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.
Speaker 2: We're on vacation, but that doesn't we don't have a
Speaker 2: great show for you today. Historia Julian Zellazar tells us
Speaker 2: about the lessons from history that we can take to
Speaker 2: what's happening in our politics today.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Seek Thanks Molly.
Speaker 1: It is a wild, wild ride for cryptocurrency. Can you
Speaker 1: You've written a book on it. You have quite a
Speaker 1: lot of knowledge this moment. Did you see this moment coming?
Speaker 3: Absolutely not. I mean crypto had totally crashed in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, and some of the biggest companies in the
Speaker 3: industry had been revealed to be frauds, including Sam bankman
Speaker 3: Fried's FTX, but also like a ton of other big companies,
Speaker 3: and all of the cryptocurrency prices started creeping back, first
Speaker 3: because of a Bitcoin etf which crypto people believed correctly
Speaker 3: would open up the market to a new group of
Speaker 3: buyers who might have been too nervous to open an
Speaker 3: account on coin base to buy bitcoin, but happy to
Speaker 3: do it through their Schwab account. And then the bitcoiner
Speaker 3: started talking up the possibility that Trump could become an
Speaker 3: advocate for the industry, and it didn't seem like a
Speaker 3: natural fit at first because Trump had called bitcoin a
Speaker 3: scam back in as recently as twenty twenty one, and
Speaker 3: he some of the lawsuits against the crypto industry that
Speaker 3: the industry is really up in arms about now were
Speaker 3: started during the Trump administration. But a bunch of like
Speaker 3: the biggest richest bitcoin advocates got together and they raised
Speaker 3: twenty five million dollars for Trump, and in July they
Speaker 3: got him to come to Nashville to the Bitcoin Convention,
Speaker 3: which is like an annual it's wild. It's almost like
Speaker 3: a religious revival or like a multi level marketing meeting.
Speaker 3: People are just talking about how bitcoin's going to save
Speaker 3: the world. And Trump came there and gave this speech
Speaker 3: about how if bitcoin's going to the moon, the US
Speaker 3: should lead the way and we should start a national
Speaker 3: Bitcoin reserve, and if I'm going to fire Gary Gensler,
Speaker 3: the SEC chair who the crypto industry hates, and I
Speaker 3: mean even the bitcoin guys were impressed by how much
Speaker 3: influence their donations were able to buy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I shouldn't laugh, but like the fact that they
Speaker 1: just figured out that they could just pay Trump and
Speaker 1: it would work. It's kind of incredible.
Speaker 3: The guy who came up with the plan, his name's
Speaker 3: David Bailey. He runs Bitcoin magazine and these conventions, and
Speaker 3: he went on a podcast and talked about it, and
Speaker 3: he said he was amazed that ten people donating eight
Speaker 3: hundred and forty four thousand each could have a huge impact.
Speaker 3: He said, it's a lot of money, but also kind
Speaker 3: of nothing, and like he was almost like giddy that
Speaker 3: he'd gotten Trump on board. And Trump now you might say, Okay,
Speaker 3: politicians say a lot of things to raise money. Is
Speaker 3: Trump actually going to does he really care about this?
Speaker 4: A month or.
Speaker 3: Two later, Trump started his own cryptocurrency and started promoting
Speaker 3: it during the campaign, which kind of annoyed a lot
Speaker 3: of his crypto supportives because they were like, Oh, you're
Speaker 3: supposed to be promoting our cryptocurrency, it's not starting a
Speaker 3: competing one. But they also liked it because they're like,
Speaker 3: a guy with this kind of conflict of interest is
Speaker 3: definitely going to follow through on his deregulatory promises.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, where are we now? Okay, So crypto,
Speaker 1: there was all this fraud. It went down. Now Trump
Speaker 1: has they see the writing, the regulatory writing on the wall,
Speaker 1: which is it will never be regulated, or at least
Speaker 1: not for the next four years. Explain to me why
Speaker 1: there's anything redeeming about crypto.
Speaker 3: So there's all different kinds of cryptocurrencies, and like when
Speaker 3: it comes to Bitcoin, the biggest, most popular one, a
Speaker 3: nobody uses bitcoin for anything. It's all about the price
Speaker 3: going up. And the bitcoiners have even abandoned talking about
Speaker 3: it becoming a world currency that we'd use to buy
Speaker 3: coffee or whatever. That one just depends on if you
Speaker 3: really believe that, like this is a future and everyone's
Speaker 3: gonna buy bitcoin, then you better get in now before
Speaker 3: they cost a million. That's sort of the pitch. There
Speaker 3: other cryptocurrencies. A lot of them are similar to stocks,
Speaker 3: and so they might be their value might depend on
Speaker 3: the success of a trading platform or something, so you
Speaker 3: can it's not like based on nothing. You can sort
Speaker 3: of evaluate whether you think that's a good idea. And
Speaker 3: then one of the biggest things going on in crypto
Speaker 3: these days is gambling on meme coins like dogecoin. Like
Speaker 3: it all it is is like do you think this
Speaker 3: picture of a dog is funny, then buy the coin,
Speaker 3: or do you think other people will think it's funny
Speaker 3: by it now before they do it, And so like that,
Speaker 3: even if you, let's say you think that is kind
Speaker 3: of stupid, well, even if you think it's stupid, if
Speaker 3: you think people are going to keep playing these silly,
Speaker 3: mean coin games that will generate activity on crypto trading
Speaker 3: platforms and might support the value of some of the cryptocurrencies,
Speaker 3: It's sort of like, even if the whole thing is
Speaker 3: kind of dumb, as long as other people are doing it,
Speaker 3: some of these are going to end up being valuable.
Speaker 1: So basically this has no purpose except to go up
Speaker 1: like a stock.
Speaker 3: Right, there's like a crypto for everything. For my book
Speaker 3: number go up. I spent like a couple of years
Speaker 3: trying to answer this question, and I looked all around
Speaker 3: the world to see, like, what are people using this for?
Speaker 3: And is there anything beyond gambling on the price going up?
Speaker 3: Because I think in the long run it's got to
Speaker 3: do something useful or people are going to get sick
Speaker 3: of it. I did find some things that people were
Speaker 3: using it for, but they were bad drugs. Right, That's
Speaker 3: like the classic one which really got bitcoin started people
Speaker 3: buying drugs on the dark web, which now is not
Speaker 3: like one of the main things with big but in
Speaker 3: the early years that really got it going. And actually
Speaker 3: the bitcoinner's got Trump to promise to pardon Ross Olbright,
Speaker 3: who ran silk Road, the original darknet drug market, because
Speaker 3: they love what he did for bitcoin. But for example,
Speaker 3: if you ever have gotten like a wrong number text message,
Speaker 3: you'll find out that the person on the other end
Speaker 3: is trying to become your friend, and then they try
Speaker 3: to scam you. They'll have you send them crypto. And
Speaker 3: for those kinds of people, crypto's great because the scammers
Speaker 3: are actually located generally in Southeast Asia, and so crypto
Speaker 3: and now allows them to receive money instantly from you
Speaker 3: with no refunds, without having to disclose their identity to
Speaker 3: some kind of bank, so it's super charged. This scam
Speaker 3: called pig butchering, which are like these online romance scams,
Speaker 3: so for them very useful. I also saw which I
Speaker 3: think is sort of a preview of what we might expect,
Speaker 3: like a if crypto's allowed to run wild. In twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, this cryptocurrency took off in the Philippines and
Speaker 3: it was called Axie Infinity, and it was basically like
Speaker 3: a Pokemon type game, but you had to buy your
Speaker 3: monsters with cryptocurrency, and if you won battles, you would
Speaker 3: earn other cryptocurrencies that were called smooth Love potions, kind
Speaker 3: of a silly name. And this, like it got so
Speaker 3: popular that like people were quitting their jobs to play
Speaker 3: this game, like millions of people were playing it, and
Speaker 3: for a time you could make really good money at it.
Speaker 3: But it was just like an unsustainable bubble that inevitably
Speaker 3: popped and led to devastation. I talked to went over
Speaker 3: there and talked with people who'd like sold their car
Speaker 3: to buy more monsters to battle and then lost it
Speaker 3: all when it popped.
Speaker 4: So it's like drugs a little bit, okay, sure, a
Speaker 4: little bit.
Speaker 1: And then they're the apes, right, people are buying the
Speaker 1: apes again. Can you explain that?
Speaker 3: No one can explain that. So people are paying tens
Speaker 3: of thousands, hundreds of thousands of dollars for board apes,
Speaker 3: which are it's like an ugly cartoon of a monkey,
Speaker 3: and it lives on the blockchain. So like in crypto
Speaker 3: land during the last bubble, the price of these went
Speaker 3: really high and like all sorts of celebrities were buying
Speaker 3: them or maybe being given them. Right, Yeah, but you
Speaker 3: had Jimmy Fallon, Paris, Hilton, Tom Brady were all showing
Speaker 3: off the board apes. This bitcoin boom, now with Trump selection,
Speaker 3: has even helped those. I was shocked I had bought
Speaker 3: actually just for research. Don't think I'm an ape person,
Speaker 3: but I bought a mutant ape in order to get
Speaker 3: into an exclusive eight party and who among us? It
Speaker 3: cost twenty thousand dollars.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So this meant that, like I could brag about being
Speaker 3: the owner of this kind of melty looking ape cartoon,
Speaker 3: and the prices of those went down as low as
Speaker 3: five grand, which I still thought was quite a lot
Speaker 3: to pay for a picture a really bad cartoon, but
Speaker 3: they've since tripled. That's sort of like the whole paradox
Speaker 3: of this recent crypto rally. The celebrities are not buying
Speaker 3: board apes anymore. Nobody's even really talking about it. There's
Speaker 3: just been this big speculative boom that like crypto is
Speaker 3: going to be deregulated, that's going to bring in lots
Speaker 3: of new customers. And you know, if you get in now,
Speaker 3: it's smart because everything's gonna boom under Trump. That's sort
Speaker 3: of the pitch I think.
Speaker 1: Huh, all right, so besides the fact that it's stupid
Speaker 1: it makes no sense, it's also really bad for the environment, right,
Speaker 1: explain that to us.
Speaker 3: So this is only really true of bitcoin. But the
Speaker 3: I mean, what makes crypto cool is that, if anything does,
Speaker 3: is that it's a way for people to transact with
Speaker 3: each other without any sort of central counterparty, Like you
Speaker 3: don't need a bank, you don't need PayPal. It's like
Speaker 3: a decentralized system that it is controlled by the by
Speaker 3: the users. And Bitcoin was set up in this innovative
Speaker 3: but very convoluted way that the computers that are running
Speaker 3: the bitcoin network basically compete to solve these random math
Speaker 3: problems in order to win new bitcoins that are generated periodically.
Speaker 3: This process is called mining, and whoever has the most
Speaker 3: powerful computers is more likely to solve the puzzle and
Speaker 3: win these new coins. And this has gotten to be
Speaker 3: such a big activity that people are running whole data
Speaker 3: centers full of bitcoin miners. And at one point, I
Speaker 3: think it was calculated that bitcoin mining was using as
Speaker 3: much energy as like the country of Argentina or something
Speaker 3: like that, and it doesn't have to be that way.
Speaker 3: Most other cryptocurrencies do not use this mining system and
Speaker 3: have come up with other ways to run their networks.
Speaker 3: But the bitcoiners will never switch because they believe it's
Speaker 3: of what makes bitcoins so secure and special.
Speaker 1: But it's not secure. It's just a total scam, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, am I missing something here? It feels like
Speaker 1: the Emperor has no clothes.
Speaker 3: I mean I considered using an Emperor has no clothes
Speaker 3: quote as like the epitaph for my book. So I
Speaker 3: don't think you're that far off. I mean I wouldn't say, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, there's a lot of smart people who are
Speaker 3: like trying to do stuff in crypto, and like maybe
Speaker 3: they'll come up with something cool, But so far, what
Speaker 3: I think they've done is come up with this sort
Speaker 3: of alternative financial system that is very useful for criminals,
Speaker 3: that makes it really easy to scam people, and that
Speaker 3: is not solving a lot of problems for ordinary people.
Speaker 1: So why does it exist?
Speaker 3: Well, selling made up coins for real money is like
Speaker 3: a really good way to make money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess that makes sense.
Speaker 3: And it's like a really powerful story. Right, Like we
Speaker 3: all know somebody or have heard about somebody who got
Speaker 3: rich off bitcoin. It's impossible not to feel a little
Speaker 3: bit of like fomo. And then when someone comes to
Speaker 3: you and pitches some new cryptocurrency and says, hey, this
Speaker 3: could be like the next Bitcoin. This could make you rich.
Speaker 3: It sounds kind of plausible because it does happen to me.
Speaker 3: It's amazing how far this mentality has taken this industry.
Speaker 4: I like this.
Speaker 3: There's a quote I really like that a bitcoin guy
Speaker 3: said at my first bitcoin conference in Miami in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one, and he said, bitcoin is number go up technology.
Speaker 3: It's a very powerful piece of technology. As the price
Speaker 3: goes higher, more people become aware of it and buy
Speaker 3: it in anticipation of the price continuing to climb. And like,
Speaker 3: I'm in the audience laughing, thinking like, wait, I thought
Speaker 3: you guys were going to be talking about something real.
Speaker 3: It sounds like a Pozi scheme. And yet actually the
Speaker 3: thing that he's saying for has been working. Like people
Speaker 3: do think, oh my god, I better get in on
Speaker 3: this while I still can. Well, my friend made some money,
Speaker 3: couldn't I? Or or even a hedge fund manager is
Speaker 3: like other guy's returns were like one hundred percent because
Speaker 3: he got a lot of crypto. Maybe I don't really
Speaker 3: believe in it, but I don't want to miss out.
Speaker 1: It's so crazy. Talk me through what you think is
Speaker 1: going to happen. There was fear of regulation. There's not
Speaker 1: going to be regulation now. Obviously that means what more municipalities.
Speaker 1: I mean, like, I know Miami took bitcoin, that there
Speaker 1: was some bitcoin people paying their taxes in bitcoin. I mean,
Speaker 1: I've read that there are a group of conservatives who
Speaker 1: think that the bitcoin can destabilize the dollar. I mean,
Speaker 1: sort of talk me through their grand plans.
Speaker 3: So for the bitcoiners, what they really want is for
Speaker 3: the US government to start buying bitcoin. And Senator Cynthia
Speaker 3: Lummis of Wisconsin, who you know used to have laser
Speaker 3: eyes on her Twitter profile, has been a big bitcoiner.
Speaker 3: She proposed this bill that would have the government spend
Speaker 3: one hundred billion real dollars to buy bitcoin.
Speaker 4: Why well, if.
Speaker 3: It goes up a lot, we'll make some money on it.
Speaker 3: Trump has sort of endorsed this plan, not specifically, but
Speaker 3: this general idea. And he even said, hey, maybe we'll
Speaker 3: pay off the national debt. Just hand him a little
Speaker 3: bitcoin check.
Speaker 1: Does he know that bitcoin isn't like you can't put
Speaker 1: it on a check.
Speaker 3: You know, caught him some slack. He's pretty old.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: This To be clear, it doesn't make any sense you would.
Speaker 3: I mean, the government would need to invest. Even if
Speaker 3: you think bitcoin is going to double or something. The
Speaker 3: government would need to buy a lot more bitcoin to
Speaker 3: make a dent and to help our finances. I mean,
Speaker 3: what this is is basically I don't want to cut
Speaker 3: some bailouts. Not quite the right word because bitcoin has
Speaker 3: gone up so much anyway, But it's like a giveaway
Speaker 3: to the bitcoiners. It's like the government coming in and
Speaker 3: pushing that price up more, which will benefit the existing holders,
Speaker 3: and the bitcoiners say, oh, well, it's going to be great.
Speaker 3: Once we do it, the other countries will be jealous
Speaker 3: and they'll do it too, and it'll the price will
Speaker 3: go up even more and then will profit. It's basically
Speaker 3: like this number go up technology pitch that I heard
Speaker 3: years ago. Now you have this whole other side of
Speaker 3: the crypto industry that's not so into bitcoin. They want
Speaker 3: to sell you all these like random coins, and basically
Speaker 3: what they want is just more ability to sell more
Speaker 3: random coins to more people. Like I would compare it
Speaker 3: to like draft Kings or fan duel, you know, and
Speaker 3: how so many states have legalized sports gambling, and like
Speaker 3: just more people are doing it is advertise more on TV.
Speaker 3: And right now under Gary Gensler, the current SEC chair,
Speaker 3: the SEC has sued lots of people who are promoting
Speaker 3: crypto gambling and said that you're violating the existing rules
Speaker 3: about marketing investments. And the new chair, who Trump wants
Speaker 3: to nominate, Paul Atkins, has signaled that he disagrees with
Speaker 3: that approach. And I would imagine a lot of these
Speaker 3: lawsuits would be dropped, so that will just make more
Speaker 3: and more financial institutions feel comfortable with offering crypto to
Speaker 3: their customers. And I would expect to see We already
Speaker 3: see it quite a lot, Like I go on Venmo
Speaker 3: and it's trying to sell me crypto. But I think
Speaker 3: we'd see even more of that, even more weird coins.
Speaker 3: Did you see Haley Welch's coin the other day? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the hawk Tua?
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Didn't that already get thought of? Is already a scam?
Speaker 1: The hawk Tua.
Speaker 3: It did immediately crash, but who's counter Yeah, it didn't
Speaker 3: go that far because I mean, let's she's not like
Speaker 3: that famous, right, and it's not clear like the legality
Speaker 3: of that kind of activity is kind of unclear. If
Speaker 3: it was all sort of legalized and given this stamp
Speaker 3: of regulatory approval, maybe you wou'd see more famous people
Speaker 3: doing stupid coins.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, there you go, Zeke, thank you for coming
Speaker 1: on and talking about this. I cannot believe that it
Speaker 1: is even stupider than I thought it was going to be.
Speaker 3: Thanks Molly.
Speaker 2: Julian Zelzar is a historian and the author of many books,
Speaker 2: including the upcoming paperback edition of Defense of Partisanship.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Julian, thank you. It's great to be with you. As always.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you a because we're buddies,
Speaker 1: and be because I'm very excited about this book. So
Speaker 1: talk to me about kind of why you decided to
Speaker 1: write this. You're an academic, you write also many many
Speaker 1: books because you're very prolific, unlike the rest of us.
Speaker 1: How did you get here?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, you know, partisanship is always something that's disparaged.
Speaker 4: People complain about it every day. You can always turn
Speaker 4: on the news and hear people talk out the need
Speaker 4: for more bipartisanship. And I've just seen enough history and
Speaker 4: studied enough history to see parties have actually been really
Speaker 4: important in American politics. And just because partisanship has gotten
Speaker 4: really ugly in the last decade, especially as a result
Speaker 4: of the GOP, it doesn't mean partisanship isn't a good
Speaker 4: thing for American politics. And I just basically wanted to
Speaker 4: make the case about why and what that could look
Speaker 4: like going forward.
Speaker 1: I think you should give us an example of good
Speaker 1: partisanship and bad partisanship.
Speaker 4: Sure. Well. One example of partisanship that was quite important
Speaker 4: was when Democrats were in the minority during President George W.
Speaker 4: Bush's term between two thousand and four and two thousand
Speaker 4: and six. They were really angry with what was happening.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of frustration with the war in Iraq
Speaker 4: and a lot of domestic policy, including Hurricane Katrina, and
Speaker 4: Democrats organized as a minority party. They were very disciplined,
Speaker 4: they were responsible, they worked within the normal processes of government,
Speaker 4: and they basically formed an opposition that resulted in their
Speaker 4: taking over Congress in two thousand and six. One other
Speaker 4: example different is after nineteen sixty four election, Lyndon Johnson
Speaker 4: was president, Democrats had huge majorities, and they use that
Speaker 4: moment to pass a lot of very important legislation. The
Speaker 4: great society that's still with us today. Bad partisanship. I
Speaker 4: think a lot of public and politics in the last
Speaker 4: few years of the Tea Party in twenty eleven, in
Speaker 4: twenty twelve, and a lot of what we saw under
Speaker 4: the first Trump term was partisanship without any guardrails. Say
Speaker 4: whatever you want, use basic processes of government like raising
Speaker 4: the debt ceiling to threaten the nation. That's bad partisanship.
Speaker 4: You have to have guardrails. In a sense of responsibility.
Speaker 1: Tell me what this sort of political moment looks like
Speaker 1: if you were to think of a time that's like
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 4: Well, I mean, I think we have very divisive times
Speaker 4: in American history. It's just part of our past. I mean,
Speaker 4: I've studied the nineteen sixties and there were deep divisions
Speaker 4: in the country. They didn't align along party lines so neatly,
Speaker 4: but they were really bitter. People really kind of disliked
Speaker 4: what the other side was saying on an issue like Vietnam. Obviously,
Speaker 4: in the nineteenth century had deep divisions over slavery. In
Speaker 4: the eighteen fifties, and we're in a moment like that
Speaker 4: right now. But I think one of the differences is
Speaker 4: one of the major political parties, Republicans, are engaging in
Speaker 4: the partisan battles that come out of these divisions without
Speaker 4: any rules. And I tell my students often it's like
Speaker 4: you have two sides playing chess. One side is trying
Speaker 4: to win, has strategy and legitimately trying to be victorious,
Speaker 4: and the other just takes the board and throws it
Speaker 4: on the floor and says I win. And I think
Speaker 4: that is a really difficult moment, because in fact, we
Speaker 4: need strong and responsible parties right now to fight out
Speaker 4: and resolve the differences that the country he has over
Speaker 4: so many issues right now.
Speaker 1: I feel like there are are moments in history where
Speaker 1: America has sort of come to the brink and come
Speaker 1: back from it. What would you say?
Speaker 4: This is sort of the closest to I don't think
Speaker 4: we're in civil war territory, and I guess they differ
Speaker 4: from some people.
Speaker 1: That's good, we don't want to be that's good. I'm
Speaker 1: happy to hear it.
Speaker 4: But that's a low bar. I mean, it's really a
Speaker 4: low bar.
Speaker 3: And what really.
Speaker 4: Worries me is that we're at a moment when just
Speaker 4: the government isn't able to do very basic things. I mean,
Speaker 4: now we keep going through these moments when there's almost
Speaker 4: government shutdowns, and there are government shutdowns, but we're talking
Speaker 4: about sending the country into default. It's like so extreme
Speaker 4: right now that we can't even get to the bigger issues.
Speaker 4: We're just trying to keep everything afloat. That's not a
Speaker 4: civil war. And I do think the differences are serious
Speaker 4: in this country. I don't agree with some commentators who
Speaker 4: think we exaggerate. I think there's differences over questions. There's problems. Yeah,
Speaker 4: we need our political system to be able to handle
Speaker 4: those better and respond to those. But it's like I
Speaker 4: don't have exact comparisons, but some of it reminds me
Speaker 4: of the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's interesting because in some ways the
Speaker 1: nineteen sixties was so much more scary and violent, but
Speaker 1: in some ways it was also you know, it just
Speaker 1: was a different America. When you are, like, when you're
Speaker 1: thinking about what democrats should be doing, because if you
Speaker 1: think sort of historically, what do you think that democrats
Speaker 1: are sort of if they could take a page from
Speaker 1: being an opposition party.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean this is the moment not to run
Speaker 4: away from partisanship and to just embrace the Republican Party.
Speaker 4: I think concessions ahead of time and really trying to
Speaker 4: move away from what the party is about is a
Speaker 4: huge mistake. This is the time when effective opposition or organizes.
Speaker 4: That means the leaders of the party Congressman Jefferies, Senator
Speaker 4: Schumer need to really lean on every member of their
Speaker 4: caucus to stay in line to vote the same way.
Speaker 4: That means using financial pressure, that means using political pressure
Speaker 4: on members of their party. They need to really distinguish
Speaker 4: themselves from what Republicans are doing and not be scared
Speaker 4: to call out what they're seeing from the GOP. That's
Speaker 4: the only way to kind of take a party from
Speaker 4: a weak place and put it in a stronger place
Speaker 4: in two years to start. And they also can't be
Speaker 4: scared of standing up to the GOP. They don't have
Speaker 4: to start voting for every item that comes their way,
Speaker 4: and they can be fine really say no, as Republicans
Speaker 4: have been. But again I go back to Democrats of
Speaker 4: earlier periods like the Bush years, and they did that
Speaker 4: very effectively, and it was quite important to reversing the
Speaker 4: direction of policies. I think Democrats need to kind of
Speaker 4: have a spine on some of this and if they
Speaker 4: want to be effective that they have to focus on
Speaker 4: their party and not the GOP.
Speaker 1: I want you to talk us through kind of the
Speaker 1: ways in which, like I always think about, you know,
Speaker 1: the damage that Trump can do, and he's done a
Speaker 1: lot of damage already. That isn't necessarily it's more of
Speaker 1: the sort of the the how much these kind of
Speaker 1: institutions are no longer respected right that you know, those
Speaker 1: kind of that kind of damage is hard to ever
Speaker 1: sort of undo, right, or at least because you have
Speaker 1: one party that thinks a lot of things, you know,
Speaker 1: they just doesn't trust the system. Have there been times
Speaker 1: when there was one party that didn't trust the system
Speaker 1: where that came back or.
Speaker 4: No, Well, yeah, I mean look at the Democrats. Actually,
Speaker 4: it's kind of funny or interesting that in the nineteen
Speaker 4: seventies a lot of Democrats had totally lost distrust in
Speaker 4: the political system. They were the ones railing against the FBI,
Speaker 4: they were the ones railing against the presidency. They felt
Speaker 4: as if, you know, they were the disenchanted group that
Speaker 4: the institutions of government didn't work and had essentially betrayed
Speaker 4: the country. And look where they are now. They've become
Speaker 4: the party that respects institutions that basically even seen their flaws,
Speaker 4: say they're important. So you can see parties really changed dramatically.
Speaker 4: I talk about this a lot these days, as the
Speaker 4: Democrats are the ones defending the FBI as opposed to
Speaker 4: the Republicans. But it takes a lot of work. And
Speaker 4: the difference is Democrats are a party ultimately, even in
Speaker 4: the bad times of the seventies, they always believed in government.
Speaker 4: They never abandoned the basic government's a good thing. Republicans
Speaker 4: are an anti government party. That's their philosophy. So I
Speaker 4: think they can be comfortable for a lot longer in
Speaker 4: the space they are now. They don't need to have
Speaker 4: their voters trust institutions. They don't need their voters to
Speaker 4: want government to work, because their argument rooted in the
Speaker 4: nineteen eighties and Ronald Reagan is the government's the problem.
Speaker 4: So if that's true, their rebound could be never or
Speaker 4: it could take a lot longer until you see them
Speaker 4: change course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's not great.
Speaker 4: No, I'm not being a voice of optimism here, although
Speaker 4: again the optimism is that we do have these institutions
Speaker 4: that can be a way to channel, certainly for Democrats,
Speaker 4: some of the frustration they're feeling, and really effective tool
Speaker 4: to taking on a very aggressive president, which is what
Speaker 4: we're going to see in the next four years.
Speaker 1: Can you give me like an aggressive So Trump is
Speaker 1: a very aggressive president. Who else historically has been a
Speaker 1: very aggressive president?
Speaker 4: Well, I mean the most obvious who comes to mind
Speaker 4: is Richard Nixon, and he really was. I think in
Speaker 4: some ways we forget sometimes in part because of the
Speaker 4: focus now on Trump, but Nixon used the presidency he
Speaker 4: is the irs, to go after his opponents. He authorized
Speaker 4: you know, break ins, an espionage. He threatened the press,
Speaker 4: not simply rhetorically, but actually threatened them in ways that
Speaker 4: are reminiscent of today. And I think Nixon, who later
Speaker 4: remakes himself as this statesperson at the time, was an
Speaker 4: incredibly you know, dangerous figure. There's a reason Watergate was
Speaker 4: so traumatic. There's a reason Congress really pressured him to resign.
Speaker 4: And I do think we've we have gone through a
Speaker 4: moment like this. Again that doesn't give comfort. It means
Speaker 4: this stuff can get very serious and very dangerous. And
Speaker 4: that's why now oversight, vigilance and opposition is going to
Speaker 4: be very important assuming that president like Trump goes through
Speaker 4: with the things he's saying he's going to do, and
Speaker 4: he's already started to do them. So I think the
Speaker 4: bet is he's going to do what he says.
Speaker 1: So I wrote a piece about a lot of these
Speaker 1: zombie laws, these laws that One of the things that
Speaker 1: I think has been really interesting is that during the
Speaker 1: break between Trump one point zero and Trump two point zero,
Speaker 1: Trump his people sort of went through and found laws
Speaker 1: that were still in the books but often like comstock,
Speaker 1: had not been used much, and they were able to
Speaker 1: you know, Alien Enemies Act, right, and that has in
Speaker 1: the Alien Enemies Act there is a sort of special
Speaker 1: cutout for journalists.
Speaker 3: What else do you?
Speaker 1: What else sort of keeps you up at night?
Speaker 4: Legally, oh, I think there's a lot of legal things
Speaker 4: he can do or already seeing how he's using before
Speaker 4: he's even in office. Again, he's using essentially threats of
Speaker 4: regulatory action against the media to try to pressure the
Speaker 4: media into taming themselves and avoiding certain kinds of coverage.
Speaker 4: I think the ABC settlement was significant. This new lawsuit
Speaker 4: against the Iowa Paper. These are all legal. You can
Speaker 4: do it if you don't mind what you're doing, and
Speaker 4: I think we're going to see a lot of more
Speaker 4: of that. The kind of regulatory power of the government
Speaker 4: over private media institutions and media that's increasingly connected to
Speaker 4: other kinds of business is pretty formidable. Within any agency,
Speaker 4: the executive has a lot of power too. This is
Speaker 4: less about intimidation, but to cut budgets, to basically freeze
Speaker 4: programs that Americans depend on to fill civil service jobs.
Speaker 4: This could be one of the big moves to change
Speaker 4: the way jobs staffing happens so that you have more
Speaker 4: loyalist If he does that, that's it could be legal,
Speaker 4: but it doesn't mean it's any better. And then finally, rhetorically,
Speaker 4: it's legal for him to say lots of stuff. Other
Speaker 4: presidents just don't say it. But when a president goes
Speaker 4: untruth social or whatever TV and starts to call people
Speaker 4: out and really kind of put out in the world
Speaker 4: words of threat and intimidation, that is a scary thing.
Speaker 4: And that's not making things up. That's truly something to
Speaker 4: be worried about. And it just creates an appmosphere where
Speaker 4: opponents are scared to say anything, people change their behavior,
Speaker 4: and finally, you can have huge and damaging effects on
Speaker 4: government programs. So I think there's lots of legal things
Speaker 4: as much as the illegal stuff that he can do,
Speaker 4: which is what causes his opponents concern.
Speaker 1: The first Trump term, in the end, they didn't protect
Speaker 1: institutions the way they did during the post Nixon period.
Speaker 1: There were a few things though, that were done. For example,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about the electoral vote counting stuff where they
Speaker 1: did sort of close the door on that. Do you
Speaker 1: think that was a failure and do you think some
Speaker 1: of that stuff is going to come back?
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't have the failure I think they did.
Speaker 4: I think so the electoral count or format they did
Speaker 4: as much. Maybe they did as much as they could do,
Speaker 4: so it's it's less it's a failure, not in not trying,
Speaker 4: but that was it. But yeah, it's dangerous. I mean,
Speaker 4: I'm not as worried in the next few years because
Speaker 4: he won and I think he's obviously feeling good and
Speaker 4: then we'll see what happens in the next election. But yes,
Speaker 4: the issue is not addressed. Where he showed how much
Speaker 4: you can stretch the existing systems of politics all remain vulnerabilities,
Speaker 4: and there's no indication that he or other Republicans in
Speaker 4: the future won't try to exploit them again. So yes,
Speaker 4: you know, you have really small windows in American politics
Speaker 4: to try to reform things. That's just the reality. No
Speaker 4: one cares about reform. Usually people focus on bread and
Speaker 4: butter issues, and you have a few periods like the
Speaker 4: nineteen seventies after Watergate, the progressive era, which is the
Speaker 4: early twentieth century, where you have interest in reforming government
Speaker 4: itself and how it works to fix problems. I think
Speaker 4: that window now has passed, so it's going to be
Speaker 4: very hard to kind of go back to all these
Speaker 4: issues and improve them. So it could come back to
Speaker 4: bite the nation. We will see.
Speaker 1: That does not sound so good, Julie, and I just
Speaker 1: am curious. The sixties, you know, there was a different
Speaker 1: kind of protesting. I mean, do you think there will
Speaker 1: be a protest movement again with trump Ism or do
Speaker 1: you think that it will look something different? And do
Speaker 1: you think and how much do you think, Like historically
Speaker 1: protests movements have moved the needle.
Speaker 4: I mean, the thing about real moments of protests is
Speaker 4: you don't see them coming, and so I don't know
Speaker 4: I see him. There will be protests because I assume
Speaker 4: he will do things that stir anger and outrage. Protest
Speaker 4: movements can be effective, not all the time, but certainly,
Speaker 4: like the anti war movement with Vietnam, it didn't end
Speaker 4: the war, but it certainly made the opposition a much
Speaker 4: more popular and understood issue than would have happened had
Speaker 4: that anti war movement never existed. The Civil rights movement
Speaker 4: as an example where the movement actually was responsible for
Speaker 4: helping get legislation through the Civil Rights of nineteen sixty four.
Speaker 4: So they can work, they don't always work. I do
Speaker 4: think back to earlier, it matters to have a very
Speaker 4: strong political party that those movements end up working for. Ultimately,
Speaker 4: movements have limits to what they could do. It's when
Speaker 4: they connect to a party with strong leadership then they
Speaker 4: can be quite powerful, as we saw with civil rights
Speaker 4: in the mid nineteen sixties. Finally, I do think some
Speaker 4: opposition's not going to be about movements. I think because
Speaker 4: of what you said earlier, this focus that the Trump
Speaker 4: team has on rules, on institutions, on processes is going
Speaker 4: to result in more of a tension within the opposition,
Speaker 4: on legal strategy, on partisan strategy, on the hill, kind
Speaker 4: of insider politics to take on what's going to be
Speaker 4: an insider Trump be in game. So I do think
Speaker 4: it won't just be movements this time around. I think
Speaker 4: that's going to be quite important in terms of how
Speaker 4: this unfolds.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too. It's really interesting and also
Speaker 1: dark moment in American politics.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Julian, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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