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 Elon Musk says Biden taxing the
Speaker 1: ultra rich would upset a lot of donors. I think
Speaker 1: it might. We have a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Senator Amy Klobshar stops by to talk about her new book,
Speaker 1: The Joy of Politics. Then we'll talk to Showtimes the Circuses,
Speaker 1: Jennifer Paul Mary about her new piece, and Vanity Fair
Speaker 1: about Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer and how she's successfully governed
Speaker 1: a divided state. But first we have vaccine scientists, pediatrician
Speaker 1: and all around good guy and author of The Deadly
Speaker 1: Rise of Anti Science, doctor Peter Hotez. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Doctor Peter Hotez.
Speaker 2: It's great to talk to you, Molly. I think this
Speaker 2: may be the first time that we don't actually talk
Speaker 2: about COVID so much with them.
Speaker 1: Right, we can just talk about COVID derangement syndrome. It's
Speaker 1: a good name, right, I mean, that's where we are basically.
Speaker 1: So I mean, let's just like top line here, So
Speaker 1: OURFK Junior has returned from the shadows. I guess at
Speaker 1: one point he was normal.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I have a new book coming out
Speaker 2: called The Deadly Rise of Anti Science. And one of
Speaker 2: the things you'll see about the book, compared to the
Speaker 2: last one, I wrote about vaccines did not cause Rachel's autism,
Speaker 2: where there was a lot of stuff about RFK and
Speaker 2: my discussions with him.
Speaker 1: You have an autistic daughter named Rachel, and she did
Speaker 1: not get her autism from vaccines.
Speaker 2: Right, she has autism and intellectual disabilities. And I wrote
Speaker 2: the book to basically counter the prevailing view about the
Speaker 2: anti prevailing anti vaccine activist sentiment that claimed vaccines cause autism,
Speaker 2: and a lot of that came from O. RFK Junior,
Speaker 2: and I debunk that whole thing and also provided the
Speaker 2: alternative narrative about what autism is, how it begins in
Speaker 2: early fetal brain development, the concepts of neurodiversity, and what
Speaker 2: autism genes are. And we did whole exim genomics sequencing
Speaker 2: on Rachel and my wife Ann and I, and we
Speaker 2: found Rachel's autism gene.
Speaker 1: That was the whole thing. That's really interesting. It was
Speaker 1: just a specific gene that was formed differently.
Speaker 2: Yeah, in this case, it's involved in neuronal communications. In
Speaker 2: her case, it's a type of gene called the neuronal
Speaker 2: side of skeleton genes, and several of the autism genes
Speaker 2: are that hers. In fact, it turned out to be
Speaker 2: one that hadn't been discovered before, and it was actually
Speaker 2: written up in a biomedical journal along with five other
Speaker 2: instances where they found it. So the technology is so
Speaker 2: amazing that they once you find one, then you can
Speaker 2: pick up, you know, several other kids or adults with it.
Speaker 1: So is there a world in which that there'll be
Speaker 1: a treatment for this or now.
Speaker 2: Well potentially, And then you know, there's this whole other
Speaker 2: thread about what does that mean, you know, for people
Speaker 2: who are very diverse, and then gets some the whole
Speaker 2: discussion of high functioning versus not high functioning? What does
Speaker 2: it mean? DAVI the associated intellectual dess. But the point
Speaker 2: is so RFK was very engaged at that point and
Speaker 2: then you know, from my point of view, he kind
Speaker 2: of I don't say he ever disappeared, but he wasn't
Speaker 2: that prominent. So that in the newest book that I
Speaker 2: have called The Deadly Rise of Anti Science and why
Speaker 2: so many Americans died because they were falsely led to
Speaker 2: believe that they didn't need a COVID vaccine or that
Speaker 2: it wasn't safe. In this kind of nonsense, you know,
Speaker 2: the major groups that identify are the organizations like the
Speaker 2: House Freedom Caucus and individual US senators and the role
Speaker 2: of Fox News and spreading that disinformation in the talking
Speaker 2: heads and RFK. I don't even know if he's mentioned
Speaker 2: in the book, and so that's point one point two,
Speaker 2: when you know he announces running for president. Other than
Speaker 2: I cringed from his past track record, I was interesting
Speaker 2: that I noticed that he wasn't talking about vaccines and all,
Speaker 2: and I think, boy, you must have been pretty well coached.
Speaker 2: They probably said, look, Bobby, you know this is what
Speaker 2: this is what you want to stay away from this
Speaker 2: one help you at all talk about all the other stuff.
Speaker 2: And he was doing that. So I was kind of surprised,
Speaker 2: you know, when he went on Rogan and then just
Speaker 2: went off on the whole vaccine again. It was like,
Speaker 2: you know, it was like it was two thousand and
Speaker 2: five again, and I thought that was really interesting or
Speaker 2: in an odd way, I'm going to just.
Speaker 1: Read you a little bit that Chelsea sent me on
Speaker 1: the Rogan podcast, he simply waved away this inconvenient fact
Speaker 1: and continue to argue that life saving vaccines are dangerous.
Speaker 1: Kennedy told Rogan that it could be aluminum in the
Speaker 1: vaccines that's causing problems. I remember in two thousand and
Speaker 1: four asking my pediatrician and she said there wasn't aluminum
Speaker 1: in vaccines, but in at't typically ingest seven to nine
Speaker 1: milligrams of aluminum per day through food, and a typical
Speaker 1: vaccine has less than half a milligram. Infants will be
Speaker 1: exposed to far more aluminum through their diet than vaccines.
Speaker 1: And there's no scientific evidence that aluminum is linked to
Speaker 1: autism or any other health condition cited by Kennedy.
Speaker 2: Right, So remember how this works. So, and this is
Speaker 2: why I don't ever do a public debate with someone
Speaker 2: like RFK Junior, because he keeps on moving the goalposts.
Speaker 2: So right, right, Because the initial the OG assertion from
Speaker 2: the Wakefield paper in the Lancet in nineteen ninety eight
Speaker 2: was that it was the measles momps rubella vaccine, the
Speaker 2: live virus vaccine replicates in the gut, and somehow that
Speaker 2: led to autism, and it never made sense to me,
Speaker 2: the paper was retracted, although it took a decade to
Speaker 2: get it retracted because it was false.
Speaker 1: And then the damage was done by then.
Speaker 2: But then, you know, they kept on whatever you call it,
Speaker 2: whack a mole or moving the goalpost. Then they shifted
Speaker 2: to thymerisol preservative that used to be in vaccines, and
Speaker 2: RFK Junior was a big proponent of that, and then
Speaker 2: that got debunked, And by debunked, I mean these large
Speaker 2: cohorts studies saying, kid, you know, kids who got the
Speaker 2: MMR vaccine were no more likely to acquire autism than
Speaker 2: kids who didn't, and kids on the autism spectrum were
Speaker 2: no more likely to have gotten MMR than kids who didn't.
Speaker 2: So then it switched to thimerosol. And then it switched
Speaker 2: to spacing vaccines too close together.
Speaker 1: If you remember the whole yes.
Speaker 2: Getting McCarthy, then you know, we got to green the
Speaker 2: vaccines and or all these books written about that, and
Speaker 2: that was all that was all bs too and then
Speaker 2: and then that got debunked, and then it fell to
Speaker 2: alum in vaccines, and then that got debunked, and then
Speaker 2: it went to something called vaccines caused chronic illness. You know,
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, so they just made it harder
Speaker 2: and harder to kind of and and that's and that's
Speaker 2: the frustration of debating this stuff is because you know,
Speaker 2: you you keep knocking one down, as they call it, whackome, well,
Speaker 2: you keep knocking one down and another one pops up.
Speaker 2: And then they switched it over for a while to
Speaker 2: the HPV vaccine recervical cancer and other cancers, and they
Speaker 2: said it caused infertility or autoimmunity, and that was all
Speaker 2: bs and and then and if you remember, they started
Speaker 2: sorted the same thing about COVID vaccines. And the reason
Speaker 2: they said it was because they had, you know, all
Speaker 2: the all the graphics. They could just copy paste the
Speaker 2: false claim from HPV vaccine at the COVID vaccines. That's
Speaker 2: the nature of the anti vaccine movement. But it takes somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, that's been really looking at this over a
Speaker 2: period of years to figure out what the heck they're
Speaker 2: doing and to debunk it.
Speaker 1: It's just ridiculous.
Speaker 2: And then the other piece to this is and again
Speaker 2: I thought RFK was done talking about this, but he
Speaker 2: went back to it and others and Rogan as well
Speaker 2: as the insidious pharma links or this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: So and the term they throw out all the time
Speaker 2: you see on social media's pharma shill s hill, and
Speaker 2: you know they claim as I'm secretly, you know, taking
Speaker 2: money from pharma companies, and when in fact, we made
Speaker 2: you know, developed two protot covid prototype vaccines that we
Speaker 2: licensed to two organizations in India and Indonesia, no patents,
Speaker 2: minimizing strings attached and everything in the open access literature,
Speaker 2: two to three dollars a dose, and wound up one
Speaker 2: hundred million doses administered in India and Indonesia, providing proof
Speaker 2: of concept that you could bypass the pharma companies and
Speaker 2: provide an alternative model. And any rational person would say, hey,
Speaker 2: I'll bet RFK Junior would really love that concept, or
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan would love that concept. Instead, you know, it's
Speaker 2: so important to demonize me or someone else that they
Speaker 2: just throw that out the window and just want to
Speaker 2: make up stuff.
Speaker 1: It's kind of incredible. Obviously. What's happening with Joe Rogan
Speaker 1: here is that Republicans know that Trump is going to
Speaker 1: get the nomination. They know that he can't possibly win
Speaker 1: a general and so the hope is that they are
Speaker 1: hoping they can find someone to pump up so that
Speaker 1: Biden will have, you know, a harder time or maybe
Speaker 1: not win at all. I mean that clearly seems to
Speaker 1: be the general sense here.
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, I see, So what you're saying is
Speaker 2: they're kind of schmoozing up RFK in order to take
Speaker 2: photes away from Biden Nerd.
Speaker 1: Right. During the pandemic, there was this unholy alliance between
Speaker 1: yoga moms who would largely vote Democratic, who were always
Speaker 1: a little suspicious of modern medicine, right, and the Trumpers.
Speaker 1: And so the hope is that these people because look,
Speaker 1: I mean, David Zachs, Elon Musk, they're not RFK junior supporters, right,
Speaker 1: they're supporters of Ron DeSantis, but they know that RFK
Speaker 1: could pull away some of these more.
Speaker 2: It's interesting to say that because, you know, the other
Speaker 2: thing that may be relevant is, like two or three
Speaker 2: days before this whole blew up with Rogan and Elon,
Speaker 2: our good friend Steve Bannon started attacking me. He publicly
Speaker 2: declared me a criminal quote unquote on his social media feed,
Speaker 2: which was retweeted by someone who calls herself the chief
Speaker 2: Operating Officer Chief executive officer of the War Room. So
Speaker 2: I said, no, that's interesting. And Bannon's gone after me
Speaker 2: before with Marjorie Taylor Green, so I knew there was
Speaker 2: going to be an issue as soon as I saw
Speaker 2: Bannon reven that up again and attacking me. And then
Speaker 2: it was interesting. I can't prove it's related, but it's interesting.
Speaker 2: Then all the Rogan Elon stuff followed a couple of
Speaker 2: after that.
Speaker 1: And you'll remember that Bannon is a big RFK Junior
Speaker 1: fan for obvious reasons. I mean, he was involved in this,
Speaker 1: you know, RFK Junior stuff just as much as any
Speaker 1: of these people because he knows that those left leaning
Speaker 1: independents could you know, I mean, the electoral college is
Speaker 1: a numbers game, right, Like all they need to do
Speaker 1: is pull enough votes away so that Biden doesn't win
Speaker 1: and Trump does. And I think that that's where this
Speaker 1: has gone, and that's why they've tacked so quickly, and
Speaker 1: that's where this is going.
Speaker 2: I'm just part of the collateral damage for all. Sorry
Speaker 2: it doesn't surprise me, but you know, that's part of
Speaker 2: what the extremists. What they do is they target science
Speaker 2: and scientists, and you know, to understand that whole space.
Speaker 2: I started talking for the new book. I started talking
Speaker 2: to political scientists, like, I don't know if you know
Speaker 2: Ruth ben gad Uh, Yeah, of course she's terrific, and
Speaker 2: so I've talked to her and she says, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 2: she points out and then I went to a deep
Speaker 2: dive for the book. You know this what Stalin did
Speaker 2: in the thirties, right, You have to derail the intelligency,
Speaker 2: and you go after the science, not only the science,
Speaker 2: but the scientists and portray them as enemies of the state.
Speaker 2: And that's exactly what's happening with me and a couple
Speaker 2: of other colleagues. So that's another component of the of
Speaker 2: the book as well. It's not just the fact that
Speaker 2: they're targeting the science and the fact that they allowed
Speaker 2: two hundred thousand Americans to needlessly perished because they refused
Speaker 2: to COVID vaccine. They were victims of that disinformation, but
Speaker 2: also going after the scientist and basically telling the troops
Speaker 2: there that were public enemies. And it makes it really tough.
Speaker 1: What I thought was so odd about this was I
Speaker 1: always thought that eventually, you know, when people started dying
Speaker 1: of COVID, that there would be some kind of tact
Speaker 1: so that there would be some kind of change that
Speaker 1: people would say, well, you know, look I saw this
Speaker 1: person die in front.
Speaker 2: Of some sort of auto correction, right right, I know it.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's just amazing I gave You don't see
Speaker 2: so much in Houston, but when you go into the
Speaker 2: more conservative rural areas of Texas. I gave a lecture
Speaker 2: University of Texas Tyler Medical Center, which is in East Texas,
Speaker 2: and basically you just talk to people, and everybody you
Speaker 2: talk to has lost a loved one because they refused
Speaker 2: to COVID vaccine. That's where you see it at home.
Speaker 2: And what's so heartbreaking about that is you know these
Speaker 2: are good people, right. I mean I gave medical grand
Speaker 2: rounds to Stanford a few weeks ago, and I said, look,
Speaker 2: if my car broke down from a flat tire, and
Speaker 2: you gave me the choice, would I want that car?
Speaker 2: If you have a flat tire in Palo Alto, California,
Speaker 2: or in East Texas. I would have said East Texas
Speaker 2: in a moment, because you know there'd be ten people
Speaker 2: fighting over who was going to help you change your tire,
Speaker 2: as opposed to in Palo Alto everybody would probably drive
Speaker 2: right by. So so you know, these are good kind people,
Speaker 2: and they were victims. Basically, they were target for this stuff.
Speaker 2: And that's what's so heartbreaking.
Speaker 1: So here's the question. They were targeted. They are victims.
Speaker 1: They never had that moment where they were like, oh,
Speaker 1: we're all dying, maybe we should get back. So maybe
Speaker 1: these people don't have our best interests at heart. In fact,
Speaker 1: they came out of it thinking that they had been
Speaker 1: duped by you. That's right.
Speaker 2: So what happened was, and this is exactly and I
Speaker 2: wrote about this recently in a journal faceve journal, I
Speaker 2: basically said, so what happened was, you're right. You would think,
Speaker 2: right if you were a member of the House Freedom Caucus,
Speaker 2: you know, actively promoting this vaccine disinformation, or Fox News
Speaker 2: anchor at night or you know, one of the talking heads,
Speaker 2: you say, oh my god, look what's happening here and
Speaker 2: have some pause for reflection. Instead, what they did was
Speaker 2: they just doubled the lie. They said, no, no, it
Speaker 2: wasn't us, it was the COVID vaccines that did that.
Speaker 2: And by the way, the scientists created the COVID virus
Speaker 2: in the first place. So instead they've they've been doubled
Speaker 2: down and doing this kind of revisionist history, which is
Speaker 2: equally damaging as well.
Speaker 1: But it's also like, well, you said masks were good,
Speaker 1: but masks were good. Like that's like I, as someone
Speaker 1: who has spent the day, actually the last three days,
Speaker 1: just swarmed with the kind of hateful twitter you get
Speaker 1: all the time. What I think is interesting is like,
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, we've got you now. You know,
Speaker 1: doctor Hotes, you said that masks were you know, on
Speaker 1: da da da da dah. You said masks help prevent diseases.
Speaker 1: We all know that, But masks still help prevent respiratory diseases.
Speaker 1: Like what are we being shown here? Yeah?
Speaker 2: I don't know. And one of the things that I
Speaker 2: did that the CDC and others did was I always
Speaker 2: went into my underlying assumption, so for instance, and that
Speaker 2: helps you know when things change. So for instance, when
Speaker 2: the two first doses of the mRNA vaccines were given out,
Speaker 2: I said, by the way, don't be surprised if we're
Speaker 2: gonna need a booster, because that's the way most vaccines work.
Speaker 2: And so it's not going to be and done and
Speaker 2: two and done, and it could be three and done,
Speaker 2: and I was looking pretty good throughout the delta and
Speaker 2: BA one omicron waves. But then, you know, the virus
Speaker 2: started mutating more and it looked like the m R
Speaker 2: and A vaccines were not as durable as we thought.
Speaker 2: And I, you know, I said that, I mean, I
Speaker 2: you know, I mean, I got a lot of credit
Speaker 2: for being one of the few that said we're not
Speaker 2: two doses is not enough.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: The mistake was I could have gone farther and said
Speaker 2: three may not.
Speaker 4: Be enough either. But and that's where we are.
Speaker 2: But the point is I explained the science behind it
Speaker 2: at each step, both before said it, during said and
Speaker 2: after set it'd say this is what you should look
Speaker 2: for for the change. But what I see from the
Speaker 2: conspiracy sites, and they do this a lot now, is
Speaker 2: they will edit something I said and put a short
Speaker 2: segment without giving the rest of the statement, and then
Speaker 2: follow it up and make it, you know, and try
Speaker 2: to make you look stupid. And that's what they do
Speaker 2: when I get stalked and they shove a cell phone
Speaker 2: camera in your face and they edited up the wazoo
Speaker 2: to make you look less credible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's just so fucking depressing. I have to say.
Speaker 2: But the other thing is you might say, well, why
Speaker 2: are they doing this, And the answer is it's part.
Speaker 2: So what's happened is, you know, if you look at
Speaker 2: the canon of stuff from people deep in the Fox
Speaker 2: News rabbit hole, it's you know, in addition to the
Speaker 2: election being stolen and putin over Zelenski and Trump, and
Speaker 2: in that canon is watch out for the scientists, and
Speaker 2: the scientists are dangerous and it makes no sense. And
Speaker 2: so what I say is, look, I mean, everyone's entitled
Speaker 2: to your conservative views or.
Speaker 1: Even extreme conservative views.
Speaker 2: I mean, do you want to believe Hillary Clinton runs
Speaker 2: a pedophile ringing a pizza parlor, you know, knock yourself out.
Speaker 2: But somehow we've got to delink that from the anti
Speaker 2: science because that's what's killing people and it's very tough
Speaker 2: to thrill that needle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I agree. I mean that I think that's right,
Speaker 1: and I think that that's what we're seeing now. I
Speaker 1: want you to stay safe, okay, because we need you,
Speaker 1: and to come back when your book comes out. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Amy Klombashar is Minnesota's senior senator and the author of
Speaker 1: the Joy of Politics, A Surviving Cancer, A Campaign, A
Speaker 1: Pandemic an insurrection and life's other unexpected curve balls. Welcome back,
Speaker 1: because you've been here before too fast Politics, Senator Amy klobaschar.
Speaker 4: Well, thanks Molly, it is wonderful to be on again.
Speaker 1: The book is called The Joy of Politics. What book
Speaker 1: is this your second, third, fourth book?
Speaker 5: I think, well, if you count my college senior essay.
Speaker 1: Yes, which we of course do in this organization, yes.
Speaker 5: Espectually because it's called Uncovering the Dome and it's about
Speaker 5: the Capitol, but it's about the Vikings Twins sports stadium
Speaker 5: that actually was passed into law and became a stadium
Speaker 5: when I was in college. So I wrote that book,
Speaker 5: which was used in college classes a lot because they
Speaker 5: could say she wrote this when she was your age.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so this is book four. Yeah, work four.
Speaker 5: And then I did a sort of a more standard
Speaker 5: bio book called Center next Door. And then I did
Speaker 5: the Anti Trust book that actually got on the New
Speaker 5: York Times bestseller list but was quite thick, with two
Speaker 5: hundred pages of footnotes. But this book, The Joy of Politics,
Speaker 5: is actually, i'd say more of a personal book.
Speaker 4: It's not a standard bio.
Speaker 5: It is about how I got through obstacles, including breast
Speaker 5: cancer of the pandemic like everyone else, although my husband
Speaker 5: got very sick and was in the hospital.
Speaker 1: And one of the first people really to get sick right.
Speaker 5: Right at the beginning when there were I think there
Speaker 5: were only nineteen people in a hospital in the whole
Speaker 5: state of Virginia. I remember looking at the time with
Speaker 5: COVID and yeah, he got it from a friend of
Speaker 5: ours who at the time only had a cough. No
Speaker 5: one knew that's how you got it, and later found
Speaker 5: out he had the antibody, so we figured out that's
Speaker 5: where he got it. And he got really sick and
Speaker 5: was on oxygen, not a ventilator, but oxygen for a
Speaker 5: week in a little hospital in Virginia because that's where
Speaker 5: he just happened to drive and someone met him in
Speaker 5: the parking lot and he got tests and he ended
Speaker 5: up there and we didn't even get the test back
Speaker 5: for two weeks on or ten days on COVID at
Speaker 5: the time, so early on, and he got through it
Speaker 5: so that when his only long haul symptom, well, some
Speaker 5: people have very serious situations. His seems to erupt only
Speaker 5: when I say we need to clean the basement, and
Speaker 5: then it's a very smart man. He had COVID and
Speaker 5: I can't do that because of all the dust. That's
Speaker 5: the only time he ever brings it up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, good for him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, anyway, he got through it, and we then, like
Speaker 5: everyone else, just got through that pandemic. And I also
Speaker 5: talk about the insurrection and my role there because I
Speaker 5: was a chair of the rules committee and Roy Blunt
Speaker 5: and I were in charge of counting the electoral ballots
Speaker 5: that day and making sure everything got done.
Speaker 4: By four in the morning.
Speaker 5: It was just the two of us and Vice President
Speaker 5: Pence and three young pairs of pages holding the mahogany
Speaker 5: boxes with the electoral ballots.
Speaker 1: That must have been a pretty weird experience.
Speaker 5: Yes, it really was, because it was this sort of
Speaker 5: ceremony pomp.
Speaker 4: I remember actually being on some shows.
Speaker 5: Ahead of time about it and how we knew that
Speaker 5: was by the time we knew then that some Republicans
Speaker 5: obviously were not going to vote like they had in
Speaker 5: the past to verify the results of the states, and
Speaker 5: so I went on a few shows and they all
Speaker 5: would say at the end, well, it's going to be
Speaker 5: fine then, and I go, well, you know, never, sir,
Speaker 5: And I think we knew the numbers were fine, but
Speaker 5: there was just brewing anger, and Trump kept bringing it up,
Speaker 5: and it turned out that they just hadn't planned the
Speaker 5: security for that kind of situation. And there we were,
Speaker 5: and it was this just ridiculously ceremonious thing in the
Speaker 5: morning and with Roy and Me leading this group of
Speaker 5: senators to the House and we start reading the ballot
Speaker 5: numbers for Alaska and we get to Arizona and that's
Speaker 5: the first objection.
Speaker 4: And then we get back and we start giving our speeches.
Speaker 5: And at the time, I was very focused on the
Speaker 5: order because everyone got three four minutes and I was
Speaker 5: in charge of that. And then all of a sudden,
Speaker 5: you know, our staff says, it seems like people have
Speaker 5: invaded the capital. And the next thing, you know, Vice
Speaker 5: President Pens is taken away from the presiding chair. We're
Speaker 5: in the chamber, and eventually they'd say, we got to leave,
Speaker 5: and we go to that secure location, which by the way,
Speaker 5: contained everyone except for the leaders that you saw in
Speaker 5: the January sixth hearings, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer and
Speaker 5: Mitch McConnell and Boone. They were all in one room,
Speaker 5: but all of the rest of the Senate and the
Speaker 5: pages were in the other So I tell that story
Speaker 5: of that day and how focused we were on getting
Speaker 5: back to finish our jobs. And we did, and at
Speaker 5: four in the morning, as I said, it was just
Speaker 5: the three of us, but this time we were walking
Speaker 5: over the broken glass and the spray painted by the
Speaker 5: spray painted pillars with racist vulgarities. But we said that
Speaker 5: democracy would prevail, and in the end it did.
Speaker 1: It did, but it was I mean, I just can't
Speaker 1: even imagine how No, I won't.
Speaker 5: But remember, like a lot of workplaces, when you have
Speaker 5: an invasion, you don't even know if there's like anthrax
Speaker 5: in there. People don't go back to the scene of
Speaker 5: the crime. Like twelve hours later, the whole set But
Speaker 5: we felt so strongly, those of us in leadership, that
Speaker 5: we had to get back to that room and that
Speaker 5: otherwise they would have won. And that is the same
Speaker 5: way in coming president and now President Biden felt, and
Speaker 5: Roy Blunt and I felt about keeping the inauguration on
Speaker 5: that platform because that was the first place they invaded,
Speaker 5: so people wanted to have it in a bunker.
Speaker 1: So I had a.
Speaker 5: Story of how much pressure we were under to change that,
Speaker 5: and we felt very secure. Different group of people were
Speaker 5: in charge of the security. We said it was going
Speaker 5: any risk, we wouldn't do it. But we felt very
Speaker 5: strongly we should be on that platform, even though we
Speaker 5: had plastic windows behind us, and we had whitewashed pillars
Speaker 5: that they couldn't even get the spray paint off of,
Speaker 5: and it looked all nights on TV. But that was
Speaker 5: the truth. And yet everyone rose to the occasion. And
Speaker 5: probably my two most memorable moments that I recount in
Speaker 5: the book were Lady Gaga boisterously belting out the star
Speaker 5: spangled banner with the words and our flag was still there,
Speaker 5: and motioning to our flag than Amanda Gorman, the youngest
Speaker 5: inaugural poet in the history of the United States at
Speaker 5: age twenty two, with that beautiful poem she wrote in
Speaker 5: just those two weeks after the inauguration, with those memorable words,
Speaker 5: we must find light in this never ending shade, And
Speaker 5: that kind of defined my work after that for the
Speaker 5: next few years, including leading the Freedom to Vote Act,
Speaker 5: which we came close, but a lot of states have
Speaker 5: done some things that are taking some of those provisions
Speaker 5: and putting him into law, including.
Speaker 4: My own state of Minnesota.
Speaker 5: And Also we made the case nationally that this wasn't
Speaker 5: just a state by state problem. When they try to
Speaker 5: ban Saturday voting in Georgia, as they just did in
Speaker 5: the last election.
Speaker 1: Yeah, how worried are you about this want on the
Speaker 1: part of Republicans to cement a minority rule?
Speaker 4: Really really concerned.
Speaker 5: I recount in the book how and argue for filibuster reform,
Speaker 5: which would have mattered in the last in a big way.
Speaker 5: But the way things work now, to think of it
Speaker 5: simply is that the first thing to think about is
Speaker 5: when they lost that presidential race, and the shadow of
Speaker 5: Donald Trump is still looming above us.
Speaker 4: But when they.
Speaker 5: Lost it, instead of changing their candidates or changing their positions,
Speaker 5: they decided, well, why don't we try to change our voters.
Speaker 4: And that's why we saw the.
Speaker 5: Reversals in certain states of some of the remedies that
Speaker 5: made it easier for people to vote. Then the second
Speaker 5: thing that happens is years of working on this, they
Speaker 5: put in these ultra conservative Supreme Court justices, and as
Speaker 5: I point out, the crazy way the Senate rules work now,
Speaker 5: it takes only fifty one votes to put one of
Speaker 5: those justices on, not sixty. So that's what you saw
Speaker 5: in those numbers with Amy Coney, Barrett and Gorsic and Caapna. However,
Speaker 5: to reverse what they do, like when they threw out
Speaker 5: Roe v. Wade and the Dobbs decision. The way our
Speaker 5: rules work in the Senate, even when we had the
Speaker 5: majority in the House, it takes sixty votes to codify
Speaker 5: Roe v. Wade into a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: It takes sixty votes to do something about voting rights
Speaker 5: or immigration. And that is why I make this case
Speaker 5: that you literally have this minority rule now on major
Speaker 5: issues that affect Americans, when it only takes fifty one
Speaker 5: votes to put those judges on, but it takes sixty
Speaker 5: to reverse any of the change unless it's involving spending
Speaker 5: and taxing. Because decades ago, Robert Byrd, who is no
Speaker 5: longer with us, he died ten years ago, he somehow
Speaker 5: not because it's in the Constitution created the Bird rule, right.
Speaker 4: Yes, and so we are still abiding by that.
Speaker 1: Will you explain what the Bird rule is for everyone
Speaker 1: who and also me who's forgotten what it is but
Speaker 1: know it exists.
Speaker 5: Okay, so here it is. What's that about? Is that
Speaker 5: if it's a about taxing or spending. It's something called reconciliation.
Speaker 5: You can pass things with fifty one votes. And what's interesting,
Speaker 5: and that's how we did the Inflation Reduction Act that
Speaker 5: allowed us to do that great thing on the pharmaceutical crisis.
Speaker 5: It allowed us to invest in climate change, but it
Speaker 5: didn't allow us to do anything on immigration. It wouldn't
Speaker 5: allow us to do anything on voting. It wouldn't allow
Speaker 5: us to put Roe v. Wade into place. So it
Speaker 5: is literally one of those exceptions that he carved out.
Speaker 5: There are over one hundred and fifty exceptions to the filibuster,
Speaker 5: including for compensation for space accidents.
Speaker 4: That's only forty one.
Speaker 5: Because over time, all right, go on, it's just unbelievable.
Speaker 5: Over time, people were actually pragmatic. They said, well, this
Speaker 5: is really important, we need to get it done, so
Speaker 5: we'll make an exception. But somehow now when it comes
Speaker 5: to people's very civil rights, we're not able to get
Speaker 5: that exception. So that is one of the things I
Speaker 5: go through in the book. But if I had to
Speaker 5: say what brings the book together, it is this simple
Speaker 5: idea that yes, we've had set backs, but the focus
Speaker 5: in politics should not be to lament each and every setback,
Speaker 5: but to rejoice in and move forward with the comebacks
Speaker 5: and the story of how with this crazy rules in
Speaker 5: place and the fifty to fifty Senate that last summer
Speaker 5: about a year ago, when everyone counted us out, we
Speaker 5: were able to get past the Inflation Reduction Act, which
Speaker 5: I just explained, but also health care for our veteran
Speaker 5: station by burn Pitt, the semiconductor bill to make chips
Speaker 5: in America again, the beginnings of a gun safety law
Speaker 5: that wasn't at all enough, but for the first time
Speaker 5: we took on the NRA with our Republican colleagues, the
Speaker 5: infrastructure law. So many of these things are bipartisan and
Speaker 5: took a lot of hard work. But the point is,
Speaker 5: believe me, and I'm sure you remember this moment. People
Speaker 5: were counting out the President, they were counting out the
Speaker 5: Democrats in the House and Senate, and we were able
Speaker 5: to get this done.
Speaker 1: So that's a.
Speaker 5: Lot of the individual stories from my own life of
Speaker 5: finding out I had breast cancer and having to go
Speaker 5: to the Senate floor with a bunch of guys who
Speaker 5: had no idea what this was or what it was
Speaker 5: like to have hot finishes. Let me tell you that
Speaker 5: and then getting through that and going on to work
Speaker 5: with my colleagues to get these bills passed.
Speaker 4: You know, that's joy.
Speaker 5: It's joy to help constituents when a family's trying to
Speaker 5: adopt a child from another country and they run into
Speaker 5: red tape, or someone gets their benefits denied and you
Speaker 5: fix it for them, or you come up with a
Speaker 5: new idea for a law. And I think right now,
Speaker 5: it's so easy to just hate our politics because of
Speaker 5: all the divides. But I just want people to remember
Speaker 5: that there are people that have hope and they never
Speaker 5: give it up every single day, and they go to
Speaker 5: work to get things done. But both elected officials and
Speaker 5: staff and people in government in general.
Speaker 1: I think about Biden, He's had incredibly successful presidency thus far.
Speaker 1: Why is there so much noise about him having open
Speaker 1: primaries not running again. I mean, can you just explain
Speaker 1: this to me? I mean, I just don't get it.
Speaker 5: Well, I think it is politics, and there's always going
Speaker 5: to be people that are running, people who don't like
Speaker 5: someone like someone. But I just kind of always go
Speaker 5: back to having just spent the last four days in
Speaker 5: my state just where people are, and I think people
Speaker 5: got pretty exhausted by the pandemic. They were in the
Speaker 5: three hundred million separate silos, right they got pissed off.
Speaker 5: They were writing angry texts and tweets. And now suddenly
Speaker 5: they're all in together. And wasn't always an easy transition,
Speaker 5: but it's getting better every day. I think a lot
Speaker 5: of them want one stability and they want to move forward.
Speaker 5: They know we got workforce problems, they know it's hard
Speaker 5: to get childcare and housing, and they want someone who's
Speaker 5: going to work on it and not just look for divides.
Speaker 5: So when I look to Joe Biden, I think there's
Speaker 5: going to be quite the case to make We are
Speaker 5: in a results business in politics, No matter all the
Speaker 5: noise and what all the divides are and all the
Speaker 5: mean stuff, we're in.
Speaker 4: The results are into business. It results or no. He
Speaker 4: got us through the pandemic. He put our economy on
Speaker 4: strong footing, and it actually came out of the pandemic
Speaker 4: in a better place than so many other nations did.
Speaker 4: And he continues one by one to tackle the problems
Speaker 4: of our nation and our world. And he led the
Speaker 4: effort to bring people together on Ukraine. So I think
Speaker 4: that there's going to be along with obviously presidents of Lensky.
Speaker 4: I think there's going to be a lot of focus
Speaker 4: on those results.
Speaker 1: I think people.
Speaker 5: Will when they get to the in the end, to
Speaker 5: the ballot box, They're going to look at what results
Speaker 5: and what it matters to them.
Speaker 1: Are people just dissatisfied with presidents? I mean it just
Speaker 1: is sort of baffling to me.
Speaker 4: People have been through a lot.
Speaker 5: So when you're gone through flat, don't you're not just like,
Speaker 5: I love politics.
Speaker 4: It's cool. I'm me up.
Speaker 1: It like not the first thing.
Speaker 5: And that's actually not to keep bringing this back, but
Speaker 5: I wrote this book to get at that, because there
Speaker 5: is understandable anger. In fact, my book was announced back
Speaker 5: in November the same day as Bernie's book, and my
Speaker 5: book is called The Joy of Politics, and Bernie's book
Speaker 5: is called It's Okay to Be Angry at Capitalism.
Speaker 4: And this was hilarious and so as your friends.
Speaker 5: And as we went into December, I was trying to
Speaker 5: get two bills past one involving the tech companies. Where
Speaker 5: As my husband said to my daughter last summer, be
Speaker 5: nice to your mom. This weekend, she's taking on the
Speaker 5: four biggest companies in the world. Has ever known, and
Speaker 5: she just got banned from Russia. So one of them
Speaker 5: was that a tech bill, but the other one was
Speaker 5: for the Afghan refugees to get them out of Limbo,
Speaker 5: a bill I actually have with Lindsey Graham. So here
Speaker 5: I am trying to get this done, and everywhere I
Speaker 5: go it's it's roadblox and Bernie keeps watching me on
Speaker 5: the floor. And then every night had come up to
Speaker 5: me and say, I got one thing to say to you.
Speaker 4: Where's the joy? Joy out there? Where's the joy?
Speaker 5: And so one of the things that we all have
Speaker 5: to do in our own lives right now, it's not
Speaker 5: just politicians, is to just remember where we came from
Speaker 5: a few years ago and where we are now. As
Speaker 5: irritating as some stuff may be, our country is still
Speaker 5: an amazing place to be. It's still a place where
Speaker 5: people come to pursue their dreams. It's still a place
Speaker 5: where you can grow up with nothing and through education
Speaker 5: and just through it all do whatever you want, basically.
Speaker 5: And there's a lot of things, of course that hold
Speaker 5: us back, but there's some amazing success stories in this country,
Speaker 5: and I just don't want us to forget that or
Speaker 5: forget what we stand for when it comes to freedom
Speaker 5: and when it comes to a place where everyone has
Speaker 5: the ability to get their fair shot.
Speaker 1: Do you think there'll be tech regulation on the horizon?
Speaker 1: I mean, where do you think we are right now?
Speaker 5: Yes, I do, in part because the rest of the
Speaker 5: world is moving. So a few things are going to
Speaker 5: dictate change. The first is AI artificial intelligence. We're going
Speaker 5: to have to put rules of the road in place
Speaker 5: on that, which the companies themselves who are involved in
Speaker 5: that part of tech have been very outwardly supportive of.
Speaker 5: But we got to make sure it's the right regulations,
Speaker 5: so that's going to happen. The second thing is other
Speaker 5: countries are moving. Europe is moving big time on competition
Speaker 5: policy and privacy, and I would like us to have
Speaker 5: our own, uniquely American form of regulation. But at some
Speaker 5: point the companies can't keep that. It's going to destroy
Speaker 5: them when they're agreeing to it. In other places, that's
Speaker 5: like you can't always put your own stuff at the
Speaker 5: top of the search engine when you have thy percent
Speaker 5: market share at Google, or you can't charge thirty percent
Speaker 5: Apple and Google on the app store for certain companies
Speaker 5: and not others and try to justify why it would
Speaker 5: be that much on every sale made, or you can't
Speaker 5: copy other products like Amazon has been wont to do
Speaker 5: at times, or that you can't get hood kids hooked
Speaker 5: on fentanyl by putting allowing cartels to lace pills with
Speaker 5: ventanyl and then saying you don't have enough people to
Speaker 5: take things down, which we're seeing on Facebook and some
Speaker 5: of these other social media platforms.
Speaker 1: These are all big deal things.
Speaker 5: So I think the combination of AI Europe moving and
Speaker 5: then how bad it's getting just makes me believe that
Speaker 5: some of this is going to pass. So I'm in
Speaker 5: it for the long game, as much as they wish
Speaker 5: that wasn't true.
Speaker 4: But as I see, you know, we have losing.
Speaker 5: A third of the nation's newspapers by the year twenty
Speaker 5: twenty five. Yeah, I think that the news organization should
Speaker 5: be able to combine their leverage to get better rates
Speaker 5: from Facebook and Google. So that's one of the bills
Speaker 5: that we got through the committee recently, and any example
Speaker 5: of what I'm pushing. I don't want to destroy these companies.
Speaker 5: They've given us great things, but this idea that we
Speaker 5: don't put any rules in place. It was Adam Smith,
Speaker 5: the godfather of capitalism, who the founding Fathers saw is
Speaker 5: one of their major major inspirations. When it came to
Speaker 5: the economy, it was he who said in mister invisible Hand.
Speaker 5: He was the one that said, beware the standing army
Speaker 5: of monopolies. And that's why we have always, on a
Speaker 5: bipartisan basis, put in competitive guardrails and competition policy. But
Speaker 5: somehow tech has just been able to say, Hey, you
Speaker 5: can't sue us, there's no rules. We're like companies in
Speaker 5: a garage. But guess what garage anymore. We're the biggest
Speaker 5: companies in the world. So I hope that they'll come around,
Speaker 5: given what's happening in the rest of the world and
Speaker 5: how another industrialized nations are agreeing to rules or getting
Speaker 5: it's not really up to them. Is that right now
Speaker 5: in Washington it is. They seem to control a lot
Speaker 5: of decisions. And so my hope is that the public
Speaker 5: will rise up. And we've already seen this with privacy,
Speaker 5: and it's going to start being a thing in elections.
Speaker 5: One mom likened her situation. I did a thing before
Speaker 5: Hakeem was the minority leader. He and I did a
Speaker 5: joint thing with moms from Brooklyn and from Minnesota, and
Speaker 5: one of the moms said that she had three kids
Speaker 5: and for the youngest, she just could not keep up
Speaker 5: with all the sites that the child was on, way
Speaker 5: too young for the sites are on. Kept enlisting the
Speaker 5: older kid to try to help her to do workarounds
Speaker 5: and to stop it and to do everything she could.
Speaker 5: And she said she felt like a water fossl was
Speaker 5: on and the water was overflowing and she was out
Speaker 5: there with a mop by herself, just trying to clean
Speaker 5: it up. And I think that really captures how a
Speaker 5: lot of parents feel right now about what's happening on
Speaker 5: the internet.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Amy koebershar Well, thank you Mollie. A joy
Speaker 1: to be on with you. Hi, it's Mollie and I
Speaker 1: am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics,
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Speaker 1: fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Jennifer Paulmary is
Speaker 1: the co host of Showtimes a Circus and a political advisor.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Jennifer Paul Mary.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Mollie.
Speaker 4: It's loateful to be with.
Speaker 1: You, delighted to have you. So I want to talk
Speaker 1: to you about the big piece you wrote in the
Speaker 1: magazine that I am a special correspondent for and you
Speaker 1: are also a special correspondent or.
Speaker 3: Some No, I'm not as cool as that. I'm just
Speaker 3: a contributing editor.
Speaker 1: An unspecial correspondent. I'm kidding, of course, talk to me
Speaker 1: about the governor of Michigan.
Speaker 3: I met Gretchen Witmer in the Saul of twenty twenty
Speaker 3: in the middle of the pandemic, right. I went out
Speaker 3: to Lansing to interview her for Showtime the Circus about
Speaker 3: how she was dealing with the politics around COVID. And
Speaker 3: you know, I worked for Hillary Clinton on her presenters
Speaker 3: of the campaign, as our communications are very interested in
Speaker 3: women leaders, writing a couple of books about it. What
Speaker 3: struck me about her right away is I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: she does not take the criticism personally. You know, at
Speaker 3: that point Trump had already done the whole that woman
Speaker 3: from Michigan a couple of times, you know, said that
Speaker 3: gone after her in that way.
Speaker 4: I was there on.
Speaker 3: Constitution Day, so it was September seventeenth, I believed, twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: and there was a Second Amendment pro Second Amendment rally
Speaker 3: at the Capitol, you know, a couple miles from her house,
Speaker 3: all sorts of assault weapons. There, a lot of like
Speaker 3: ditch the witch signs people trying to get a repeal
Speaker 3: effort underway.
Speaker 4: Bill Barr had been.
Speaker 3: In Michigan the day before, addressing a college and said
Speaker 3: that complaint compared her COVID lockdowns to slave And what
Speaker 3: we came to find out three weeks later was she
Speaker 3: was the target of this kidnapping and assassination plot.
Speaker 4: And what's crazy, you know.
Speaker 3: And she told me later that when I talked to
Speaker 3: her about all of these things in her backyard and
Speaker 3: Lansing in September of twenty twenty, she already knew about
Speaker 3: the plot. She didn't talk about it yet, but she
Speaker 3: already knew, and she knew that Bill Barr knew, and
Speaker 3: he still said these things that he said to her
Speaker 3: about her and about you know, slavery, and she talked
Speaker 3: about when we did the interview, she talked about what
Speaker 3: the administration says and how this rile peoples up and
Speaker 3: it is dangerous. And I was just really struck that
Speaker 3: she pushes back, doesn't give in, doesn't change her position
Speaker 3: in the face of all this criticism, and manages not
Speaker 3: to take it personally, which was which is different than
Speaker 3: what I've seen for other leaders. And like from what
Speaker 3: I experienced personally with when Hillary was attacked, you know,
Speaker 3: you're thinking, you're attacked, we must be doing something wrong.
Speaker 3: And so I wanted to come back and spend a
Speaker 3: week with her to figure out, like, where is this
Speaker 3: coming from. She's a gen X leader. She's not the
Speaker 3: first through the door, right, She's Jennifer grand Home was
Speaker 3: the first woman governor of Michigan, so gradual womber watch
Speaker 3: Jennifer Grant.
Speaker 4: Help take a lot of things there.
Speaker 3: She watched Hillary take a lot of things and arrows.
Speaker 3: And so there's an interesting thing happening now with gen
Speaker 3: x women leaders coming to the floor, and you know
Speaker 3: they're able to They're able to deal with some of
Speaker 3: this some of the incoming better. And obviously Michigan has
Speaker 3: this incredible amount of women leaders. All three of state
Speaker 3: bid elected officers or women, the ag, the Secretary of State,
Speaker 3: forty percent of the state legislature, which is now Democrat
Speaker 3: after being both houses being held by Republicans first time
Speaker 3: in forty years. Half of the Congressional delegation are women.
Speaker 3: So there's just a lot of interesting happening with women
Speaker 3: in Michigan, and I wanted to explore.
Speaker 1: So I want you to say a little more about
Speaker 1: what it means, because this is something I spend a
Speaker 1: lot of time thinking about. How do you feel like this?
Speaker 1: This ability to not take it personally is an asset
Speaker 1: for a woman running at the national level, which she
Speaker 1: obviously will be soon.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I will, like well, I think that
Speaker 3: she would be a very good presidential contender if she
Speaker 3: did choose to, you know, in twenty eight or whenever
Speaker 3: it is, if she does choose to run. But you know,
Speaker 3: one of the things that happened when in the Clinton
Speaker 3: campaign was I had this epiphany very late, like in
Speaker 3: October of twenty sixteen, and I was like trying to
Speaker 3: think of why everybody hated her so much.
Speaker 4: I just watched footage from like the last.
Speaker 3: Locker up rally, and I just had this thought that
Speaker 3: what we had done was show that Hillary Clinton could
Speaker 3: do the job the same way the job has always
Speaker 3: been done, which means the same way a man has
Speaker 3: done the job, which means you're robbing her of half
Speaker 3: of her humanity, which means, of course people think inauthentic. Right,
Speaker 3: of course, people think that she's suspicious or hiding something
Speaker 3: because we were trying to force her, you know, force
Speaker 3: like a square peg into a round hole. And I
Speaker 3: still thought she would win at that time, but it
Speaker 3: was sort of like this chasm opened up, and I
Speaker 3: saw how much it matters the role models we have
Speaker 3: in our head. We just had no other way to
Speaker 3: think about a president other than had that it is
Speaker 3: done by a man, and so I'm looking for women
Speaker 3: that are speaking a little differently about leadership. And to
Speaker 3: see that she didn't take it personally, which I have
Speaker 3: to say, you know, Hillary would always say, I listened
Speaker 3: to curticism, I try not to take it personally. I
Speaker 3: listened to like what I can learn from and then
Speaker 3: try to disregard the rest. But still it was hard
Speaker 3: to not think at the root of all the criticism
Speaker 3: that you know you personally are doing something wrong, and
Speaker 3: you know whitmer two important things I think for her
Speaker 3: seeing grand Home succeed, be attack, Hillary succeed and be attacked.
Speaker 4: Is she expected to succeed.
Speaker 3: And do well in politics and knew not to take
Speaker 3: it seriously when people came after her, And so I
Speaker 3: think that that makes you you lose a sense of
Speaker 3: defensiveness that you know, it's encumbersome. It's cumbersome for any candidate,
Speaker 3: but particularly for women. And you're just relatable. And the
Speaker 3: thing that she always talks about, you know, you ask
Speaker 3: people like what shipu's leader?
Speaker 4: What motivates yous? And she has and some level.
Speaker 3: Very common answer that I had found frustrating until I
Speaker 3: went friends of time with her, which was, well, I'm
Speaker 3: part of the Sandwich generation. I had to take care
Speaker 3: of my terminally ill mother when she was dying and
Speaker 3: take care of my daughter at the same time, and
Speaker 3: that was frustrating to deal with insurance companies, so it
Speaker 3: set her. She didn't set her default to action, but
Speaker 3: also she knew how to get things done. And you're like, okay,
Speaker 3: that sounds very common and it's and to women, a
Speaker 3: very common experience for women, sort of a unique experience women,
Speaker 3: that's experiences unique for women. And then I thought, of
Speaker 3: course that's it, Like, that's it, Molly, Like, we now
Speaker 3: see this is lead, This is a different role, This
Speaker 3: is a different style leadership, This is a different model
Speaker 3: of leadership. And we recognize that. We see how there
Speaker 3: are a lot of women that can relate to that.
Speaker 3: And then this is one thing that was striking to
Speaker 3: me because normally with women leaders, you don't hear people
Speaker 3: say when you ask them what do you think of
Speaker 3: that person? They don't normally say she's just like me,
Speaker 3: she's one of us, right, No, it's certainly not, but
Speaker 3: that's what they say about her. I also, I would say,
Speaker 3: I've heard that said about Amy clubis sharm. When I
Speaker 3: would go to clublish our events in New Hampshire. When
Speaker 3: she was running for president, people would say like, oh,
Speaker 3: she's just one of us, She's just a normal middle
Speaker 3: class mom, normal middle class mom ten fifteen years ago.
Speaker 1: But then they wouldn't vote for her.
Speaker 3: Didn't mean, right, someone are gonna be president and that's like,
Speaker 3: so what's really exciting? And like, Whitmer is sort of
Speaker 3: a to tell this story. But she's not the only
Speaker 3: woman that's like that, right, So that that's what's exciting.
Speaker 4: It's like, as I'm looking for.
Speaker 3: I'm not one of the people that believes a woman
Speaker 3: can't win or like God for biby, try that again,
Speaker 3: because Hillary got more votes, right, she proved a woman
Speaker 3: can win, and she did it with halfy humanity.
Speaker 4: Tied behind her back.
Speaker 3: I'm looking for progress to see women don't have to
Speaker 3: model themselves after men in order to be seen as
Speaker 3: leaders and like what the advent of? You know? And
Speaker 3: I think part of the reason why Witmer is able
Speaker 3: to shed all of that is because there are so
Speaker 3: many women leaders in Michigan, so they're not just judged
Speaker 3: by you know, because otherwise people expect each woman to
Speaker 3: embody the qualities of all women, and then that's an
Speaker 3: impossible standard. Feel like that's one of the things that
Speaker 3: happened to Hillary. Because there are so many women leaders,
Speaker 3: they're judged on their own ability, not as a composite,
Speaker 3: fake person.
Speaker 4: I'm able to relate better with voters.
Speaker 1: Or like the last country in the world who can't
Speaker 1: fucking get it together? What do you think that is?
Speaker 4: I think a.
Speaker 3: Big piece of it is how we elect leaders in
Speaker 3: a parliamentary system. It would be easier because you know,
Speaker 3: consider this if Hillary had they've had a parliamentary system,
Speaker 3: and then rather than going through a primary, you were
Speaker 3: selected by your peers. Women do well with their peers,
Speaker 3: you can, you know, so you're selected by so in
Speaker 3: this case, say five hundred and thirty five members of Congress,
Speaker 3: you know roughly three hundred Democrats say, if you are
Speaker 3: making your argument to you know three or four hundred
Speaker 3: people who are able to know you as an individual.
Speaker 3: They can know you, and this is so important, they
Speaker 3: can talk about you right to others as a human,
Speaker 3: as an individual, and when you go before the country,
Speaker 3: you're going you're going before the country as your parties,
Speaker 3: as these people have are all your validators. They have
Speaker 3: selected you, rather than wanting in an open primary where
Speaker 3: you don't have that kind of validation, and you're not
Speaker 3: able to get to know the people who are secting
Speaker 3: know as leader one on one. And I know Hillary
Speaker 3: Clinton believes that is like the big problem. And then
Speaker 3: there's just you know, American culture. It's such a big culture,
Speaker 3: such a big country.
Speaker 4: So not very male dominated in most professions.
Speaker 3: Still there haven't been like these avenues for women to
Speaker 3: come through and be able to have their stories be heard.
Speaker 3: But I really do think it's possible.
Speaker 1: You don't think Americans are just fucking sexist, right.
Speaker 3: I think that everyone has unconscious gender bias, and then
Speaker 3: that is pretty crippling in the country's gender bias, we've
Speaker 3: unconscious race bias.
Speaker 4: And it's not just a.
Speaker 3: Problem on the right by any means, and I think
Speaker 3: sometimes it's you know, I experienced it a lot with Democrats.
Speaker 3: The problem with Democrats is they're so sure they're not
Speaker 3: racist and they're not sexist. They're very if they don't
Speaker 3: like a woman, and very like think that there's a
Speaker 3: legitimate reason for it, as opposed to like welling into
Speaker 3: those those kinds of traps.
Speaker 1: I've seen this a lot, by the way, a lot.
Speaker 1: I remember a man who very involved in democratic politics
Speaker 1: explaining to me why he wasn't racist or sexist. He
Speaker 1: just didn't like the vice president.
Speaker 4: Also didn't like Hillary, also didn't like him. Was this Warren?
Speaker 3: Yeah, right, not racist or sexist, She's just not. And
Speaker 3: then the things you hear about Kamala Harris are all
Speaker 3: the things that are said about.
Speaker 1: That are said by racist senexus.
Speaker 4: Well, like, what are her credentials?
Speaker 1: There's just something about her.
Speaker 3: I don't like, we had an acronym for it, t
Speaker 3: sajh idl.
Speaker 4: There's just something about her.
Speaker 3: I don't like, there's just about her just and they
Speaker 3: can't get to the root of it because it is
Speaker 3: like the psychiciotist thing, you know. But with Harris, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: what's she really doing? And there's good research about this.
Speaker 3: People assume a woman leader's not getting anything done unless
Speaker 3: she's over communicating about it, or like, what are really
Speaker 3: her credentials? With happening with Harris, the constant head one
Speaker 3: she faces, you're like, there you go.
Speaker 4: She's first. She's first in many ways in.
Speaker 1: The Harris situation, I do think you have the incredible
Speaker 1: problem of being vice president, which is that is a
Speaker 1: job totally I mean, it's you know, they made a
Speaker 1: whole show about it. It's the worst job in the world.
Speaker 1: You're both the most important and also completely you know, overshadowed.
Speaker 3: Talk about mismatched expectations for someone coming into a job.
Speaker 3: She's so exceptional. She's the first, she's the first woman,
Speaker 3: she's the first Black woman, she's the first Asian woman.
Speaker 4: She's going to ignite this ticket on you know.
Speaker 3: And she's going to be this historic, groundbreaking, exciting vice president.
Speaker 3: But you know what she really is vice president, which
Speaker 3: is very much behind the scenes job. You know, I
Speaker 3: have pretty an insight to how she spends her days.
Speaker 3: It is the days of a shadow president, because her
Speaker 3: most important job is to be ready to do that job. Right.
Speaker 3: So but that's not you know, that's not set up
Speaker 3: to meet expectations of excitement.
Speaker 4: It's a very very like that's a very tough situation
Speaker 4: to be.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about what the governor is is up
Speaker 1: to now?
Speaker 4: So what's interesting about her?
Speaker 3: When I think she's you know, we sort of know
Speaker 3: for her sort of a disservice to hers. We sort
Speaker 3: of know her by you know, all the crazy things
Speaker 3: that have happened to her, men showing up at her
Speaker 3: home at office with guns to complain about the job
Speaker 3: she's doing, the plot and like that.
Speaker 1: That's like a very Michigan thing. I mean, I feel
Speaker 1: like every elected woman in Michigan has a story of
Speaker 1: like some guys showing up at her office with a gun.
Speaker 3: Jocelyn Ben's in the Secretary of State I think Mally
Speaker 3: Moros is a state you know, state senator.
Speaker 4: She's sort of you.
Speaker 1: Know, I'm sure Debbie Dingle has a story like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, go on, yeah, Debbie Dingle, Debby seven out. And
Speaker 3: so it's sort of distracting. But I've thought a lot
Speaker 3: about why that was happening to Whitmer on such a
Speaker 3: you know, dramatic scale, and I think that from Michigan.
Speaker 3: And I really think it's it's the patriarchy crumbling. Look,
Speaker 3: it's it's the debris that hits you as the thing
Speaker 3: is crumbling, Because what's happening in Michigan is women leaders
Speaker 3: are not the exception. Women leaders are the rule. I
Speaker 3: think that's the reckoning that women leaders of this generation
Speaker 3: of Gen X millennial are going through. First through the
Speaker 3: door of the baby armor's a ton of blowback, next
Speaker 3: wave through the door, getting a lot of blowback. But
Speaker 3: where's it coming from. It's coming from the fact. I mean,
Speaker 3: if you are resorting to guns, as you know, as
Speaker 3: some people did in Michigan to stop a woman who
Speaker 3: is already in charge, that is its own admission that
Speaker 3: you have lost if you're trying to keep women from
Speaker 3: having power. So I think you know, so I am
Speaker 3: not pessimistic about how people feel about women. Are leaders,
Speaker 3: are women's chances, because I think that's probably what this
Speaker 3: reckoning is, kind of the battle of the bulge for
Speaker 3: some men that you know, obviously not all that want
Speaker 3: to stop women in power. But the other thing is
Speaker 3: that Lemmer just keeps winning. She was first elected in
Speaker 3: two thousand, so she spent almost twenty five years in
Speaker 3: politics and has never won election by less than eight
Speaker 3: a general election by less than eight points. Dramatically overperforms
Speaker 3: and she's very skilled. She finds a way to win.
Speaker 3: Winning a trifecta both Republicans. The Republicans controlled both the
Speaker 3: House and the Senate and the state legislature. She had
Speaker 3: a plan for how they might win back both houses.
Speaker 3: It seemed unlikely they managed to get it done. I
Speaker 3: talked to one reporter who said, everyone in Lansing understands
Speaker 3: the only reason the Democrats are in charge, the only
Speaker 3: reason a house the Senate Democrat has their seat is
Speaker 3: because of this is because of her in the kind
Speaker 3: of campaign that that she ran, and she's very aggressively
Speaker 3: moving forward a very gressive agenda. Now, sometimes your strength
Speaker 3: becomes your weakness. Right, you could see a scenario in
Speaker 3: which some of the things that she passed may end
Speaker 3: at being unpopular or problematic in the implementation. Like what
Speaker 3: I haven't seeing. There's not anything that I've seen that
Speaker 3: they've taken to date that would be in that category.
Speaker 3: There's some tax rebates, some Democrats even don't like some
Speaker 3: tax preferences for car companies. Things like that, a lot
Speaker 3: of money, a lot of money going out the door,
Speaker 3: whether in the form of a tax rebates or being
Speaker 3: or you know, those kinds of things that can you
Speaker 3: just never know how these things play out, right, they
Speaker 3: can come back at you.
Speaker 4: So it is it's not as if.
Speaker 3: She has this, you know, not anybody's got some kind
Speaker 3: of easy, easy path for you don't know how many
Speaker 3: things are going to play out.
Speaker 4: But what she is, you know, and I told her
Speaker 4: about you have a very divided state politically. Do you
Speaker 4: think that you should.
Speaker 3: Trend your expectations or maybe taper or put moderate a
Speaker 3: position based on where other people are? And she said no.
Speaker 3: She said that she thinks her job is to make
Speaker 3: the most informed say and she has a very rigorous
Speaker 3: decision making process, really impressively led by.
Speaker 4: Her chief has stabbed jo Anne. Hal's very rigorous, very inclusive.
Speaker 3: Once it made a decision, they stick with it and
Speaker 3: they get it done.
Speaker 4: And she's like, my job is to go was flame.
Speaker 3: Why I think it's the right thing to people don't
Speaker 3: agree with it, So you could see how like that
Speaker 3: could you know, that could create political problems down the hike.
Speaker 3: But she seems at peace with this. And then also
Speaker 3: the attacks, they haven't they take a toll. She's been
Speaker 3: clear on that. She's been clear of the tactic under
Speaker 3: her family. She's kind of been dealing with this her
Speaker 3: whole career. A very interesting thing about her, and I
Speaker 3: think it's being her age right because like I said before,
Speaker 3: like she's coming into this reckoning of like people coming
Speaker 3: to terms with women being in power for real and
Speaker 3: over long periods of time, not just a one off.
Speaker 4: GRETUA member is the first person to have figned a
Speaker 4: warrant for Larry Nasser, the US gymnastics doctor.
Speaker 3: She was in the middle of that fight because a
Speaker 3: because the county prosecutor, a man had to resign because
Speaker 3: he was part of a human traffic chex ring and
Speaker 3: she was asked to come in and fill out the term,
Speaker 3: so like the point being something BIG's going on here, right,
Speaker 3: She's just kind of in the you know, she's been
Speaker 3: in the eye of that storm and been in it
Speaker 3: for a while, so pretty comfortable in dealing with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's so interesting. Thank you so much. I hope
Speaker 1: you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Michigan women. You're fascinating Michigan women.
Speaker 1: We love it. Good for them, no more perfectly. Jesse Cannon,
Speaker 1: Molly Jong Fast.
Speaker 6: You know that Joe Biden is an evil dictator when
Speaker 6: his son actually, wait, how did I mess that up?
Speaker 6: That's right, He's not an evil dictator. His son actually
Speaker 6: had a deplete guilty for his text troubles.
Speaker 1: So I think it's important that we just talk about
Speaker 1: this for a minute. One of the things Republicans have
Speaker 1: been just losing their minds about is Hunter Biden. You
Speaker 1: will have seen his pictures. You will have seen people
Speaker 1: he said this, he'sa that. But I would want to
Speaker 1: point out so he had a gun charge and some
Speaker 1: tax stuff. He didn't pay his taxes. He owed thirty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars in proper deductions and filing his taxes, like
Speaker 1: Roger Stone and his wife said with the DJ last
Speaker 1: year for two million dollars in unpaid taxes. There was
Speaker 1: no outrage. It was just a normal day. So people
Speaker 1: settle with the irs all the time. I'm not defending
Speaker 1: Hunter Biden because honestly, who cares. But Republicans are just furious.
Speaker 1: And the reason why it's our moment of fuckery is
Speaker 1: that you can never make these people happy. There is
Speaker 1: no world in which telling these people they will never
Speaker 1: think it's enough. They will never feel that Joe Biden
Speaker 1: has held Hunter accountable enough. And for that that is
Speaker 1: our moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode. To
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to
Speaker 1: hear the best minds in politics make sense of all
Speaker 1: this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
Speaker 1: it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again,
Speaker 1: thanks for listening.