Senate and below. Take the
Speaker 4: way for them to solve it, to take leadership there.
Speaker 4: And I am especially pumped about some of the work
Speaker 4: that we are doing in these states that a lot
Speaker 4: of people write off, like I'm really pumped about Indiana,
Speaker 4: I'm pumped about Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: I want to hear about pumped about Indiana because one
Speaker 1: of the things that's really shaped my most recent podcasting
Speaker 1: is that we had a man, Adam Fresh who ran
Speaker 1: again and you'll remember, ran against Lauren Boepert. Everyone said,
Speaker 1: you're crazy we had him and he lost by seven
Speaker 1: into votes. So I'm now very excited about seats that
Speaker 1: people think you're crazy to be excited about. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about Indiana.
Speaker 4: Well, I think you know, Indiana falls into the bucket
Speaker 4: of states where as people will call Barack Obama one
Speaker 4: Indiana in two thousand and eight, it's so crazy, right,
Speaker 4: But there is an open US Senate race in Indiana.
Speaker 4: Mike Brown is retiring, and for a while that they
Speaker 4: was trying to find a Democrat to run in that race.
Speaker 4: And I don't know, if the top of my head
Speaker 4: if we have identified one just yet, but it's the
Speaker 4: kind of place where it's really worth building democratic infrastructure.
Speaker 4: There are and this has turned so many of these
Speaker 4: red states blue cities, and I think we should keep
Speaker 4: that in mind because they are going to become more
Speaker 4: and more powerful. So we're looking especially in places where
Speaker 4: they're going to be competitive or could be competitive or
Speaker 4: should be competitive US Sunate elections. That includes places like Montana,
Speaker 4: where we've now seen an uprising of young people standing
Speaker 4: with representative's effort. Police is like Nebraska, where there will
Speaker 4: be two US Senate seats on the ballot and a
Speaker 4: whole bunch of furious people mad about the bills they've
Speaker 4: passed against trans kids. Josh Holly is on the ballot
Speaker 4: in Missouri, they have again passed some egregious legislation against
Speaker 4: trans people.
Speaker 1: There.
Speaker 4: It is worth thinking holistically. You know, where's Joe binding
Speaker 4: in a campaign? Probably Pennsylvania, with consin Michigan, Arizona, Georgia.
Speaker 4: Great awesome. Where else can we be and what else
Speaker 4: can we be doing to lift up the entire ticket
Speaker 4: without counting on the top of the ticket to do
Speaker 4: the work.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this a little more because
Speaker 1: what you're saying is basically that you think that what
Speaker 1: happened in Kansas in the twenty tens could happen you
Speaker 1: could have this kind of seismic blowback. And you are
Speaker 1: not the first person to come on this podcast to
Speaker 1: talk about a seismic blowback. In fact, a few weeks
Speaker 1: ago we had James car on here and he was
Speaker 1: talking about the Mississippi governorship.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a perfect example here. People also forget like
Speaker 4: Kansas has a democratic governor, Luisiana has a democratic governor.
Speaker 4: Kentucky had a democratic state legislature as recently as twenty
Speaker 4: sixteen and still has a democratic governor. These are places
Speaker 4: where democrats can win if it's the right democrat and
Speaker 4: if they're willing to invest in it.
Speaker 1: This Mississippi governor's race is really on the horizon. It's
Speaker 1: a candidate called Presley. He is relative of Elvis Presley.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about that a little bit.
Speaker 4: I think it's a really compelling race. That's a great candidate,
Speaker 4: and he's not just like the relative at Elvis Presley experience.
Speaker 4: He's the Mississippi Public Service Commits Center.
Speaker 1: He's the highest elected Democrat in the state right now.
Speaker 1: Just yeah, like in Florida where Nikki Fried was the
Speaker 1: AG chair.
Speaker 4: This is what you want. You want a Democrat who
Speaker 4: has roots, who has ties to the community. It also
Speaker 4: helps that he has a name. A fun fact about
Speaker 4: Brandon Presley is when he ran in the early two
Speaker 4: thousands in one office at twenty three, he was the
Speaker 4: youngest mayor in Mississippi's history. Big deal. Kind of folks
Speaker 4: who love to work with had run for something, been
Speaker 4: around in the early two thousands. It's the kind of
Speaker 4: race that we shouldn't ran off just because it seems
Speaker 4: like a long shot. And it's certainly the kind of
Speaker 4: place that I hope the candidate that Presley is able
Speaker 4: to keep it really local. You know, governor's races in particular,
Speaker 4: it can be about the problems the communities themselves are facing.
Speaker 4: It's easy to keep them centered. So I hope that
Speaker 4: he's able to do that successfully.
Speaker 1: Can you tell me something you're seeing that other people
Speaker 1: aren't at the state level.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the things that I think is really
Speaker 4: exciting about the twenty twenty four races and twenty twoty
Speaker 4: three writ large is that we are building on the
Speaker 4: work we've done since twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, that
Speaker 4: none of that was for not so whether it's black
Speaker 4: quoters matter.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a great organization. Sorry, go on, yeah,
Speaker 1: or state.
Speaker 4: Parties or county parties, like all of these folks who've
Speaker 4: been doing this work for a while. They did to
Speaker 4: register black voters in twenty twenty or twenty twenty two
Speaker 4: will also help twenty twenty four. It's why I think
Speaker 4: it's so important that this year Democrats can't take our
Speaker 4: foot off the gas. I've hurt for too many people
Speaker 4: who have said, oh, I'm just hired of politics. They
Speaker 4: don't want to spend any more money, i don't want
Speaker 4: to pay any more attention. I'm just let me have
Speaker 4: a break. Come back to me next year. It's like, no,
Speaker 4: we don't have the luxury of that. That's not how
Speaker 4: this works, because if we'll lose momentum, we can lose
Speaker 4: it all.
Speaker 1: Yeah. The school boards seem really I mean, that is
Speaker 1: something where you really could end up like your school
Speaker 1: could end up being completely crazy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you're not going to know it until it's
Speaker 4: too late for you to get involved. Like that's actually
Speaker 4: the really scary part about school boards is it is
Speaker 4: often too late to feel the challenger, or get on
Speaker 4: the ballot, or stop or even like contest some of
Speaker 4: these races until the absolutely bananas people have geared themselves
Speaker 4: that revealed themselves to be as bad shit as they are.
Speaker 4: So that's the thing that we really have to think
Speaker 4: about in terms of as an organization, can we flood
Speaker 4: this zone good really good people running for these races.
Speaker 1: So do you think I mean, is it fair to
Speaker 1: say if you have a kid in public school you
Speaker 1: should run for school board?
Speaker 4: Absolutely, if you have a kid in public school, if
Speaker 4: you're thinking about having a kid in public school, even
Speaker 4: if you haven't, and because you made that decision for
Speaker 4: a particular reason, like that's also a compelling part of
Speaker 4: a campaign. I would say it's definitely worth noting that
Speaker 4: the median school board member is fifty nine years old.
Speaker 4: We are especially looking for younger parents, who are people
Speaker 4: who currently have kids. That's often retirees who run for
Speaker 4: school board and are a little bit distanced from the
Speaker 4: work itself. But that's not to say that anyone and
Speaker 4: everyone who cares about their schools, which is ultimately a
Speaker 4: way of saying I care about my community, whether I
Speaker 4: have a kid in the system or not. I should
Speaker 4: get engaged.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about like sort of the races that
Speaker 1: you think our listeners should be like really supporting, you know,
Speaker 1: giving money too. I mean what, like, what's a lot
Speaker 1: of bang for your boy?
Speaker 4: I think you can't go wrong engaging with whatever the
Speaker 4: local races near you. I know it's not always a
Speaker 4: helpful answers. People are like, you know, I can't really
Speaker 4: like flip it. It's like one you don't know. The
Speaker 4: best way to future the other side can take control,
Speaker 4: or to to let them keep holding control is to
Speaker 4: not engage with it. I think it's really important important
Speaker 4: that people invest in the places they live. The cool
Speaker 4: thing about it is when you do, and then the
Speaker 4: people you help elect or people you prevent from winning,
Speaker 4: make a difference, you get to live the results of that.
Speaker 4: You get to bake down the bike path that your
Speaker 4: elected official helped open, you get to go regress that
Speaker 4: they made possible, or send your kids to the school
Speaker 4: that you helped fund more teachers for. I think that's
Speaker 4: really special and it creates sort of a virtuous cycle
Speaker 4: of wanting to stay engaged because you see why it matters,
Speaker 4: which is not to say you also shouldn't send money
Speaker 4: to state parties and groups that organize young people in
Speaker 4: communities of color all across the country. But investing where
Speaker 4: you live, you like, really can't go wrong.
Speaker 1: That's a great answer. Do you have any hope for
Speaker 1: this Florida State Party right now? Like, I mean, where
Speaker 1: are the sort of states where Democrats are kind of
Speaker 1: rebuilding and where you have some hope there?
Speaker 4: Well, I think the state party, you know, there's nowhere,
Speaker 4: nowhere works to go. But I think there's some incredible
Speaker 4: Democrats in Florida. Fantry's Driscoll, Anna Escamani, Maxwell Frost, Ashley
Speaker 4: Gant who are really amazing. And even more local, there's
Speaker 4: some incredible school board members across Florida who are showing
Speaker 4: what fighting really looks, like Maria Salamanca and Orange County,
Speaker 4: Luisa Santos and Lucy Abiaz Geller in Miami Dade. These
Speaker 4: are amazing, And you'll know, it's mostly women, mostly people
Speaker 4: of color, who are really unafraid to fight for their values.
Speaker 4: And I think that's what we need moving forward. There
Speaker 4: are so many state parties across the country that are
Speaker 4: sort of winnowing on the vine, unfortunately, and the way
Speaker 4: to rescue them is to invest in them. We cannot
Speaker 4: abandon this critical infrastructure, especially going into a national electioneer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a really good point. And there really are
Speaker 1: volunteer opportunities on the state party level.
Speaker 4: Too, totally, and especially as you live in a place
Speaker 4: where the presidential campaign is not likely to have as
Speaker 4: much infrastructure. But your doors knocked for your city council race,
Speaker 4: your school board race, your state house race will help
Speaker 4: the full ticket, right, it all helps. It doesn't matter
Speaker 4: necessarily what Democrats you are going to.
Speaker 1: The doors for. Will you remind me of that statistic
Speaker 1: that you like to quote or that you have quoted
Speaker 1: in the past with me about how meaningful it is
Speaker 1: to have someone run on the ticket even if they
Speaker 1: don't win in a red state.
Speaker 4: So we have this theory called reverse code tails, which
Speaker 4: is basically that running people locally, whether or not they
Speaker 4: win or lose, those campaigns have a really galvanizing effort
Speaker 4: in those communities. They bring voters out, they bring volunteers out,
Speaker 4: and they help volks up the ticket either win by
Speaker 4: bigger margins or lose by a little bit less, both
Speaker 4: of which is progress towards eventually flipping in some places,
Speaker 4: and I think especially in places where you're thinking about,
Speaker 4: like rural Pennsylvania or rural Michigan or the redder parts
Speaker 4: of Wisconsin. In some places, the local Democrat is just
Speaker 4: looking to move the margin from seventy thirty to sixty forty. Right,
Speaker 4: That's okay, and that's how you eventually get to fifty
Speaker 4: to fifty. You don't go from seventy thirty to fifty
Speaker 4: to fifty overnight. You do it by losing by lass
Speaker 4: a little bit each time. And that I think is
Speaker 4: really about thinking long term. You know, we got to
Speaker 4: look beyond the singular election cycle. Well, only winning is
Speaker 4: winning eventually, in order to win big, we do have
Speaker 4: to lose a little bit first. So it's not that
Speaker 4: folks are sacrificial lambs. It's that they're in service of
Speaker 4: a broader, longer term mission.
Speaker 1: So good, Amanda Liman. I hope you'll come back anytime.
Speaker 4: Molly, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Mollie, and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time Fast Politics the show you're listening to
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Speaker 1: Ben Terris is a reporter at The Washington Post and
Speaker 1: author of The Big Break, The Gamblers Party, Animals and
Speaker 1: True Believers Trying to Win in Washington Wall America Loses
Speaker 1: its Mind. Welcome to Fast Politics, ben Terris, thanks so
Speaker 1: much for having me talk about the book first, and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk about poor Shawn mguilwack.
Speaker 2: Sure, I have a book coming out. It's my first book.
Speaker 2: Could be my last book, because writing a book is
Speaker 2: incredibly hard. It turns out, and it nearly killed me.
Speaker 2: It took two years, and I'm very very excited about it,
Speaker 2: very proud of it. It's called The Big Break, The
Speaker 2: Gamblers Party, Animals and True Believers trying to Win in
Speaker 2: Washington while America loses its mind, and it comes out
Speaker 2: on June sixth, and it's a Washington book. It's kind
Speaker 2: of you know, we've all seen and read and sometimes loved,
Speaker 2: sometimes hated all these Trump books that have come out,
Speaker 2: and this is sort of like a Donald Trump book
Speaker 2: without him being in it really at all. It's a
Speaker 2: book about the Washington that he left behind, the Washington
Speaker 2: that he might be returning to, a wild cast of
Speaker 2: characters behind the scenes, folks, people you've heard of, people
Speaker 2: you haven't heard of, all kind of trying to make
Speaker 2: it work in this new new normal. And I got
Speaker 2: to tell you, having been and reported in Washington for
Speaker 2: you know, ten twelve years now, it even shocked me
Speaker 2: the kinds of stuff that I was learning about and
Speaker 2: reporting on, as I know, really delved into the process.
Speaker 1: Okay, you can't say that, because now I'm going to
Speaker 1: ask you, here's this is good training. What you don't
Speaker 1: want to do in an interview. What were the things
Speaker 1: that shocked you?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean, you know, this excerpt that I had
Speaker 2: come out in the Washington Post out Sean mcley is
Speaker 2: a good example. This was a story about a Democratic
Speaker 2: operative named Sean who was this real rising star Democrat
Speaker 2: and he had a polling and think tank organization that
Speaker 2: he started in twenty eighteen called Data for Progress. And
Speaker 2: you know, he was a hot shot, like he was
Speaker 2: really on the rise. His polls were getting tweeted out
Speaker 2: by the White House. He was getting meetings with Chuck
Speaker 2: Schumer and his staff and going to the White House
Speaker 2: for meeting Apparently Joe Biden would cite his polling and
Speaker 2: you know in private meetings. And he was also this
Speaker 2: real showman like character and so for me, I thought, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is a guy who is kind of taking some
Speaker 2: of the Trump lessons and using it on the Democratic side.
Speaker 2: He's quotable, he you know, likes to say things that
Speaker 2: get him in the newspapery. Was in a pro pried
Speaker 2: a lot of the time with his jokes, but like
Speaker 2: people kind of dug it because he was good at
Speaker 2: what he did. And so in spending time with him,
Speaker 2: I got to learn about his gambling habit, which started
Speaker 2: at poker nights. For me, I would go to his
Speaker 2: poker nights.
Speaker 1: Oh, he went to his poker knights.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the gambling habit wasn't just poker. He would
Speaker 2: bet kind of pretty big sums of money on politics,
Speaker 2: including on races that he was polling, and for me,
Speaker 2: I was like.
Speaker 1: I'm a cynical guy.
Speaker 2: I'm a cynical guy, but like seeing the Pete Rose
Speaker 2: of politics in action and kind of bragging about it. Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna win fourteen thousand dollars on this chan Tell
Speaker 2: Brown Nina Turner race. If Nina Turner loses, even though
Speaker 2: he was doing polling for Nina Turner super Pack.
Speaker 1: That seems really bad.
Speaker 2: Yeah. When I heard that, I was like, man, why
Speaker 2: is nobody nobody's questioning this. People around the poker table
Speaker 2: just were kind of like, oh, like, what other bets
Speaker 2: you got? And some people were making best with them.
Speaker 2: It was kind of a cynical scene.
Speaker 1: Right, So when you were reporting this, you're embedded, and
Speaker 1: then the scandal breaks later, did you have a sense
Speaker 1: of because micla he was brought down by a number
Speaker 1: of scandals, is that fair?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right. And so I did not
Speaker 2: know any of that was going to break, right, So
Speaker 2: at first, when I'm reporting on him, I have this
Speaker 2: kind of story of his gambling and betting on politics,
Speaker 2: and I feel like I sort of have it to
Speaker 2: myself as a reporter, which is a great place to
Speaker 2: be in a way, it's like I'm going to report
Speaker 2: of something that nobody's ever heard about, and it's going
Speaker 2: to change the way that people think about politics to
Speaker 2: a degree, or though people will be surprised by it,
Speaker 2: or people be amused by it, or people will be
Speaker 2: angered by it, and it will sort of be my story.
Speaker 2: What happened with Sean is his entire world kind of
Speaker 2: imploded by the end of the year. And you know,
Speaker 2: his rides included teaming up with Gabe Bankman Freed, the
Speaker 2: brother of Sam Bankman Freed, the crypto former billionaire. He
Speaker 2: was kind of helping advise the bank Men Freed on
Speaker 2: how to, you know, on how to spend their money
Speaker 2: in Washington, among other things, what can mandidates to endorse
Speaker 2: and having the ear of people like that can make
Speaker 2: you very powerful in Washington. The gambling was a story too.
Speaker 2: By the end of the year, what happened was he
Speaker 2: got on the wrong side of a number of people.
Speaker 2: Sam Bankman Freed had his implosion, a lot of Sean's
Speaker 2: bets went the wrong way, and all of that combined
Speaker 2: kind of forced the situation at Data for Progress where
Speaker 2: all of these young staffers that when I first got
Speaker 2: to know them, really looked up to Sean as kind
Speaker 2: of a big brother figure, somebody who could inspire them
Speaker 2: politically and get them inside the room in Washington and
Speaker 2: just danced their careers and made them think about politics
Speaker 2: in a different way. And they all kind of thought
Speaker 2: into his project. When all of these things happened, at
Speaker 2: the end of the year, it just became unsustainable and
Speaker 2: there was basically a staff coup and he was fired.
Speaker 2: They found out, you know, even more details later about
Speaker 2: things he was doing that they did not like as
Speaker 2: a organization, and so at first she has to kind
Speaker 2: of negotiate for a severance, and by the end of
Speaker 2: the year they just fired him on the spot. And
Speaker 2: you know, he's out there somewhere now, probably trying to
Speaker 2: plot a comeback. But it's it's a pretty pretty steep
Speaker 2: fall for somebody like Sean.
Speaker 1: So I want to like just pull back for a minute,
Speaker 1: because I feel like this is a larger issue. We
Speaker 1: see it's not a larger issue, but there certainly is
Speaker 1: a fair amount of, I want to say, polling problems.
Speaker 1: I'm going to be generous here. You know, every time
Speaker 1: I have a polster on this podcast. I say you
Speaker 1: guys are wrong about this, wrong about that, and they
Speaker 1: say things like, well, you're not reading the polls, right.
Speaker 1: Poles are a vibe some of Sean's polls we always
Speaker 1: thought on this podcast seemed a little optimistic.
Speaker 2: So my big takeaway from my year and a half
Speaker 2: with Sean and also just kind of embedded in Washington
Speaker 2: in general, is that nobody really knows anything. Everybody in
Speaker 2: Washington makes money and gets influenced by convincing people that
Speaker 2: they kind of have the secret, they know how things
Speaker 2: are going to play out, they know how to couch it.
Speaker 2: Nobody ever says it's a guarantee. They always have ways
Speaker 2: to say. Look, if you read the poll, it means that,
Speaker 2: like you know, ninety percent chance that so and so
Speaker 2: could win, the other thing happens. It doesn't mean we're
Speaker 2: wrong because ten percent is still a possibility. Like you
Speaker 2: don't understand probability, and maybe I don't, But also I
Speaker 2: feel like there's a lot of people who make a
Speaker 2: living by convincing people they know things and really nobody does.
Speaker 2: Maybe they have a slightly better chance at understanding how
Speaker 2: the electorate is going to go based on their data,
Speaker 2: but really this last midterm was so confusing and so
Speaker 2: unexpected that you'd like to think that people would chill
Speaker 2: out on their confidence about what they can and can't predict.
Speaker 2: But also, Washington has been doing this forever. Nobody really
Speaker 2: saw Obama coming, nobody really saw Trump coming, and yet
Speaker 2: everybody still claims to know what's what I mean. I
Speaker 2: spent the beginning of my time at these poker knights,
Speaker 2: and I remember Sean talking about Donald Trump is cooked,
Speaker 2: He's a cook turkey. He said he's ever going to
Speaker 2: run again, He's ever going to win again. And that
Speaker 2: might be right, but he's going to run again. He's
Speaker 2: certainly running, and he could win. I mean, anyone who
Speaker 2: says otherwise is you know, what are they basing that on?
Speaker 2: It's nothing.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point that there's a
Speaker 1: sort of culture of like convincing people, you know, sort
Speaker 1: of almost the unknowable right.
Speaker 2: That's right. And also I feel like a lot of
Speaker 2: people in that industry are very good at explaining away
Speaker 2: how they were wrong. So I don't think, you know,
Speaker 2: any of us would disagree that. Right before the midterms,
Speaker 2: everyone seemed to be saying Republicans are going to have
Speaker 2: a red wave right, and it turned out not to
Speaker 2: quite be that way, and so therefore the people who
Speaker 2: said that are wrong. And yet if you talk to them,
Speaker 2: there's so many ways that they can explain the ways
Speaker 2: in which they were right. Oh well, we got the
Speaker 2: actual electorate correct, predicted how many people in America were
Speaker 2: basically you were going to vote for Republicans versus Democrats.
Speaker 2: We just didn't have it geographically figured out. And it's like, okay,
Speaker 2: well what does that do for me? I don't really care.
Speaker 2: What I thought going into terms was everybody saying the
Speaker 2: Republicans are going to have these huge games everywhere, and
Speaker 2: then when it didn't happen, I sort of feel like
Speaker 2: people should say, my bad, I got itron instead of
Speaker 2: showing all the ways in which they were technically right,
Speaker 2: because being technically right, like, who cares?
Speaker 1: Tell us what other Washington weirdnesses you've observed.
Speaker 2: When I set out to write this book, the idea
Speaker 2: was to try to answer the question, how did Trump
Speaker 2: change Washington?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: It was a very chaotic obviously four year presidency. It
Speaker 2: was chaotic during the election. Before that, people really got
Speaker 2: to know Washington or what they thought Washington was during
Speaker 2: these years. You know, like people in America knew the
Speaker 2: names of counselors to the President, like Kelly and Conway,
Speaker 2: or you know, the Commerce Secretary and Wilbur Ross. These
Speaker 2: were characters all of a sudden in the national drama,
Speaker 2: and so people thought they understood Washington. This book is
Speaker 2: sort of a look at the Washington below that surface.
Speaker 2: And I think it's more interesting because it's just the
Speaker 2: people who are always around. There's lots of drama. There's
Speaker 2: people who have these really serious professional and personal relationships
Speaker 2: at break because of the Trump presidency. There's stories of
Speaker 2: people who are desperately trying to make change in spite
Speaker 2: of it or because of it, and just the headwinds
Speaker 2: that you're up against when a place like Washington that
Speaker 2: is often not really interested in change. So basically, I
Speaker 2: spent time with a cast of I don't know twelve
Speaker 2: people or so, and I feel like it's a pretty
Speaker 2: broad slice of Washington.
Speaker 1: Tell us who the people are.
Speaker 2: Well, I can tell you that Matt Slapp is a character.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, you really got people right before they crashed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. That was also not something I expected. A leged
Speaker 2: groping scandal that Matt Slap found himself in by the
Speaker 2: end of the year that is in the book. Did
Speaker 2: not expect it. Also, just to be clear, I did
Speaker 2: not have that information before it was published. It wasn't
Speaker 2: like I knew about a groping incident and sat on it.
Speaker 2: I would have reported it in the paper if I
Speaker 2: had known at the time. But after I was reported
Speaker 2: it was something I continued to report. The Matt Slap story,
Speaker 2: A big part of that thread is actually not even
Speaker 2: about that scandal. It's about him and his right hand
Speaker 2: man at Sea Pack, the organization.
Speaker 1: That conservative political action.
Speaker 2: That's right, and he and Matt Slap is the head
Speaker 2: of that. He had a spokesman for years. They were
Speaker 2: so close that when the spokesman was Ian, when Ian
Speaker 2: was having a family, he thought about having Matt and
Speaker 2: Mercedes Slap as godparents.
Speaker 1: That's how close they got.
Speaker 2: But over the course of the last couple of years,
Speaker 2: really their relationship prad into white where now you know
Speaker 2: they're not even speaking, and so stories like that I
Speaker 2: feel like capture this moment.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: It's a story about the personal dramas that that happened
Speaker 2: in Washington, about the political dramas that happened about the
Speaker 2: waves in which they are connected. Right, People don't just
Speaker 2: break up because of politics, and people's politics don't change
Speaker 2: just because of politics. Sometimes it's personal, Sometimes it's petty
Speaker 2: and about workplace drama or about weird situations at Seapack.
Speaker 2: And I feel like that story, if you read that,
Speaker 2: you're going to kind of understand some of the psychodrama
Speaker 2: happening within the Republican Party right now.
Speaker 1: And so that's fascinating. A match lap, so you really
Speaker 1: did find yourself in the middle of drama.
Speaker 2: Yes, I was always a little surprised by the access
Speaker 2: some of these people gave me. I mean, I went
Speaker 2: to Seapac and I went to match Slaps after Seapack
Speaker 2: presidential sweep.
Speaker 1: Did you get COVID there?
Speaker 2: You know, I didn't get COVID there?
Speaker 1: What year was it? You didn't go the year when
Speaker 1: the guy had COVID?
Speaker 2: Well I went last year, So presumably everybody had COVID, right, okay,
Speaker 2: but nobody was testing for it really, and somehow I
Speaker 2: didn't get I kind of just assumed they'd have like
Speaker 2: all the varieties there, like you could go into the
Speaker 2: bar and order, like you know, the first strain of COVID.
Speaker 2: But no, it didn't hit me somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it is interesting to me that we're
Speaker 1: talking about this journalist and the murderer Janet Malcolm. You know,
Speaker 1: the thing where the subjects cannot resist the journalist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Washington is filled with people like that.
Speaker 2: To be honest, take Sean, he kind of was of
Speaker 2: this all preciss good press mentality.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Well, here's a good example of that. He made a
Speaker 2: joke to me once on September tenth that nobody understood
Speaker 2: the power of earned media better than Osama bin Lauden.
Speaker 1: Yikes, because I have a teenager who might make that joke,
Speaker 1: and I would then take them aside and be like
Speaker 1: you guys like k not gol.
Speaker 2: And I'd like to think your teenager probably wouldn't make
Speaker 2: that joke in front of a journalist on the record, right,
Speaker 2: all right, you know that joke just to explain it
Speaker 2: to people who don't get earned media as one of
Speaker 2: these political jargonterns for like free press. And basically what
Speaker 2: he's saying is nobody was able to get more press
Speaker 2: attention than Osama bin Laden and do more with it.
Speaker 2: And when he made that joke, his press person was
Speaker 2: right next to me and she was like, you know,
Speaker 2: she sighed, and she's like, you know, it's gotten to
Speaker 2: the point where he says so many controversial things that
Speaker 2: journalists like won't even print them anymore, Jesus, because it's
Speaker 2: like it's not even worth it, you know. He called
Speaker 2: himself a Clarence Thomas Democrat because he believed that more
Speaker 2: money in politics was a good thing for his party,
Speaker 2: his bank account. He said, Lee Atwater was his political idol,
Speaker 2: lee Atwater being the you know, infamous Republican strategist to
Speaker 2: encourage Republicans to kind of dog whistle their racism instead
Speaker 2: of being blatant about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's really bad, he once said to.
Speaker 2: Me, not even to me, he said to a whole
Speaker 2: poker table. All the zoomers that work for him have
Speaker 2: long COVID and are bisexual, and that he believes that
Speaker 2: long COVID is a real thing when someone who isn't
Speaker 2: bisexual has it. Like he just would say things because
Speaker 2: he thought all press attention was good press attention, and
Speaker 2: for him it was for a while. It really helped
Speaker 2: him rise. But the same thing that can help you
Speaker 2: rise in Washington can also be the cause of your downfall, right, And.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really good point. Thank you, Ben.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back anytime.
Speaker 2: I'd love to come back.
Speaker 3: No, Rick Wilson, Yes, Molly Jung Fast.
Speaker 1: I know mine. What is this saying that has your
Speaker 1: moment of fucker.
Speaker 3: Certain cable networks not learning the lessons of the past
Speaker 3: and putting Donald Trump on their air in a way
Speaker 3: where he will go on the TV and lie like
Speaker 3: a fucking rug for half an hour.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you want to hear mine.
Speaker 3: Go.
Speaker 1: You go to a party. Yeah, and this crazy person
Speaker 1: is following you around all weekend.
Speaker 3: I've been to that party and seen that crazy. I mean,
Speaker 3: I gotta be honest. When I saw her see you
Speaker 3: because I looked back on that when we were all
Speaker 3: walking to the hill. I saw you like twenty people
Speaker 3: back from him. I raven at you, and I saw
Speaker 3: her like behind you, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: what is that a fucking like gaunt valkyrie.
Speaker 1: Rah. I'm just telling you that scream is real. All right, guys, Thanks.
Speaker 3: Rick, thanks for having me. As always.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
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