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.
Speaker 2: Nazis march proudley through the streets of Nashville this weekend.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you. Today, the
Speaker 2: New Republic's Michael Tamaski joins us to talk about the
Speaker 2: media coverage of the twenty twenty four election. That we'll
Speaker 2: talk to the New Yorkers Jonathan Blitzer about his new
Speaker 2: book Everyone Who Is Gone is here, the United States,
Speaker 2: Central America and the making of a crisis. But first
Speaker 2: we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project,
Speaker 2: z owned Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics. It's Monday, and that means
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, let's go. We're both in terrible moods.
Speaker 3: Fucking cranky today. I mean, we're both just like bitchy
Speaker 3: people today.
Speaker 1: The first thing we're going to talk about here is
Speaker 1: the Oh my god, let's just get this out here.
Speaker 1: No one is swamping out any presidential candidates period. Paragraph
Speaker 1: not happening.
Speaker 4: You know what.
Speaker 3: I am so fucking done with these people who think
Speaker 3: I'm going to propose a very clever political strategy and say.
Speaker 4: That Jew Biden should retire.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, we'll replace him magically with with who?
Speaker 4: With who?
Speaker 3: You fucking morons, There is no option here. You got
Speaker 3: to dance with the one that brung you, fight with
Speaker 3: the army you came to war with.
Speaker 4: This is so goddamn dumb. I you know what it is.
Speaker 4: I'm sorry.
Speaker 3: It's a luxury good for people who have never run
Speaker 3: a goddamn race, who've never worked in an actual election,
Speaker 3: who've never done politics at the retail level. This idea
Speaker 3: that oh, well, it's so simple, we'll just swap out
Speaker 3: Biden Harris for who who?
Speaker 4: Exactly? True?
Speaker 1: How about two white people, let's swap them out for right?
Speaker 1: This idea that there's some democratic machine that is going
Speaker 1: to go in there, right, the Council of Owls. He's
Speaker 1: going to come out and be like, sorry, Biden, you're
Speaker 1: eighty one. We've had a talk, we've decided it's enough,
Speaker 1: and you know, sorry, Kamala, you're the highest woman elected
Speaker 1: ever in America and the.
Speaker 3: First African American woman in the vice presidential position.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but we've decided, the Council of vows we know better,
Speaker 1: because this is the Batman movie, and so we're going
Speaker 1: to swap you both out for two. It just is
Speaker 1: so insane. It's not going to happen.
Speaker 4: I mean, I hear this Molly so often. I know
Speaker 4: you do too.
Speaker 3: And my question is always who, who exactly? Who exactly?
Speaker 3: Right now? Are you going to pick up the phone and.
Speaker 1: Call Michelle Oh, a woman who has said she will
Speaker 1: never run for elected office?
Speaker 4: Right? Get like?
Speaker 3: Oh? Govin's ready? Okay, great? Sure tell me another. Tell
Speaker 3: me any practical political person, any professional person who has
Speaker 3: been in an elections, who has run a campaign, who
Speaker 3: has been a candidate in a national campaign. Every single
Speaker 3: person knows this is a process that begins two or
Speaker 3: three years before the actual election day. The moving parts
Speaker 3: are astounding in their complexity and their expense, and the
Speaker 3: time it takes to put them together, and the arrogance
Speaker 3: of people who believe that they've got some simple option here. Look,
Speaker 3: is it hard? Of course? Campaigns should be hard. They're difficult,
Speaker 3: They're complex, and is by and old. Oh my god,
Speaker 3: you just fucking notice now, great people brilliant.
Speaker 4: So is Trump.
Speaker 3: And here's the thing that I've said to a lot
Speaker 3: of people who've done that, and have brought this up
Speaker 3: to me, and I said, who's the one person ever
Speaker 3: in history? Now, as of right now, in the primaries
Speaker 3: and general elections, twenty eight people have run against Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: Who's the one person who's ever beaten him. That would
Speaker 3: be Joseph Robin Att motherfucking bob. So they can stop
Speaker 3: this bullshit. It needs to stop. It is the most
Speaker 3: a feat bullshit, counterproductive, self referential, home yoga dick sucking
Speaker 3: I've ever heard in my life. It needs to fucking stop.
Speaker 1: Tell us what you really say. I been clear enough,
Speaker 1: not clear. I have a theory that I want to
Speaker 1: try out with you, which is that condonry has become
Speaker 1: completely removed from the real world. Yes, and part of
Speaker 1: it maybe because people are not reading mainstream media anymore. Right.
Speaker 1: We have a country of three hundred and thirty million people, right,
Speaker 1: and a million tuned into The Daily Show. Okay, say
Speaker 1: twenty million people watch that dumb YouTube clip of John
Speaker 1: Stewart saying that Joe Biden was too old twenty even, thirty,
Speaker 1: even forty. You still have a country of hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of people, and I think the pundit industrial complex
Speaker 1: is so removed from real voters that we're almost going
Speaker 1: on nothing.
Speaker 3: There is a great gift that I have in this world.
Speaker 3: I have campaigned in thirty nine states. I don't live
Speaker 3: in Washington, I don't live in New York. I have
Speaker 3: a relatively greater exposure to America than a lot of
Speaker 3: people who write highly paid columns for expensive and elite publications.
Speaker 3: The stuff they think matters, and this is also the
Speaker 3: DC consultocracy. The stuff they think matters to Americans is
Speaker 3: completely disconnected from reality.
Speaker 5: So on the opposite, yes you are, That's why we
Speaker 5: get along so well.
Speaker 3: But at a heartfel conversation of the day with a
Speaker 3: Democrat operative and he really spent a lot of time
Speaker 3: trying to convince me that we need to talk about
Speaker 3: prescription drug coverage and labor unions, and I'm like, what
Speaker 3: the fuck are you talking about. Have you been anywhere
Speaker 3: in America in the last five years. No one's talking
Speaker 3: about that. They're talking about the things on the right.
Speaker 3: They've got their immigration machine pumped up to eleven, They've
Speaker 3: got their hate machine pumped up to eleven. Everywhere else,
Speaker 3: people are terrified that democracy is falling apart and that
Speaker 3: women are going to be put into the Handmaid's Tale.
Speaker 3: This is not an easy lift anymore to just go
Speaker 3: out and do a simple focus script and go, well,
Speaker 3: here's what we're going to do. This is the fun issue. Oh,
Speaker 3: it's jobs of the economy and education.
Speaker 4: No it's not.
Speaker 3: It's stopped being that a long time ago. We need
Speaker 3: to rereel about what's happening in the country. And not
Speaker 3: everybody is gonna is going to fit into what clever pundits,
Speaker 3: and you and I are both clever pundits ourselves. But
Speaker 3: the idea that you can you can spin this way,
Speaker 3: to spin this thing out and say, oh, we'll just
Speaker 3: swap out Joe Biden. It's a luxury good by people
Speaker 3: who do not understand how politics works or the stakes
Speaker 3: at hand.
Speaker 1: So aight point two million people watch the Daily Show
Speaker 1: on YouTube, which is good. That's good. I mean, look,
Speaker 1: I think it's probably about ten million Americans.
Speaker 3: Look, I had the number one critique of Biden from
Speaker 3: all these people. Here's the thing that fascinates me. It's
Speaker 3: not how's the economy doing. Oh, it's terrible, Biden's really
Speaker 3: fucked it up. Nope, that's not their critique. You know,
Speaker 3: Biden hasn't sufficiently, you know, fought back against ops. That's
Speaker 3: not their critique. Biden hasn't been a strong leader in
Speaker 3: foreign policy. That's not their critique. Their critique is Biden's old.
Speaker 3: We aesthetically don't like old people, and therefore we should
Speaker 3: have someone young and fresh to run against Trump. Where
Speaker 3: the exchange here isn't young versus old, it's old versus evil.
Speaker 1: Right, Well, I also think like voters, and again I
Speaker 1: don't want to make sense here, but voters are old.
Speaker 3: Yes, the average voter in this country is in their
Speaker 3: late forties, late forties, mollie.
Speaker 1: And I don't know if that's the mean motors a median,
Speaker 1: but like, my sense is that a lot of people
Speaker 1: who show up to vote are are a lot older
Speaker 1: than that.
Speaker 4: For the media and voting age is sixty one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so that's the thing is, like, I
Speaker 1: don't actually think people vote on agism.
Speaker 3: America is a post policy country on both sides.
Speaker 1: Frankly, we Democrats are trying.
Speaker 3: Let me put it this way, Barack Obama, who is
Speaker 3: the most brilliant campaign and candidate of the twentieth century,
Speaker 3: and I mean that as a high compliment. He had
Speaker 3: a two word policy, hope change, And I remember sitting
Speaker 3: in focus groups trying to like pin it down, like
Speaker 3: when we were back then, it was like, don't you
Speaker 3: know liberal Marxist Barack Obama will impose.
Speaker 4: Full communism And they were like no, I like hope
Speaker 4: and change. And on the Republican side with Trump, it's
Speaker 4: like it's like, I'm angry.
Speaker 3: I'm a sixty five year old white guy who drives
Speaker 3: a truck and I haven't had an direction in twenty years.
Speaker 4: Take revenge on my enemies for me.
Speaker 1: Donald, right, exactly.
Speaker 4: I've had too much coffee this morning.
Speaker 1: Well we both have had too much coffee that, to
Speaker 1: be honest, but I think so I want to say,
Speaker 1: Biden is not being swapped out for Michelle Obama.
Speaker 4: Nope, not happening.
Speaker 1: The first person to ever tell me that Biden was
Speaker 1: going to be swapped out for Michelle Obama was Michael Moore. Well,
Speaker 1: Michael Moore once told me that, and I was like,
Speaker 1: right before the it was Hillary. Hillary is going to
Speaker 1: be swapped out for Michelle Obama or should be? And
Speaker 1: I was like, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3: Look I get it. People like Michelle Obama. That's fine,
Speaker 3: And you know what, She's a likable person.
Speaker 1: I like her too, She's great.
Speaker 3: She has not spent a lot of her post Washington
Speaker 3: time being a terrible human being, you know, and Cobb
Speaker 3: Wesser for that, right. But this idea that any of
Speaker 3: this is mechanically doable or practical or easy, or that
Speaker 3: it will change the fundamental course of the election is
Speaker 3: astounding to me. I don't understand what mental breakdown is
Speaker 3: happening in the heads of elite pundits who keep saying this.
Speaker 1: Okay, Jesse's bored. He just texted me, We've done this
Speaker 1: too much so and I don't want to you know,
Speaker 1: we don't want to lose the youngest I know. Right,
Speaker 1: Can we talk about Fanny Willis? Because I want to
Speaker 1: talk about Fanny Wellis.
Speaker 4: Let's talk about Fanny Willis.
Speaker 1: I'm watching Fanny Willis yesterday and I'm thinking, I don't know,
Speaker 1: maybe I'm wrong, but I'm thinking, fuck these fucking people
Speaker 1: who are dragging her through these Like in my mind,
Speaker 1: she was pissed, but I was more pissed for her,
Speaker 1: Like I did not feel like Republicans came out looking
Speaker 1: great yesterday. Now the people I talked to horror. Do
Speaker 1: you see people were like that was a little over
Speaker 1: the top. She should have been less enraged. But I
Speaker 1: actually think that the rage that she showed a lot
Speaker 1: of women related.
Speaker 4: To I actually agree with that, and I'll tell you why.
Speaker 3: Because the idea that the Republican opo machine has come
Speaker 3: up with is, oh, well, we can disqualify her because
Speaker 3: of her personal life.
Speaker 4: Is that really the game they want to play is.
Speaker 6: That this is a problem they want it like, I
Speaker 6: just I wonder if that doesn't have a certain potential
Speaker 6: downside for a whole variety of Republicans.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the thing where they say Biden
Speaker 1: has dementia and then Trump goes on to make all
Speaker 1: these mistakes.
Speaker 3: Right, and the Trump goes out and speaks at like
Speaker 3: ancient Sumerian.
Speaker 4: It goes, yes, he's.
Speaker 1: Right, French. Well, she's divorced, he's divorced. They are not
Speaker 1: even dating anymore. There's a whole thing about when she says,
Speaker 1: you know, we stop being physical, but we didn't have
Speaker 1: the talk for another month. And it's like, in my mind,
Speaker 1: I thought, like, this is such a bad look. They're
Speaker 1: all trying to protect this guy who had an affair
Speaker 1: with a porn star while his third wife had just
Speaker 1: delivered their child and then gave her money.
Speaker 3: Does anyone want to make an argument that Donald Trump
Speaker 3: is somehow this figure of moral probity anybody, anybody out
Speaker 3: there at all, because I guarantee you Donald trucks, Donald truck, Wow,
Speaker 3: Donald truck a lot of coffee this morning, kids, a
Speaker 3: lot of coffee. Donald Trump has a sordid, grotesque personal life.
Speaker 3: And in his case, the MOGA's like, that's the sound
Speaker 3: of his viruinity and masculinity. But he'll fuck anything that moves,
Speaker 3: including office furniture. Oh oh what Trump? And Oh I'm
Speaker 3: gonna get in trouble again because I just use the
Speaker 3: official mocking the Trump maga voter voice.
Speaker 4: Well, I forgot Rick see it in.
Speaker 1: I think that that's a really good point that you know,
Speaker 1: you have one set of rules for Trump and another
Speaker 1: set of rules for everyone else. So Fanny Willis is divorced,
Speaker 1: she's dating someone. First of all, Like, I actually do
Speaker 1: agree with the people who said, like he should have
Speaker 1: stepped down, like don't hire him. You have to be
Speaker 1: so careful when you're going after Trump people because they'll
Speaker 1: take everything you do and blow it up. But that said,
Speaker 1: the case here is that somehow she did something corrupt
Speaker 1: and they just don't have any evidence to prove it.
Speaker 1: And then you have this other story running in the news,
Speaker 1: which is that Trump is taking over the RNC so
Speaker 1: it will pay his legal bills.
Speaker 3: So this guy from North Carolina that they're putting in there,
Speaker 3: yes he's an election denier, but he's essentially fundamentally uninteresting
Speaker 3: in the RNC takeover the fact that they're putting Lara
Speaker 3: Trump as the co chair of the RNC. You know,
Speaker 3: Lara Trump is not qualified. During the roller meat station
Speaker 3: at a wah wah Okay, she is a profoundly unequipped
Speaker 3: person for this job except for the management of the grift,
Speaker 3: and that is entirely what will happen. And they're putting
Speaker 3: Chris Losovita, his strategist, in as chief operating officer, so
Speaker 3: Chris actually knows where all the bodies are and it
Speaker 3: can bleed the turn up until it is absolutely fucking dry.
Speaker 3: By the time this is over, the Republican National Committee
Speaker 3: will be utterly bankrupt. They'll have to sell the building
Speaker 3: on C Street. It is amazing to.
Speaker 4: Me what they're about to get away with here.
Speaker 1: Just like game is out for me. You are a
Speaker 1: Republican donor. Okay, maybe you donate to Trump, but are
Speaker 1: you going to donate to the RNC when it is
Speaker 1: just in the service of Trump.
Speaker 3: The rnc's major donor pool is going to dry up quickly.
Speaker 3: The rnc's small dollarpool has dried up a good bit,
Speaker 3: in part because the only thing that works for Republican
Speaker 3: donors now in their direct mail email campaigns is the
Speaker 3: name Trump.
Speaker 4: Ain't nobody out.
Speaker 3: There going, yeah, I need me some more of that,
Speaker 3: Tommy Tuberville, ooh no, it is now Donald Trump.
Speaker 7: Unless the email says trump Trump Trump Trump Trump Trump
Speaker 7: Trump trum trum trum trump tup trumpp trump, the small
Speaker 7: dollar donors go, it must be one of them cook
Speaker 7: establishment of Rhano Republicans. I'm not going to vote for him,
Speaker 7: and I'm not going to send any money, so RANA.
Speaker 7: They have bled their email list dry. This is a
Speaker 7: little secret in the industry side. The RNC email lists
Speaker 7: have been sucked dry.
Speaker 3: They are desiccated, they are bled, bled, bled, and there's
Speaker 3: not much more blood to get out of the out
Speaker 3: of that particular turn up.
Speaker 1: Oh well, lots prayers, whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thoughts and prayers. Look, there will be some money
Speaker 3: that comes in there, it won't be what it should
Speaker 3: be or needs to be. They're not going to raise
Speaker 3: for five hundred million dollars to fund a convention and
Speaker 3: everything else based on the fact that.
Speaker 1: They need that money for other stuff.
Speaker 4: I mean, right, but you're not going to get it.
Speaker 3: It is also, while they're afraid and they'll give their
Speaker 3: money to Trump, they're not afraid of whoever this mooke
Speaker 3: is from North Carolina.
Speaker 4: You're not really afraid of that.
Speaker 3: They're going to spend a lot of time figuring out
Speaker 3: what the minimum dollar figure to give to Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Thank you, You are welcome. Did you know Rick Wilson
Speaker 1: and I are bringing together some friends for a general
Speaker 1: election kickoff party at City Winery in New York on
Speaker 1: March sixth. We're going to be chatting right after Super
Speaker 1: Tuesday about what's going on, and it is going to
Speaker 1: probably be the one fun night for the next eighty days.
Speaker 1: If you're in the New York area, please come by
Speaker 1: and join us. You can go to City Winery's website
Speaker 1: and grab a ticket.
Speaker 4: Michael Tumaski is the editor of The New Republic.
Speaker 1: Welcome back too fast politics, my bestie and also the
Speaker 1: person who taught me to write no pressure a mike
Speaker 1: to MASKI. Oh shucks. So let's talk about the unique
Speaker 1: moment in history we are in here. No pressure, Yeah,
Speaker 1: no pressure. I mean, you're not incredibly old, but if
Speaker 1: you were incredibly old, no, But you've been covering American
Speaker 1: politics for a long time, and it seems like right
Speaker 1: now we're in a period that is both terrifying and
Speaker 1: also crushingly boring. Discuss terrifying for sure. Boring Yeah, well
Speaker 1: it's not boring, but it's repetitive.
Speaker 8: Donald Trump has become boring. Although, yeah, it's a very
Speaker 8: weird thing. He is both of these things. He's a
Speaker 8: monster who is an imminent threat to you that I estates,
Speaker 8: but his stick is really boring now. And you know,
Speaker 8: I watched a little bit of from South Carolina. This
Speaker 8: was his most recent speech. It was Wednesday night. You know,
Speaker 8: did you see this jag about the photograph of him
Speaker 8: golfing and you know how he looked fat and then
Speaker 8: he complained about that. Did you see all this?
Speaker 1: Now? The part of the seventeen hour speech that I watched.
Speaker 1: And by the way, as someone who's sat through these speeches.
Speaker 1: They really are like two two and a half hours.
Speaker 1: I mean they're fucking long.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah, people walk out now, you know all the time.
Speaker 8: You know, you don't see that reported much, but it's true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because they're very boring. And he also has a
Speaker 1: couple lies. He just goes all in on and the
Speaker 1: people who watch him are like, I mean, again, this
Speaker 1: is an unfair comparison, but they're little like deadheads, right,
Speaker 1: like this is their thing, this is a raison.
Speaker 8: Datra I think that's true of a big chuck of them.
Speaker 8: I mean, I know people that I went to high
Speaker 8: school with from my Facebook page, who.
Speaker 1: Sharton Caveat you grew up in West Virginia.
Speaker 8: I grew up in West Virginia. Yeah, so I know
Speaker 8: a lot of these folks were new. But I still
Speaker 8: see you know a lot of them say, oh I've
Speaker 8: seen him four times, I've seen him six times. So yeah,
Speaker 8: it is a little bit like that some folks. Half
Speaker 8: of it doesn't make any sense, right.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't necessarily matter. It doesn't matter to his people,
Speaker 1: right because he occupies a different zone than all other
Speaker 1: normal politicians.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 1: He gets away with things that even people like Mike Pence.
Speaker 1: The things that Trump gets away with are not transferable
Speaker 1: to anyone else except maybe Don Junior.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and not even him in quote the same way.
Speaker 8: But I don't know how to explain it. But it's mystical,
Speaker 8: and that is fascist. Between the fascist leader and his followers,
Speaker 8: there is this mystical, inexplicable bond that exists that transcends
Speaker 8: any particular thing the person might say or not say,
Speaker 8: or do or whatever. So you know, like Trump makes
Speaker 8: all these he makes more verbal guests Joe Biden does.
Speaker 8: But you know, they don't care, they don't pay attention,
Speaker 8: and so it doesn't become a mean well, there are
Speaker 8: other reasons it doesn't become because the Democrats don't push it.
Speaker 1: They don't fight the way the Republicans.
Speaker 8: Yeah, they don't fight the way I always do on
Speaker 8: things like that. But you can say anything. What do
Speaker 8: you think he could say that with Bosi's people. I
Speaker 8: don't know that there's any He could call them idiots
Speaker 8: and they'd love him. He probably has.
Speaker 1: I mean, in all those hours of speeches, he said
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff. You know. I want to like
Speaker 1: talk for a minute about how difficult it is to
Speaker 1: write about what it is, this authoritarian because it's two things, right.
Speaker 1: It's Trump as a sort of Mussolini character, Mussolini asque character, right,
Speaker 1: someone who is bombastic and amusing in a way that
Speaker 1: makes him seem less dangerous. That's why I picked Mussolini
Speaker 1: because like Mussolini. Obviously there are many ways in which
Speaker 1: Trump is not like him. But that sort of bumback,
Speaker 1: a humorous kind of we're all in on the joke
Speaker 1: is actually really does come from there. But I'm curious,
Speaker 1: like the problems we have now of covering this is
Speaker 1: that we know what it is, and yet it feels
Speaker 1: like there's a lot of anxiety in the mainstream media
Speaker 1: about how to not look like a partisan when covering
Speaker 1: the rise of authoritarianism. And I feel like we're maybe
Speaker 1: worrying about the wrong things. I mean, you and I
Speaker 1: are not, they are, yeah, right, right.
Speaker 4: Right, yeah.
Speaker 8: Reporters does some reporters covering this, and particularly editors, and
Speaker 8: I think there should be more focus on editors, Like specifically,
Speaker 8: the people who write the front page headlines, are the
Speaker 8: home page headlines for the New York Times in the
Speaker 8: Washington Post. Those people have enormous enormous influence, who are they.
Speaker 8: I don't know, Maybe you do. I don't know who
Speaker 8: they are, but like just every word they choose is
Speaker 8: so important, and everything they decide to hilight is so important.
Speaker 8: So we saw the last weekend that her report came
Speaker 8: out last Thursday afternoon. It was a big story, and
Speaker 8: understandably so I'm not saying it shouldn't be a story.
Speaker 8: I mean whether her was behaving in accordance with prosecutorial
Speaker 8: norms in saying some of the things he said of
Speaker 8: that report.
Speaker 4: No, I don't think he was.
Speaker 1: Andrew Weisman doesn't think so. And he worked on a
Speaker 1: special council.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, nobody thinks he did. But he said
Speaker 8: they were news. But they were news for three days
Speaker 8: or two and a half days, And so you know,
Speaker 8: I woke up Saturday morning. Of course, they led the
Speaker 8: papers on Friday morning. Then I woke up Saturday morning,
Speaker 8: getting my first coffee and walking my computer, wondering, oh boy,
Speaker 8: what's going to be the lead story? Don't tell me.
Speaker 8: And yes, Biden's mental acuity again for the second day running.
Speaker 8: Now that's a choice. That's a specific decision you know
Speaker 8: that they made. Did they need to make that? Was?
Speaker 8: I don't remember what else was going on in the
Speaker 8: news that day.
Speaker 4: But a lot.
Speaker 1: Trumpet had rejected NATO and encouraged Russia to attack NATO allies, Yes,
Speaker 1: but for not paying their bills, the irony upon iron a. Yes.
Speaker 8: Anyway, these are choices that mainstream media institutions made, and
Speaker 8: years another that I wrote about this in my piece
Speaker 8: on Monday when I was talking about all this stuff.
Speaker 8: Trump gave a speech Friday night before an NRA crowd
Speaker 8: in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and he referred to it as Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 8: He said, what a nice Saturday afternoon.
Speaker 4: Believe me, I don't have to do this.
Speaker 8: If I didn't believe the I'd be somewhere else, I'd
Speaker 8: be very nice place. But it was Friday night and
Speaker 8: he called it Saturday afternoon. Now, the New York Times
Speaker 8: in the Washington Posts both had reporters there. They both
Speaker 8: ran stories on this speech. Neither of them even mentioned
Speaker 8: that he did that. And that was one of about
Speaker 8: five guests. He called Biden Obama again and other things.
Speaker 8: None of them were even mentioned in the Times and
Speaker 8: Post speeches. Now, if Biden had done those things, don't
Speaker 8: you think they'd be mentioned in the In the news
Speaker 8: articles I kind of do. I certainly do.
Speaker 4: The way they.
Speaker 8: Covered these things, it's it's just it's it's mysterifying something.
Speaker 1: I was somewhere the other day with a bunch of
Speaker 1: really smart, educated political people and they were like, well,
Speaker 1: they need to get by and out there, and I
Speaker 1: was like, you guys, he gave a speech on Monday.
Speaker 1: On Tuesday, he spoke to whatever. I mean, you know,
Speaker 1: I watch c SPAN, so I see all the times
Speaker 1: he speaks. And what's happened is that he only gets
Speaker 1: covered when he gaffs. So when he gives I mean,
Speaker 1: I heard him give a speech that was a very
Speaker 1: long speech, and it was quite he was speaking quite quickly,
Speaker 1: which for me, you know, and my father might be hereditary,
Speaker 1: we have some you know, we're not fast talkers. It
Speaker 1: requires a lot of like mental acuity, which I at
Speaker 1: forty five no longer have nobody covered it at all.
Speaker 1: And so literally I'm with all of these smart people
Speaker 1: and they're like, well, they should get him out there more,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, he's out there every fucking.
Speaker 8: Day, Yes, of course he is. And now he's not
Speaker 8: out there. I will say this, he's not out there
Speaker 8: necessarily like in campaign mode every day, you know, when
Speaker 8: when you're out there as president, it's not the same
Speaker 8: as being in campaign.
Speaker 1: I mean unless you're Trump. Yeah, and everything is just
Speaker 1: running and trying to stay to jail.
Speaker 8: Right exactly. So they could probably do a little bit
Speaker 8: more of that. But yeah, the other problem here, Molly,
Speaker 8: is like the way news organizations, mainstream news organizations, define news.
Speaker 8: News by definition is something that is new.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 8: If Trump says for the five hundredth time, in some way,
Speaker 8: shape or form, that I'm going to subvert democracy if
Speaker 8: you make me president again, it stops being news. I mean,
Speaker 8: it's still shocking, outrageous, and it should be on the
Speaker 8: front page even if it's the five hundredth time. But
Speaker 8: news organizations say, oh, that's not new this, And so
Speaker 8: that's how they diminish the threat and normalize it because
Speaker 8: the more he says and think about it's a terrible paradox,
Speaker 8: the more he says outrageous things, the less newsworthy they become,
Speaker 8: and the more normal two on that that's profound, Eh.
Speaker 1: That's why they pay you the medium books. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean I think that's right. The other thing that
Speaker 1: I think is pretty interesting that we probably should talk
Speaker 1: about is this special election in New York's third Yeah?
Speaker 1: Where because I mean again, and everyone gets mad at
Speaker 1: me for saying this. Why everyone gets mad at me
Speaker 1: for saying this, I don't know, but like, so, the
Speaker 1: whole theory of the case with Biden is that Biden
Speaker 1: should drop out because the polls show he's behind. Okay, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's it. That's all that you know. And
Speaker 1: he's old, so that's right. I mean, there's not any
Speaker 1: other information here that I'm missing, right, No, not at all. Okay,
Speaker 1: So this is the whole you should drop out of incumbency,
Speaker 1: which is an enormous advantage. And he's been quite in
Speaker 1: my mind anyway, quite a good president. The Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 1: and I don't want to sound too smug here, but
Speaker 1: has actually done all the things they promised it would.
Speaker 1: But here is Joe Biden. So this whole idea is
Speaker 1: based on polls New York's third district. Pole's show Swazi
Speaker 1: barely eking it out. He wins by six points, actually
Speaker 1: by eight points.
Speaker 8: Yeah, no, I noticed Mike Johnson said Biden wanted by
Speaker 8: eight points and Swazi didn't. Yeah, he won by seven
Speaker 8: point eight.
Speaker 1: Right, seven point eight points, so a sixteen point swing.
Speaker 8: Sixteen point swing. As I heard you say on TV
Speaker 8: the other day, you argue that it's a bell Weather
Speaker 8: and Mike Johnson argued that it's not at bell Weather.
Speaker 8: I'm on tem Molly here. It's absolutely bell Weather. But
Speaker 8: you know, it's also like it's instructive of the way
Speaker 8: that the mainstream media unconsciously in bibes right wing medias
Speaker 8: and tropes and talking points. It was the right wing
Speaker 8: media that said this post. I grant you Pols said
Speaker 8: it too, But the New York Post banging on about
Speaker 8: the migrant Christness and sanctuary Swazi and all this crowd.
Speaker 1: I didn't see that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, there's a website Sanctuary Swas Jesus Christ. So
Speaker 8: it's the New York Post banging on about all this stuff,
Speaker 8: and so they put it into mainstream of borders heads
Speaker 8: that oh, this is going to be all about the
Speaker 8: border and it's going to be a disaster for Democrats,
Speaker 8: and then Democrats start panicking and Republicans start looking over
Speaker 8: as it turns out dramatically overcome, and everybody expects a
Speaker 8: close race or even for him to lose, and that
Speaker 8: it's not remotely close, called it ten o'clock. Yeah, it
Speaker 8: wasn't it all close? And he won every part of
Speaker 8: the district as far as I can see. And this
Speaker 8: keeps happening, as Simon Rosenberg keeps playing out, it keeps happening.
Speaker 8: There was the Pennsylvania House race that night too, on
Speaker 8: Tuesday night, where the Democrat won. That was a more
Speaker 8: democratic district than this one was. But still Democrats keep
Speaker 8: winning these special elections. And there really is a correlation
Speaker 8: between these special elections and how things turn out in November,
Speaker 8: because it tells you where people's heads are, and people's
Speaker 8: heads are. Republicans are extreme, Republicans are against the board.
Speaker 8: They've taken away abortion rights. Now they this nonsense of
Speaker 8: the border where they're refusing to fix a problem that
Speaker 8: they're highlighting all the time. So yeah, so all the
Speaker 8: what political scientists called the fundamentals are totally in the
Speaker 8: Democrats direction. The unfortunate fact is that Joe Biden's eighty
Speaker 8: one years old. Of all the things he can do,
Speaker 8: the one thing you can't do is get me young
Speaker 8: if you were seventy five seven points ahead.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting to me The New York Times again,
Speaker 1: which both of us have written for and both of
Speaker 1: us appreciate, and there's a lot of good stuff in there.
Speaker 1: The New York Times opinion page has literally like you know,
Speaker 1: trans panic and Biden's age, Like you know, if I
Speaker 1: see Ross, both are the idea that Republicans are operating
Speaker 1: in good faith, even Ross, who a lot of people
Speaker 1: like whatever, I don't have a sense that they're operating
Speaker 1: in good faith. I want to talk about the border
Speaker 1: for a second. So I actually was listening to the
Speaker 1: MPR Politics podcast, which can both be maddening but also great.
Speaker 1: They were talking about how like there's so much emphasis
Speaker 1: for voters on the border, right, like Republicans. It's the
Speaker 1: same with the Biden stuff, right, bidens Old, bidens Ald.
Speaker 1: And then Trump gets up there and says something that
Speaker 1: is a gaff like Saturday morning, and with the border,
Speaker 1: it's sort of the same thing, right, the border, the border,
Speaker 1: the border, the border. And then it's like, well, Republicans
Speaker 1: killed that legislation because Trump told them to.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I don't know if people noticed. You know, Greg Sargent,
Speaker 8: who now is my oll leg at the New Republic,
Speaker 8: There's been New York guest many times he wrote a
Speaker 8: piece last week for T and R picked up a
Speaker 8: pole that said, people haven't really yet noticed that this
Speaker 8: was Trump's fault, so Democrats really have to drive that.
Speaker 8: Oh maybe they did notice it in the New York
Speaker 8: Special District because they're paying more attention. There were ads
Speaker 8: of stuff.
Speaker 1: Right, But it's an opportunity for Democrats.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it is, it is, and Democrats I think again.
Speaker 8: You know, this is where like Corses went on this
Speaker 8: smart jag last night that there's something I've written about
Speaker 8: a lot too. Republicans just kind of like reflexively assume
Speaker 8: that they represent Middle America and that Democrats represent Burke
Speaker 8: and the Upper West Side. Well, that is not true.
Speaker 8: It's just not true. Republicans are extremists. Their positions are extreme.
Speaker 8: Most Middle Americans, most swing voters in Michigan and Wisconsin
Speaker 8: and so on, tending to support Democratic positions much more
Speaker 8: than Republican positions. They don't want extreme, harsh policies on
Speaker 8: the border. They want the border police, for sure. They
Speaker 8: want us to have a border, and they want there
Speaker 8: to be a process, but they want a human process.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 8: They don't want to treat people like dogs. They want
Speaker 8: to treat people like people, and they want opportunities for
Speaker 8: past to citizenship and so forth.
Speaker 1: But the reason they want those things is because they've
Speaker 1: been told that the border is chaos and that migrants
Speaker 1: are flooding into the country, et cetera, et cetera. I mean,
Speaker 1: the reality is, yes, you have to have a path
Speaker 1: to citizenship because these people can't work. So you're having
Speaker 1: these people come in be poor, be forced to stay
Speaker 1: poor because they can't work because there is no path.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, the only way the economy survives, especially as
Speaker 1: birth rates decline in wealthy nations, is with immigration. Katherine
Speaker 1: Rampell had a really good piece about this in The
Speaker 1: Wasting Bos that actually immigration is a huge economic boon,
Speaker 1: and especially in a tight labor market.
Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely huge.
Speaker 8: I think your average person doesn't read reports about this,
Speaker 8: but they kind of instinctively know it. They know it
Speaker 8: from their communities, they know it from they see you know,
Speaker 8: Salvador and restaurants and so on and so on. They
Speaker 8: just know an anecdote that immigrants add to our economic
Speaker 8: well being. And so this is why, as I said,
Speaker 8: you know, I mean, yeah, people want a policed border,
Speaker 8: but they don't want families to be separated. They don't
Speaker 8: want what Donald Trump and Republicans want. They want a
Speaker 8: reasonable middle of the road policy, and so Republicans know
Speaker 8: they don't represent Middle America, but that idea is fixed
Speaker 8: in the media's collective mind.
Speaker 1: So interesting and right. Thank you so much, Mike TAMASKI.
Speaker 1: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 8: I will come back at any time, your Molly. Thank you.
Speaker 2: Jonathan Blitzer is a writer at The New Yorker and
Speaker 2: author of Everyone Who Is Gone Is Here? The United States,
Speaker 2: Central America and the Making of a Crisis.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics. Jonathan Blitzer, Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for having me son of Wolf. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: You're not related to Wolf Blitzer, right, This is a PSA.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, this is the most brainworms nepo baby thing
Speaker 1: I do every day. It's like, I'm like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: obviously it's Wolf Blitzer son. You'd actually be Wolf Blitzer's grandson.
Speaker 1: As I was thinking about this, very stupid all right, So, anyway,
Speaker 1: you wrote this incredible book about the border. I always
Speaker 1: wonder when books come out during the time when everyone
Speaker 1: is talking about you know, books take years and years
Speaker 1: and years to write, so they're almost impossible to time,
Speaker 1: So what happened.
Speaker 5: Well, it's funny because in a certain sense, obviously all
Speaker 5: of the drama and stress of the Southern border right
Speaker 5: now is good through the book insofar as people are
Speaker 5: talking about this issue. The thing I was primarily interested
Speaker 5: in was the arrival of Central American asylum seekers at
Speaker 5: the Southern border and kind of telling the history of
Speaker 5: how that came to be, which has been for the
Speaker 5: last decade at least, the kind of main story of
Speaker 5: how life at the border and beyond have changed in
Speaker 5: the United States. And now that remains the case. I mean,
Speaker 5: there's still huge numbers of Central Americans from mel Salvador, Guatemala,
Speaker 5: and Duras coming to the US seeking asylum, but now
Speaker 5: the situation has gotten even more global, and so now
Speaker 5: the main population of people showing up at the Southern
Speaker 5: border are Venezuelans, But then there are also people from
Speaker 5: a number of other countries in Latin America and in
Speaker 5: the world, and so it's kind of a collision of
Speaker 5: two things that were happening. And my sense of writing
Speaker 5: all of this was, this problem isn't going anywhere, and
Speaker 5: I wanted to try to go back into the actual
Speaker 5: history and really understand some of the lives that helped
Speaker 5: kind of open up site lines into what the politics
Speaker 5: and policy and history of it all had been. And
Speaker 5: so now there's kind of a dual phenomenon to account
Speaker 5: for the one in my book, which is the last decade,
Speaker 5: and now we're entering kind of this new phase which
Speaker 5: is messier and even more dramatic in some ways.
Speaker 1: So let's talk for a minute. I would love it
Speaker 1: if you would just talk about what drives immigration here,
Speaker 1: what that looks like, so why these people want to
Speaker 1: come here, and what the factors are there.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so I would say kind of three ways of
Speaker 5: breaking that down, starting with the most recent developments at
Speaker 5: the border. So right now, what we're seeing is that
Speaker 5: the world on a whole is experiencing more mass migration
Speaker 5: than it has in decades. And the people who are
Speaker 5: showing up at the US southern border are people fleeing
Speaker 5: all kinds of things over a kind of a range
Speaker 5: of different countries and areas. And so you know, you
Speaker 5: have Venezuelans fleeing collapsing totalitarian regime and they've been fleeing
Speaker 5: in huge numbers since at least twenty fifteen, I mean
Speaker 5: millions of people. You have, for instance, Haitians who have
Speaker 5: been displaced for more than a decade following the twenty
Speaker 5: to ten earthquake, who had resettled in other countries in
Speaker 5: South America, but who were uprooted again as a result
Speaker 5: of the economic fallout from COVID, and so they're now
Speaker 5: back on the move and have been on the move.
Speaker 5: You know for many, many years. You have Nicaraguins fleeing
Speaker 5: a repressive government in Nicaraguile, Cubans fleeing a repressive government
Speaker 5: in Cuba, people leaving their homes in large numbers because
Speaker 5: of the ravages of climate change, you know, hurricanes, major storms.
Speaker 5: People have lost their homes, their livelihoods. You know, you
Speaker 5: have all of these things happening at once. And what
Speaker 5: has been going on in Central America for many years
Speaker 5: has been really nothing short of a mass exodus. And
Speaker 5: that story is what I'm primarily interested in the book,
Speaker 5: which is a story that kind of goes back to
Speaker 5: the nineteen eighties, but the kind of primary reason, I
Speaker 5: would say, on the whole to explain why so many
Speaker 5: Central Americans were seeking asylum in the United States. This
Speaker 5: over the last decade, from maybe twenty fourteen up until
Speaker 5: the last couple of years was a combination of things like,
Speaker 5: you know, massive crime, really horrific gang violence that had
Speaker 5: kind of dominated the region, and that incidentaly was the
Speaker 5: result of US deportation policy in the nineties. You know,
Speaker 5: corrupt regimes that the US had in some form another
Speaker 5: help prop up, and that we're running they their countries
Speaker 5: into the ground. And so you had kind of all
Speaker 5: of these things happening. And what the through line is
Speaker 5: in all of it is the asylum system at the
Speaker 5: southern border, which is a fraction of what the United
Speaker 5: States immigration system is. All asylum is is a mechanism
Speaker 5: by which people showing up at the southern border seeking
Speaker 5: protection you are allowed to gain entry into the country.
Speaker 5: The problem is that the immigration debate in Washington has
Speaker 5: been stuck for so long, I mean for decades in fact,
Speaker 5: that the immigration system hasn't been updated in any sense
Speaker 5: really since nineteen ninety and so you know, you have
Speaker 5: labor shortages all across the country, you have visas that
Speaker 5: have been capped, you know, visas to reunite with family,
Speaker 5: temporary work visas, all of these things that should facilitate
Speaker 5: people's legal entry into the United States and would make
Speaker 5: this all orderly and more manageable. These have been channels
Speaker 5: that have been blocked because of inaction in Congress, and
Speaker 5: so what's happened increasingly is the pressure point for the
Speaker 5: whole drama has been the border, because people who otherwise
Speaker 5: would have legitimate and good reason to come to the US,
Speaker 5: either seeking protection or opportunity, have no choice but to
Speaker 5: show up at the southern border and apply through the
Speaker 5: asylum system, which is badly backlogged. There are millions of
Speaker 5: cases in a backlog. It takes years before someone's case
Speaker 5: is actually heard, and the worse that system fares the better,
Speaker 5: the more of an incentive it provides to people who
Speaker 5: are desperate to come and present themselves at the border
Speaker 5: because the government is overwhelmed is in many cases letting
Speaker 5: people in on the idea that in several years they'll
Speaker 5: eventually have their case be adjudicated. But that's years down
Speaker 5: the line.
Speaker 1: Last week I read someone who wrote a really good
Speaker 1: piece for the Washington Post about the border, who was
Speaker 1: bilin Gal. Really long piece and she talked about what
Speaker 1: the fundamental problems on the on the border were, and
Speaker 1: she said that ultimately it came down to the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, there's been no legislation for twenty years,
Speaker 1: no legislation, no money, so of course you know you
Speaker 1: have no path, so the only way to come is
Speaker 1: to use this broken asylum system. So it does seem
Speaker 1: to me to be kind of shocking that you know,
Speaker 1: you don't have the judges right, the reason why this
Speaker 1: takes so long. You don't have the judges to look
Speaker 1: at these cases. It's just a money and a legislation problem.
Speaker 4: By and large, I agree completely.
Speaker 5: I would say there are kind of two rough ways
Speaker 5: I've come to understand just the gridlock on it. The
Speaker 5: first is, without question, if the US government could devote
Speaker 5: more resources to the border in the form of more
Speaker 5: immigration judges, more asylum officers, you know, more agents with
Speaker 5: customs and border protection to process people who are arriving,
Speaker 5: you know, facilities that allow space in which to process
Speaker 5: people as they arrived. That it would definitely reduce the
Speaker 5: pressure at the border. But and this is the second
Speaker 5: thing that wouldn't be enough on its own. I mean,
Speaker 5: basically what we're seeing now, and this gets to something
Speaker 5: you've also said, because the overall immigration system hasn't moved
Speaker 5: an inch in decades, there's no way for people to
Speaker 5: come to the United States legally, even though there's all
Speaker 5: kinds of good reasons to admit them legally. And so,
Speaker 5: you know, the asylum system was never meant to address
Speaker 5: the kind of scale of people arriving that we're seeing
Speaker 5: now and honestly we were seeing ten years ago. But
Speaker 5: because nothing else changes, that's the only aspect of the
Speaker 5: system that kind of gets worked and stressed to this degree.
Speaker 1: There's no pass turns out, ignoring something doesn't make it
Speaker 1: better exactly.
Speaker 5: And you know, it's funny what the Biden administration has done,
Speaker 5: and we can talk about it. I mean, the Biden administration,
Speaker 5: it's been a mixed bag on immigration stuff. But one
Speaker 5: thing that's interesting that they've done, which kind of reflects
Speaker 5: just the general stalemate in Washington, is they've acknowledged that, look,
Speaker 5: because there are no pathways, we need rather than to
Speaker 5: just process everyone in the worst place possible at the border,
Speaker 5: we need to give people a chance to begin to
Speaker 5: you know, file claims and papers with US before they
Speaker 5: reach the border, and we can then parole them in
Speaker 5: that's the authority that the president has to basically give
Speaker 5: people legal cover to enter the country, and they've done
Speaker 5: that for populations that we've seen a real rise in
Speaker 5: immigration from so Venezuelans, Haitians, Cubans, Nicaraguans, and they created
Speaker 5: a program, a parole program where thirty thousand people from
Speaker 5: these countries can enter the country legally each month, and
Speaker 5: one of the consequences of that was that there was
Speaker 5: a ninety percent drop in those populations showing up at
Speaker 5: the southern border, which is to say, you know, if
Speaker 5: you create legal pathways, people will avail themselves of them.
Speaker 5: The problem is that the people now who have come
Speaker 5: into the United States through these parole programs don't have
Speaker 5: a path to legal status either because the same forces
Speaker 5: of gridlock or at play when it comes to you know,
Speaker 5: they're eventually getting legalized. So basically, the Biden administration is
Speaker 5: in a bind because the only entity that can open
Speaker 5: up legal pathways in a meaningful way, in a kind
Speaker 5: of thorough going way as Congress. But Congress is a
Speaker 5: dead zone. And so you're kind of in this You're
Speaker 5: you're sort of in this catch twenty two situation if
Speaker 5: you're the administration, where you want to make it more
Speaker 5: orderly at the border and again, we can talk about it.
Speaker 5: There's a lot there, but you want to make it
Speaker 5: more orderly at the border by allowing people to come
Speaker 5: in a more kind of ordered, lawful way. But then
Speaker 5: they're in, and now what happens They have a sort
Speaker 5: of temporary legal standing for you know, two years, but
Speaker 5: what happens after that. That's a big question, right, And
Speaker 5: that is a big question. This gets my sort of
Speaker 5: next question, which is Republicans. This is why I love
Speaker 5: Trump so much, and I love I mean Jesus fucking Christ.
Speaker 5: So Trump was like, they don't need a border bill
Speaker 5: because obviously you didn't want a border bill because he
Speaker 5: wants a border to be bad. But there are a
Speaker 5: lot of Trump people are like, Biden can do this
Speaker 5: with an executive order, she doesn't need legislation.
Speaker 1: Explain to us why that is just not true.
Speaker 5: I mean, honestly, and I obviously spend a lot of
Speaker 5: time thinking about this stuff.
Speaker 4: I don't even really know what they mean. It's when
Speaker 4: they say that.
Speaker 5: They're objecting already to the idea that the president is
Speaker 5: taking a unilateral action in the form of this parole program.
Speaker 5: So you know, they want him with a kind of
Speaker 5: you know, sweep of the pen to shut the border down,
Speaker 5: which again that's also a nonsensical claim. The border cannot
Speaker 5: just be shut down. It doesn't work like that. So
Speaker 5: what they essentially mean when they engage in that bit
Speaker 5: of ridiculous hyperbole is for the president to suspend asylum
Speaker 5: process thing. But again, the idea that not doing anything
Speaker 5: or the President simply bowing to be tough and to
Speaker 5: just kind of, like in a symbolic gesture, say well,
Speaker 5: that's it, We're closed, which is what Congressional Republicans literally
Speaker 5: say the president should do. They say he should simply
Speaker 5: just clear the air once and for all and explain
Speaker 5: to people that quote unquote we're closed. I mean, I've
Speaker 5: had Republican congress members tell me this.
Speaker 1: I love that members of Congress have told you that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, is weighing in on this.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 5: There's not any one thing the president can do to
Speaker 5: turn this around. And the thing is that he's trying
Speaker 5: to do which are extremely kind of narrow and technical,
Speaker 5: but like would help to some degree, for instance, getting
Speaker 5: more resources to the border just to reduce the sort
Speaker 5: of temperature of what's going on there. The Republicans are
Speaker 5: blocking and so it's a perfect circle. It's a perfect
Speaker 5: circle for them. They're not saying really anything in good
Speaker 5: faith here about what the president should or shouldn't be doing.
Speaker 1: Right. But I mean, I want to pull back for
Speaker 1: a second because this is my obsession when it comes
Speaker 1: to immigration, and I feel like we don't talk about
Speaker 1: this because I guess whatever, But we actually need immigrants.
Speaker 1: You have a tight labor market, you have a population
Speaker 1: that is not keeping up with the numbers. I mean,
Speaker 1: we're going to keep people out because that works so
Speaker 1: well for Japan. I mean, what's the thinking here.
Speaker 5: I mean, I don't think that they're thinking here it's
Speaker 5: mine ending, honestly. I mean, there's you know, this isn't
Speaker 5: just a kind of aggressive call for more humanity. You know,
Speaker 5: this is like a bottom line, it's.
Speaker 1: A capitalist call for more workers. I mean exactly. So
Speaker 1: that's what I don't guess.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think, you know, I think it's
Speaker 5: kind of I mean, this is going to sound sort
Speaker 5: of reductive and obvious, but it's sort of the baseline
Speaker 5: reality of what we see in Washington, which is just
Speaker 5: the simplest politics here of getting re elected and people,
Speaker 5: you know, they're playing off of resentments and confusions and
Speaker 5: fears that people in the electorate have, and that's the
Speaker 5: kind of be all and end all of how they're
Speaker 5: gaming this issue out. I mean, it's incredible to see
Speaker 5: there are Republican governors do state and local officials who
Speaker 5: are very plainly saying, look, we have labor shortages.
Speaker 4: We need workers.
Speaker 5: I mean, what we're seeing right now this is in
Speaker 5: primarily in blue states, but it's incredibly dramatic, and it
Speaker 5: kind of just shows that sort of the tragedy and
Speaker 5: senselessness of what we're experiencing. The governor of Texas has
Speaker 5: been busting all of these migrants to blue cities and
Speaker 5: blue states and doing it deliberately to so chaos with
Speaker 5: coordinating with state and local authorities. So large numbers of
Speaker 5: people are showing up in cities like you know, Denver, Chicago, Washington,
Speaker 5: New York. And I was recently speaking to the mayor
Speaker 5: of Denver who said to me, you know, every day
Speaker 5: we're getting calls from employers all across the city saying, look,
Speaker 5: we have so many jobs we need to fill. There
Speaker 5: are thousands of people who are arriving here who want
Speaker 5: to work, Please help us. What are we missing. How
Speaker 5: do we connect these dots?
Speaker 1: And you can't hire them legally because there's no.
Speaker 5: Pass exactly, they don't have work authorization, and there are
Speaker 5: kind of different bureaucratic ways of doing that, but it's,
Speaker 5: you know, the gears of government. Government kind of grind
Speaker 5: slowly in that regard. And obviously the numbers are overwhelming
Speaker 5: cities because the governor busting them to these cities is
Speaker 5: trying to overwhelm them. So it's just you're kind of
Speaker 5: in this bizarre situation where like this solution is crying out.
Speaker 5: No one's even got really a question about what some
Speaker 5: of the needs are. I mean, obviously, in Washington on
Speaker 5: comprehensive immigration reform, that's just a morass. But in terms
Speaker 5: of some of these more straightforward things like meeting labor needs,
Speaker 5: you'd think temporary work visas. There's not controversy on that.
Speaker 5: And if you talk to conservatives their game, I mean,
Speaker 5: if you talk to them away from the kind of
Speaker 5: combat zone of Washington, they'll say, yeah, of course, we
Speaker 5: definitely need more temporary worker visas.
Speaker 1: This is what the Co Brothers want. I mean, these
Speaker 1: guys are they're not humanitarians. The Co Brothers actually there's
Speaker 1: only one brother. Now. One of the things that I'm
Speaker 1: struck by is actually, in these red states, you see
Speaker 1: governors changing child labor laws and lowering the fines for
Speaker 1: companies because they know that children are working in these factories.
Speaker 1: And we had Hannah Aronson from the New York Times
Speaker 1: on to talk about that, and she said, they know
Speaker 1: they have children working in these factories, and that's why
Speaker 1: they're trying to lower the fines. And these children are
Speaker 1: spending all night working in factories, falling into Cheeto dusters,
Speaker 1: you know, breaking their arms, being paralyzed, trying to go
Speaker 1: to school the next day. I mean, we are in
Speaker 1: the middle of like Upton Sinclair Land.
Speaker 5: You know, when you pan out and look at the
Speaker 5: broader history too, I mean that's all obviously, it's horrific,
Speaker 5: and it's sort of in plain sight now thanks to
Speaker 5: Hannah Driver's recording and others. You know, when you pan
Speaker 5: out too, though, and look at the history that there's
Speaker 5: always been that tension, particularly on the Republican side. I
Speaker 5: mean both parties, look have had to have a very
Speaker 5: vexed history of dealing with immigration policy, to be clear,
Speaker 5: but on the Republican side, one of the kind of
Speaker 5: interesting strains, kind of the intra family tension. There is,
Speaker 5: you know, on the one hand, a kind of more
Speaker 5: classic nativist populist sentiment which is sort of always sloshed
Speaker 5: around the party. But then you also have more of
Speaker 5: the chamber of commerce of you which is look, I mean,
Speaker 5: this is what you're describing. There's a kind of capitalist.
Speaker 4: Bottom line here.
Speaker 5: Why would we block people from working in industries where
Speaker 5: there are needs? But then within that community on the
Speaker 5: on the right, is some disagreement about, you know, the
Speaker 5: degree to which people can continue to work in an
Speaker 5: undocumented fashion. Obviously it's easier, more profitable for big companies
Speaker 5: to not have to pay people, to not give them
Speaker 5: labor protections. That's a very scary fact, and that's been
Speaker 5: a fact for decades. The intractability of reform on this
Speaker 5: issue has also turned into a profit bottom line for
Speaker 5: companies and for Republican politicians who defend them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm hoping you could sort of give me a
Speaker 1: little something to make me not so depressed.
Speaker 5: So I spent years working on this book, and the
Speaker 5: deeper you get into it, you know, this is a
Speaker 5: book about the history of the United States and Central
Speaker 5: America and how American foreign policy and how American politics
Speaker 5: have contributed to all the sorts of strife in the
Speaker 5: region that leads to mass migration. And so the book
Speaker 5: sort of narrates the interconnectedness of the US and the
Speaker 5: wider region, but also the kind of infinite loop of
Speaker 5: it that the US does things that generate more migration,
Speaker 5: that leads the US to do more hasty things, and
Speaker 5: on and on and on. And I have to say though,
Speaker 5: that the silver lining and doing this reporting for me
Speaker 5: because obviously, on the policy and politics level it's just
Speaker 5: donningly upsetting, and on the human level, there's just so
Speaker 5: much suffering, so much needless gratuitous suffering.
Speaker 4: I have to say that.
Speaker 5: And this is going to end up sounding really corny,
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, but you know, writing about people who have
Speaker 5: been kind of buffeted by these forces of history that
Speaker 5: are just so vast that no single person could keep
Speaker 5: them at bay, who nevertheless kind of refused to be
Speaker 5: defined by those circumstances that honestly made me, I mean,
Speaker 5: even just as a journalist. And again again I realized
Speaker 5: that this sounds sort of pie in the sky, but no, no,
Speaker 5: I'll take it. Yeah, I mean it made me feel like, Okay,
Speaker 5: you know, there's there's more of a need than ever
Speaker 5: to fight on, to tell these stories, to try to
Speaker 5: get to the human dimension of this because the politics
Speaker 5: are so stupid, but the people are so endlessly interesting
Speaker 5: and full of surprises, and that mismatch on the one
Speaker 5: hand is tragic and upsetting and on the other does
Speaker 5: kind of give you hope.
Speaker 1: I completely agree. And as much as I feel like
Speaker 1: it's it's so crushing and sad, and the stuff we
Speaker 1: hear is just every day, it's just horrendous, I do
Speaker 1: feel very much that like we beat on into the sea.
Speaker 1: That's a quote from Butcher to a So we beat on,
Speaker 1: So we beat on. Yeah, but as I butchered this
Speaker 1: show quote. No, it's gonna talk, but it is really true.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Jonathan. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Oh, I would love it.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: A moment ou Rick Wilson. Yes, it's time for our
Speaker 1: one segment, What is your moment of hackery?
Speaker 3: The one segment of my moment of fuckery this week
Speaker 3: is the inevitable moment of fuckery that is the entire
Speaker 3: Republican Party. Alexi Navolney has been murdered and they are
Speaker 3: already like, well, you know, it doesn't mean Putin's a
Speaker 3: bad guy, per se. He can't lose. He's at the
Speaker 3: top of his game.
Speaker 4: Y'all.
Speaker 3: If you're in the Republican Party and you're still kissing
Speaker 3: Vladimir Putin's ass and you're stra, say, do you want
Speaker 3: me to start in the front of the back this guy?
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus christ Rick, you're offending my genteel sensibilities. All right,
Speaker 1: go on. I mean, I don't know that we need a.
Speaker 3: Full but look, the moment of fuckery is at this
Speaker 3: goddamn party. For all of its other wild sins, excesses, mistakes, errors,
Speaker 3: violations of decency, dignity, intellect, and human rights. The fact
Speaker 3: that after Vladimir Putin has straight out murdered somebody and
Speaker 3: they're still kissing his ass, but at least they have
Speaker 3: nice subway stations, right.
Speaker 1: Tucker, Yeah, Tucker Carlson goes grocery shopping. I do have
Speaker 1: the sense that he does not spend a lot of
Speaker 1: time grocery shopping. After watching that video.
Speaker 3: I have the sense that he sends his second second
Speaker 3: deputy under kitchen maid scullery made to the shopping.
Speaker 1: Is chief of staffs chief of staff. My moment of
Speaker 1: fuckery is is, first of all, I can't tell if
Speaker 1: I'm like, if I'm the problem it's me, or if
Speaker 1: everyone else is a problem. So it's probably me, But
Speaker 1: I think I might be the problem here. But I
Speaker 1: feel like my moment of fuckery is that I feel
Speaker 1: like everyone is losing their minds over the wrong presidential candidate.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes it is.
Speaker 1: So if you're a good natured liberal, stop it, stop it.
Speaker 1: And if you're a bad natured conservative, you do whatever
Speaker 1: you want. I don't care. You got Donald Trump. Good luck.
Speaker 3: My other micro moment of fuckery is that the star
Speaker 3: witness in all of the bullshit about Hunter Biden turns
Speaker 3: out to be a line liar who lies and has
Speaker 3: now been arrested by the federal government because he's a
Speaker 3: lying liar who lied.
Speaker 1: Right, And we're talking about Merrit fucking Garland, So like
Speaker 1: this is the slowest of slow rolling DJs ever, So
Speaker 1: like this guy must have done so much criming for
Speaker 1: him to even get indited, like right, because this is merit.
Speaker 1: I don't want to put my finger on the scale.
Speaker 1: I just let people, wait, let James Cally release that
Speaker 1: fucking latter and that motherfucker by the way. As we
Speaker 1: go on with this moment of fuck, I just feel
Speaker 1: like Jesse's going to cut this but don't ever buy
Speaker 1: James Comy's books, like that fucking guy lost the election
Speaker 1: for Hillary Quinton.
Speaker 3: Thank you will, folks, have a great day.
Speaker 1: Jesse's like, I hate both of them.
Speaker 4: He's fuck up both of you right now.
Speaker 1: Jesse's like, I can't tell which one I hate more.
Speaker 4: Stop.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.