Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics. Well,
Speaker 1: we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's
Speaker 1: best minds.
Speaker 2: And Lara Trump is trying to assemble one hundred thousand
Speaker 2: poll watchers. We have such a great show for you.
Speaker 3: Today.
Speaker 2: Janelle Stelson drops by to tell us about her congressional
Speaker 2: run in Pennsylvania against Scott Perry. That will talk to
Speaker 2: Lisa Larra and Elizabeth Dias about their new book, The
Speaker 2: Fall of Row The Rise of a New America. But
Speaker 2: first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the
Speaker 2: Lincoln Projects owned Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, my friend and yours, Rick Wilson. Let's do it,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, So I want to talk about a little
Speaker 1: bit of Trump. Pretty interesting. Andrew Ross orkin today, who
Speaker 1: is on squawk Box and writes deal book for the
Speaker 1: New York Times, very very smart. Happens to be married
Speaker 1: to my agent, who I'm obsessed with, and he said
Speaker 1: something interesting. So there's a lot of anxiety in New
Speaker 1: York about Trump because besides the fact that he wants
Speaker 1: to end American democracy, which none of us really like, oh,
Speaker 1: just that a lot of rich people have pivoted to
Speaker 1: Trump because he's basically offered to kill all taxes. The
Speaker 1: other yesterday he said, or maybe was two days ago,
Speaker 1: he said that he was going to end income tax
Speaker 1: and just put on a tariff on everything, which is
Speaker 1: highly inflationary, completely insane and awesome.
Speaker 4: The math isn't even conceivable for that to work. There
Speaker 4: is no math that makes that work ever, ever, in
Speaker 4: the history of the universe. That math doesn't work unless
Speaker 4: somehow we start importing solid fucking logs of platinum from
Speaker 4: another planet and we put a tariff on it.
Speaker 3: But it doesn't work. You can't make it work.
Speaker 4: It's like a nineteenth century view of economics from a
Speaker 4: guy who failed economics.
Speaker 1: Yes, the fact that Trump doesn't understand economics should be
Speaker 1: the world's most unsurprising thing. But anyways, so, a lot
Speaker 1: of rich people very excited about Trump because he's offered
Speaker 1: to basically do whatever they want in order for him
Speaker 1: to win. He told the oil companies that he was
Speaker 1: going to make oil great again. He was going to
Speaker 1: make sure that they could offshore drill wherever they wanted,
Speaker 1: because oil is the future. I mean, I can't believe
Speaker 1: he's given up on coal. What a long eight years
Speaker 1: it's been Remember when he was so excited about Cole
Speaker 1: I'm going to make coal great again. It was Virginia.
Speaker 1: It's like, no, honey, it's like you're in an R
Speaker 1: plus forty seven. Just you know, you don't have to
Speaker 1: make coal gready, and they're going to vote for you anyway.
Speaker 4: The idea of Trump's transactional nature is right in the
Speaker 4: faces of America. But these billionaires that are picking Trump
Speaker 4: that are going back. Look, you got Steve Schwartzman from
Speaker 4: Black Rock.
Speaker 1: Who right, who was always going to vote for Trump.
Speaker 3: Who was always going to go back to Trump in
Speaker 3: the end.
Speaker 1: Even like the fact that his like maybe his kids
Speaker 1: were like, you can't support him now that he's done insurrection,
Speaker 1: and he had like a minute where he was like,
Speaker 1: I think insurrection might be too much, and then he
Speaker 1: was like, never mind, I'm back.
Speaker 3: Yeah, never mind, I'm back.
Speaker 4: And my favorite part of see Schwartzman was like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm worried about anti Semitism. I'm like, have you met
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's fucking basse.
Speaker 1: Dinner with Nick Flints with Nick right for the Jews.
Speaker 4: I'm like, if you haven't noticed yet, Kanye and Nick
Speaker 4: flinte is at for dinner, as well as a whole
Speaker 4: bunch of these other dipshits around Trump That just blew
Speaker 4: me up.
Speaker 3: I was like, what, that's your reasoning.
Speaker 4: But you know what, my guys like Schwartzman, guys like
Speaker 4: Bernie Marcus, all these people, they go out into the
Speaker 4: world and they say, let's see if I go from
Speaker 4: sixteen billion dollars of net worth to fifteen point four,
Speaker 4: that's the greatest tragedy in all humanity, and I.
Speaker 3: Must stop it. So I will allow Trump to burn
Speaker 3: down the world.
Speaker 1: To end American democracy. Yeah, yeah, they use an interesting
Speaker 1: rank all could we play this clip from Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Speaker 5: I will say I was surprised. I spoke to a
Speaker 5: number of CEOs who I would say walked into the
Speaker 5: meeting being lump supporter ish or thinking that they might
Speaker 5: be leaning that direction, who said that he was remarkably meandering,
Speaker 5: could not keep a straight thought, was all over the map,
Speaker 5: and that they was maybe not surprising, but was interesting
Speaker 5: to me because these were people who I think might
Speaker 5: have been actually predisposed to him, and actually walked out
Speaker 5: of the room less predisposed to him, actually predisposed to
Speaker 5: thinking this is not necessary. As one person said, this
Speaker 5: may not be any different or better than a Biden thought.
Speaker 5: If you're thinking that way.
Speaker 1: The only thing I because remember, rich people are very
Speaker 1: mad at Joe Biden, and I think we need to
Speaker 1: take a minute here to talk about why Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has put someone in charge of antitrust who is really
Speaker 1: really smart.
Speaker 3: By the way, I just like to point out I
Speaker 3: am a Lena kh fanboy.
Speaker 1: Right, Lena Khan?
Speaker 3: Why am I b Yes, tell us.
Speaker 4: Why I am a fan of Lina Khan Because I'm
Speaker 4: a conservative who believe in free markets and not in
Speaker 4: this goddamn kleptocracy that we've established that allows the people
Speaker 4: with more lobbyists to win every regulatory fight, and that
Speaker 4: allows major companies to destroy their competition while it's still
Speaker 4: in the cradle so that they can retain eighty ninety
Speaker 4: percent market share. I'm against people who abuse the patent system.
Speaker 4: I'm against people who who are engaged in the kabuki
Speaker 4: dance of we're just a company that competes in the
Speaker 4: market when they own ninety percent of the fucking market. No, no,
Speaker 4: no no, and if the market is broken because they've
Speaker 4: managed to short circuit it by regulatory capture, by lobbying,
Speaker 4: by political favors, by and by manipulating markets.
Speaker 3: That's not a free market.
Speaker 4: I approach this from the right, not as like I
Speaker 4: want the government to run everything. No, No, I want
Speaker 4: the government to stop giving these corporations everything they want
Speaker 4: and giving them monopoly power or oligopoly power in the market.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 1: So what I think is important here is that some
Speaker 1: rich kleptocrats are very pissed. They went into this meeting
Speaker 1: very trump curious. Andrew ross Organ describes their horror at
Speaker 1: the level of distracted and also disjointed and also demented
Speaker 1: rhetoric from Donald J. Trump. Seventy eight years old today,
Speaker 1: Happy birthday, Donald Trump.
Speaker 4: All I can say is at the age of seventy eight,
Speaker 4: where I will be eighteen years from now.
Speaker 1: Humbo brag.
Speaker 4: I hope I don't feel the same icy hand of
Speaker 4: death clenching my heart Donald Trump is now experiencing, because
Speaker 4: I have to tell you, I don't think this has
Speaker 4: been a good week for the guy. And we joke
Speaker 4: about the shark thing, but all the reporting out of
Speaker 4: the hearing yesterday and one of my friends got to
Speaker 4: read back from a member yesterday who is a Trump supporter,
Speaker 4: who said, man, that was awkward.
Speaker 3: That was fucking weird. That was not great.
Speaker 1: Someone said it was like a drum uncle.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like talking to your drunk uncle at
Speaker 4: the family reunion. But like I said, a friend of
Speaker 4: mine spoke to a member who came back and said,
Speaker 4: that was so awkward.
Speaker 3: It was not great.
Speaker 4: And it was a lot of like Trump giving them
Speaker 4: political advice, which.
Speaker 3: Is people are like, oh, please God, don't make me
Speaker 3: do that. Please God, don't make me do that.
Speaker 4: They're like, you should have zoom town halls. Yes, you
Speaker 4: should do that. That'll be fun for me.
Speaker 1: What else did they say?
Speaker 4: He was on one of his little little revenge things.
Speaker 4: He was going after Jeff Rowe, who ran santruss billion
Speaker 4: dollar train wreck of a campaign, and he was going
Speaker 4: out all these people, you know, you've got to do
Speaker 4: it my way. And there was also a sense that
Speaker 4: he was like just crazy, like he's not winning Virginia.
Speaker 1: Really in Minnesota.
Speaker 3: It's fabulous to think.
Speaker 4: But I don't wake up in the morning mill you know,
Speaker 4: I could worry about any number of things in this campaign.
Speaker 4: I don't wake up in the morning going, man, what's
Speaker 4: my strategy to beat Trump in Virginia.
Speaker 1: Right, I'm looking at the notice in this nonprofit newsroom
Speaker 1: that I'm like obsessed with.
Speaker 3: I I love them.
Speaker 1: They're reporting and they said that Trump suggested that only
Speaker 1: that abortion only became a complex issue ten years ago,
Speaker 1: which is probably when he learned about it. I didn't
Speaker 1: know that.
Speaker 5: I just you're telling you me not for the first time.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: He told if he were in office, he would have
Speaker 1: prevented war in Ukraine and also Hamas's attack on October
Speaker 1: seventh in Israel. Russian ships off the coast of Cuba
Speaker 1: were a particular interest to Trump, earning him a standing
Speaker 1: ovation from the only Cuban born lawmaker, Senator Mario Diaz,
Speaker 1: who you know. Trump also laid into Jeff Rowe as
Speaker 1: a top former strategist for Ron DeSantis' presidential run. Trump
Speaker 1: said Roe, who directed millions of dollars to firms he controlled,
Speaker 1: well advising disantist as surgery on candidates wallets.
Speaker 3: Let's be clear about something.
Speaker 4: Jeff row in twenty twenty two was involved in eleven
Speaker 4: campaigns that spent a total of one hundred and ten
Speaker 4: million dollars, and he got blown the fuck out.
Speaker 1: I like him for that.
Speaker 4: Actually, I think he won one congressional race out of
Speaker 4: the whole package. Then he jumped over to do Ron
Speaker 4: DeSantis's inside the campaign and the super pack through some
Speaker 4: ledger Germaine, which is a word it's under used.
Speaker 1: I don't even know what it means.
Speaker 3: What is a man like sleight of hand.
Speaker 4: His company was representing both the pack and the campaign.
Speaker 3: They're like, we have a firewall. Uh huh, I bet
Speaker 3: you do.
Speaker 4: A long story short, as we all know, President DeSantis'
Speaker 4: campaign went really really well and as the nominee of
Speaker 4: the Republican Party President Santa oh wait he did, and
Speaker 4: he got blown the fuck out in Iowa.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he is a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure. But Jeff Row also there's a
Speaker 4: little inside tweak here. He and Jared had this great
Speaker 4: relationship for a while, and Jared was trying to bring
Speaker 4: Jeff Row in at one point to overcome all of
Speaker 4: the Corey Lewandowski, Brad Parscal, Steve Bannon, Yahoo wing ding
Speaker 4: weirdos in the situation. But instead the battle was won
Speaker 4: by Susie Wiles and Chris Losovita, who I am told
Speaker 4: yesterday I was told there was a Trump team call
Speaker 4: or zoom. I'm not sure which one it was, but
Speaker 4: they were on a call when the news broke about
Speaker 4: Trump saying that Milwaukee was a horrible place, and we
Speaker 4: were told that was like you could hear a pin
Speaker 4: drop on the call, Like, oh fuck, I'm saying, I
Speaker 4: want to ask you something about this this weird week.
Speaker 4: So the Supreme Court yesterday comes out on Mithra pristone
Speaker 4: with a decision that was a setback on the right,
Speaker 4: but it was only on standing. So first off, I
Speaker 4: wanted to ask you about this kind of sing about this.
Speaker 4: Last night I got to ask Molly about this. What
Speaker 4: do you think the politics of it mean? And should
Speaker 4: people be too happy about this? I don't think they should.
Speaker 1: No. I actually think what's interesting about it, which I
Speaker 1: was thinking about last night, was like, I mean, look,
Speaker 1: they threw it out on standing. There is no standing
Speaker 1: on this, and again it really speaks the Fifth Circuit right.
Speaker 1: The fact that the Supreme Court even had to like
Speaker 1: look at this for the Circus right exactly, that the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court even had to look at something that's crazy
Speaker 1: is really like it makes them look good again. We
Speaker 1: know from the Supreme Court. They do earlier decisions that
Speaker 1: make them look less crazy, and then right before they
Speaker 1: go on vacation they dump the real crazy ones. So
Speaker 1: expect some crazy shit to go down. This they never
Speaker 1: had standing, so I think they'll come back with this.
Speaker 1: I mean, one of the things that this Supreme Court
Speaker 1: loves to do is to give you a taste of
Speaker 1: what's going to happen and then bring it back. Remember
Speaker 1: Roberts were done with abortion. They have two abortion cases
Speaker 1: this semester, so I think it's very likely we'll see
Speaker 1: more on the pills. Look, the pills for them are
Speaker 1: the worst, right because you know you can have abortions.
Speaker 4: They make it private, right, they can't stand outside a
Speaker 4: clinic and screaming at pregnant women.
Speaker 1: But I think we've already seen an introduction that like
Speaker 1: two of the most crazy justices are ready to use
Speaker 1: the Commstock Act for whatever they can. And so I
Speaker 1: think we know where this is going. Unlike Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: who can't keep it in his pants, they understand that
Speaker 1: like abortion is a fucking loser for them. And so
Speaker 1: while you have like these conferences, say, you know, remember
Speaker 1: you had the Southern Baptist Convention saying they're going to
Speaker 1: go after IVF next, which is like just the thing
Speaker 1: not to say during an election year when Democrats are saying,
Speaker 1: you're going to go after IVF next, and Republicans are like,
Speaker 1: we don't want to codify it, but you're good, right.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine Katie Brett and Ted Cruz are like
Speaker 1: cursing the Southern Baptists being like, don't say anything about IVF.
Speaker 3: We got to win the Southern Baptists.
Speaker 4: They gave Democrats a gift yesterday in this campaign that,
Speaker 4: as you and I both know, Donald Trump is not
Speaker 4: a smart man.
Speaker 1: Has incredible political instinct.
Speaker 4: He has a feral sense of cunning and instincts that
Speaker 4: are cunning. And that's why Yesterday's like, oh, Bush is
Speaker 4: now complicated. Some states are good, some states are not.
Speaker 4: He understands how deadly this can be if he fucks
Speaker 4: it up, and he's kind of fuck it up. But
Speaker 4: this whole thing, I was just curious about your take
Speaker 4: on it, because I really think that this was a very,
Speaker 4: very very bad week with the Southern Baptist and I
Speaker 4: don't want people to get too enthusiastic about this court decision.
Speaker 3: Thinking, oh, well, they figured it out. They're not going
Speaker 3: to fuck u. Now, they're gonna.
Speaker 1: Still yeah, yeah, oh, no question. I think two things.
Speaker 1: They are going to fuck you and also they are
Speaker 1: definitely coming for IBF.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and they're coming for birth control. Let's stop pretending
Speaker 4: they're not.
Speaker 1: The goal here is to make it so you can't
Speaker 1: have an IUD and you can't have the morning after
Speaker 1: pill right now, right there saying right now the position
Speaker 1: that is on the sort of starting line. It hasn't
Speaker 1: been fully expressed, but right now it's this embryonic personhood idea.
Speaker 1: So that means no more IVF. That means no more
Speaker 1: IUD because an IUD they consider to be an abortion
Speaker 1: because they keep the feetus from implanting. No more morning
Speaker 1: after pills. So these are three things they are like
Speaker 1: actively ready to go after. Once they get those. By
Speaker 1: the way, we will be back in like the eighteen nineties,
Speaker 1: like Canada won't be normal. Mexico has legalized abortion, right
Speaker 1: one of.
Speaker 4: The largest Catholic countries in the hemisphere is legalized abortion.
Speaker 1: Well then, yeah, exactly, but we because the two of
Speaker 1: these Catholics are progressive compared to the Evangelicals that we
Speaker 1: are being ruled by right now or the evangelicals that
Speaker 1: make up the Republican Party, because we are they're not
Speaker 1: empower though they're trying to get back from power. I
Speaker 1: think it's a real shit show. But I also think
Speaker 1: it's we're thinking about this, which is Trump is going
Speaker 1: to try to sell this abortion thing. As you know,
Speaker 1: one of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump ever pulled
Speaker 1: was that he people convinced that he was a moderate
Speaker 1: because he had been a Democrat and because he also,
Speaker 1: you know, has had all these sexual assault delegations. We thought,
Speaker 1: who wasn't gonna you don't know whether your religious extreme is,
Speaker 1: But it turns out he is.
Speaker 4: Like I said, I just want people to be cautious
Speaker 4: about that whole thing because I'm convinced that this is
Speaker 4: basically a Supreme Court headfake, where you know, John Roberts
Speaker 4: is trying to play his.
Speaker 3: His home own little big thing. That ain't it, folks,
Speaker 3: This Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: We have more decisions today. And the other thing is
Speaker 1: it's June fourteenth, so like we're going to have two
Speaker 1: weeks of starting some of the really crazy decisions going.
Speaker 1: And you know, look, this Supreme Court has one goal.
Speaker 1: It's to remake the country in the image of this
Speaker 1: very kind of religious, deeply undemocratic, anti government craziness.
Speaker 4: It's absolutely true. I think we're now entering the real
Speaker 4: heat of the campaign. We're coming up on the debate,
Speaker 4: We're coming up on a lot of moments where people
Speaker 4: are going to see what the people are made of.
Speaker 4: I don't think Donald Trump is doing well physically. I
Speaker 4: don't think he's doing well mentally. I think he is
Speaker 4: in much deeper trouble than people believe. That doesn't mean
Speaker 4: we get to take any days off. I don't think
Speaker 4: this guy is very stable right now. I think the
Speaker 4: court cases broke his brain like more than it's usually
Speaker 4: been broken.
Speaker 3: And I'm here for that.
Speaker 4: The analogy to nerd out for just a second, this
Speaker 4: is like Germany in late nineteen forty three. They know
Speaker 4: they're going to lose the war, but that doesn't mean
Speaker 4: they're not crazy. And that doesn't mean the fanatic loyalists
Speaker 4: around Hitler I mean Trump. But I repeat myself, you
Speaker 4: know the fanatics are going to stay fanatic. But I
Speaker 4: think they know that the inevitability argument with Trump. They
Speaker 4: may work with the billionaire class, but it's not working
Speaker 4: more broadly.
Speaker 1: Than that right now, Yeah, no, I agree.
Speaker 3: It's Rick Wilson Ram Sunshine.
Speaker 1: Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to
Speaker 1: look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable all
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Speaker 2: Janelle Stelson is a candidate in Pennsylvania's tenth congressional district.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fastpolitics to now, thank you a pleasure, Mollie.
Speaker 1: So you are running for Congress in Pennsylvania's tenth district.
Speaker 1: You are running against Scott Perry. I feel like Scott Perry.
Speaker 1: He's a special kind of Republican candidate to be running against.
Speaker 7: Well, and you're very polite.
Speaker 1: Explain to us what your district looks like and what
Speaker 1: you're doing.
Speaker 6: You know, my district looks a lot like every other
Speaker 6: district that wants its needs to be met. For the
Speaker 6: past twelve years, our sixth term congressman has been doing
Speaker 6: very little to meet those needs. He has mostly been well,
Speaker 6: you know, he's kind of dumped in some circles Congressman chaos.
Speaker 6: These days down in Washington creating a whole wreaking havoc,
Speaker 6: basically meaning in large part is an anarchist obstructionist. He's
Speaker 6: the reason this one hundred and eighteenth Congress had at
Speaker 6: one point achieved fewer pieces of legislation than at any
Speaker 6: time since the Great Depression back in the nineteen thirties.
Speaker 6: Thank you, Congressman Perry. That is not exactly meeting my
Speaker 6: district's needs. The do nothing Congress, right Amen's sister.
Speaker 1: So explain to us, You're in a very tight district
Speaker 1: in Pennsylvania, but we just saw a poll that has
Speaker 1: you guys tied. Explain to us how you win in Pennsylvania's.
Speaker 6: Tenth Well, I think how you win is something I've
Speaker 6: been practicing for the past thirty eight years, and that's listening,
Speaker 6: listening to formally what my viewers had to say were
Speaker 6: their issues and concerns, and now listening to what I
Speaker 6: hope will be my constituents say and carrying their voices
Speaker 6: to the halls of Congress. And that really is why
Speaker 6: I got into this race, you know, being on air
Speaker 6: as the Trust did nonpartisan voice for the past thirty
Speaker 6: eight years, and everybody living rooms is a big deal.
Speaker 6: And you know, I went from polling place to polling
Speaker 6: place on our primary day, which was back in April,
Speaker 6: the end of April, and I won a six way
Speaker 6: primary by twenty points against some very good candidates, including
Speaker 6: the nominee from last cycle. But what I was saying
Speaker 6: is at the polling places, the Republicans were going in
Speaker 6: or shaking my hands because they know me from TV,
Speaker 6: and some of them would whisper conspiratorially, I'm going to
Speaker 6: write you in and so is my husband, and others
Speaker 6: were saying, you know, we can't vote for you this time,
Speaker 6: but we got you back in November.
Speaker 1: Don't worry.
Speaker 6: And so, you know, that's always great to hear, particularly
Speaker 6: from Republicans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are a lot of people on the progressive
Speaker 1: side who are mad at Joe Biden. But when you
Speaker 1: heard that speech that he gave the D Day's speech,
Speaker 1: there were two different ones, but one of them was
Speaker 1: an homage to previous president twops spoken on D Day
Speaker 1: and have spoken about the importance of American democracy. One
Speaker 1: of the people he gave this homage to was Ronald Reagan. Now, politically,
Speaker 1: a lot of his policy decisions do not speak to me.
Speaker 1: But if you're going to compare Democrats and Republicans, they're
Speaker 1: much closer to each other than they are to Mega.
Speaker 1: You know what, at I.
Speaker 6: Look at this as American issues. I'm not somebody like
Speaker 6: Scott Perry who went to the border a couple months
Speaker 6: ago and was grand standing. You know, he flew there
Speaker 6: on the taxpayer dime, even though he touts himself as
Speaker 6: a fiscal conservative.
Speaker 1: He off no solutions.
Speaker 6: He just pointed fingers of blame, which everybody does when
Speaker 6: they head to the southern border. You know, this is
Speaker 6: what's wrong with Washington. This is what is wrong with
Speaker 6: longtime six term politician, Congressman Scott Perry, Congressman Chaos. He
Speaker 6: goes down, he offers no solutions. You know, this is
Speaker 6: an American problem, not a Republican or a democratic problem.
Speaker 6: We need to secure the border, have a proper amount
Speaker 6: of people working there. Unlike Scott Perry, who has voted
Speaker 6: to cut funding repeatedly for border security. You know, we
Speaker 6: need to look at this problem and if we do
Speaker 6: it right, we can be a shining example of democracy
Speaker 6: around the world. Let's shore up this deeply broken asylum system.
Speaker 6: You know, if people are not deemed to have legitimate
Speaker 6: claims to be in this country, send them home expeditiously
Speaker 6: and humanity in a humanitarian fashion, get them back to
Speaker 6: their native countries. And conversely, the people who do have
Speaker 6: legitimate claims to be here, let's move more quickly to
Speaker 6: get them assimilated into our communities and work in and
Speaker 6: pay in taxes and doing the things everybody wants them
Speaker 6: to be doing. This crisis of refugees and asylum seekers
Speaker 6: is not getting any easier as the earth becomes less
Speaker 6: hospitable after the damage we've done, So we can really
Speaker 6: show people how to do this right again, an American problem,
Speaker 6: not something that Republicans or Democrats need to be pointing
Speaker 6: fingers at the other side all the time. Both parties
Speaker 6: have been watching it for years.
Speaker 1: I also think though, that there's not a path right,
Speaker 1: Like if you put money into immigration and you have
Speaker 1: a path for people for whom they are actually legitimately
Speaker 1: seeking asylum, right, if you had judges on the border,
Speaker 1: if you could process claims quickly, if you could offer
Speaker 1: a real legal path to citizenship, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: there are solves here that they're just money that is
Speaker 1: not going there.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and Mollie This is but one example, and there
Speaker 6: are many. I know, we only have minutes for our
Speaker 6: show today, Yeah, but you know, we could probably be
Speaker 6: here for a month talking about all the egregious votes
Speaker 6: he's taken during his time in office.
Speaker 1: And also Pennsylvania does not share a border with Mexico.
Speaker 1: It does not.
Speaker 6: But we're all affected. Again, it's American problem, you know.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, but I do think that it is like
Speaker 1: one of the things that I've been struck by with
Speaker 1: this crew. But Scott Perry also doesn't really leave in
Speaker 1: an American democracy. Can you talk about these Republicans who
Speaker 1: have gone authoritarian?
Speaker 6: Well, a lot of people think that Scott Berry is
Speaker 6: just a bridge too far right.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 6: You know, the extremest votes he has taken time and
Speaker 6: time again that in no way resemble the Republican Party
Speaker 6: at all. He's too extreme for the Republicans now as well,
Speaker 6: you know, you look at January sixth, he's one of
Speaker 6: the architects deeply involved in that day. It is so
Speaker 6: disappointing that he's just been put on the House Intelligence Committee,
Speaker 6: which of coursees the FBI, which he was under investigation
Speaker 6: by the FBI is the agency that seized his phone
Speaker 6: because of his deep involvement in January sixth and the
Speaker 6: deadly insurrection. So you know, it's almost like the fox
Speaker 6: guarding the Henhouse. In terms of the Mall Committee after
Speaker 6: eating all the heads. This guy was under investigation, and
Speaker 6: now he's going to have oversight over the folks who
Speaker 6: are investigating him. It feels deeply broken as an American,
Speaker 6: not in a partisan way. It makes me sad, and
Speaker 6: it sort of seems like we're seeing a little bit,
Speaker 6: you know, these things that the Supreme Court is looking
Speaker 6: broken these days. This to me is like Justices Alito
Speaker 6: and Clarence Thomas not recusing themselves from January sixth cases.
Speaker 6: This is just, you know, somebody has shown you who
Speaker 6: they are and shown you why they should not be
Speaker 6: involved in whatever structure you're talking about here, we're talking
Speaker 6: about the Intel Committee. You know, it's just a very
Speaker 6: very bad fit. And when you have must the Republicans
Speaker 6: questioning and concerned that he would be on that committee,
Speaker 6: you know, shame on Speaker Johnson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, Speaker Johnson really serves at the pleasure
Speaker 1: of Donald Trump, right, I mean that's how he got
Speaker 1: the job, that's how he keeps the job well.
Speaker 6: As I say, I can only handle one extremist at
Speaker 6: a time. I can only handle one election, Dot Denier.
Speaker 6: I'm focused on Congressman Perry.
Speaker 1: When you are in this moment and you're talking to
Speaker 1: people in Pennsylvania and you live in this very purple district,
Speaker 1: what are their concerns, what are they telling you? What
Speaker 1: do you hear it?
Speaker 6: Well, again, Mollie, to have all week, after twelve years
Speaker 6: of relative inaction, things that should not have been urgent
Speaker 6: to attend to have become urgent because of the inaction.
Speaker 6: But I'll tell you probably the top three things I
Speaker 6: hear a lot of people talking about, for instance, one
Speaker 6: of the extreme right fringe votes that he took that
Speaker 6: he was the only one in the Pennsylvanian delegation, no
Speaker 6: other Republican, no Democrat. He voted not to give medals
Speaker 6: to the officers who protected the Capitol, protected his life
Speaker 6: on January sixth, and the lives of his colleagues, so
Speaker 6: that in a few hours he could walk back into
Speaker 6: the chamber and vote to overturn all of our votes.
Speaker 6: People don't want to have their votes overturned. They want
Speaker 6: to know that their voices are heard in the halls
Speaker 6: of Congress, and this is a really big deal. And
Speaker 6: then you know he didn't comply with the bipartisan commission
Speaker 6: that was investigating what happened January sixth to make sure
Speaker 6: it never happens again. You know, he was one of
Speaker 6: those He's like, yeah, I'm not talking to them, And
Speaker 6: he sought a presidential pardon, which now he says he
Speaker 6: didn't seek, but people in the Trump administration said he did.
Speaker 6: And if you haven't done anything wrong, I'm not sure
Speaker 6: why you have to ask for a pardon, right exactly,
Speaker 6: this just me.
Speaker 1: I'll tell you.
Speaker 6: I hear about that. I hear a lot about choice
Speaker 6: and women's reproductive rights.
Speaker 1: Oh you do, that's good? Oh yeah, it's huge.
Speaker 6: And that is a Republican and a Democratic issue and
Speaker 6: every party in between. I was live on the set
Speaker 6: back in twenty twenty two when the Supreme Court handed
Speaker 6: down the Dobbs decision, overturning Row, and I was put
Speaker 6: in the position where I had to look out into
Speaker 6: the camera in my best at the time, nonpartisan way
Speaker 6: and tell every woman watching that her rights had been
Speaker 6: rolled back fifty years.
Speaker 1: Were you shocked when it happened?
Speaker 6: I think everybody was kind of shocked. Although we you know,
Speaker 6: at what point do you get desensitized because we're living
Speaker 6: in a shocking world world. But yes, I mean, and
Speaker 6: of course we had an inkling that it was going
Speaker 6: to happen when there was a leap several months before.
Speaker 6: But something else really important happened that day. The fact
Speaker 6: that in many cases, depending on your age, your mother
Speaker 6: had more rights than your daughters or your nieces. That's
Speaker 6: a pretty big deal. But I went up to the
Speaker 6: newsroom afterward and one of my colleagues was sort of
Speaker 6: hunched down in the corner. And it's somebody who has
Speaker 6: to deal with a lot of trauma every day. He's
Speaker 6: the person who sends us out to fires and accidents,
Speaker 6: and you know, there's a lot of loss of life
Speaker 6: on the news. And I touched his shoulder and I said,
Speaker 6: to you, okay, and he looked up at me and
Speaker 6: he said, Janelle, you don't know this, but my wife
Speaker 6: was raped and if we had not had abortion available
Speaker 6: to us, our lives would be ruined. And it's a
Speaker 6: very important thing to remember on the campaign trail, you
Speaker 6: know that it's not just about women, it's about the
Speaker 6: men and the families who love us. And I also
Speaker 6: had to seek comment from our local congress people that
Speaker 6: evening and in the next couple of days, and Congressman
Speaker 6: Perry was basically dancing a jig. He wants a nationwide
Speaker 6: abortion ban sponsored the Life at Conception Act has sponsored
Speaker 6: that for the past seven years, which would be, you know,
Speaker 6: a nationwide abortion band with no exceptions, not for rape,
Speaker 6: not for incest, not for the life or help of
Speaker 6: the mother. And same thing with IVF. And he keeps
Speaker 6: trying to walk this back because he's seen how deeply
Speaker 6: unpopular it was after Alabama made its bands on IVF.
Speaker 6: And I say, judge a man by his actions, not
Speaker 6: by his work.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And also I feel like one of the things
Speaker 1: that this Life and Conception Act does, besides making it
Speaker 1: impossible to get abortions, is it also if this is
Speaker 1: taken as it's advertised, it would be the end of
Speaker 1: IVF as we know.
Speaker 7: Yeah, it would be.
Speaker 6: With some people try to act as a recent phenomenon.
Speaker 6: You know, IVF has been around for forty years. Members
Speaker 6: of my family have been conceived by IVF. This is
Speaker 6: something that you know, when you're talking to a group
Speaker 6: of people, almost to any group.
Speaker 1: It's the kind of thing, you know.
Speaker 6: I do a lot of speak at engagements and you say,
Speaker 6: who here has been touched by cancer? Almost every hand
Speaker 6: was up. I feel like it's starting to be the
Speaker 6: same way with IVF. It's so popular. And again this
Speaker 6: drives home the point we should not have politicians involved
Speaker 6: in our healthcare decisions. Who wants Scott Perry telling you
Speaker 6: when to start a family, how to start a family,
Speaker 6: you know, or expand your family. It's just something that
Speaker 6: should be between a woman, her doctor and whoever she
Speaker 6: brings into the conversation. It's ridiculous and I think, you know, Molly,
Speaker 6: and for everybody listening, if guys were the ones who
Speaker 6: had the babies, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion,
Speaker 6: right of course, I think it's two things. Right, it's
Speaker 6: like men controlling the conversation about women's health. But I
Speaker 6: also think it's that a lot of us were in
Speaker 6: denial that it would go.
Speaker 1: I actually was not. I always thought after they passed
Speaker 1: SBA in Texas, I thought, oh, I know where this
Speaker 1: is going.
Speaker 7: Oh you were right, and it's not going to stop here.
Speaker 6: Now we're looking at lg BTQ issues, we're looking at
Speaker 6: you know, there's an awful lot going on that Scott
Speaker 6: Perry is all kinds of in favor of restricting, which
Speaker 6: is very funny because he was head of the Freedom Caucus. Honestly,
Speaker 6: it should be called the anti Freedom Caucus.
Speaker 1: I think that what is interesting too is that you
Speaker 1: do see this sort of belief on the right, like
Speaker 1: they are supporting all of these like wildly unpopular ideas
Speaker 1: right like contraception. Nobody in the world. It's like pornography,
Speaker 1: like these are two things that Americans are just like,
Speaker 1: leave us alone. You know. They want the freedom to
Speaker 1: read what they want to read, and they want the
Speaker 1: freedom to use birth control because we live in the
Speaker 1: world where there's birth control now. And these are two
Speaker 1: things that the right has in their crosshairs.
Speaker 6: It really is. And I have to say, you know,
Speaker 6: there's a cadre of people or a cabal, whatever you
Speaker 6: want to call it in congre right now, the obstructionists,
Speaker 6: the ones who don't do anything for the people in
Speaker 6: their home districts, like Scott Perry. You know, we have
Speaker 6: economic issues we should be talking about, but instead we're
Speaker 6: just you know, it's like you look at these people,
Speaker 6: they're causing so many problems. They're not tending to the
Speaker 6: issues their districts care about. And I got to say,
Speaker 6: if you look at a Marjorie Taylor Green and think, yes,
Speaker 6: she's not for me, she doesn't belong in Congress, there's
Speaker 6: not a lot we can do about that. She's in
Speaker 6: a solidly Republican district. But I got to tell you,
Speaker 6: Scott Perry is the most vulnerable maggot extremist in Congress
Speaker 6: right now, and he's getting more vulnerable all the time
Speaker 6: as I come after him and our support builds. So
Speaker 6: this is really the place, Pennsylvania's tenth district. If you
Speaker 6: want to flip the US House blue and get rid
Speaker 6: of some of this nonsense, you get rid of Scott Perry,
Speaker 6: and you vote me in.
Speaker 1: Right. What we've seen with Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren
Speaker 1: Vauper too, is that one member of Congress, if it's
Speaker 1: one like Scott Perry, who's so ideological and nutty, can
Speaker 1: really cause a lot of damage in American democracy.
Speaker 6: Well, you know, Mollie, my estimation of you is rising
Speaker 6: by the minute because I see that you're very polite,
Speaker 6: because you use the adjective when I am talking to supporters,
Speaker 6: whether it's on the phones or knocking doors or just
Speaker 6: people come up to me on the streets. They use
Speaker 6: a lot saltier language than knife.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. One of the things that causes me a
Speaker 1: lot of anxiety is this idea that people are not
Speaker 1: getting the real news, that they're getting this kind of
Speaker 1: red sludge, that they're getting fake news through TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker 1: I mean, how much of your job is sort of
Speaker 1: debunking lies or do you feel that people are actually
Speaker 1: getting good news through local outlets.
Speaker 7: First of all, you hurt my heart when you talk
Speaker 7: about media that way.
Speaker 1: Molly up the rights. Well that's why I said, you're
Speaker 1: getting good news, good local news.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, I know there are a lot of other outlets.
Speaker 6: In fact, recently we're hearing, you know, about interference by
Speaker 6: bots sent by certain countries. And I got to say
Speaker 6: another nickname, Congressman CHAOSK. Perry has is Putin's Pennsylvania puppet,
Speaker 6: you know, because he's against the funding for Ukraine and
Speaker 6: you know a lot of people for them. It's just
Speaker 6: a foreign relations situation, which he is, by the way,
Speaker 6: on that committee and wreaking habit as well. But it's
Speaker 6: also an economic issue here at home. When you can't
Speaker 6: get grain out of the port of Odessa in Ukraine,
Speaker 6: that's going to cause a lot of problems around the
Speaker 6: world in terms of food insecurity and prices. Here at home,
Speaker 6: you have people who are struggling. There are a lot
Speaker 6: of people who are pinched, and they tell me, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm actually having to make decisions about whether I put
Speaker 6: food on the table or take my life saving drugs.
Speaker 6: And I got to say, here's another point against Scott Perry.
Speaker 6: He's the one who voted against the government's ability to
Speaker 6: negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. You know, right
Speaker 6: now it's only ten drugs. I'd like to see that
Speaker 6: expand if I'm lucky enough to get to Washington. And
Speaker 6: I'd like to see the age limits lowered as well,
Speaker 6: but he voted against it. Again, this is a guy
Speaker 6: who touts himself a fiscal conservative, and it was extrapolated
Speaker 6: that the move is going to save taxpayers and a
Speaker 6: government about one hundred and twenty billion dollars in fairly
Speaker 6: short order, and it will save the average person slash
Speaker 6: family about one hundred and fifty dollars a month, so
Speaker 6: they don't have to make those tough decisions about whether
Speaker 6: to put food on the table or take their drugs.
Speaker 6: And you know what, here's the dot dot dot, Mollie.
Speaker 6: He did it while he was taking money from Big Pharma.
Speaker 1: Of course, I'm not surprised. Thank you, so so so much.
Speaker 1: I hope he'll come back.
Speaker 3: Molly.
Speaker 1: It was an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 6: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: So there and Elizabeth Dias are the authors of the
Speaker 2: Fall of Row The Rise of a New America.
Speaker 1: Welcome Too Fast Politics, Lisa, Thanks for having me and Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: It's great to be here. Fantastic. The book is called
Speaker 1: The Fall of Row, the Rise of a New America.
Speaker 1: So super interesting. We're talking about this before. Lisa. You
Speaker 1: are political reporter, national political reporter. Elizabeth your beat is religion.
Speaker 1: How did you find each other to tell the story.
Speaker 7: Well, we both joined the Times around in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 7: so we sort of joined at the same time, and
Speaker 7: we found that we liked looking at politics through different
Speaker 7: but similar lenses, you know, sort of cultural politics, how
Speaker 7: politics influences the country, you know, not so much the
Speaker 7: data and the Machia nations and the strategy but more
Speaker 7: sort of how politics influences people's lives. And we were
Speaker 7: both had covered abortion for bits and pieces over our career,
Speaker 7: and we did a few stories together on end We
Speaker 7: had been watching the encroachment increasingly restrictive bands of course
Speaker 7: in the States during the Trump years, and then when
Speaker 7: it was oral arguments and Dobbs, which was the case
Speaker 7: that would go on to end Row, we were on
Speaker 7: the phone together and we were listening and we actually
Speaker 7: both remember the moment it happened, which was I don't
Speaker 7: know if you remember this in the argument but went
Speaker 7: justice Barrett started talking about safe haven boxes, which are
Speaker 7: those boxes?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, and then you explain though to our listeners. Yeah.
Speaker 7: So she was saying, basically, why do you need abortion
Speaker 7: when you have these safe haven boxes, which your boxes
Speaker 7: by fire stations where a new mother can leave the newborn,
Speaker 7: you know, anonymously, and I'll be adopted. And we were
Speaker 7: on the phone and one of us said to the other, Oh,
Speaker 7: they're going to overturn rop This is it, and someone
Speaker 7: needs to be writing this for history. This is a
Speaker 7: major major turning moment in like American politics and law
Speaker 7: and policy. And we're sure someone must be writing this.
Speaker 7: How could someone not be writing this? It doesn't tell
Speaker 7: me don't need to write this, And then nobody was
Speaker 7: writing it, ed that we were writing it, And there you.
Speaker 1: Go, Elizabeth Imian, How did the religion be inform your
Speaker 1: experience of this story?
Speaker 8: Well, this is a topic that we really felt you
Speaker 8: can't understand it unless you can really see all the
Speaker 8: strands of the big picture.
Speaker 1: In just looking at it through lons.
Speaker 8: Of politics leaves out the massive our story of how religion,
Speaker 8: especially conservative mostly conservative Christianity, was a driving force in
Speaker 8: even getting to this point. I mean, the roots of
Speaker 8: the anti abortion movement are deep in the Catholic Church.
Speaker 7: Evangelicals were late to that movement.
Speaker 8: And while yes, abortion is about the procedure itself and
Speaker 8: the question of ken a woman and a pregnancy, the
Speaker 8: meaning of abortion in American life is just so much bigger.
Speaker 8: Right when people are talking about abortion, what we found
Speaker 8: that really talking about is what does it mean to
Speaker 8: be a woman in America and what are all of
Speaker 8: the values that go with that. So unless you kind
Speaker 8: of take a look and examine that bigger meaning, the
Speaker 8: why right of why this is such a huge issue,
Speaker 8: we really only get a partial story It's been a
Speaker 8: really fruitful combination because you know, it leads not only
Speaker 8: to investigations in areas that have been undercovered, like the
Speaker 8: a role of religion in Christianity in overturning Row, but
Speaker 8: also it provides a way to understand what's going on
Speaker 8: that you just really can't understand where we're going as
Speaker 8: a country, the rise of been to America, as we
Speaker 8: say in the in the subtitle, without understanding these bigger
Speaker 8: cultural and religious parents.
Speaker 7: Right at its core, this is a question abortion, is
Speaker 7: a question of where women fit into the national project
Speaker 7: of America. And you know, since that famous Abigail Adams quote,
Speaker 7: you know where she wrote to John Ams and said,
Speaker 7: remember the ladies, like, that question has been unsettled. And
Speaker 7: what the ruling in that case showed us is that
Speaker 7: it remains unsettled that there is a very active conservative
Speaker 7: Christian minority in the country who has one view of
Speaker 7: what where a woman fits and what a woman should
Speaker 7: be in America, and there's a broad majority that's more
Speaker 7: secular that has a diff from view, right. And so
Speaker 7: this is really about what does it mean to be
Speaker 7: a woman in the amic democracy and more than that,
Speaker 7: in the American project as a whole.
Speaker 1: So what do you think, what do you think about
Speaker 1: this idea that where does fetal personhood and I like
Speaker 1: to call it embryonic personhood because I'm on the opinion side,
Speaker 1: Where does that factor into all of this?
Speaker 8: Well, that's really where the anti abortion movement is headed.
Speaker 8: I mean, at its core, it's a movement that believes
Speaker 8: that a human is a person deserving of rights at conception.
Speaker 8: That's a certainly a minority view in America. It's quite
Speaker 8: a minority view. And I think for so many years
Speaker 8: because the movement was talking about Okay, we have to
Speaker 8: overturn row, it's sort of obscured that an ultimate end,
Speaker 8: like what an ultimate end of that would be. So
Speaker 8: the fallow row was really just the beginning of this
Speaker 8: much much bigger goal. I mean, people don't talk a
Speaker 8: lot of the more main mainstream anti abortion groups try
Speaker 8: are trying to not talk about quote field personhood right now,
Speaker 8: especially the.
Speaker 1: Relation until they get into play power, right, so and so.
Speaker 8: But the but what we are seeing is because kind
Speaker 8: of the the the edges have been stripped away, right,
Speaker 8: that that kind of veil of denial that so many
Speaker 8: people had about what was going on and like wood Row,
Speaker 8: the very idea that rowe could go away, that that
Speaker 8: denial has been shattered. And what we're seeing too is
Speaker 8: the anti abortion movement has been changing so much since
Speaker 8: the case, and there is an edge that has been
Speaker 8: increasingly radicalized also through the Trump movement. Right, things that
Speaker 8: seem possible before are now suddenly possible. So they are
Speaker 8: openly trying to pursue rights for an embryo as I go.
Speaker 8: And you know, we're seeing this be manifested in things
Speaker 8: like opposing IDF for example.
Speaker 1: Is there a religious component to that? Oh yeah, where
Speaker 1: does that come from?
Speaker 7: It's really deep.
Speaker 8: In one set of a Christianity's view about what it
Speaker 8: means to be a human person, right, and when this
Speaker 8: sort of soul comes into the body, how does all
Speaker 8: that work.
Speaker 1: It's deep in.
Speaker 8: Catholic theology that life begins that conception. So not everyone,
Speaker 8: of course, who is Catholic or who is Christian.
Speaker 7: Believes that.
Speaker 8: This is where you see a lot of fracturing, but
Speaker 8: it's very hard. We really think it's impossible to talk
Speaker 8: about what it means like where this movement is going
Speaker 8: without understanding those deep roots in one certain Christian worldview.
Speaker 8: So what we're seeing now even at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 8: all with the Supreme Court, out of these questions of
Speaker 8: you know, what does it mean? What might it mean
Speaker 8: for America to be a Christian nation? Is democracy on
Speaker 8: its own? Or is America a democracy sort of set
Speaker 8: within the Kingdom of God? For example? There's a fringe
Speaker 8: that is really pushing that. And so it's a major
Speaker 8: conflict that extends well beyond just abortion. It's all aspects
Speaker 8: and pick your reach in American life.
Speaker 1: Right, what did you find when you were reporting this book? Like,
Speaker 1: one of the things I'm often surprised by is how
Speaker 1: I know a lot of stuff because I just read
Speaker 1: all on the same topics again and again and again.
Speaker 1: What did you sort of stumble on where you're like, oh, wow.
Speaker 7: Well, so I think there's a very macro answer that question,
Speaker 7: and a bunch of micro ones too.
Speaker 1: Sure so.
Speaker 7: And the biggest level, like, our book covers a ten
Speaker 7: year period which we called the Final Decade of Row.
Speaker 7: And we start with that Republican autopsy that was conducted
Speaker 7: after around me lost in Obama won re election in
Speaker 7: twenty twelve, where Republicans basically said we need to dump
Speaker 7: abortion as an issue. This is a loser for us,
Speaker 7: and we need to find ways to win more female
Speaker 7: voters and voters of color and all of that. We
Speaker 7: picked that point because it's the lowest point for the
Speaker 7: anti abortion movement, and we charged their rise over the decade.
Speaker 7: And this was a story that I had covered, that
Speaker 7: I had lived. I covered Romy's campaign, I covered Hillaries campaign,
Speaker 7: I covered Button's campaign. You know, I went a million
Speaker 7: campaigns in between, and all the politics. But there was
Speaker 7: something about putting this all together, that going back and
Speaker 7: isolating the moments that were just about this issue and
Speaker 7: looking at them as a whole and re reporting them
Speaker 7: and getting these additional details that I realized how much
Speaker 7: even I, as I covered these issues, had missed, and
Speaker 7: how we didn't really have a narrative, a clear narrative
Speaker 7: to explain how ro fell. So, you know, I think
Speaker 7: when we think about the Republican Party and I write
Speaker 7: about the Republican Party, everyone kind of knows what happened there,
Speaker 7: what happened with trump Ism and the MAGA movement and
Speaker 7: with abortion. You know, there's this simplistic, you know answer,
Speaker 7: which is Trump won three Supreme Court justices and the
Speaker 7: court change and abortion and Roe fell. But in fact,
Speaker 7: the answer is so much bigger, and the strategy by
Speaker 7: the anti abortion movement was so much longer and more
Speaker 7: detailed than just that. So I think what surprised me
Speaker 7: was how there was no narrative around this issue, how
Speaker 7: little in a way it had been covered, and how
Speaker 7: our book really creates the first narrative that explains to
Speaker 7: people how the country got here and how row felt now.
Speaker 7: In terms of the smaller details, another thing that we
Speaker 7: really wanted to do was dive into the lives of
Speaker 7: the people on both sides of this policy and this debate,
Speaker 7: who you know, were most active, and really explore their
Speaker 7: own lives. So we just learned all these really interesting
Speaker 7: personal details about people's families and fertility, you know, their childhoods,
Speaker 7: and those were things I really hadn't known. And the
Speaker 7: one that I particularly liked was we discovered that Mike
Speaker 7: Pence when he was married, it was a secon we
Speaker 7: you know, it was a second marriage for Karen Pence's wife,
Speaker 7: and so we were looking around to see like at
Speaker 7: the time, Mike Pence was Catholic, as was Karen Pens
Speaker 7: and they were pretty devoutly Catholic, So we were trying
Speaker 7: to see was the first marriage innulled because you know,
Speaker 7: obviously divorced round pound in Catholicism. And we actually found
Speaker 7: out that the priest who married them shortly after marrying
Speaker 7: Mike and Karen Pence came out of the closet and
Speaker 7: went on to lead in deep pride. Good for him,
Speaker 7: I geah, Yeah, it was kind of a fun little twist.
Speaker 7: So Mike and Karen Pence were married who, you know,
Speaker 7: such an opponent same sex marriage and rights, were actually
Speaker 7: married by gay Price no longer a priest.
Speaker 1: Good for them. Elizabeth, What about you? What did you
Speaker 1: sort of learn writing this book that you were really
Speaker 1: surprised by macro micro whatever.
Speaker 8: Well, everything that Lisa said, I mean, I would add
Speaker 8: on to it. I think understanding these deep religious influences
Speaker 8: and how all of this happened, even for me, was
Speaker 8: pretty powerful. There's, you know, a way to look at this.
Speaker 8: Everything that's going on is sort of a story within
Speaker 8: a story within a story, and part of that is
Speaker 8: why America is changing so much on issues like abortion.
Speaker 8: This is happening in a context of rising secularism total,
Speaker 8: you know, the de christianization of America, the struggle for that,
Speaker 8: the rising backlash within certain conservative Christian circles to that
Speaker 8: and what that looks like. It's why you can see both,
Speaker 8: like you can have these competing things going on of
Speaker 8: the country becoming more secular and also right wing for
Speaker 8: conservative Christianity and people trying to express their values. You
Speaker 8: know that that really is make America great again for them,
Speaker 8: like bringing back so that was that's been fascinating. But
Speaker 8: even beyond that, the way that this story of the
Speaker 8: Fall of Row fits in for so many of the
Speaker 8: people who are working to make it happen into a
Speaker 8: story a religion that goes back to a young woman
Speaker 8: who likely was a teenager and gave birth to a
Speaker 8: baby that they worship as the Son of God.
Speaker 1: Right, these are such.
Speaker 8: Debated storylines and you just can't understand I don't think
Speaker 8: the states or what it means will mean in the
Speaker 8: future to be a woman in America without understanding this
Speaker 8: bigger fight going on between one particular Christian worldview and
Speaker 8: another majority view in America that is more pluralistic and
Speaker 8: is increasingly secular.
Speaker 1: So it's just part of that.
Speaker 8: We can see in a very specific way through Leonard
Speaker 8: Leo the longtime architect right at the Federalist Society, who's
Speaker 8: so influential, and picking the judges who would go on
Speaker 8: to become former President Trump's Supreme Court picks for him.
Speaker 8: The story of why he's so opposed to abortion personally
Speaker 8: is deeply rooted in his religious views about suffering and
Speaker 8: his own story of his daughter who hads fina bifida
Speaker 8: and die and kind of.
Speaker 7: How he dealt religiously with that.
Speaker 8: And we found that actually the day that Row found
Speaker 8: it happened on a certain Catholic holy day, the Feast
Speaker 8: of the Sacred Heart, which has extreme personal significance to
Speaker 8: Leonard Leo's. He had named his daughter after the saint.
Speaker 8: The holy day is devoted to It's like.
Speaker 1: The Da Vinci Code, but women suffer instead. Yes, but
Speaker 1: go on, I don't mean to boil it down in
Speaker 1: such a way, but it's just, you know, I feel
Speaker 1: bad for him, but not that bad, But yes, go on,
Speaker 1: I was sorry.
Speaker 8: You get at these sort of epic questions of spiritual
Speaker 8: versus earthly forces and how power works, and it's just,
Speaker 8: I think such a much bigger story. It's very hard
Speaker 8: to confront that now, and especially what that means for
Speaker 8: you know, the stakes for women, right, that's just very
Speaker 8: different ideas about the role of women in society and
Speaker 8: family when it comes to sex, marriage, kids, all of it.
Speaker 8: You have to kind of spend time exploring that and
Speaker 8: seeing what the steaks are.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, no, it's so interesting and I didn't mean
Speaker 1: to make light of it, but I can't help myself
Speaker 1: because I grew up in a very non religious Hashold.
Speaker 1: One of the things we talked about when we talked
Speaker 1: together on Morning Joe was that the left really never
Speaker 1: saw this coming. I've talked to other people who've said
Speaker 1: this very same thing, which was that so much was
Speaker 1: riding on the election of Hillary Clinton, that Planned Parenthood
Speaker 1: and a lot of organizations, that there was such a
Speaker 1: mass sort of belief that she would be the president
Speaker 1: that certain things maybe didn't get the attention they could have.
Speaker 7: Look, I think that's right. I think there was a sense.
Speaker 7: You have to remember where the country was in twenty twelve,
Speaker 7: twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, the run ups at Clinton's run,
Speaker 7: which was you know, it seemed like abortion was this
Speaker 7: old fight. It was decided like conservative states at that
Speaker 7: time were passing more restrictive laws, But it just didn't
Speaker 7: capture the imagination. It wasn't the thing that was driving
Speaker 7: like liberal activists. It felt like this thing from like
Speaker 7: the boomer moms or grandma's or whatever. It was a
Speaker 7: settled issue. Hillary Clinton was widely expected to win and
Speaker 7: she was going to expand abortion rights in all of this,
Speaker 7: and then of course she lost. And I think part
Speaker 7: of what the left was unprepared for is they thought
Speaker 7: about this issue in terms of the election cycles and
Speaker 7: in terms of winning public opinion. If we destigmatize the proposal,
Speaker 7: we get it in as a plot line in movies
Speaker 7: like Juno or Gray's Anatomy. If we elect people who
Speaker 7: will protect abortion rights, it'll be fine. They'll be forced
Speaker 7: to roll back these restrictive laws. As Elizabeth was outlining,
Speaker 7: the anti abortion movement is thinking in generations, right, and
Speaker 7: they're not thinking about public opinion because they are engaged
Speaker 7: in this battle for these like spiritual ideas. So you
Speaker 7: believe that you were engaged in a world battle. It
Speaker 7: doesn't matter if everyone disagrees with you. So what they
Speaker 7: were doing was moving the levers of power everywhere. They
Speaker 7: could state legislatures, judicial you know, judge ships, all the
Speaker 7: way up to the Supreme Court. So you reach a
Speaker 7: point where the left is unable to stop this from
Speaker 7: happening because the anti abortion movement controls the system, and
Speaker 7: that's the point at which Trump has those three Supreme
Speaker 7: Court justices, and by then it's too late. So I
Speaker 7: just think like the anti abortion forces were playing chess
Speaker 7: and the abortion rights side was playing checkers, and the
Speaker 7: skull of how they were looking at this was just
Speaker 7: so different. It was asymmetrical in a way, right.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's a really important point that
Speaker 1: they had this grand plan that the left just didn't
Speaker 1: see coming in a certain way.
Speaker 7: And I think, like you were mentioning, you know, you
Speaker 7: grew up in a really secular home, Like I think
Speaker 7: it can be hard to understand, like you really have
Speaker 7: to understand the roots of this thing in the anti
Speaker 7: abortion movement. And you know, it's been interesting to see
Speaker 7: all this news with the LEO and the recordings and
Speaker 7: the flags, and you know, it didn't go unnoticed by
Speaker 7: Elizabeth and I that the flag his wife wanted to
Speaker 7: raise to push back on the Pride flag was the
Speaker 7: flag of the Sacred Heart right, which is that Catholic symbol.
Speaker 7: We were talking about so this is a thing that's
Speaker 7: very deep for them can be hard, I think for
Speaker 7: people who are raised more secularly to wrap their heads
Speaker 7: around what that all means. I think it actually helped
Speaker 7: us that we were raised in more observant homes, and
Speaker 7: so I think that helped us kind of understand a
Speaker 7: little bit more and take a wider purview than I
Speaker 7: think sometimes people do to this issue, which is necessary.
Speaker 1: Thank you both so much.
Speaker 7: Thank you, ma, thank you for having us.
Speaker 1: No moment fuck so Rick Wilson, Yes, ma'am, do you
Speaker 1: have a moment of fuckery?
Speaker 4: I do have a moment of fuckery. My moment of
Speaker 4: thuckery is yesterday's ritual humiliation session on Capitol Hill where
Speaker 4: Mitch fuck and McConnell, who I have told you guys
Speaker 4: a million times loathes and despises Donald Trump with every
Speaker 4: fiber of his grotesque little being, went out there and
Speaker 4: once again, once again when he has a chance to
Speaker 4: break the evil of Trump, and the MAGA movement went
Speaker 4: out there. Oh well, support the Norman I'm a party
Speaker 4: because olverys. If we don't communist Trams, lesbian celebrity abortionist
Speaker 4: will wound.
Speaker 3: I mean God, all.
Speaker 4: Fucking mighty, the guy can't stop himself. And I'm sorry, Mitch,
Speaker 4: you're eighty two years old. Go retire, be done. Try
Speaker 4: not to make yourself a guy who will end up
Speaker 4: with a grave that reeks of piss for all eternity
Speaker 4: by supporting this fucking guy.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, I understand the craven desire for power. I
Speaker 1: respect the hell out of it. But the photos out
Speaker 1: of that meeting yesterday were so cringe well, they just
Speaker 1: were so embarrassing, and like, you have this opportunity, even
Speaker 1: if the guy did win, you could have salvage the
Speaker 1: tiny bit of your dignity by not There were photos
Speaker 1: of them actually, and they weren't bowing on purpose. They
Speaker 1: were just sort of like, you know, it just looked
Speaker 1: like they were bowing right, but it looked like, you know,
Speaker 1: painting is from the Renaissance.
Speaker 3: Accidental Renaissance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, accidental.
Speaker 3: That was awful, awful, awful, awful.
Speaker 1: So the accidental Renaissance is our moment of fuck Gray.
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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