Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Donald Trump says he will bring
Speaker 1: back the president's power of impoundment that way you can't
Speaker 1: impeach him again.
Speaker 2: We have an amazing show today.
Speaker 1: Slate's Dahlia Lethwick talks to us about the Supreme Court's
Speaker 1: latest surprise ruling, and then we'll talk to the amazing
Speaker 1: Wesley Lowry about his book American White Lash, a Changing
Speaker 1: Nation and the Cost of Progress. But first we have
Speaker 1: the host of the Lawrence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Laurence o'donald.
Speaker 3: It is great to be back. And I have to
Speaker 3: warn you at the outside that I am scree hours
Speaker 3: behind you and everywhere. Okay, you you have a three
Speaker 3: hour head start on me today because I'm in an
Speaker 3: undisclosed location where i'll i'll just say, the sun sets
Speaker 3: into the ocean, and so I you know, I'm way
Speaker 3: behind here, as is generally the entire state that I'm
Speaker 3: in at the moment. It's basically there's like a three
Speaker 3: hour leg time at dinner sometimes if you say certain
Speaker 3: things that they aren't quite up to speed with.
Speaker 1: Here, you know, is your governor a future presidential candidate.
Speaker 3: He's a future presidential candidate, not this time, but next time,
Speaker 3: and that'll be quite a crowded field that he's a
Speaker 3: future presidential candidate in. You're just assuming everyone figured out California, right, Wow,
Speaker 3: you know that's that's a wicked smile audience. I have
Speaker 3: to take.
Speaker 2: This audience is very smart.
Speaker 3: I have to say, yeah, that's true, but.
Speaker 1: I just assumed California because Governor Newsome has sort of
Speaker 1: sucked up a lot of the oxygen. And I don't
Speaker 1: actually say that in a negative way. I think that
Speaker 1: twenty eight is going to be an amazing field with.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, he's he's he's matured a lot as
Speaker 3: a politician in a way that's similar to Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: If you were looking at him ten years ago, you'd
Speaker 3: be a lot less impressed. If you're looking at Joe Biden,
Speaker 3: you know, twenty years ago, you'd be a lot less impressed.
Speaker 3: And so Gavin Mussom definitely has learned a lot. He's
Speaker 3: become better at governing and better at politics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also have like this whole theory again,
Speaker 1: which is that old Biden is the best Biden.
Speaker 2: I think we've talked about this before.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I agree completely, and that.
Speaker 1: Even if he misses a step verbally though. Again, there
Speaker 1: was a video of him calling Joe Manchin Jojo, and
Speaker 1: I was like, how is that a gaff?
Speaker 2: That's what he calls Joe, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: Speaking of other leaders of the free world or former
Speaker 1: leaders of the free world.
Speaker 2: There was another Trump tape.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, And the fun thing about this Trump tape
Speaker 3: is that we've known it existed for seventeen days, right,
Speaker 3: because the indictment Daltrum comes out and it quotes a
Speaker 3: tape in the middle of the of the indictment and
Speaker 3: it says this recording was made with Donald Trump's consent.
Speaker 3: So there were two presumptions, you know, guesses about the recording.
Speaker 3: One is it's the author who's there to write Mark
Speaker 3: Meadow's biography for him, because obviously Mark Meadows can't do that,
Speaker 3: and he's recording his interview subject Donald Trump. Right. The
Speaker 3: other theory, and both can be true, is that Trump
Speaker 3: was recording the conversation. Trump's staff was recording the conversation,
Speaker 3: because that's a thing that they do to protect Trump
Speaker 3: against being misquoted, which I have to say is the
Speaker 3: funniest reason ever for recording anything. It's like, no, Donald,
Speaker 3: you don't want the recording so you can claim you
Speaker 3: were misquoted. Okay, if you have the recording, you won't
Speaker 3: be able to claim you were misquoted. Let's just, for
Speaker 3: the sake of simplicity, assumed that it's the author's recording.
Speaker 3: And Jack Smith got it with a subpoena or or
Speaker 3: he got up with a subpoena to Trump's staff, and
Speaker 3: so we knew that there's a recording, right And I
Speaker 3: think in the back of our minds, we're kind of
Speaker 3: thinking lazily, like, okay, you know, well, we'll hear that
Speaker 3: in court. And it's like no, no, no, you're gonna
Speaker 3: hear it in seventeen days because it's gonna leak. It's crush,
Speaker 3: it's gonna leak, you know. And it's so I felt
Speaker 3: like so dumb yesterday. It's like, wait a minute, you
Speaker 3: mean I didn't predict that recording with pele leak, Like
Speaker 3: how how did I forget to predict that? And uh,
Speaker 3: and you know, and there it is, and you know,
Speaker 3: not surprisingly they they quoted only a portion in the indictment,
Speaker 3: you know, of what we heard, and there's a little
Speaker 3: more language that sounds, you know, even a bit more
Speaker 3: incriminating that wasn't included in the indictment. But that doesn't mean.
Speaker 3: I heard somebody on TV yesterday wondering, like, was that
Speaker 3: a mistake that they didn't include that other line. It's like,
Speaker 3: of course not. It's like, they make it very clear,
Speaker 3: you know that this isn't the whole thing, you know
Speaker 3: that they're quoting, you know, in the indictment. But it's
Speaker 3: proof beyond reasonable doubt if and I'm sure they do
Speaker 3: have this, if they have witnesses to that event. You know,
Speaker 3: the book author, the apparently a book publisher was there,
Speaker 3: All of the Trump staff, all of those people have
Speaker 3: been subpoenaed to the grand jury. They've all gone under oath,
Speaker 3: and they've all been asked exactly what was Donald Trump
Speaker 3: holding up and they just they all described it to
Speaker 3: the best of their ability under oath, because at that point,
Speaker 3: you know, nobody's protecting Donald Trump. And so somebody probably
Speaker 3: said something like, well, he showed it to me and
Speaker 3: it was very clear, like there's a person on there,
Speaker 3: you know where Trump says see that basically says something
Speaker 3: like you know, you see that, and the person kind
Speaker 3: of goes yeah, you know, there's a kind of acknowledgment
Speaker 3: that they're looking at the thing, right, and that person
Speaker 3: under oath told the grand jury what that person saw,
Speaker 3: and he saw the words iran, and he saw you know,
Speaker 3: battle plan or classified you know, all these things that
Speaker 3: are there, and then you know that are basically for
Speaker 3: you as a jury, are the same thing as videotape, right,
Speaker 3: And so at that point, that is proof beyond a
Speaker 3: reasonable doubt that he was holding up and showing and
Speaker 3: as the law refers to it, disseminating classified information.
Speaker 1: He of course said in the third person, I might add,
Speaker 1: which is always like my favorite with one of his
Speaker 1: weird affectations, that this was proof that he was exonerated.
Speaker 3: Exactly. He's going to do that with the worst stuff
Speaker 3: that comes along. Right where it's proof of guilt beyond
Speaker 3: a reasonable doubt, Donald Trump will every time say it's
Speaker 3: proof of the opposite, which is unique to him, you know,
Speaker 3: like OJ wasn't saying those little blood specs on the
Speaker 3: door of the Bronco proves that I didn't do it?
Speaker 3: Like that wasn't Ojy's idea. Oj was going for the
Speaker 3: classical notion of proof beyond a reasonable doubt, like you know,
Speaker 3: and he wasn't saying, oh no, no, the bloodstains on
Speaker 3: the help my case. Like so, Trump is doing this
Speaker 3: thing that is purely Trumpian in the American experience, where
Speaker 3: he's going in the most you know, flat out high
Speaker 3: speed propagandistic way, you know, to the craziest position you
Speaker 3: could possibly hold. And he should because he has tested
Speaker 3: Trump voters from the first day on believing nonsense, right,
Speaker 3: so just ask them to believe a little more nonsense,
Speaker 3: and you've pulled the along this far, you know, so
Speaker 3: so they'll they'll go along with that. I'm sure you'll
Speaker 3: hear people with all your Trump friends, you know, in Manhattan,
Speaker 3: you'll be hearing them say that proves that proves he
Speaker 3: didn't do it, right, No.
Speaker 1: And I mean I think that that's a really good
Speaker 1: point here. I love that you brought up OJ because
Speaker 1: that's like our vintage too. And of course you're in California,
Speaker 1: so ergo OJ must be brought up. But I think
Speaker 1: that's a really good point that he has really successfully
Speaker 1: made all of these indictments not about your guy does crimes,
Speaker 1: but instead against like what kind of system punishes a
Speaker 1: person like me for crimes?
Speaker 3: Well, I wouldn't say successfully, because successfully he has to
Speaker 3: do that to a majority of voters, and he's nowhere
Speaker 3: close to a majority of voters, and really successfully, once
Speaker 3: you're indicted, I'm afraid you have to do that to
Speaker 3: twelve voters, in particular on your criminal trial jury. And
Speaker 3: I don't think he's going to be successful with the
Speaker 3: twelve jurors.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that we'll see, and they will be Florida jurors.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll be Florida. But you know, I know it's
Speaker 3: surprising and it sounds incredibly Pollyanna, But the history of
Speaker 3: jury service in the United States is a history of
Speaker 3: people taking the oath very seriously. Yes, there are exceptions, Absolutely,
Speaker 3: there are exceptions. But Trump himself has delivered to us
Speaker 3: the most dramatic example of this, and that was in
Speaker 3: Andrew Weisman's prosecution of Paul Manifort in the in the
Speaker 3: Mueller investigation, and I had you know, there was one
Speaker 3: juror from that case who went public, and she went
Speaker 3: public on my show, and she was a Trump voter,
Speaker 3: and she voted guilty guilty on Paul Mannofort for everything, okay,
Speaker 3: And she said on my show, you know, if Trump,
Speaker 3: you know, pardons him, that would be a problem for me.
Speaker 3: And of course he does put us. But she also
Speaker 3: said this great line. You know, she said, when I
Speaker 3: became a juror, I left the Mega hat in the car.
Speaker 3: And it's real. You know, she went into that jury
Speaker 3: loving Donald Trump. She left the jury ready to vote
Speaker 3: for Donald Trump for reelection. But she found Trump's guy
Speaker 3: guilty because she took an oath to listen to the evidence.
Speaker 3: That's the way it happens most of the time. Now
Speaker 3: you can easily get one, you know, in this case
Speaker 3: in Florida, who you know violates the oath and becomes
Speaker 3: creates a hung jury. But that just means you have
Speaker 3: the trial again.
Speaker 1: Right, No, that's true. And there's still also, more importantly,
Speaker 1: another set of indictments.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and boy, they're getting more interesting all the time.
Speaker 3: I'm a little surprised that the news is telling us
Speaker 3: that Jack Smith is just interviewing Georgia's Secretary of State Raffensburger.
Speaker 3: Now I would have thought they did that six months ago.
Speaker 3: So that tells me that, Okay, that is moving slower
Speaker 3: than I thought, But at least it's a reassurance that
Speaker 3: Jack Smith has recognized what we all recognized, which is
Speaker 3: that crime of interfering in the election in Georgia is
Speaker 3: a federal crime as well as a state crime, and
Speaker 3: they're totally different crimes. You know, there's nothing double jeopardy
Speaker 3: about prosecuting him federally for exactly the same conduct for
Speaker 3: which he will be prosecuted at the state level in Georgia,
Speaker 3: because that same conduct crosses criminal line in completely different
Speaker 3: sets of laws. It's such an obvious federal crime you
Speaker 3: know that he committed. It's the most obvious of them all,
Speaker 3: is that recording with Raffensburger. It's great to know that
Speaker 3: Jack Smith is on that case because that case is
Speaker 3: going to be in Washington, d C. Because that's where
Speaker 3: Donald Trump made the phone call. And I can tell
Speaker 3: you right now that Washington d C. Jury is going
Speaker 3: to have no struggle unanimously arriving at the verdict that
Speaker 3: that was criminal conduct and guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
Speaker 2: And then you have Georgia. You have the state charges.
Speaker 3: Georgia's separate case, and you know, Fulton County. If he
Speaker 3: committed that crime in Marjorie Taylor Greens District, he'd have
Speaker 3: a good shot with the jury. I'm afraid he does
Speaker 3: not have a jury pool tilted his way in Fulton County, Georgia,
Speaker 3: which voted seventy percent for Joe Burr. And so that
Speaker 3: jury's going to find him guilt of the crimes that
Speaker 3: Sawny Willis charges him with. I mean, that's just not
Speaker 3: a difficult predict. We've all heard the tape. Imagine a
Speaker 3: world where we'd never heard the Reffensburger tape. But it
Speaker 3: does exist, right, okay, and the prosecutors have it. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you noticed the cable news reaction last night, there's
Speaker 3: two minutes of tape that is that is suggestive, and
Speaker 3: we're all filling in the blanks of it, you know,
Speaker 3: like a great radio drama. You know, we can see it.
Speaker 3: Imagine if you know, at the indictment level or at
Speaker 3: some point the Georgia tape emerged when Trump is charged
Speaker 3: with the crime, and in the indictment is the quotation
Speaker 3: I need you to find me, you know, eleven votes,
Speaker 3: like we would just be you know, we would explode
Speaker 3: with guilty beyond a reasonable doubt coverage of that moment.
Speaker 3: And so we already know it, like we already know
Speaker 3: the very worst evidence against Donald Trump, the most damning
Speaker 3: evidence against Donald Trump in the case. And the weird
Speaker 3: thing is we've known it exactly as long as the
Speaker 3: prosecutor has known it, because it became public literally, you know,
Speaker 3: on her first day on the job.
Speaker 1: So here's a question about these allegations. The timetable on
Speaker 1: all of these seems to be after the Republican primary.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't care. I don't care about the timetable
Speaker 3: at all, because criminal process doesn't care about the timetable.
Speaker 3: They don't care what you're doing. You know, it's like
Speaker 3: you're charged with the crime in Georgia. We don't care.
Speaker 3: They don't care at all. When the New Hampshire primary
Speaker 3: is any of that stuff is. It's beyond the scope
Speaker 3: of criminal process to be able to care about that.
Speaker 3: And I don't care when he gets convicted. I don't care.
Speaker 3: I don't care if it's after the election, and I
Speaker 3: don't care what it happens. It's all going to happen.
Speaker 3: It's why I said shortly after Biden was inaugurated, I
Speaker 3: introduced the concept of defendant Trump, and I said in
Speaker 3: house that EMERSONBC, you know, to executives, we have now
Speaker 3: entered the defendant Trump phase of this network's life, and
Speaker 3: it's going to be years. And nothing was happening, right
Speaker 3: Nothing was happening. All we knew pretty much right away
Speaker 3: was there's going to be in Georgia criminal investigation of
Speaker 3: that phone call. But what was clear to me was
Speaker 3: Egen Carol lawsuits from the January sixth attack. What was
Speaker 3: very clear to me was and I said it my
Speaker 3: first presentation of defendant Trump concept on the show, is
Speaker 3: Donald Trump is going to be a defendant for the
Speaker 3: rest of his life, and he's going to be appealing
Speaker 3: as a defendant criminal convictions for the rest of his life,
Speaker 3: possibly depending on how long he lives, but he's absolutely
Speaker 3: going to be a civil defendant for the rest of
Speaker 3: his life, you know. And so you know, for Eging
Speaker 3: Carol to get to the end of the line in
Speaker 3: litigation with Donald Trump, it might not occurred during Trump's
Speaker 3: lifetime because there's so many different layers to it, right,
Speaker 3: Like he's going to appeal the jury verdict he's going
Speaker 3: to and if he fails at that, you then move
Speaker 3: into the collection stage of the money, and that can
Speaker 3: be dragged out by defendant Trump for many, many, many
Speaker 3: many years. So he's going to be a criminal and
Speaker 3: or civil defendant for the rest of his life. And
Speaker 3: this is this is a permanent condition for him, it's
Speaker 3: a permanent condition for the news media and what has
Speaker 3: forced him into the role of defendant. Completely ignores election
Speaker 3: calendars and doesn't care about it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it seems as if he's still going to
Speaker 2: win the nomination.
Speaker 3: I don't make any prediction about it. You know, if
Speaker 3: he wins the nomination, he's going to lose the election.
Speaker 3: That I think is pretty certain. You know, there's a
Speaker 3: very simple thing in politics that every single president prior
Speaker 3: to Trump has done. Is when you win the presidency,
Speaker 3: you spend all of your time privately concentrating on winning
Speaker 3: the votes you didn't win. Let me pick up. You know,
Speaker 3: I won x percent. I'd like to win two percent
Speaker 3: more next time, or three percent more next time. Right now. Publicly,
Speaker 3: you have to serve the people who elected you in
Speaker 3: your speech making and all of that, but privately you're
Speaker 3: concentrating NonStop on the people who didn't vote for you,
Speaker 3: because you're trying to add to your vote comps for reelection.
Speaker 3: That's that's what you're trying to do. And no one's
Speaker 3: comfortable with the margin they win by, you know that
Speaker 3: first time, especially, so all I care about when he
Speaker 3: got elected was let me listen to him talk to
Speaker 3: voters who didn't vote for him. And I'm still waiting
Speaker 3: to hear him say one sentence to them. So this time,
Speaker 3: you know, he comes in second and the electoral College
Speaker 3: ailed the vote, and he still doesn't say a word
Speaker 3: to people who didn't vote for him, not one.
Speaker 2: Word, actually word about this this week?
Speaker 1: Don't you think that this is actually a fundamental Republican
Speaker 1: primary problem? Like if you look at these candidates, right,
Speaker 1: so you have this sense that Trump is perhaps running
Speaker 1: too far to the right on certain things. So in fact,
Speaker 1: DeSantis and Pence run even further to the right, like
Speaker 1: nobody is trying to. I mean, they're fighting for the base,
Speaker 1: but they're also making it very clear that they have
Speaker 1: no interest in picking up swing voters.
Speaker 3: Well at this stage, yeah, I mean, you know, Nixon
Speaker 3: and others, you know, talked about how you have to
Speaker 3: run to the right in the Republican primary. But then
Speaker 3: then as soon as the Republican primary's over, you have
Speaker 3: to run back to the center. So Nixon was rushing
Speaker 3: back to the center as soon as he gets the nomination,
Speaker 3: you know, like let me get back into this competitive zone,
Speaker 3: you know, for November. And everybody did that, you know,
Speaker 3: Reagan did that, like George H. W. Bush did that.
Speaker 3: Everybody did that, and that Trump's the first one who doesn't.
Speaker 3: He's stupid, So he doesn't know how I mean, he's
Speaker 3: ranked stupid. So if you said to him, you know,
Speaker 3: if Nixon was there to say to hey, well now
Speaker 3: you have to swerve to the middle, Donald Trump would
Speaker 3: not know what middle meant. He wouldn't know how to
Speaker 3: find it. He wouldn't know, like, have no idea. And
Speaker 3: so he's just locked with the vote that he has
Speaker 3: and the only thing that could happen to that vote
Speaker 3: is that it diminishes because it cannot increase and you
Speaker 3: know the number of indictments. It won't make those people
Speaker 3: vote for Joe Biden, but it might make them not
Speaker 3: rush to the polls that day.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Lawrence. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: I am coming back. You can't keep me away. You
Speaker 3: know what column I'm in there, and your guest book,
Speaker 3: I'm in the Desperately Available column. You know that.
Speaker 1: Dalia Litswick is a senior editor at Slight and author
Speaker 1: of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and The Battle to
Speaker 1: Save America.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Dalia. Thank you for having me back. Molly.
Speaker 1: I'm always so excited to get to have you on
Speaker 1: the podcast, and I'm always so excited to talk Supreme
Speaker 1: Court with you. By the way, do you just have
Speaker 1: so much anxiety after what they did last last season
Speaker 1: that you know this second season.
Speaker 2: Of super Emboldened Supreme Court makes you nervous? Or now?
Speaker 4: I mean, I think in a weird way. I've been
Speaker 4: like Lucy footballed with kindness this season, Like I was prepared,
Speaker 4: do you know what I mean? Like it was such
Speaker 4: a disaster last year that I was fully prepared for
Speaker 4: like ten six three precedent overturning democracy, denying on stilts
Speaker 4: on skates, like middle Finger to y'all, and like that's
Speaker 4: just not happening. And so you know, we only have
Speaker 4: seven cases left and they're gonna be bad and we
Speaker 4: can talk about it. But the fact that you know,
Speaker 4: including like Tuesday's independent state legislature theory, like it could
Speaker 4: have been so very bad, and all of these cases
Speaker 4: are coming out not badly. And then I'm just like
Speaker 4: my eyes trying to figure out, like, okay, I mean,
Speaker 4: how bad can affirmative action be to like make all
Speaker 4: these good outcomes also bad. So it's it's very strange.
Speaker 4: I don't have a working theory for what happened to
Speaker 4: the like hashtag yar court from this time last year,
Speaker 4: but something very different is happening.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this big ruling this week, which
Speaker 1: was this Supreme Court rejects this independent state legislature theory.
Speaker 2: It's a little bit complicated.
Speaker 4: Oh my god, it's so technical, Molly that by the
Speaker 4: time I finish the next paragraph, you will be asleep.
Speaker 4: And it's also, i mean to be clear, like the
Speaker 4: most consequential or could have been the most consequential case
Speaker 4: for the future of democracy, like no joke, huge deal,
Speaker 4: and the like very short version is that this independent
Speaker 4: state legislature theory. And I'm putting up air quotes around
Speaker 4: theory because it's not one was going to be the
Speaker 4: vehicle by which very scary conservative legislators in North Carolina.
Speaker 4: But like backed by Leonard Leo in big money and
Speaker 4: you know, all the apparatus of destroying democracy, We're going
Speaker 4: to essentially say that state legislatures thirty of the fifty
Speaker 4: are red state controlled, could essentially put in place any
Speaker 4: election practices they want and it would be unreviewable by
Speaker 4: their state supreme court. That was the theory, and it
Speaker 4: was not to put to find a point on it.
Speaker 4: A version of that theory was the thing that was
Speaker 4: being pushed on Mike Pants right to set aside all
Speaker 4: of those contested elections.
Speaker 1: Right, this is the theory where dan Quayle said, no,
Speaker 1: you can't do that.
Speaker 4: Right when Mike Pants is like speed dialing the important
Speaker 4: legal thinker of our time, Dan and lands on dan Quail.
Speaker 4: But like, seriously, Mike Ludig, the guy who he talked
Speaker 4: to was you know, a sort of unbelievable conservative legal
Speaker 4: movement stalwart. You know, who worked in the Reagan White House,
Speaker 4: who worked in the Bush Justice Department, who was you know,
Speaker 4: on the very short list for the seat that John
Speaker 4: Roberts got. It was Mike Ludig who said to Mike Pants, like,
Speaker 4: you cannot you know, refuse to certify these contested states,
Speaker 4: and that kind of saved us from a real coup,
Speaker 4: and a version of that theory, the sort of less
Speaker 4: maximalist version of that theory, was being used to say
Speaker 4: that essentially, state legislators can do whatever the hell they end.
Speaker 4: They can't be checked. And today I'm sorry. And Tuesday,
Speaker 4: in a six to three kind of resounding majority, picking
Speaker 4: off not just the liberals but Amy Cony, Barrett and
Speaker 4: Brett Kavanaugh. The Chief Justice was like, oh no, no,
Speaker 4: oh no, no, that would be stupid.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to I just want to get back
Speaker 1: to this for a second, because I do think it's
Speaker 1: it's quite interesting.
Speaker 2: Gorsi, who's somehow.
Speaker 1: Believes in the like sanctity of Native American, you know, personhood,
Speaker 1: but not women or black people, was the one who
Speaker 1: went along with the two Zalads.
Speaker 4: Right, Gorsich, Alito and Thomas dissented in this case. Now
Speaker 4: there's a slightly credible argument for the descent, which is,
Speaker 4: after the court had heard this case, the North Carolina
Speaker 4: Supreme Court flipped conservative and withdrew the opinion, and essentially,
Speaker 4: by most rules of legal construction, the court the case
Speaker 4: is then moot. Right, like, there's no real basis. And
Speaker 4: to be clear, John Roberts had to do some like
Speaker 4: amazing turning himself into a pretzel to decide this case
Speaker 4: on the merits, which he did. So the dissenter some
Speaker 4: of the dissenters, you know, objected because this case was moot,
Speaker 4: and that's probably right. But it's also right that I
Speaker 4: think the three dissenters and they have signed off, by
Speaker 4: the way, in the past on versions of the independent
Speaker 4: state legislature theory. The really interesting person, in some sense
Speaker 4: is Brett Cavanaugh, who had certainly been independent state curious
Speaker 4: in the past, but this time votes with Roberts and
Speaker 4: the liberals.
Speaker 1: So interesting, this is good news. There were a few
Speaker 1: other bright spots. Will you tell us about the other
Speaker 1: bright spots.
Speaker 4: There's kind of been a freakish number of bright spots, Molly,
Speaker 4: the same Roberts Court right, which gave us Shelby County,
Speaker 4: which gave us you know, Bernovich like, which has really
Speaker 4: dismantled the Voting Rights Act, the crown Jewel of voting
Speaker 4: rights gave us a case out of Alabama that was
Speaker 4: going to eviscerate what was left of the Voting Rights Act.
Speaker 4: And again resoundingly came out in favor of voting.
Speaker 2: We had.
Speaker 4: This court came out, as you suggested in the Indian
Speaker 4: Child Welfare Act case, resoundingly, resoundingly on the side of
Speaker 4: of course, Native American tribes get sort of a right
Speaker 4: of first refe fusal to take kids who are in
Speaker 4: foster care and keep them within the tribe.
Speaker 2: It's hard to.
Speaker 4: Believe the Supreme Court that last year, as you said,
Speaker 4: gave us Dobbs, gave us bruin the gun case, gave
Speaker 4: us Coach Kennedy praying on the fifty yard line, now
Speaker 4: is giving us these like pot smoking, hippie like kumbaya cases.
Speaker 4: And there's something, as I said, something is shifting, at
Speaker 4: least for Kavanaugh and Barrett and sometimes for Gorsic. And
Speaker 4: we're seeing the sentence Justice Alito and Justice Thomas dissent
Speaker 4: alone in ways that I could not fathom if this
Speaker 4: was happening last year.
Speaker 1: So the state legislatures and federal elections that was Tuesday,
Speaker 1: then race and voting maps. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about that, because that's pretty amazing too.
Speaker 4: This was an amazing case where essentially the state of
Speaker 4: Alabama wanted to turn the Fourteenth Amendment on its head
Speaker 4: and say that if you have any race conscious remediation
Speaker 4: of voting maps, then that's racist. That to try to
Speaker 4: fix centuries of racial bias in the voting system is
Speaker 4: itself racist. And as I said, this is a huge win.
Speaker 4: The court bats it away. A version of that theory
Speaker 4: was the one that was being used to challenge the
Speaker 4: Indian Child Welfare Act, that it's racist to use the
Speaker 4: idea that Native American children belong with Native American custodians,
Speaker 4: because that also is racist. And so we've seen this
Speaker 4: slew of cases where the court refuses to see the
Speaker 4: anti discrimination Reconstructition Amendments to mean that the real sufferers
Speaker 4: here are white people. So that's a huge, big deal.
Speaker 1: It feels like a very Charlie Kirk kind of logic. Right,
Speaker 1: it's racist to say racism is racist?
Speaker 4: Try it right, or that the term of art they
Speaker 4: keep using is that the Constitution is meant to be
Speaker 4: color blind, and that means that everything that happened in
Speaker 4: the Reconstruction Amendments demands that white people not suffer. I
Speaker 4: will say one of the big losses. You know, there
Speaker 4: have been some big losses. The clean Water Act took
Speaker 4: it to the chops. That's just unbelievably depressing if you
Speaker 4: think you know that all of this other stuff can
Speaker 4: be fixed in five or ten years, Like what can't
Speaker 4: be fixed is wetlands that are going to be destroyed.
Speaker 4: As you say, you know, we're going to have to
Speaker 4: wait and see that. The big big biggies of the term,
Speaker 4: as always happens in the worst jack in the box ever,
Speaker 4: is at the end of the term, you get punched
Speaker 4: in the mouth by the affirmative action cases, the Biden
Speaker 4: Loan forgiveness case, and that three zero three creative case.
Speaker 2: Right, can you explain to us what the three O
Speaker 2: three creative is.
Speaker 4: It's going to sound familiar to folks because it's in
Speaker 4: some sense a test second bite at the apple of
Speaker 4: the Masterpiece cake Shop case that the court here just
Speaker 4: a few years ago, where we had a baker who
Speaker 4: refused to bake wedding cakes for same sex couples. People
Speaker 4: will recall that case kind of was punted when Anthony
Speaker 4: Kennedy was the deciding vote at the court. But Anthony
Speaker 4: Kennedy was replaced by Brett Cavanaugh, and then we got
Speaker 4: Amy Cony Barrett and So the case comes back, this
Speaker 4: time in the form of a web designer, again in Colorado,
Speaker 4: who doesn't actually make wedding websites, but would like to
Speaker 4: maybe think about it someday, and if she does, she'd
Speaker 4: like to be able to discriminate against same sex couples
Speaker 4: and not run a foul of the state's public accommodation's law.
Speaker 4: So this is an entirely fanciful case. No harm has
Speaker 4: come to her, but the court was unbelievably solicitous of
Speaker 4: the pain that would be involved in being forced to
Speaker 4: make same sex website.
Speaker 1: So that's coming right, and that sounds like they might
Speaker 1: have an opinion on that.
Speaker 4: One important thing to say about that case, just for
Speaker 4: listeners who we're looking to see what's coming, is there's
Speaker 4: nobody on the other side of the case. At least
Speaker 4: in Masterpiece Cake Shop, we had people who had somebody
Speaker 4: say to their faces, I will not make this cake
Speaker 4: for you because I don't believe in your lifestyle. Here
Speaker 4: we have nobody, and so the only story that was
Speaker 4: told at the court was that of the website designer.
Speaker 4: There's because, as I said, there's no harmed party here.
Speaker 4: The court when they heard this case at oral argument,
Speaker 4: were so so heartbroken about her suffering, and there was
Speaker 4: no one on the other side to evince any pain.
Speaker 2: That seems like a weird scenario for the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, formally, you can't actually hear cases where
Speaker 4: there's no to remediate, but that doesn't bother this court
Speaker 4: as much as it should. And again, you know, if
Speaker 4: we were talking five months ago, Molly, every single one
Speaker 4: of the cases that we've talked about thus far looked
Speaker 4: to be six three juggernauts.
Speaker 2: So the real I think takeaway.
Speaker 4: And I say this knowing as I said, there's a
Speaker 4: bunch of biggies to come, is that it really feels
Speaker 4: like John Roberts is back in control of his court.
Speaker 4: He is writing these big, big honking voting rights decisions.
Speaker 4: He seems to have somehow convinced, at least Kevanaugh and
Speaker 4: Barrett that maybe they don't want to make common cause
Speaker 4: with Sam Alito and the other private jet members of
Speaker 4: the Court, but it's his court.
Speaker 2: Again.
Speaker 1: You have forayed very nicely into what you wrote about
Speaker 1: this Alito private jet scandal, not to be confused with
Speaker 1: the Clarence Thomas private jet scandal.
Speaker 4: Correct, so many scandals so little time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also these people like they can't fly commercial,
Speaker 1: Like none of these people clearly can fly commercial.
Speaker 2: Let's just talk about this for a minute.
Speaker 1: You sort of scratch a foe find numerous ethics violations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean I think that when the Justice Elee
Speaker 4: story broke last week in Pro Publica, and like pause
Speaker 4: as a press person to think about the fact that
Speaker 4: he didn't wait for the story to break and he
Speaker 4: didn't respond to their questions. He just took to the
Speaker 4: pages of the Wall Street Journal Opinion section to write
Speaker 4: a rebuttal of the story that had not yet dropped,
Speaker 4: in which he justified everything that they said about him
Speaker 4: by conceding that he did all of it but it
Speaker 4: didn't violate the rules. So like, just as a press strategist,
Speaker 4: like probably not a good way to make the story
Speaker 4: go away.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, it's just an amazing thing.
Speaker 1: I also love that the crew at the Wall Street
Speaker 1: Journal Opinion was happy to oblige this, getting like there's
Speaker 1: a world where the Wall Street Journal Opinion page says, no,
Speaker 1: you can't use us.
Speaker 4: To screw over the Pro Publica reporters, yep.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: And also just to get ahead of your own personal scandal.
Speaker 2: There's nothing ideological here.
Speaker 4: The Wall Street Journal, we should note, is the same
Speaker 4: place that before the Dobbs leap leak happened a year ago,
Speaker 4: was intimating that they knew what was happening in court discussions,
Speaker 4: right the Wall Street Journal opinion section. Also, when John
Speaker 4: Roberts in the Obamacare case, the first one was quote
Speaker 4: unquote going wobbly and looked like he was going to
Speaker 4: defect and uphold Obamacare, they also knew that in advance.
Speaker 4: So somebody who does not have the greatest constitutional minds
Speaker 4: on the bat phone, Mike Pence, has Dan Quayle is
Speaker 4: making calls to the Wall Street Journal opinion page.
Speaker 2: It would seem.
Speaker 1: Right, it's sort of amazing stuff with these scandals. You
Speaker 1: have Thomas, you have Alito, you have you know, Paul Singer.
Speaker 1: I mean, you just have a cast of sketchy characters
Speaker 1: like they're Historically, Congress has been able to reign in
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court's you know, Malfeasanzas. I mean, yes and no,
Speaker 1: I think back in reconstruction.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yes, in the old.
Speaker 2: I should qualify that I.
Speaker 4: Was gonna say, I think and folks should read Professor
Speaker 4: Steve Vladdock's amazing book The Shadow Docket, where he talks
Speaker 4: about all the times in history that Congress has done
Speaker 4: exactly what you said, Molly, which is, you know, change
Speaker 4: the composition of the court, strip the court of jurisdiction.
Speaker 4: They used to force the justices to ride circuit, which
Speaker 4: meant they had to like sleep in barns like right
Speaker 4: around the country and like so yes, historically there was
Speaker 4: a lot of power, including you know, salaries, that was
Speaker 4: exercised over the court, and then this kind of freaky
Speaker 4: learned helplessness set in so that you get to the
Speaker 4: point we're at today where you know, lots and lots
Speaker 4: and lots of elected officials are like, hum, this seems bad,
Speaker 4: soone should do something right.
Speaker 2: It was my kurrent the frog voice.
Speaker 4: I don't quite know why, but you know, like there's
Speaker 4: no sense that anything that could be done to remediate
Speaker 4: it is possible, and of course that's wrong. Things could
Speaker 4: be done, and we're starting to see for what it's worth.
Speaker 4: You know, folks like Sheldon Whitehouse, like Representative Hank Johnson.
Speaker 4: You know, there's a bipartisan bill that Angus King is
Speaker 4: behind you. There's now some move toward doing things to either,
Speaker 4: you know, impose term limits or add seats to the court,
Speaker 4: or at least ask them to create their own ethics
Speaker 4: rules that they could voluntarily follow. But like there is
Speaker 4: some momentum behind the idea that maybe Congress like shouldn't
Speaker 4: sit and wait for the easter bunny to fix this,
Speaker 4: Like it's got to get fixed. But I think you're
Speaker 4: right descriptively, like there historically is a long tradition of
Speaker 4: reigning in the court, and I think we've just not
Speaker 4: exercised that muscle. And maybe if I could say one
Speaker 4: other thing, I might say this. I think part of
Speaker 4: the reason for that is that we have this fanciful
Speaker 4: story we tell about court packing, right that FDR was
Speaker 4: going to pack the court and then like he almost
Speaker 4: direct his presidency and everybody hated him and it was
Speaker 4: super bad. But this kind of animates where we started,
Speaker 4: which is something is changing at the court right now
Speaker 4: in terms of the doctrine, in terms of pulling back
Speaker 4: from the brink of crazy. And that's exactly the thing
Speaker 4: that happened. It's kind of known as the switch in
Speaker 4: time that saved nine, where under the threat of court packing,
Speaker 4: the justices modulated their own bad behavior and started upholding
Speaker 4: FDR's New Deal legislation, and some justices left, some justices switched,
Speaker 4: but they just stopped acting as though, you know, they
Speaker 4: were an imperial court. And it's interesting to ask whether
Speaker 4: one of the reasons we're seeing a kind of pumping
Speaker 4: of the brakes doctrinally this month at the court is
Speaker 4: some version of the switch in time that saved nine.
Speaker 2: Right right, so interesting. Thank you, Dahlia.
Speaker 4: Oh my goodness, thank you.
Speaker 2: Hi.
Speaker 1: It's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for the
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Speaker 1: Wesley Lowry is the author of American White Lash, A
Speaker 1: Changing Nation and the Cost of Progress.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics, Wes.
Speaker 5: Lowry, Thank you for having me.
Speaker 2: Very excited to have you.
Speaker 1: It's funny because I think about what a seminal and
Speaker 1: important book Backlash was, and I was thinking about that
Speaker 1: when we were talking about your new book, which is
Speaker 1: called American Whitelash, A Changing Nation and the cost of Progress.
Speaker 1: So talk to me a little bit about where that
Speaker 1: comes from.
Speaker 6: Sure, The way I tell the story is I had
Speaker 6: spent the end of the Obama years covering the rise
Speaker 6: of Black Lives Matter, covering the emergence of this kind
Speaker 6: of activist energy on the left. Wrote my first book
Speaker 6: about it that came out in November of twenty sixteen,
Speaker 6: and you know, November and twenty sixteen was a very
Speaker 6: newsless time.
Speaker 5: Nothing was happening at all.
Speaker 6: Well, it was this era where we knew that one
Speaker 6: season of our politics was ending to start another. And
Speaker 6: what happened was we just ended up getting a different
Speaker 6: new season than we thought we were going to get.
Speaker 6: And so I was very braced for listening and trying
Speaker 6: to figure out, you know, what would it look like
Speaker 6: to cover the racial justice movement under the first female president,
Speaker 6: And suddenly was handed a very different story. And so
Speaker 6: now I was having to figure out, what does it
Speaker 6: look like to cover these issues, these issues of race injustice,
Speaker 6: following the election of an openly negativist president who ultimately,
Speaker 6: would you know, attempt to undermine our democracy. As I
Speaker 6: did that, I remember just watching story after story and
Speaker 6: covering story after story of cases of violence, whether it
Speaker 6: was a Muslim woman being attacked on the train in
Speaker 6: Portland or Charlottesville, and the rally.
Speaker 5: Of What's premises the shootings in El Paso.
Speaker 6: Or Pittsburgh, and it became really clear to me that
Speaker 6: on my beat, the story of this moment was going
Speaker 6: to be a story of white racial violence, and trying
Speaker 6: to figure out how to explain, how to contextualize what
Speaker 6: we were seeing and the reality that the Trump administration
Speaker 6: at the era we were in, had empowered these type
Speaker 6: of people who who wanted to commit this type of violence.
Speaker 1: Explain a little more about what that empowerment looks like.
Speaker 5: Well, we want to.
Speaker 6: Think about a few things, and I want to clarify,
Speaker 6: you know, for a moment, I'm talking about like the
Speaker 6: white supremacist movement.
Speaker 5: I'm talking about a vowed racist.
Speaker 6: I'm not talking about like people who like make a
Speaker 6: bad joke about immigrants at Thanksgiving, you know, I'm talking
Speaker 6: about actually the people who want to see a race
Speaker 6: war and want to see America become the whiteth no state.
Speaker 1: I want to I just want to add later on
Speaker 1: the people who made the bad jokes did in fact
Speaker 1: storm the capitals so well.
Speaker 5: The mixture of both, right, right, So what happens? Right,
Speaker 5: So let's think about it. We're living in a world
Speaker 5: of a black president and of.
Speaker 6: Assive demographic change that is changing the way the country
Speaker 6: looks and works, and our white population is extremely anxious
Speaker 6: about this. By the end of the Obama administration, fifty
Speaker 6: five percent of white Americans believe that white Americans are
Speaker 6: racially discriminated against. In America, white people believe they are
Speaker 6: a racial minority. This is where we are and t
Speaker 6: Donald Trump, and what Donald Trump does is he plays
Speaker 6: to these anxieties and the movement that he builds is
Speaker 6: nothing starts with him. Right. We see this building with
Speaker 6: the Tea Party movement. We see this building with the
Speaker 6: anti immigrant movement prior to this, even back in the
Speaker 6: Bush administration, in the Obama administration, but Trump engages in
Speaker 6: an openly nativist rhetoric, and that rhetoric and that engagement,
Speaker 6: that pivot is something that's very welcome by the avaled
Speaker 6: white supremacist. Trump is doing it trying to reach the
Speaker 6: average white person who now thinks.
Speaker 5: That they're a black person, right.
Speaker 6: But what he's doing is he's using the rhetoric, he's
Speaker 6: using the talking points of the event racist and what
Speaker 6: he has sent in what he ends up doing is
Speaker 6: he ends up sending a ton of these white Americans
Speaker 6: into the arms of this really dangerous movement.
Speaker 5: And that results in people losing their lives.
Speaker 1: Your thesis here is that this is a kind of
Speaker 1: last gas, sort of backlash to progress.
Speaker 6: The way I think about it is I think about
Speaker 6: our history as a tug of war that on one
Speaker 6: side you have white supremacist forces, on the other side
Speaker 6: you have anti racist forces. And every time there is
Speaker 6: a tug and a pull and what feels like a
Speaker 6: victory on behalf of multiculturalism and multiracial democracy, the white
Speaker 6: supremacist forces tug back.
Speaker 5: And so we've seen this.
Speaker 6: We see this following emancipation and reconstruction. We see the
Speaker 6: rise of the New Klan and reactionary movement. We see
Speaker 6: this following the Civil Rights movement. We see the rise
Speaker 6: of conservative reactionary movement, and now in this moment where
Speaker 6: we elect a black president, where our country is changing demographically,
Speaker 6: and where for the first time as a country we've
Speaker 6: really had to be a multiracial democracy. People get to
Speaker 6: vote that, it would only make sense that we would
Speaker 6: have that type of tug back from these forces, and
Speaker 6: it helps explain a lot of what's.
Speaker 5: Been going on.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has no historical precedent, right he has no
Speaker 1: understanding of the kind of Nixonian sort of George Wallacey
Speaker 1: racism of that generation, or does he.
Speaker 6: I don't know that he has the understanding of it,
Speaker 6: although I would be surprised, you know, I actually wouldn't
Speaker 6: be surprised if he did have some broad knowledge of it.
Speaker 5: But Donald Trump is very smart.
Speaker 6: What I mean by that is that he is someone
Speaker 6: who is intuitively smart about people, what they respond to,
Speaker 6: what they react to. He as understands the way that
Speaker 6: nativist leaders across societies and cultures have understood that there
Speaker 6: is nothing more compelling than convincing people who are scared
Speaker 6: and anxious that the enemy is at the gate, and
Speaker 6: that you are the one who will protect them and
Speaker 6: keep them safe, that all of your problems are not
Speaker 6: your fault, that it's because of some other people who
Speaker 6: are different than you, who are scary, who are bringing disease,
Speaker 6: who are bringing.
Speaker 5: Crime, and I am going to save you from them.
Speaker 5: And we have seen across all of human history leaders
Speaker 5: who rise by doing this.
Speaker 6: But again, here's the danger. It's very The reason people
Speaker 6: do it is because it's effective relective, right. But what
Speaker 6: happens is when you dehumanize people, people in your society
Speaker 6: start treating those people like they're not human because they've
Speaker 6: been dehumanized, right, and that necessarily leads to violence and
Speaker 6: to backlash and beyond that, think about it. I think
Speaker 6: sometimes those of us in the media and the political media,
Speaker 6: we're like in on the game in this way, right,
Speaker 6: we're like, oh, we know that all these people don't
Speaker 6: actually believe everything they say, and X, Y and Z.
Speaker 5: Let's think about it. If the President United States is
Speaker 5: telling people.
Speaker 6: That the country's southern border is being invaded by dangerous
Speaker 6: disease carrying criminals, if he was telling the truth, it
Speaker 6: would be our responsibility to show up with guns to
Speaker 6: defend the border.
Speaker 5: Right, Like our president is literally.
Speaker 6: Telling us what the country's renovated, Right, how many people
Speaker 6: we are country?
Speaker 5: Millions of people, tens of hundreds of millions people.
Speaker 6: How many people have to build take him seriously to
Speaker 6: imperil somebody's life. A small portion of people taking him
Speaker 6: seriously creates a very dangerous environment for a lot of people.
Speaker 1: I want you to explain a little bit about this
Speaker 1: idea that sort of the trigger for some of this
Speaker 1: was the election of Barack Obama.
Speaker 6: I think that certainly within the actual white.
Speaker 5: Supremacist movement, the election of Rock Obama was very major.
Speaker 5: I do think that within our mainstream.
Speaker 6: Politics, a lot of these things were boiling long before.
Speaker 5: Barack Obama's election.
Speaker 6: I think secondarily, though, sometimes there's a way in which
Speaker 6: the election of a historic figure actually creates a permission
Speaker 6: structure for people to live out their prejudices.
Speaker 2: So we've seen studies that's interesting.
Speaker 6: Where there are countries that say, elect their first female
Speaker 6: prime minister, and open expression of misogyny actually goes up
Speaker 6: following that.
Speaker 5: Right among the people who voted.
Speaker 2: For they feel they have a pass.
Speaker 5: Now, yeah, well, I can't be a sexist.
Speaker 6: I voted for Kathy right, right, right, Like it's I
Speaker 6: voted for Obama twice.
Speaker 5: But and then here we go, right, it's the character
Speaker 5: doesn't get out.
Speaker 6: And so we see in this moment, right, and we
Speaker 6: see this in the polling, is that white Americans far
Speaker 6: outpaced Black Americans in the significance that they imbibe in
Speaker 6: Barack Obama's election insomuch as it suggests progress. Right that
Speaker 6: after Barack Obama's elected in the polling, white Americans say
Speaker 6: that they believe it means that there's been much more
Speaker 6: racial progress since the fifties andies.
Speaker 5: Than what Black Americans believe.
Speaker 6: In that there was this desire, and we saw this
Speaker 6: in the framing all the time, there was this desire
Speaker 6: for a quote unquote post racial America where if we
Speaker 6: just like say it enough, maybe it's true that people
Speaker 6: wanted to be able to say no, no, no, we
Speaker 6: move past all of this. We have a black friend,
Speaker 6: his name is Barack Obama.
Speaker 5: In the White out right.
Speaker 6: So therefore, all these things I feel about immigrants, and
Speaker 6: all these things I feel about this, and all these
Speaker 6: things I feel about this, those things can't be racism
Speaker 6: or they can't be racial prejudice.
Speaker 5: Because like already established, and I like black people. I
Speaker 5: voted for Barack Obama.
Speaker 2: Right's Y and Z.
Speaker 6: And so I do think that that certainly factors into
Speaker 6: our politics in this moment. I think the factor in
Speaker 6: the politics not just that lead to Donald Trump, but
Speaker 6: into this moment too, where we're seeing a lot of
Speaker 6: reaction very centrist politics.
Speaker 5: We're like, oh no, no, George Floyd was terrible. I support
Speaker 5: me too, but and then bought blah blah blah blah blah,
Speaker 5: and we're seeing a ton of right.
Speaker 2: I think that's a really, really good point.
Speaker 1: Can you talk about some of the sort of violence
Speaker 1: that you have have written about in this book?
Speaker 5: Sure? You know.
Speaker 6: So what I try to do in this book is
Speaker 6: I try to look at different cases and tell the
Speaker 6: stories of different individuals who fell victim to the violence of.
Speaker 5: This era, and those are different types of violence.
Speaker 6: I tell the story of Marcelo Lucero, who is an
Speaker 6: Ecuadorian immigrant and beaten to death in patchav New York
Speaker 6: and so Long Island right after Obama was elected. I
Speaker 6: tell the story of the Sikh temple that was shot
Speaker 6: up in Wisconsin and anti Semitic.
Speaker 5: Attack in Kansas.
Speaker 6: Richard Collins who is killed in Maryland during the Trump era, Charlottesville,
Speaker 6: and so what I'm trying to do is collect stories
Speaker 6: that are different types of racialized violence, anti black violence,
Speaker 6: immigrant violence, anti Semitic violence, anti Muslim violence, and anti
Speaker 6: sek violence, and showing how even as there are unique histories,
Speaker 6: there is an overlay in an overlap, right. I think
Speaker 6: that sometimes in our desire to categorize, we miss the
Speaker 6: bigger plot. So, for example, we just saw the sentencing
Speaker 6: of the shooter.
Speaker 5: And the Tree of Life Senagogue shooting.
Speaker 6: In Pittsburgh, and he said this at the time, and
Speaker 6: he said this now in the sentencing in his trial
Speaker 6: as well, that the reason he targeted that synagogue was
Speaker 6: specifically because he believed it was helping resettle refugees in
Speaker 6: the United States of America and contribute to the Great
Speaker 6: Replacement right. So it is anti Semitic violence, right, but
Speaker 6: that anti Semitic violence is tied in very specifically to
Speaker 6: this anti immigrant segment in a phobia to this where
Speaker 6: we see this with the shooters in Charleston and in Buffalo,
Speaker 6: right where they are this is anti black violence, but
Speaker 6: they are also anti Semitic.
Speaker 5: They believe in a great replacement right, that white.
Speaker 6: Supremacy is this conspiracy theory that implicates all of these
Speaker 6: other groups. And that sometimes if we're just so hyper
Speaker 6: focused on the one we miss how all these stories
Speaker 6: are actually connected together.
Speaker 1: Right. That makes a lot of sense, And ultimately I
Speaker 1: think that the sort of message is important, which is
Speaker 1: that you know you're opening Pandora's box and so you
Speaker 1: know you don't get to choose who gets subjected to
Speaker 1: the violence.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 6: And again, it's this interplay between these things, right where
Speaker 6: we have to understand that it can be easier to think, Okay, well,
Speaker 6: this person is prejudiced against those people over there or
Speaker 6: this person, but the reality is everyone ends up becoming
Speaker 6: implicated in this because these prejudices play.
Speaker 2: Off of each other, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really good point. Where do
Speaker 1: you kind of go from there?
Speaker 5: You know, I think that a.
Speaker 6: Big thing for us, and I think there are a few,
Speaker 6: but I think a big thing for us first is
Speaker 6: that I do think we have to be honest and
Speaker 6: will to be honest to grapple with these anxieties. I
Speaker 6: think sometimes in our polite political society, we have people
Speaker 6: who are attempting to cause plays more liberal or progressive
Speaker 6: than they are, but then in the privacy of their
Speaker 6: homes and in the privacy of the ballot box, they
Speaker 6: express much more anxiety and frustration and scaredness.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: I think we see this around and I think we're
Speaker 6: seeing a lot of that in the kind of moderate
Speaker 6: reactionary backlash we're seeing right now, how our institutions are
Speaker 6: suddenly very concerned with appealing to Republicans and not letting
Speaker 6: the wokeness go too far right. And I think that
Speaker 6: is a reflection of kind of a white moderate politics,
Speaker 6: where people really are concerned about, well, what is happening
Speaker 6: with crime, and what will happen if the country becomes
Speaker 6: majority Hispanic.
Speaker 5: And will that mean I lose out.
Speaker 6: I think that pretending as if those concerns don't exist
Speaker 6: doesn't help.
Speaker 5: Us, right.
Speaker 6: I think we have to be willing to live in
Speaker 6: the world as an exist. We saw this a lot
Speaker 6: with the eyes of Trump, where it was extremely clear
Speaker 6: from the very beginning that this was a nativist candidate
Speaker 6: running on an explicit appeal.
Speaker 5: To white Americans, that he was in the country the
Speaker 5: way it was We're.
Speaker 6: Going to build a wall and keep the criminal Mexicans out,
Speaker 6: I'm going to ban Muslims from coming here, X, Y,
Speaker 6: and Z. And yet our institutions bent over backwards to
Speaker 6: pretend as.
Speaker 5: If that wasn't what it was. This must be about
Speaker 5: these other issues, and you're just trying to say they're
Speaker 5: all right. None of those was what anyone want to say.
Speaker 6: It was just very clear that we had a very
Speaker 6: open and proud bigot running for president, and the people
Speaker 6: whose job it was to tell us what the weather
Speaker 6: is refuse to say what the weather was. And I
Speaker 6: think that we have to be willing to be honest
Speaker 6: about that. We have to be willing to be honest
Speaker 6: about when Ron DeSantis, as he did yesterday, announces that
Speaker 6: he would ban birthright citizenship in the United America, a
Speaker 6: thing that he can't even do as president, we have
Speaker 6: to be honest about what that is an appeal to
Speaker 6: what he's saying. I think that sometimes there's a refusal
Speaker 6: to do that. Some of that is because we don't
Speaker 6: want Republicans to say we're biased against them or that
Speaker 6: we're being mean. Right, So it's all these different reasons,
Speaker 6: But fundamentally, I think journalism we've got to be willing
Speaker 6: to tell the truth.
Speaker 5: And I think in all of our liberal.
Speaker 6: Institutions, whether it's our speech groups, whether it's our public platforms, right,
Speaker 6: we've got to be willing to defend multiracial democracy.
Speaker 5: If someone is actively.
Speaker 6: Trying to change the way our multiracial democracy works to
Speaker 6: have it not be so, I think it is the
Speaker 6: job of our institutions to stand up and do something
Speaker 6: about that.
Speaker 1: I'm really glad you brought that up, because I wonder
Speaker 1: and we're almost out a time, but I just was wondering,
Speaker 1: if you go quickly, do you think that the sort
Speaker 1: of lie that the conservatives have told the mainstream media
Speaker 1: for so long that it's too liberal has really been
Speaker 1: this sort of most successful lie in American life.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's a massive, extremely successful the
Speaker 5: way that they've been able to work the refs. I
Speaker 5: also think that it speaks, though, to the idea that
Speaker 5: so much of the media says is about telling the
Speaker 5: truth and about representing things as they are, but in reality,
Speaker 5: it is about creating a commercial product.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: If you don't actually have to sell a single newspaper,
Speaker 5: if you don't actually have to have a single person
Speaker 5: tuned in, then you can just tell the truth no
Speaker 5: matter who it offends. What you're worried about is your ratings.
Speaker 6: If what you're worried about is subscribers and advertisers, suddenly
Speaker 6: you're having to factor in all these questions about how
Speaker 6: what you're doing and what you're saying is being perceived
Speaker 6: by these people, whether or not it is actually true
Speaker 6: or not. So I think we see a lot of that.
Speaker 6: But beyond that, I think even most importantly though, right
Speaker 6: we have to remember how young.
Speaker 5: Our multiracial democracy is. That it's only existed at the
Speaker 5: end of the sixties.
Speaker 6: Our media institutions were not created to defend a multiracial democracy.
Speaker 5: They were created before it existed. That they have never,
Speaker 5: as part of their mission, seen in as central to
Speaker 5: uphold because when their missions were crafted, it didn't exist.
Speaker 5: And so what does it mean.
Speaker 6: To be the press and the media in a free
Speaker 6: multiracial democracy, and what does it mean to be defenders
Speaker 6: of that and supporters of that as a value? And
Speaker 6: some of that means constructing guardrails that when someone look
Speaker 6: the press in Germany would not quote someone ranting about
Speaker 6: the Jews.
Speaker 5: The reason they wouldn't is they've.
Speaker 6: Been there and they've done that before, and no one
Speaker 6: would argue that there's not.
Speaker 5: A free press in Germany.
Speaker 6: Right, It's that we understand that our job is to
Speaker 6: be facilitators and curators of the public square. And then
Speaker 6: as we do that, we have to decide what we
Speaker 6: allow it or what we don't. Not that no one
Speaker 6: could ever find it or not on the internet, but
Speaker 6: when you hand some on a microphone in primetime and
Speaker 6: give them a town hall, that's you inserting them and
Speaker 6: their ideas into the bloodstream of American life. And I
Speaker 6: think we have to be better stewards of what we
Speaker 6: do with that and.
Speaker 5: How we do it.
Speaker 2: Wes Lowry, I hope you'll come back anytime.
Speaker 5: You know how to get hold of me.
Speaker 2: Oh, Jesse Cannon, Miley, junk Fast.
Speaker 3: If I was a betting man, I don't know that
Speaker 3: I would bet that Donald Trump shows up to any
Speaker 3: of these debates. But he's got a new excuse on
Speaker 3: why he may not show up.
Speaker 1: This is like the trumpiest Trump is. I'm right, you know,
Speaker 1: like the debates, they're not happening yet, but they're coming ergo.
Speaker 1: He says he might skip them. After all, he's leading
Speaker 1: the field by forty points. Sorry, Fox News Life does
Speaker 1: it work that way? The former president added, I think
Speaker 1: he will certainly be back and forth and back and
Speaker 1: forth and back and forth until the debate starts. And
Speaker 1: for that that is our moment of fuckeray. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.