Speaker 1: You're listening to Comedy centralow.
Speaker 2: From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central. It's America,
Speaker 2: It's only source for news this it's the Daily Too.
Speaker 2: To your host, Jessey Lightning, can't corn that Clubber.
Speaker 1: Welcome to na John George Clubber.
Speaker 3: And I'm Jesse Lightning.
Speaker 4: We missed you so much. Has it been twenty four hours.
Speaker 4: I barely recognize you at all.
Speaker 5: That's because it's a different audience than last night.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, you're right, nothing.
Speaker 5: Gets past me. We've got so much to talk about tonight.
Speaker 5: So let's get right into our continuing coverage of Indecision
Speaker 5: twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: Let's get off of America's Happiest felon Donald Trump. He's
Speaker 4: ahead of the polls, but he's not resting on his laurels.
Speaker 4: He's at rallies talking about the issues that matter.
Speaker 3: The other day, I got very angry.
Speaker 6: Some man called Chris Christie fat and I said, sir,
Speaker 6: And then he said he was a pig. I said, sir,
Speaker 6: Chris Christy is not a fat pig. Please remember when
Speaker 6: a waitress came off a beautiful waitress and I never
Speaker 6: liked talking about physics. She's beautiful inside.
Speaker 3: I don't even order bacon anymore. You know, Bacon's gone.
Speaker 7: Up like five.
Speaker 3: I said, too expensive.
Speaker 1: I don't want, I don't want. Byron likes bacon.
Speaker 7: Sleepy.
Speaker 8: Joe also declared that he wanted to test his skills
Speaker 8: and stamina against mine on the golf course. And I
Speaker 8: will even give Joe Biden ten strokes. Aside ten strokes,
Speaker 8: that's a lot.
Speaker 3: Jokes on you, Donald Trump. Joe Biden's already had ten drugs.
Speaker 4: Bu Yes, if you missed Donald Trump's rally yesterday, it
Speaker 4: had very important things to say, like Biden sucks at golf,
Speaker 4: Chris Christy is fat, and once I saw a hot waitress.
Speaker 5: I have to say, this was the first time I
Speaker 5: ever heard Trump talk about a woman's inner beauty. Maybe
Speaker 5: he's maturing either that or he thinks there's more boobs
Speaker 5: to find on the inside. Of course, it wasn't old
Speaker 5: boobs in bacon, which coincidentally is the title my memoir
Speaker 5: coming out this Christmas. Trump did touch on some important
Speaker 5: issues in a very dramatic way, and to be clear,
Speaker 5: we did not add this music.
Speaker 6: We are a nation where fentanyl and all other forms
Speaker 6: of illegal drugs are easier to get than groceries to
Speaker 6: feed our beautiful families and babies. Mothers will never again
Speaker 6: be forced to watch the children overdosing and hostiling, and
Speaker 6: we will never allow mothers to watch their child hopelessly
Speaker 6: dying in their arms, screaming.
Speaker 3: What can I do? What can I do?
Speaker 9: Help be God?
Speaker 1: What can I do?
Speaker 5: Never that I'd say this, but I miss him talking
Speaker 5: about the hot waitress.
Speaker 3: Help me God?
Speaker 10: What can I do?
Speaker 4: I mean, what chilling words about the opioid crisis? Slightly
Speaker 4: undercut by the crisis he moved onto in the very
Speaker 4: next sentence, What can I do?
Speaker 3: What can I do? Help be God?
Speaker 4: What can I do?
Speaker 3: We are a nation who's once revered.
Speaker 6: Airports are a dirty, crowded mess.
Speaker 3: You sit and wait for hours and then are.
Speaker 6: Notified that the plane won't league, that they have no
Speaker 6: idea when they will.
Speaker 4: Wow, WHOA, What a smooth transition from there's blood in
Speaker 4: the streets too, and why do I want to.
Speaker 1: Check my bags?
Speaker 5: They're killing us with metonol and I'm in boarding group six.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 5: The reason why Trump is having a blast on the
Speaker 5: campaign trail is because his opponent, Joe Biden, whose poll
Speaker 5: numbers are hovering somewhere between uh oh and oh shit.
Speaker 5: But worry not, Biden's team has a plan. Tomorrow, He'll
Speaker 5: hold a press conference to show that he's fully in
Speaker 5: charge of all his faculties. Unfortunately, their branding isn't helping.
Speaker 5: The next test is what the White House says will
Speaker 5: be some kind of a big boy press conference.
Speaker 12: He'll have a press conference, a big boy press conference,
Speaker 12: his big boy press conference, A big boy press conference.
Speaker 9: I guess a big boy press conference is what we're
Speaker 9: calling it.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, stop saying big boy press conference. It
Speaker 5: sounds like he's going to show everyone that he can
Speaker 5: tie his own shoes, although at this point it would
Speaker 5: be reassuring to see him do that.
Speaker 4: But some Democrats aren't waiting to see whether Biden can
Speaker 4: get through his big boy presser without a binki. Now
Speaker 4: every day brings new lawmakers openly questioning whether Biden should
Speaker 4: remain as the nominee, and today one of the party's
Speaker 4: biggest names waited.
Speaker 5: Nancy Pelosi passed up a golden opportunity to say President
Speaker 5: Biden should stay in the race.
Speaker 12: Does he have your support to be the head of
Speaker 12: the Democrat.
Speaker 13: Sicut as long as the president had the president. It's
Speaker 13: up to the president to sucide if he is going
Speaker 13: to run. We're all encouraging him to make that decision
Speaker 13: because time is running. Sure, he's beloved, he is respected,
Speaker 13: and if people want him to make that decision.
Speaker 4: Keep in mind, Biden has said about fifty times that
Speaker 4: he's staying in the race. He's like, I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 4: The Lord Almighty couldn't get me out of this race.
Speaker 4: And Pelosi's going, yep, great, just let us know when
Speaker 4: you decide. Clot's takeing TikTok. I mean, I mean, that's
Speaker 4: the same energy my mom had when I told her
Speaker 4: I was going into comedy. She still calls me up
Speaker 4: today like, have you made a decision about medical school?
Speaker 1: Yet?
Speaker 3: By the way, it probably doesn't help that as.
Speaker 4: She was speaking, I kept thinking, man, I wish that
Speaker 4: Biden could channel.
Speaker 3: The youth and vigor of Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 5: But Pelosi wasn't the biggest name to come out against
Speaker 5: Biden today because while she was gently nudging him out
Speaker 5: of the race, an even more powerful Democrat was running
Speaker 5: him over with a steamroller.
Speaker 7: All right, this just end the scene.
Speaker 14: Then, big Democratic donor George Clooney, of course, the actor
Speaker 14: has just called for President Biden to step aside the
Speaker 14: actor and writes, it's devastating to say it, but the
Speaker 14: Joe Biden I was with three weeks ago at the
Speaker 14: fundraiser was not the Joe big effing deal Biden of
Speaker 14: twenty ten. He wasn't even the Joe Biden of twenty
Speaker 14: He was the same man we all witnessed at the debate.
Speaker 3: In short, Clooney says, this is about age, nothing more.
Speaker 7: He adds, we are not going to win in November
Speaker 7: with this present.
Speaker 5: Yeah, you know you're in trouble when even Danny Ocean
Speaker 5: is saying we can't pull this one off.
Speaker 3: Of course, I will say.
Speaker 4: It's easy for him to say Biden's too old. Clooney
Speaker 4: doesn't age. He doesn't know what it's like for us
Speaker 4: mortals to slowly decline, while he becomes more and more fokable,
Speaker 4: just saltier and more peppery, the glint of his eyes
Speaker 4: glowing ever more brightly, and the smile, the supple lips
Speaker 4: just so supple.
Speaker 3: He goes with this clooney thing, doing the Clooney thing.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I'm doing the cloney thing again.
Speaker 7: Jesus to get so beautiful.
Speaker 5: God, keep it in your pants. The point is Clooney
Speaker 5: isn't just a random celebrity. He's a major fundraiser for
Speaker 5: the Democratic Party. Last month he helped raise thirty million
Speaker 5: dollars for Joe Biden. Wait, while we were all distracted
Speaker 5: by this ed who was watching the money?
Speaker 3: Oh it was.
Speaker 5: At the whole time cloning such a clever, sexy silver
Speaker 5: fox of a man who's just got.
Speaker 3: Those lips, those lips. Conclude yourself in. I'm sorry, he's
Speaker 3: a lot, you know what.
Speaker 4: It's important to remember that, as of now, only eight
Speaker 4: House Democrats have called on Joe Biden to step down,
Speaker 4: and the dissenters might get all the headlines, but there
Speaker 4: are hundreds of other Democrats who are still with Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: but with a skeptical public. Now is the time for
Speaker 4: them to make their case to the people. So let's
Speaker 4: hear their enthusiasm. What do you say, Congressman Jim Clyburn.
Speaker 1: We are ride in with Biden? You're right, ind.
Speaker 3: Conversation about we are ride in with Biden. The conversation
Speaker 3: abou Vice President Kamala Howers.
Speaker 1: In there, we are riding.
Speaker 4: Okay, I wouldn't say that was enthusiasm. I was hearing there,
Speaker 4: I'm writing with Biden. Sounds like you're in a Felma
Speaker 4: Louise situation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's the same tone of voice to use when
Speaker 5: you don't like the man. Your best friend is marrying,
Speaker 5: but you're a bridesmaid, So congratulations Becky and Mark. He
Speaker 5: hit on me at the rehearsal dinner. But Mark's our man, Marx,
Speaker 5: our man. We don't talk anymore.
Speaker 3: Okay, all right, you know what, maybe maybe we don't
Speaker 3: need enthusiasm.
Speaker 4: We just need an argument, a good, strong argument for
Speaker 4: supporting him as the nominee.
Speaker 3: Sell us on him.
Speaker 2: You know, President Biden declinents to leave voluntarily, then we
Speaker 2: have no choice but to, you know, support him as
Speaker 2: our nominee.
Speaker 9: I am fully behind him as our nominee until he's.
Speaker 12: Not our nominee.
Speaker 5: Okay, again, let's an argument in Morris eatment of fact.
Speaker 5: It's like if your mother in law asked you if
Speaker 5: you like the dinner she made, and you say, you
Speaker 5: made a dinner and it was food, and I will
Speaker 5: eat the food until there is other food.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, if Trump is an existential threat to democracy,
Speaker 4: and you're not making the case for Biden to drop out,
Speaker 4: then you gotta explain why you keep supporting him.
Speaker 11: Go.
Speaker 15: Do you support keeping Biden as your nominating going? Do
Speaker 15: you support keeping Biden at the top of the ticket.
Speaker 15: Do you think that Biden just stays your nominee? I
Speaker 15: love that time, I love that tie. Do you mind
Speaker 15: if I hang myself with it? Instead of answering your question?
Speaker 3: Actually, you know what?
Speaker 4: Actually I wonder what it was he liked about that tie?
Speaker 4: Can we have another angle on that?
Speaker 12: Oh?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, oh.
Speaker 10: That makes sense.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like democrats, listen, We're not going to sit
Speaker 4: here and tell you what to do. Whatever you do,
Speaker 4: actually do it. This indecisive waffling only makes you look
Speaker 4: like you don't have the courage of your convictions. Either
Speaker 4: tell Joe that he needs to go, or stand by
Speaker 4: him and really make the case for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, or don't spend the next four months running around
Speaker 5: saying I don't know, I don't know. But when November comes,
Speaker 5: the only thing you're going to be saying is.
Speaker 7: This, what can I do?
Speaker 3: What can I do? Help me? God?
Speaker 1: What can I do?
Speaker 3: Weake come out?
Speaker 4: Ronnie Chang discovers one of Trump's incredible success.
Speaker 10: Jolies, stay cool, welcome back you daily.
Speaker 5: So next week Donald compon accept the Republican nomination for
Speaker 5: a second term in Wisconsin. But while he's in the state,
Speaker 5: there's one town he may want to avoid. Ronnie Chang
Speaker 5: tells us why.
Speaker 11: Trump's promised in twenty sixteen to bring that manufacturing. Johns
Speaker 11: was a major appear in the Upper Midwest, and Trump's
Speaker 11: first year in office, the artists of deals delivered them
Speaker 11: a master.
Speaker 6: Fox Conn will invest in Southeast Wisconsin.
Speaker 5: Electronics manufacturer of fox Con is opening its first major
Speaker 5: US factory in Wisconsin.
Speaker 13: Investing ten billion dollars of their own money.
Speaker 16: To do so.
Speaker 11: That's right, fox Cott, the Taiwan based company that's good
Speaker 11: at making iPhones and great at making their employees jump
Speaker 11: off buildings. The fox Con deal in Mount Pleasant was
Speaker 11: as golden as the shovels Trump brought to the groundbreaking.
Speaker 9: I think we can say this is we can say
Speaker 9: the eighth wonder of the world.
Speaker 11: So to learn more about this eighth wonder of the world,
Speaker 11: I spoke with Alan Young, the business genius responsible for
Speaker 11: bringing fox Con to Wiscon sing, love business, Love big business.
Speaker 11: I love great businessmen. You brought manufacturing to Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 11: When you love most about Wisconsin, the cheese or the
Speaker 11: high rate of alcoholism.
Speaker 16: It turns out Wisconsin actually to our benefit.
Speaker 17: What's the right choice?
Speaker 16: And the vision really was to create what we call
Speaker 16: Wiscone Valley, the ten billion dollar projects later to create
Speaker 16: up to thirteen thousand.
Speaker 11: Job all right, high tech job creation, local country Bumpkin,
Speaker 11: Kelly Galaher must be exciting.
Speaker 17: Fox con came to town. They promised us the world.
Speaker 17: Then that does because our village officials are morons.
Speaker 11: Look, lady, I came here to do a feel good
Speaker 11: puff piece about phone corporations creating jobs for farmers or whatever.
Speaker 7: Okay, are you telling me that's not happening.
Speaker 17: They promised us thirteen thousand jobs and a ten million
Speaker 17: dollar investment. We got a few hundred jobs. We bulldozed
Speaker 17: one hundred homes, moved people out, used eminent domain against them,
Speaker 17: and except for a few buildings that Fox Cohn has
Speaker 17: put there, it's basically empty.
Speaker 11: Well, you can't fault Fox Cohn for putting money into
Speaker 11: this town and trying to make something happen.
Speaker 17: But they didn't put money in on it. Unfortunately, the
Speaker 17: village of Mount Pleasant decided instead of making Fox KHN
Speaker 17: by the land that they wanted for their factory are
Speaker 17: part time village trustees.
Speaker 9: They said, we'll do it for you. We borrowed nearly
Speaker 9: a billion dollars.
Speaker 11: So a bunch of village idiots borrowed a billion dollars
Speaker 11: to get Fox don't come in. Fox con comes in
Speaker 11: and goes, hey, we can give you, guys, civilization, take
Speaker 11: you out of the farms.
Speaker 9: Well, we like our farms.
Speaker 7: What was foxhn promising to build.
Speaker 17: Well, first they said they were going to build a
Speaker 17: large screen lcdtvs.
Speaker 7: Amazing, I love those.
Speaker 17: A few weeks later they changed it that they were
Speaker 17: going to build small LSED screens, the kinds that you
Speaker 17: get in the car.
Speaker 7: So I love those two. I love all screens.
Speaker 17: Then they announced that they were going to build coffee robots.
Speaker 7: Okay, but you know what, who doesn't like coffee?
Speaker 17: That didn't happen either, And right now nobody knows what
Speaker 17: they do inside that building. Okay, it's three thousand square
Speaker 17: acres of land. Do you know how much three thousand
Speaker 17: square acres of land is?
Speaker 7: Of course not, I'm not a dumb fine, you should
Speaker 7: really go check it out. Fine, I will.
Speaker 11: This simple villager wasn't making any sense. Allen and fox
Speaker 11: Conn as showed the residents of Mount Pleasant that will
Speaker 11: be bringing a study tech hop to its barren farmland.
Speaker 11: But instead all fox Conn built was a bunch of
Speaker 11: roads to nowhere with the help two empty warehouses and
Speaker 11: a lame disco fall in the middle of an empty field.
Speaker 3: Hell, I needed answers.
Speaker 7: What the hell is everybody? I was a thousand thousand dogs. Yeah, sorry,
Speaker 7: so just wondering.
Speaker 11: Well, the job's at the jobs's fifteen thousand jobs.
Speaker 7: This can't be right.
Speaker 11: And even if there aren't any jobs or products or transparency,
Speaker 11: surely fox cont has a plan.
Speaker 16: I would say that over the past few years, everybody
Speaker 16: learned a few lessons. I think the storyline is happening.
Speaker 16: A story is a good one. It really is trail
Speaker 16: blazing and making pioneering decisions, even though it might not
Speaker 16: make sense.
Speaker 7: Even though it makes absolutely no sense.
Speaker 1: Well, okay, absolutely no sense.
Speaker 16: But right now I think we're in the chapter two
Speaker 16: or chapter three of the whole thing stayed.
Speaker 7: Eleven of the well you don't want to get there right?
Speaker 16: Well, the outcome was job Operation You really shouldn't care
Speaker 16: if you build potato chips or micro chips.
Speaker 7: Potato chips or microchips, who cares?
Speaker 11: Just make something that's what people want for Fox can
Speaker 11: to make something in this factory.
Speaker 7: It takes a village. It takes a village to build
Speaker 7: a factory that makes nothing.
Speaker 3: You got me there.
Speaker 11: Ellen did a great job at showing the very thin
Speaker 11: line between genius business plan and scam. Okay, I think
Speaker 11: I see why you're so upset. You got catfished. Do
Speaker 11: you know what catfishing is?
Speaker 9: Yes?
Speaker 10: I do?
Speaker 17: But what?
Speaker 10: Who?
Speaker 8: What?
Speaker 7: Why did they do this? If it's so bad for everybody?
Speaker 3: Why did this happen? Well?
Speaker 9: It was really Donald Trump.
Speaker 17: Oh and the largest failed publicly funded economic development project
Speaker 17: in Wisconsin history, possibly in US history, Thank you wish.
Speaker 11: In true Trump fashion, he made a promise, never delivered
Speaker 11: and left someone else holding the bag. Was there any
Speaker 11: way to turn this development disaster around?
Speaker 4: More breaking news now Microsoft could be coming to Mount Pleasant.
Speaker 12: This is a huge win for the village.
Speaker 17: Microsoft came to town and they announced a three point
Speaker 17: three billion dollar investment project and two thousand full time jobs.
Speaker 11: Okay, two thousand is quite a step down. From thirteen thousand.
Speaker 9: But those thirteen thousand jobs were never real.
Speaker 7: What even making there?
Speaker 9: It's going to be an AI data center.
Speaker 11: Wait, but that if it's a cent that's going to
Speaker 11: take jobs, they're going to replace workers.
Speaker 7: You're going to end up with less jobs than before.
Speaker 9: Well it's better than nothing.
Speaker 7: Actually no, because no jobs will be zero.
Speaker 11: This will be negative jobs because it'll be taking other
Speaker 11: people's jobs.
Speaker 9: All I know is that these are two thousand real jobs.
Speaker 3: God, damn villages is jobs?
Speaker 6: Man?
Speaker 11: Did you guys talk about anything else here in business?
Speaker 11: Not everything turns out the way you wanted to. But hey,
Speaker 11: with a little ingenuity and some American can do spirit,
Speaker 11: you too could turn thirteen thousand jobs into two thousand
Speaker 11: and put your whole village into debt.
Speaker 7: Great John, thank you.
Speaker 4: Ronic When we come back to Elizabeth Dies Elise Hlero.
Speaker 3: I'll talk about the future of abortion in America. They'll
Speaker 3: go away.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Dall's show, our.
Speaker 4: Guests tonight, our reporters at The New York Times and
Speaker 4: co authors of the best selling book The Fall of
Speaker 4: Row The Rise of a New America. Please welcome Elizabeth
Speaker 4: Das and Lisa lehre.
Speaker 5: Oh my goodness. Thank you so much for being on
Speaker 5: the show and for all of your incredible work on this.
Speaker 5: We enjoyed your book very much, and also we're thoroughly
Speaker 5: horrified by all of it, obviously, but so many Americans
Speaker 5: felt kind of blindsided when Roe v. Wade was overturned.
Speaker 5: And yet you walk us through every step of the way.
Speaker 5: This was not an overnight, shocking decision. This was decades
Speaker 5: in the making. Walk us through some of that.
Speaker 12: You mean, the secret plan to overturn Roe v. Wade, Yes, yes,
Speaker 12: there was one. For fifty years, the anti abortion movement
Speaker 12: tried so hard, right, they made it their life's work,
Speaker 12: generational commitment, to try to overturn Row. This was a
Speaker 12: moral commitment for them, for them, the greatest moral calling
Speaker 12: of their lives. And they were not successful until about
Speaker 12: ten years ago. Something changed, and we've taken to calling
Speaker 12: it this was the last decade, the final decade of
Speaker 12: their Row era in American life. They had new tactics,
Speaker 12: new strategies, and they really radicalized along with the Republican
Speaker 12: Party and did what many Americans thought was unimaginable, which
Speaker 12: was overturning Roe v.
Speaker 7: Wade.
Speaker 4: In telling this story, how much of this did you
Speaker 4: find was based in sort of a moral argument, And
Speaker 4: how much of this felt like it was groups who
Speaker 4: had political motives who were trying to utilize Roe as
Speaker 4: a piece in which to gain more political power.
Speaker 18: Well, certainly there's a really deep moral and spiritual element.
Speaker 18: These are conservative Christians, largely Evangelical and Catholics, and they
Speaker 18: see this as a story that's rooted in biblical kinds
Speaker 18: of terms. But I think there's also this broader effort,
Speaker 18: and what they effectively want to do is overturn elements
Speaker 18: of the sexual revolution and return the family, the American family,
Speaker 18: to a more traditional time. I think one of the
Speaker 18: most interesting things we found in our book was the
Speaker 18: role that abortion plays. Of course, abortion is about the
Speaker 18: right to terminate a pregnancy and when a woman can
Speaker 18: legally do that, but it also has this great symbolism
Speaker 18: in American life. It sort of symbolizes for people morality
Speaker 18: and religion and medicine, and of course politics and gender
Speaker 18: roles and all these really big things. And so if
Speaker 18: you want to understand where this election might be going,
Speaker 18: and it really if you want to understand where the
Speaker 18: country might be going, the story of the Fall of
Speaker 18: row is one way to understand that.
Speaker 4: I guess you articulate that that Roe has taken on
Speaker 4: such a larger Yeah, it's not just one thing anymore.
Speaker 3: Was that always the case or is there? Can you
Speaker 3: pinpoint when that really started to pick up steam?
Speaker 18: Well, look, our book starts in twenty thirteen, which is
Speaker 18: right when Obama ran one reelection, and it's also when
Speaker 18: conservative Christians became a slight minority in America. So this
Speaker 18: is a group that felt that they were losing their
Speaker 18: holds on American life, losing their traditional power in American life,
Speaker 18: and I think abortion rights were one way that they
Speaker 18: thought they could sort of return the country to where
Speaker 18: it was before. So it is this larger fight, and
Speaker 18: we're seeing that play out now in sort of efforts
Speaker 18: around IVF, around some forms of contraception. This is, of
Speaker 18: course about abortion, but it's about so much more than
Speaker 18: just abortion.
Speaker 5: One of the things that I really appreciated about this
Speaker 5: book is you go through the backstories of all of
Speaker 5: these characters you don't pay as heroes and villains. You
Speaker 5: talk about Leonard Leo from the Federalist Society and talk
Speaker 5: about how he personally was affected, what formed his fate.
Speaker 12: Leonard Leo devout Catholic, obviously legal mastermind. But the story
Speaker 12: that motivated motivated him the most is the death of
Speaker 12: his daughter when she was fourteen. Their firstborn daughter had
Speaker 12: a very difficult prenatal diagnosis. They decided to give birth
Speaker 12: and raise her, and uh, you know, when we talked
Speaker 12: with him, he talked a lot about suffering and his
Speaker 12: views motivated by Catholic theology about suffering and salvation in
Speaker 12: the in the human experience. And so for him that
Speaker 12: really shaped not only how he wanted to run his
Speaker 12: own family, but how he sees how the entire country
Speaker 12: and world should be structured.
Speaker 18: You know, for a lot of these anti abortion activists,
Speaker 18: those two worlds are intertwined. This isn't a story that
Speaker 18: you can understand just through politics or just through religion.
Speaker 18: These are intertwined stories, and I think think that's part
Speaker 18: of what we really tried to get out at the
Speaker 18: book was tell those intertwined stories in a way that
Speaker 18: reflected sort of the intimate This is such an intimate issue,
Speaker 18: you know. That reflected that intimacy and how personal it
Speaker 18: is for these people. Look, it's something that everyone understands
Speaker 18: if you've had a baby, if you were with someone
Speaker 18: who had a baby, if you were a baby, at
Speaker 18: some level you would inherently understand like how this works
Speaker 18: and what this is about. And I think it's not
Speaker 18: the kind of issue that even for the most committed
Speaker 18: activists that can be disconnected or rooted.
Speaker 12: Just in politicals.
Speaker 4: I mean, this book talks about the successes of the activists, right,
Speaker 4: a lot of them are the grassroot activists on the right.
Speaker 3: Like, what were the failings of the left in this fight?
Speaker 18: Well, you know, look, I think it was really there
Speaker 18: was this profound sense of denial across the left, and
Speaker 18: in some ways that's reasonable, Right, it's really hard to
Speaker 18: believe that this right that people had for generations could
Speaker 18: suddenly just vanish. And because of that, Democrats, you know,
Speaker 18: they would always go out Democratic candidates and warn about
Speaker 18: threats to Row or Roe could fall, and people just
Speaker 18: didn't believe them. Like we have the book, tons of
Speaker 18: polling and focus groups where the issue just didn't resonate
Speaker 18: with people because they didn't believe it would happen. And
Speaker 18: so it's hard to see and prevent something that you
Speaker 18: don't think is happening, Right, And then of course they
Speaker 18: got very very unlucky. Trump won and he got three
Speaker 18: appointments to Supreme Court, unheard of since Ronald Reagan. And
Speaker 18: there becomes a point, a turning point, where the march
Speaker 18: to end row effectively becomes unstoppable for Democrats and the
Speaker 18: abortion rights activists.
Speaker 5: There's the you know, part of the civil rights activists
Speaker 5: were rooted in the Christian community. Where's the disconnect? Why
Speaker 5: have liberals not been able to connect with the Christian
Speaker 5: community since then?
Speaker 12: Well, conservative Christians figured out that this wasn't really about
Speaker 12: cultural opinion, and a majority of Americans support and abortion rights,
Speaker 12: you know, for decades. But for them, this was about
Speaker 12: finding ways to pull the levers of power.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 12: You can kind of do all the moral conversation education
Speaker 12: that you want either on either side of this, but
Speaker 12: if you don't have power, you can't do anything. So
Speaker 12: they figured out exactly what levers where in the country,
Speaker 12: at what levels of government, from the smallest state house
Speaker 12: lobbyists all the way up to the presidency the Supreme Court,
Speaker 12: and they identified them, they pulled them, and then they're
Speaker 12: able to change the culture that way, right, instead of
Speaker 12: having culture change the law.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 18: Look, I think we think of politics as working one way. Right,
Speaker 18: people protest, public opinion changes, politicians respond, the culture changes.
Speaker 18: This is a really different kind of story. This is
Speaker 18: you know, a majority of America's supported ROE for decades,
Speaker 18: but these activists on the right, where these conservative Christian
Speaker 18: activists were able to seize controls of these levers of
Speaker 18: power and change the culture effectively through force.
Speaker 4: Now, take a step back into what's happening now. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we see the Republican platform seems to be softening on abortion,
Speaker 4: at least not articulating that they want a federal band.
Speaker 4: We see what happened with mivapristone at the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: Do you see a recalculation happening?
Speaker 12: Some different things are happening at once here, right, Like,
Speaker 12: obviously Trump and a lot of Republican leaders see that
Speaker 12: this is now a losing issue for them. I mean,
Speaker 12: ROE was a foundation for so long. Republicans were able
Speaker 12: to use it in a certain way to motivate key
Speaker 12: parts of their base, and that's obviously really changed. But
Speaker 12: you know, now things we think of as maybe losses
Speaker 12: for the anti abortion movement, they're able to reframe and
Speaker 12: see them as wins.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 12: I mean, even the platform can be doing whatever it's
Speaker 12: doing right in their minds, but they're on the ground
Speaker 12: thinking in these generational long terms of how they can
Speaker 12: change the groundwork, similarly to how they overturned row Right.
Speaker 12: They're thinking long term about what does this mean for
Speaker 12: how we can restrict IVF right? What is this and
Speaker 12: for access to some forms of birth control? That is
Speaker 12: such a different long game than Democrats are playing, so
Speaker 12: in a way, it is definitely a power struggle right now.
Speaker 12: The two movements, the anti abortion activists and the Republican
Speaker 12: Party needed each other to gain power and to accomplish
Speaker 12: their mutual goals, so that we're seeing that as attention.
Speaker 12: But this is a movement that cannot be undercounted. I mean,
Speaker 12: they accomplished one of the biggest political resurgences this country
Speaker 12: has ever seen, and under the noses of people, many
Speaker 12: of whom just weren't paying attention.
Speaker 5: Where do you feel, where do we go from here?
Speaker 5: I mean, are women going to have to just run
Speaker 5: for president and have presidential immunity in order to legally
Speaker 5: have a.
Speaker 11: Well?
Speaker 18: I mean it is worth pointing out that many of
Speaker 18: the most prominent figures in the anti abortion movement are women.
Speaker 18: That there was a strategy to put women at the
Speaker 18: front of that movement. I think, you know, I've asked
Speaker 18: a lot of abortion rights activists like that very question,
Speaker 18: what happens now. It took fifty years for a row
Speaker 18: to fall, how many years does it take for it
Speaker 18: to return? And nobody knows. It's an unanswerable question. But
Speaker 18: nobody's saying one year. Nobody's saying five years, this is
Speaker 18: ten years, this is twenty years. There's no magic Wand
Speaker 18: you know President Biden talks about restoring Row, there's no
Speaker 18: way to do that without a margin in the Senate.
Speaker 18: That feels almost impossible unless they overturn the filibuster and
Speaker 18: then all agree on what that looks like, which, as
Speaker 18: we know about the Senate, that's.
Speaker 5: An extremely high bar.
Speaker 18: So there's no easy answer here. There's not some like
Speaker 18: thing that can just snap back in place and Row returns.
Speaker 18: I think the country is in for many more decades
Speaker 18: of wrangling over this issue.
Speaker 4: For the disheartened folks who see this story, what can
Speaker 4: they take away? What positive change can they make?
Speaker 18: Look, I think one of the things that has been
Speaker 18: that was most powerful for the anti abortion was this
Speaker 18: sense of denial. They did something because nobody believed they
Speaker 18: could do it, and that's been really shattered now. So
Speaker 18: I think there's a lot more awareness of what's going on.
Speaker 18: I think people are paying a lot more attention to
Speaker 18: what's happening, not only with abortion rights, but with things
Speaker 18: like IVF in some forms of contraception. So, like all
Speaker 18: political issues, I think this is one of engagement and awareness,
Speaker 18: and I do wonder if we're I do think we're
Speaker 18: seeing more of that now.
Speaker 12: And there's this question of ken Democrats respond with any
Speaker 12: kind of generational plan in the way that Republicans had.
Speaker 3: I mean, it was just a answer. Yeah, we've answered that.
Speaker 9: I mean, this is asymmetrical warfare.
Speaker 5: It hasn't been for a very long time.
Speaker 12: And there's a real question. I mean, even people like
Speaker 12: Hillary Clinton told us that the Democrats just don't have
Speaker 12: the same kind of infrastructure on their side. So there's
Speaker 12: an open question as too, you know that are they
Speaker 12: thinking just an election cycles or are they thinking about
Speaker 12: one generation, two generations from now.
Speaker 5: We so appreciate all of the work that you're doing
Speaker 5: and you being on here tonight. We're still hopeful that
Speaker 5: there will be your next book, The Rerise of Roe
Speaker 5: putting out a.
Speaker 3: Get the sequel going, yea, we get the secrel going.
Speaker 5: Thankks so much for being here, Thanks for the all
Speaker 5: the crow is available now Elizabeth Dyas and Lisa Larrer.
Speaker 5: We're going to take a quick break, but we'll.
Speaker 10: Be right down that.
Speaker 8: Night.
Speaker 5: NI next week when we will be in Milwaukee for
Speaker 5: the RNC all week long.
Speaker 4: Yes, and if you're in Milwaukee the Sunday, we'll be
Speaker 4: at Cathedral Square Park for In Dog Decision twenty twenty
Speaker 4: four Rescuing Democracy.
Speaker 3: We're partnering with.
Speaker 4: Madak, a local Milwaukee animal shelter and Headcount with the
Speaker 4: hopes to get lots of pups adopted and humans registered
Speaker 4: to vote.
Speaker 3: So we will see you there now here is.
Speaker 15: Do you believe as your rugery election on that?
Speaker 9: I'm not speaking English to you.
Speaker 13: I'm not going to be making any statements about any
Speaker 13: of that right.
Speaker 4: Now in the hallway.
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