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 Ron Desantas's biggest donor has pulled
Speaker 1: out due to the candidate's policies being too extreme. We're
Speaker 1: back from vacation with a fantastic show for you Today.
Speaker 1: Alex Winter stops by to talk about his excellent documentary
Speaker 1: The YouTube Effect. Then we'll talk to Celeste Hedley and
Speaker 1: Marie Brenner about their amazing podcast Big Sugar. But first
Speaker 1: we have Pod Save America's Tommy Vitour. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Tommy, thank you for having me.
Speaker 3: Very excited to have you.
Speaker 1: And also, not much has happened in the week that
Speaker 1: I have quote unquote been on vacation. Another Trump indictment,
Speaker 1: a federal indictment, a superseding, basically one and a half
Speaker 1: more federal indictments.
Speaker 2: Congratulations, Thank you, Yes, seventy eight counts. It's good to
Speaker 2: have your number of accounts to be just match your AIGs.
Speaker 2: That's all. We're all good. Thanks v here.
Speaker 1: I mean again, like the thing I'm so struck by,
Speaker 1: and you have worked in politics, you know, like they
Speaker 1: had this off ramp yet again, and yet again they
Speaker 1: were like, no, this is our guy.
Speaker 2: The Republicans, you mean, yeah, in terms of the primary, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean, you know what is remarkable about this is
Speaker 2: the timing. You know, they are going to be three
Speaker 2: of the majority of their primaries and caucuses when these
Speaker 2: trials start, potentially unless they get delayed, and so they're
Speaker 2: in this position where none of the Republicans are going
Speaker 2: to seem willing to run hard against Donald Trump, but
Speaker 2: they might be in a position where he's just appearing
Speaker 2: in the court room for the majority of the campaign
Speaker 2: and nobody seems to want to do anything about it. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: I'm like so impressed because again, I feel like this
Speaker 1: just keeps happening. There's like a moment of silence where
Speaker 1: they're like, wait, we should get this guy the curb,
Speaker 1: and then they're like, no, too much warp. Let's just
Speaker 1: stick with our guy, even though he has, you know,
Speaker 1: a trial in New York coming up, a trial in
Speaker 1: the district, now, a trial in Florida.
Speaker 3: Like no, no, this is our man.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, to me, it's just sort of a story
Speaker 2: of compounding political cowardice. Because there was the moment right
Speaker 2: after January sixth, where they could have impeached him, Mitch
Speaker 2: McConnell decided to be a whimp and not go forward
Speaker 2: with that. I think he was worried that Trump would
Speaker 2: leave and start his own party and you know, hurt
Speaker 2: the Republicans in the long run. But then, you know,
Speaker 2: you and Kevin McCarthy say some tough things about what
Speaker 2: Trump had done and blame him for the insurrection, and
Speaker 2: then fly down to mar Lago to kiss his ass.
Speaker 2: And fast forward to today. I mean, they have not
Speaker 2: laid the groundwork with Republican voters to know, convince them
Speaker 2: that January sixth was should rule him out as president.
Speaker 1: I keep thinking it's funny because it's like yesterday I
Speaker 1: was in the UK doing this news show on Sky
Speaker 1: and like the anchor kept saying to me, well, we
Speaker 1: in the UK don't see any that he becomes president,
Speaker 1: And I was like, do you guys not understand.
Speaker 3: How the electoral college works?
Speaker 1: Like he doesn't have to win the popular vote, He
Speaker 1: just needs to win ten thousand voters in Wisconsin and
Speaker 1: twenty thousand voters in you know, Michigan. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is a sort of insane system.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, you're right that
Speaker 2: it's kind of a coin flip. You know, right now
Speaker 2: it's fifty to fifty, but the electoral college process is
Speaker 2: stacked in favor of Republicans. I think, you know, Joe
Speaker 2: Biden would probably have to win like fifty one, fifty
Speaker 2: two to fifty three percent of the popular vote to
Speaker 2: really feel comfortable that he was going to get it
Speaker 2: over the finish line with the electoral college. And also,
Speaker 2: you know, there's polls. There's a poll out today the
Speaker 2: New York Times that has Trump with forty four percent
Speaker 2: of the vote in the Iowa COCCAS scores among Iowa
Speaker 2: COCCA scorers, and DeSantis is twenty. So he's doubling up
Speaker 2: his next primary opponent in the first state. And by
Speaker 2: the way, Iowa's a state that he has struggled in historically,
Speaker 2: so he's probably going to better numbers from there.
Speaker 1: In twenty fifteen, he actually lost Iowa to Ted Cruz, which, yeah,
Speaker 1: imagine losing anything to Ted Cruz truly embarrassing.
Speaker 2: You just, yeah, with the worst person in the world.
Speaker 1: Anyway, We're just saying that because we're jealous of his
Speaker 1: enormous podcasting success.
Speaker 2: Correct, He's a full time podcaster, part time senator, and
Speaker 2: I think that's a pretty good life hack if you
Speaker 2: want to.
Speaker 1: Feel happy, I'm being Yeah, Ted cruz Is really makes
Speaker 1: Marco Rubio look like a charming guy.
Speaker 2: Sure does.
Speaker 1: I do want for one minute to make fun of
Speaker 1: the boys who work at the National Review. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: hate that Trump is the nominee, but I still delight
Speaker 1: in their incredible miscalculation when it comes to Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 2: And then, yeah, Ron DeSantis, I think someone needed to
Speaker 2: perform kind of an early charisma check on him and
Speaker 2: just go down there and spend thirty minutes in a
Speaker 2: room with the guy. Like, I don't think it's over
Speaker 2: for Ron DeSantis. He is twenty percent in that Iowa poll.
Speaker 2: I think, yeh, there was some under the hood. There
Speaker 2: were some numbers on electability that were a little better
Speaker 2: for him than I would have expected among Iowa Coccus scores.
Speaker 2: I think I think that's the path to defeating Trump
Speaker 2: in this primary, which is convincing a bunch of hardcore Republicans,
Speaker 2: even maybe a portion of Trump's base, that he will
Speaker 2: lose to Joe Biden because of all this baggage like,
Speaker 2: that's what I would be doing all day every day,
Speaker 2: kind of like Chris Christy is. But yeah, Ron DeSantis
Speaker 2: has just shown himself to be uncomfortable around human beings.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how I else to say it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I remember that there was a Republican member of
Speaker 1: a big real estate family who went and met with
Speaker 1: him early on and left and was like, I'm never.
Speaker 3: Giving him any money.
Speaker 1: And I thought like, if you can do that with
Speaker 1: a donor one on one, then you you know, it's
Speaker 1: one thing to leave and say like I'm not sure
Speaker 1: this is the best pick.
Speaker 3: But he was literally like this guy sucks.
Speaker 1: And I was like, all right, you know, so I
Speaker 1: am very impressed by that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he propulses people.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: The New York Times asked Republican primary voters in their
Speaker 2: most recent poll which candidates they thought were fun, and like,
Speaker 2: they think Trump is fun, you know, and listen, he like,
Speaker 2: we detest the guy. He repulses us. But for a
Speaker 2: lot of Republican like Maga people, they go to these events,
Speaker 2: they have a great time. They see their friends, they like,
Speaker 2: they hear them play the greatest hits about the deep
Speaker 2: state and lock her up and blah blah blah, and
Speaker 2: like there's nothing about Ronda Sants campaign that seems enjoyable.
Speaker 2: He's at the state fair telling kids, are you consume
Speaker 2: it makes too much sugar? You know, like that's that's
Speaker 2: the place you go to eat too much sugar. Ron,
Speaker 2: that was an amazing moment. Yeah, that kid, he was like,
Speaker 2: isn't that a lot of sugar? I'm always looking she's nine.
Speaker 2: You psychout. You do a couple of things at the
Speaker 2: Iowa Stay Fair. I've been many times. You eat like
Speaker 2: some sort of funnel cake, You go on some fun rides,
Speaker 2: you gorge on like a fried twinkie. You see the buttercow.
Speaker 2: You don't lecture people, especially like a little girl. I
Speaker 2: believe about being our sugar and like an icy pop.
Speaker 3: Now Ron DeSantis.
Speaker 1: Speaking of Ron DeSantis, he has taken a pivot and
Speaker 1: decided he's no longer going to a focus on the
Speaker 1: people he's running against. He's going to focus on Gavin
Speaker 1: Newsom because he is running for governor of California.
Speaker 2: Discussed if that is interesting, I mean, I think the
Speaker 2: Desanta's campaign must be thinking to themselves. Donald Trump has
Speaker 2: blotted out the sun. He is consuming all day of
Speaker 2: every news cycle, even if it's bad news with indictments
Speaker 2: or whatever. It's so benefiting him because we just can't
Speaker 2: get covered except for when we're firing people. Therefore, what
Speaker 2: gimmicks can we use to get in the press? Gavin
Speaker 2: Newsom is like super pugilistic. He clearly hates Ron DeSantis,
Speaker 2: understandably so, and wants to do this debate. Like I
Speaker 2: actually think Gavin Newsom would probably mop the floor with
Speaker 2: Rond de Santis in this event. But it's a weird
Speaker 2: choice to debate some random dude.
Speaker 1: We'll see, right, I think it's really smart on the
Speaker 1: point on the part of Dessantas right, DeSantis is quietly
Speaker 1: waiting in the wings, God forbid something happens to Biden.
Speaker 1: You know, I think he's positioned himself as like the alt.
Speaker 1: I mean, don't you think that's what's happening and that's
Speaker 1: why there's some hostility towards him.
Speaker 2: What are you saying DeSantis is the alt? Or are
Speaker 2: Gavin's the alt?
Speaker 3: Gavin is the Alt?
Speaker 2: Sorry, I think Gavin Newsome I spent a little time
Speaker 2: with him. He's super competitive. He wants Democrats to be tougher.
Speaker 2: He wants to win. He is unbelievably frustrated about sort
Speaker 2: of like information bubbles, which is why he went on
Speaker 2: Sean Handy's show in the first place, and.
Speaker 3: He killed it on Sean Hannaday. I thought he was great.
Speaker 2: If I had been in this comms person and they said, hey,
Speaker 2: I want to go on Sean Handedy, I said, a boss,
Speaker 2: absolutely not. This is a bring against you. Don't do it.
Speaker 2: Go on like a Joe Rogan or some other show
Speaker 2: where you have a chance. I was wrong, he was right.
Speaker 2: It was fantastic.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think there's definitely probably part of Gavin
Speaker 2: that wants to run for president. I don't know if
Speaker 2: he will, but he's certainly like creating this national profile
Speaker 2: for himself by you know, punching a lot of Republicans
Speaker 2: in the face, including on Fox News, which I think
Speaker 2: the Democrats probably like.
Speaker 1: I have to say that Meg Gaffin before, and I
Speaker 1: was struck by how readily charismatic he was, like shocking
Speaker 1: like charismatic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, he's like, if you look at the
Speaker 2: resume and the things they've gotten done in California, it's
Speaker 2: incredibly impressive. And then he is, you know, like super
Speaker 2: likable guy in a lot of ways, like he can,
Speaker 2: you know, deliver a compelling message to a crowd. And
Speaker 2: he's also dyslexic, so the way he retains information is
Speaker 2: just by memorizing everything. So he has all these facts
Speaker 2: and figures like right there on the on the tip
Speaker 2: of his tongue that can hurt you. I think, you
Speaker 2: know why work for Barack Obama. There were times when
Speaker 2: he sounded way too wonky and was appealing to people
Speaker 2: with like, you know, spreadsheets, basically verbal spreadsheets, and I
Speaker 2: don't think that always works, but I think a few
Speaker 2: layer in, you know, some emotional appeals with a clear
Speaker 2: grasp with the acts, that can be pretty pretty effective.
Speaker 1: Good thing that I think about with these candidates, as
Speaker 1: we're talking about we're in this strange primary season of weirdness,
Speaker 1: is that it does seem like Ted Cruz has an
Speaker 1: incredible amount of ambition, used largely to become a clown.
Speaker 1: But a lot of these candidates don't feel, especially on
Speaker 1: the Democratic side, don't feel that ambitious, whereas Newsom seems
Speaker 1: like a killer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a really good observation. I do think Gavin
Speaker 2: seems like there's a lot of like really strong Democratic
Speaker 2: governors in the various states, you know, Regretchen Witmer, Roy
Speaker 2: Cooper in North Carolina. Like the list can go on
Speaker 2: and on and on. You don't see a lot of
Speaker 2: them going on TV to pick fights with the entire
Speaker 2: Republican Party. Yeah, we're like picking a fight with Greg
Speaker 2: Abbott or some other Republican Right. So Gavin is definitely
Speaker 2: like feels.
Speaker 1: The need to be out there, yeah, which I actually
Speaker 1: think ultimately is good. Now, one of the things I've
Speaker 1: been really struck by as we are watching this and
Speaker 1: looking at this all this polling, which again with all
Speaker 1: this pulling, you know, maybe it's right, maybe it's wrong.
Speaker 3: Right, We've seen it be wrong before.
Speaker 1: But the thing I've been struck by is like, and
Speaker 1: I was thinking about this yesterday when I was watching
Speaker 1: Alina Habba give a pess conference during Trump's arraignment where
Speaker 1: she was saying and really you know, she was saying
Speaker 1: and you can see that the day that Trump was,
Speaker 1: you know, was indicted by New York was the day
Speaker 1: after they found Hunter Biden's laptop, you know, making this
Speaker 1: kind of taste that this was all Democrats trying to
Speaker 1: obfuscate Hunter's laptop instead of what it really was, which
Speaker 1: was the guy who did all the crimes. Maybe getting
Speaker 1: in a little bit of trouble for it, but it
Speaker 1: works with their people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, it does. I caught a clip of Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan today who is basically like, you know, I think
Speaker 2: there's going to be some people who saying Trump economy
Speaker 2: before COVID was pretty good. I'd love to go back
Speaker 2: to that. And you know, when you look at all
Speaker 2: these efforts to indict Donald Trump, it does seem like
Speaker 2: they're targeting him. If you look at the history with
Speaker 2: the Steele dossier and the impeachments, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: does seem like there's a coordinate effort to go after
Speaker 2: him and maybe he's the victim. And I think there
Speaker 2: is some real risk there of Republicans being able to,
Speaker 2: you know, reach that audience, like so of the Joe
Speaker 2: Rogan audience that is predisposed to think that there is
Speaker 2: some grand conspiracy driving these things, and also filter in
Speaker 2: little bits of news about the allegations against Hunter Biden
Speaker 2: and you know, make these baseless suggestions that Joe Biden
Speaker 2: was essentially part of it.
Speaker 1: And it's funny because It's like people will be like, well,
Speaker 1: what would you think about Hunter Biden.
Speaker 3: I'm like, send him to jail.
Speaker 1: I don't care, no, my kid, I mean whatever, Democrats
Speaker 1: are not a cult. I mean, if you want to
Speaker 1: lock up all the bidens, I mean, I just you know,
Speaker 1: if somebody did a crime, they should go to jail.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean there's really two pieces of the story. I
Speaker 2: mean there's the there's the plea agreement piece of this,
Speaker 2: and it was sort of like you know, you know,
Speaker 2: tax fraud or failure to pay taxes and then sort
Speaker 2: of you know, making a mistatement on a gun license,
Speaker 2: like Republicans want to put people in jail for that. Okay,
Speaker 2: I mean that's that's fair.
Speaker 3: This is strange.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And didn't Rogerstone have some tax issues too.
Speaker 2: I mean I think a lot of the feeling comfy
Speaker 2: and that's some tax issues over the years, you know,
Speaker 2: And I think, look, I'm with you, like everyone should
Speaker 2: face the same standard of justice. But you know, Trump
Speaker 2: prosecutor is the one who's been looking at these Hunter
Speaker 2: Biden allegations and cut this plea deal. But there's the
Speaker 2: other piece of this. I think we need to do
Speaker 2: a better job emphasizing, which is like Hunter Biden is
Speaker 2: someone who is dealing with a really horrific addiction problem,
Speaker 2: and Joe Biden was a dad in this case, like
Speaker 2: just you know, doing everything he could in his power
Speaker 2: to keep his kid alive. You know, I mean quite literally,
Speaker 2: Like I read Hunter's book, and you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: a miracle he's still here, you know. And so I
Speaker 2: think emphasizing that part of the story, like Joe Biden
Speaker 2: the father dealing with the loved one with addiction, Like
Speaker 2: that's a story that I think a lot of people
Speaker 2: can understand and relate to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, I read that book and I interviewed Hunter,
Speaker 1: and I'm sober since I was nineteen and come from
Speaker 1: a family riddled with addiction and alcoholism. So I totally
Speaker 1: get it. Yeah, and also remember Hunter. I Mean the
Speaker 1: thing that I feel like is maybe a little bit
Speaker 1: of a messaging malpractice is like we forget that Joe
Speaker 1: Biden has had this incredible tragedy and has had all
Speaker 1: of these children. I mean, like you're pigging on one
Speaker 1: of his two surviving children. And when you're not pigging,
Speaker 1: you know, like Trump, when Trump World isn't pigging on
Speaker 1: on Hunter. They're picking on Ashley, like of his two
Speaker 1: surviving children, Like, think about how catastrophic that kind of losses.
Speaker 2: It's unimaginable. I mean, you know, I have been a
Speaker 2: month old daughter, Like what happened to Joe Biden, you know,
Speaker 2: with his wife, that accident, entering his first wife. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's unimaginable to me. I don't even want to think
Speaker 2: about it. And then losing Bo who clearly was Ina
Speaker 2: s or Joe Biden's other half, equally horrific and unfair
Speaker 2: and tragic and just you know, the crassness of deciding
Speaker 2: to go this hard after Hunter Biden politically just to
Speaker 2: harm his dad is kind of, I guess, part and
Speaker 2: parcel of our politics. I do wonder if there will
Speaker 2: be some part of the electorate that's turned off by
Speaker 2: I do think, like there's reasonable criticisms to make about,
Speaker 2: you know, suppression of the laptop story by news outlets
Speaker 2: for the election, et cetera, et cetera. All the things
Speaker 2: they're talking about are specific to Hunter Biden's conduct. There's
Speaker 2: no accusation, even from Hunter Biden's business partner, that Joe
Speaker 2: Biden was in on the deal, right, just like taking
Speaker 2: a call from his kid and got put on speakerphone.
Speaker 2: We're showing you out or saying hi to business associates
Speaker 2: like I don't know, what are you to tell your
Speaker 2: kid to give your kid the heisman and say no,
Speaker 2: I will take your phone call, of course, not or
Speaker 2: anything human being. So we'll see how this plays out.
Speaker 2: And also I think, you know, if I were Jared
Speaker 2: and Evanka, I would be a little worried about a
Speaker 2: broader narrative about you know, kids benefiting from political connections.
Speaker 2: Given a Jared got two billion dollars from the Saudi
Speaker 2: government for his little investment fund.
Speaker 3: It is amazing.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Trump kids are such and I say
Speaker 1: this is a beneficiary of nepotism myself, and I always
Speaker 1: am really a book born on that.
Speaker 3: It's just amazing to me.
Speaker 1: The last thing I would do, or at least I
Speaker 1: would put in the caveat you know, this nepotism born
Speaker 1: on third base, you know.
Speaker 3: Did not hit a home run.
Speaker 1: So it is kind of amazing to me that those
Speaker 1: kids managed to me somehow. I mean, Don Junior, that
Speaker 1: is really an incredible bit of projection.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean just so angry about it too.
Speaker 2: Just profiting off of everything they do, you know, like
Speaker 2: you'll see him doing spond con for like steaks and shit.
Speaker 2: You're like, dude, I thought you were the son of
Speaker 2: a billionaire. Couldn't you even Jared Kushner again, Like, yes,
Speaker 2: Hunter Biden did some things that I don't agree with.
Speaker 2: There were troubling then if he broke the laws, he
Speaker 2: should be prosecuting. The difference in my book is like
Speaker 2: Trump made Jared Kushner his like shadow Secretary of State,
Speaker 2: a guy every reason, Like I was whatsapping with Mohammad
Speaker 2: b and Salman, this homicidal dictator or run in Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 2: He was cutting these Middle East piece deals they were
Speaker 2: not peace deals, about Abraham A Cord deals, and then
Speaker 2: clearly getting a huge kickback on the back end, like
Speaker 2: literally got two billion dollars from the Saudis despite having
Speaker 2: no investing experience. That's something I think that's worth talking about.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm not laughing because it's funny. I'm laughing
Speaker 1: to keep from crying.
Speaker 2: Now. I'm with you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Tommy, you think next week we're gonna see some
Speaker 1: Georgia indictments?
Speaker 2: God, good question. I can't believe there's more of this
Speaker 2: to come. I do. I wonder you know that my
Speaker 2: colleague Max Fisher, who is a criok media now he's
Speaker 2: the New York Times. For a while, he looked at
Speaker 2: how prosecutions had gone internationally and he saw some evidence
Speaker 2: that in South Africa there was an instance where like
Speaker 2: the accumulation that charges against a leader there, you know,
Speaker 2: led people to over time think like, Okay, this guy's
Speaker 2: got to go. I wonder if that cumulative effect will
Speaker 2: happen here with Trump or if at some point people
Speaker 2: will either think, okay, now he's being targeted unfairly, or
Speaker 2: maybe just tune it out. I don't know, but it
Speaker 2: is remarkable. They were going to be waiting for another
Speaker 2: set of indictments.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's funny because Trump world is saying that three
Speaker 1: indictments is better than one.
Speaker 4: Maybe they're right.
Speaker 2: There was a Raiders pullout today with ask respondents they
Speaker 2: would vote for Trump for president if you were convicted
Speaker 2: of a felony by a jury. In forty five percent
Speaker 2: said they would not vote for him. This is mong Republicans.
Speaker 2: Thirty five percent, yeah, said they would, so you know again,
Speaker 2: twenty eight percent they would vote for him if you
Speaker 2: were currently serving time in prison, so you know, dispiriting.
Speaker 2: That's the Laura Lumer crew. Thank you so much, Tommy.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back. Of course, it was a
Speaker 2: blast finger thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Alex Winter is an actor and director and his latest
Speaker 1: film is called The YouTube Effect and it's out now.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Fast Politics, Alex.
Speaker 4: Winter, so good to be here. Thanks, Molly.
Speaker 1: I already delighted to have you. Really interested to talk
Speaker 1: to you about this movie.
Speaker 3: I also like wonder. I just first want.
Speaker 1: To quickly ask you about like I guess I very
Speaker 1: much understand, like moving from being an.
Speaker 3: Actor to being a filmmaker. But just two seconds on that,
Speaker 3: well he started doing both.
Speaker 4: I was a child actor. I was on Broadway for
Speaker 4: a lot of my childhood and saving up for film
Speaker 4: school them so I stopped acting. I've quit acting like
Speaker 4: five times. The first time was at like seventeen years old,
Speaker 4: after ten years of acting professionally as a child. Then
Speaker 4: I went to NYU Film School to study directing and writing.
Speaker 4: When I came out of that and I was broke
Speaker 4: and still had an agent, so I said, can you
Speaker 4: get me some auditions? So I could avoid delivering pizza
Speaker 4: like my roommate, and I ended up booking like Lost
Speaker 4: Boys and Bill and Ted and all this stuff, which
Speaker 4: look I wasn't like looking down my nose on. It
Speaker 4: was super fun. But at that time I was already directing.
Speaker 4: I was directing music videos and TV commercials, and my
Speaker 4: partner Tompson, and I had a show on MTV, our
Speaker 4: movie Freak. So I'm kind of always done both. It's
Speaker 4: just one is less publicly visible than the other.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pretty interesting. And also I was just am curious
Speaker 1: about how people get where they're going because I have
Speaker 1: like never had a normal career or known how to
Speaker 1: get one.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I don't know either. I couldn't tell you anything
Speaker 4: about that. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I literally was like I remember being like nineteen and
Speaker 1: being like, okay, so I'll just write a book because
Speaker 1: I have no idea how you do anything else?
Speaker 4: Yep, not good. Yeah, that's it. I do what I
Speaker 4: do and I can't do anything else, So thankfully I'm
Speaker 4: doing this.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this movie. What sort of got
Speaker 1: you going on this? Why did you decide to make.
Speaker 4: It getting through as quickly as possible. I've been around
Speaker 4: the internet from the beginning of the kind of public
Speaker 4: facing Internet, which was in the eighties. I first got
Speaker 4: online and probably eighty fivee.
Speaker 3: What was that Prodigy.
Speaker 4: It was a BBS era, so in bulletin board systems,
Speaker 4: you know, simples islet modem No, no way yet. But
Speaker 4: I was very captivated by the growth of online community
Speaker 4: right away and how robust it was, and how diverse,
Speaker 4: and how the barriers were being broken down all over
Speaker 4: the planet and within what would become much bigger subcultures
Speaker 4: and then primary cultures as the Internet grew. And that
Speaker 4: was just a really fascinating place to be and it's
Speaker 4: kind of the way things are now, just writ large.
Speaker 4: It was a very small version of these giant communities
Speaker 4: we now have. So I started making my first doc
Speaker 4: was about the rise and fall of Napster, and I
Speaker 4: was around Sean Fanning and Parker for the back end
Speaker 4: of Napster's demise and spent a lot of time with
Speaker 4: Sean Fanning primarily, and Aldam San Matteo and the other
Speaker 4: primary players at Napster because Napster was really the first
Speaker 4: time you ever had a large scale online community ever,
Speaker 4: one hundred million people on the Internet at once, very seminal.
Speaker 4: So that's been an area of fascination for me. And
Speaker 4: YouTube is by far, by an order of magnitude, the
Speaker 4: largest media platform on the globe. You know, it's the
Speaker 4: second most search website on the planet after Google. Both
Speaker 4: of those are owned by one company. And the implications
Speaker 4: are so vast and I never hear them really being
Speaker 4: discussed very much other than kind of somewhat cliche stuff
Speaker 4: about like being rabbit holed or black killed or things
Speaker 4: that don't even really have much relevance anymore. And so
Speaker 4: I really wanted to dig in and figure out, like
Speaker 4: what the implications of this vast beast are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I always thinking about this regulation is like the
Speaker 1: most unsexy topic ever.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: Trump was able to fuck up a lot of our
Speaker 1: country and our planet and our you know, environmentally and
Speaker 1: like with transit. I mean, he was able to deregulate
Speaker 1: a lot of things very quickly, and that was sort
Speaker 1: of what he ran on. And I don't think when
Speaker 1: he would say this stuff, I don't know that anyone.
Speaker 3: I'm sure, I mean, some.
Speaker 1: People, but mostly a lot of people didn't really kind
Speaker 1: of understand what the larger implications for deregulating things were,
Speaker 1: But this is not even a question of deregulation. This
Speaker 1: is more of a question of like, these things are
Speaker 1: not regulated.
Speaker 4: No, they're not. And it's very, very difficult to successfully
Speaker 4: regulate companies that have such deep pockets because their lobbying
Speaker 4: power is so vast and impenetrable, and it's spread evenly
Speaker 4: across both sides of the aisles, so you know they
Speaker 4: own they've locked up most of the Democrats and most
Speaker 4: of the Republicans. And no one is coming at I
Speaker 4: mean my movie specifically about Google, but you can stay
Speaker 4: similar for Meta and other platform big companies. But no
Speaker 4: one's coming at Google with any in my opinion, any
Speaker 4: meaningful legislation or regulation at all. And I think that
Speaker 4: there are things being done on the state level, there
Speaker 4: are things being done by individual lawyers who are suing them,
Speaker 4: like Harry Goldberg who's in our film, but there is
Speaker 4: really nothing happening, and there's an enormous amount of talk
Speaker 4: and posturing, and I would say, honestly, literally, no meaningful
Speaker 4: anti trust, anti monopoly regulation that would that would actually help.
Speaker 4: In fact, conversely, I would say that the a lot
Speaker 4: of what I don't mean to be a party pooper
Speaker 4: but a lot of what the government.
Speaker 1: No, we never talk about the president stuff here. So
Speaker 1: it's just like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, as much as I want the federal government to
Speaker 4: to because I do think that this is going to
Speaker 4: become a this is only can be solved by the
Speaker 4: federal government, at the end of the day, you have
Speaker 4: to sort of deal with these companies like we dealt
Speaker 4: with Standard Oil.
Speaker 3: So we're in trouble.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So I think that the A they don't
Speaker 4: understand the technology very much anyway, be there, they're they're
Speaker 4: paid up up to the hill with with cash and
Speaker 4: then see the ideas they do have about regular regulating
Speaker 4: the Internet are usually terrible and will make the Internet worse,
Speaker 4: like what's going on largely with the EU regulation with
Speaker 4: the Internet and which has caused a lot of censorship
Speaker 4: and a lot of marginalized communities to be art. And
Speaker 4: I think that the US is gearing up, especially on
Speaker 4: AI and social media platform is gearing up for very
Speaker 4: similar I think they're borrowing some of the language from
Speaker 4: some of the same people who wrote the EEU language
Speaker 4: a very similar misguided approach to dealing with these issues,
Speaker 4: and I think it's going to hurt people more than
Speaker 4: it's going to help them. So I think we have
Speaker 4: kind of a bumpy road ahead.
Speaker 1: So explain why a little more on that, because I
Speaker 1: don't know so much about the EU regulations except I
Speaker 1: know that they have more regulation than we do here.
Speaker 4: They do. But the thing that people get very excited
Speaker 4: when there's language around turning off and we're deplatforming or
Speaker 4: shutting down chunks of the Internet. But these this is
Speaker 4: a fragile landscape, and you know, there's a lot of
Speaker 4: great articles written about this, so it's not a difficult
Speaker 4: thing to seek out, but a lot of the discourse
Speaker 4: in the US around reforming Section two thirty, for example,
Speaker 4: there's a reason why the far right is so eager
Speaker 4: and why Trump was so eager to dismantle two thirty
Speaker 4: because it creates more censorship, It prevents safeguards for primarily
Speaker 4: smaller websites and language to be accessible online. And it
Speaker 4: really won't hurt the large companies because they're so deep
Speaker 4: pocketed they'll find ways around this stuff. So we have
Speaker 4: to be incredibly careful. It's very nuanced how you deal
Speaker 4: with content moderation and with deplatforming. Giant chunks of human
Speaker 4: beings that are online without causing major damage. And I
Speaker 4: think that's the problem is a lot of this regulation,
Speaker 4: like some of the legislation regulation in the U, is
Speaker 4: coming in with a hammer as opposed to a scalpel,
Speaker 4: and they're just there is just whack the mole. They're
Speaker 4: just bashing this stuff back and saying, hey, well we
Speaker 4: are we are preventing a lot of this discourse from
Speaker 4: happening online. So now childer nursing. But that's actually not
Speaker 4: the case. It can actually make children less safe. They
Speaker 4: can make LGBTQ lessie. Some just point to one thing
Speaker 4: that he use doing that America is looking at doing
Speaker 4: is requiring age verification, and that's a huge privacy breach
Speaker 4: and it's very dangerous for children and for people in
Speaker 4: marginalized communities to have to give up their identity online
Speaker 4: in that way, and it will cause it will cause
Speaker 4: people to get hurt.
Speaker 3: That seems not good.
Speaker 1: Explain to us a little bit about this, the connection
Speaker 1: between Google and YouTube.
Speaker 4: Well, one of the things I learned a lot making
Speaker 4: the film, though I had done a lot of research
Speaker 4: going in and you know, look, this is I guess
Speaker 4: kind of a wimpy caveat that this is a giant company.
Speaker 3: We love a wimpy caveat.
Speaker 4: I'm the king of the whimpy caveat.
Speaker 3: It's yeah, yeah, you know, be happy to have it.
Speaker 4: Google is a huge company. They do a lot of good.
Speaker 4: There's a lot of great people there. I know a
Speaker 4: lot of engineers there. I know a lot of people
Speaker 4: pretty high up the food chain there that are amazing
Speaker 4: people doing great work. So just saying and saying with YouTube,
Speaker 4: and you know, we use it all the time in
Speaker 4: a way when you're dealing with a platform as vast
Speaker 4: as YouTube that is so much more than a social
Speaker 4: media platform, so much more than news media, TV, influencers,
Speaker 4: culture search, it's all of that stuff. It's going to
Speaker 4: do a lot of good, but because it has so
Speaker 4: much influences, doing a lot of a lot of harm.
Speaker 4: And what I didn't realize going into the cell that
Speaker 4: became evident pretty quickly is that it's not a ruse
Speaker 4: because it sounds I think I'm unfairly nefarious, but YouTube
Speaker 4: is really not a separate company from Google in any
Speaker 4: meaningful way. YouTube is really I would argue that Google
Speaker 4: YouTube is really Google Media front at. It is really
Speaker 4: the platform. It's the reason it's the second most search
Speaker 4: and viewed website after Google. Is that they are in
Speaker 4: a sense of package. You know, Google performs it's functions
Speaker 4: online and YouTube performs is functions online, but they are
Speaker 4: part and parcel of the same function, which is that
Speaker 4: they are holding the eyeballs and the attention of more
Speaker 4: people on this planet than any other source for all
Speaker 4: of recorded human history, all of our information, all of
Speaker 4: our media. And I think the implications of Google's direct
Speaker 4: relationship and ownership of YouTube is important and important to
Speaker 4: underscore and understand why and what it means. And I
Speaker 4: think they've gone to great pains to try to to
Speaker 4: present a kind of superficial optical idea of two separate entities.
Speaker 4: But other than the people that work within the YouTube
Speaker 4: you know, the engineers and the basic folks working on
Speaker 4: the UI, et cetera, they really are just a part
Speaker 4: of Google's media front end and they are run under
Speaker 4: the ethos of Google an alphabet.
Speaker 3: So what does that translate to.
Speaker 4: It means that as Google grows, which is it is
Speaker 4: growing exponentially, and as it creates more data farms and
Speaker 4: more of a collection of the world's data and our
Speaker 4: identity and our content, it gives them a leg up.
Speaker 4: I would say against any other platform, any other media company,
Speaker 4: any other information source, any other search source in a
Speaker 4: vast way. So I think it just requires more scrutiny
Speaker 4: than they're getting. I think they've been. I think that
Speaker 4: people are so overawed by the size of YouTube that
Speaker 4: they tend to just forget it exists. Like people will
Speaker 4: say to me, well, what about TikTok. The kids, aren't
Speaker 4: the kids all on TikTok. I'm like, yeah, but there's like,
Speaker 4: there's billions of billions for people to quote Carl Sagan
Speaker 4: on on YouTube than there are on TikTok. It's just
Speaker 4: not a comparable they're not comparable platforms. And right, so
Speaker 4: I think it tends to get overlooked, and you know,
Speaker 4: circling back to your regulation point at the top, I
Speaker 4: think that also prevents us from putting proper safeguards in place,
Speaker 4: because we just sort of throw up our hands and say, well,
Speaker 4: it's just another social media platform, and it isn't. It's
Speaker 4: really the media front end for the largest tech company
Speaker 4: on the planet.
Speaker 1: Right right, right, So, so talk to us about you know,
Speaker 1: this movie, talk about how YouTube is radicalizing people.
Speaker 3: How does this happen.
Speaker 4: What's interesting is, I would argue, and to be fair
Speaker 4: to people who were talking about rabbit hole and you know,
Speaker 4: a couple of years ago, there was a point when
Speaker 4: the recommender algorithm had first been introduced that it was
Speaker 4: causing havoc, and to be fair to YouTube and Google,
Speaker 4: they did primarily fix that. It's very difficult to go
Speaker 4: on YouTube now the way one used to a few
Speaker 4: years ago, and you know, search for fuzzy slippers and
Speaker 4: then suddenly be down a rabbit hole with Alex Jones
Speaker 4: and you know, Jordan Peterson and Shapiro, you know, with
Speaker 4: flat earthers and people talking about the moon landing being fake.
Speaker 4: Those videos are all there. And if that's your your deal,
Speaker 4: and that's the kind of stuff you dig, well, sure
Speaker 4: you can have a field day. But I would argue
Speaker 4: that the that the radicalization on YouTube today and what
Speaker 4: what made YouTube the number one platform for sending people
Speaker 4: to the January sixth insurrection more than any other platform
Speaker 4: is the parasocial component. Is the fact that you were
Speaker 4: dealing with the very powerful and visceral and ad money
Speaker 4: amplified system of looking into a webcam and feeling that
Speaker 4: you are having an intimate connection with the person on
Speaker 4: the other end of that webcam, who, meanwhile, you don't know,
Speaker 4: that person ends up feeling like your best buddy. And
Speaker 4: because YouTube is not TikTok and you have you know,
Speaker 4: videos that are hours and hours long, that creates an
Speaker 4: incredibly strong bond between the influencer or you know, the
Speaker 4: person or the people that are talking into that webcam
Speaker 4: and the people on the other end. It also has
Speaker 4: because of its scale, it has enormous ability for communication
Speaker 4: and interconnection. So through the comment section and in other ways,
Speaker 4: you can suddenly build an army, which is what happened
Speaker 4: on January sixth. So if you take that to you know,
Speaker 4: cruising into the twenty twenty four election, what we were
Speaker 4: pounding the table and trying to get YouTube to do
Speaker 4: for years after the christ Church shooting was deplatform some
Speaker 4: of these people and moderate their content better, because while
Speaker 4: content moderation is hard, it is absolutely doable, so that,
Speaker 4: you know, in fairness to then they booted Stephan Mulinu,
Speaker 4: who was causing enormous problem in real world violence.
Speaker 3: That guy is terrible. I shouldn't laugh, but he really
Speaker 3: just the worst.
Speaker 4: The Deep platformed Alex Jones who was just you know,
Speaker 4: a parodic example of propaganda. But you know, Stephen Crowder
Speaker 4: is still there with millions and millions and millions of followers.
Speaker 4: And after after the FBI went down to Marl Largo
Speaker 4: and you know, knocked on Trump's bathroom door to try
Speaker 4: to get some of the classified documents back, Crowder went
Speaker 4: on YouTube and said to his millions of followers that
Speaker 4: they should take up arms and civil war. And that's
Speaker 4: you know, that's a heavily funded, probably dark money funded
Speaker 4: channel with enormous ad value to YouTube that's not going
Speaker 4: to get deep platform. That's causing real world violence. So
Speaker 4: that's how people get radicalized, it's not I would really
Speaker 4: would love for the narrative to jump off this algorithm speak,
Speaker 4: which is which just sounds like magic box stuff and
Speaker 4: turns everybody's brains to jello, and just look at this
Speaker 4: as as a business issue, you know, with then they're
Speaker 4: just human business decisions. If YouTube is going to get
Speaker 4: add money off of platforming people that are radicalizing you know,
Speaker 4: their followers, then they're not going to be platform them.
Speaker 4: Then people are going to get hurt. And that's got
Speaker 4: nothing to do with algorithms or technology, that's just business.
Speaker 6: So Alex, you tell so many great stories in this documentary.
Speaker 6: I couldn't help but wonder what was on the cutting
Speaker 6: room for if any thing really broke your heart to cut.
Speaker 4: We had more of the real world violence, first person
Speaker 4: shooters that were live streaming killings on YouTube, things like that.
Speaker 4: To be honest with you, it didn't break my heart
Speaker 4: because I mean, you know, I wanted to jump out
Speaker 4: in the edit room a window, right, So it's like,
Speaker 4: it's like, I get it. I was like, if I
Speaker 4: can't deal with this, like, how's an audience going to
Speaker 4: want to see? So there was that aspect, and there
Speaker 4: was really wanted to tell a very specific narrative story
Speaker 4: around a core group of characters, Caleb, Kine, Natalie, when Ryan,
Speaker 4: Ryan's Toylet like, who are these human beings? What are
Speaker 4: their relationships to each other? And so we focused more
Speaker 4: on the really critical, game changing watershed moments that made
Speaker 4: history in those ways in gamer Gate, the christ Church shooting,
Speaker 4: things like that, and so a lot of the incidental
Speaker 4: stuff didn't happen. You could make eighty movies out of YouTube,
Speaker 4: which is so vast. You can make an influencer movie.
Speaker 4: You could make a Kids on the Internet movie. You
Speaker 4: could make a just a Beltway What's going on in
Speaker 4: DC with these guys movie, But we were at the
Speaker 4: end of the day very much focused on these on
Speaker 4: these core characters in their story.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, just incredible stuff. We really appreciate you
Speaker 1: coming on. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'd love to you. Yeah, I love you, and
Speaker 4: it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Mollie and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
Speaker 1: right now, is going to have merch for sale over
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Speaker 3: Thanks for your support.
Speaker 1: Marie Brenner is an author, investigative journalist and writer at
Speaker 1: large from Fanny Fair. Celeste Hedley is a journalist and
Speaker 1: author and the host of Big Sugar. Welcome to Fastpolitics,
Speaker 1: Celeste and also Marie Brenner.
Speaker 7: Thanks for having us.
Speaker 5: Thank you for having us, Mollie.
Speaker 1: So tell me about how big Sugar came to be.
Speaker 1: Whoever wants to start is fine.
Speaker 5: Well, the extraordinary story begins with a lunch where I
Speaker 5: was talking to a head of a great public interest
Speaker 5: foundation and I said, tell me about your most riveting case.
Speaker 5: This was nineteen ninety nine, and she said, there are
Speaker 5: two lawyers fighting the most powerful sugar interests in the
Speaker 5: country right now in South Florida, and you have got
Speaker 5: to get down to West Palm Beach, take a forty
Speaker 5: five minute drive out to the sugarcane country and meet
Speaker 5: these extraordinary public interest lawyers who are trying to stop
Speaker 5: slave labor essentially in the fields that belonged to two
Speaker 5: powerful brothers called Alfie and Peppie von hul And that
Speaker 5: was the beginning of the beginning.
Speaker 3: So, Celeste, how'd you get involved in this?
Speaker 7: I got involved because I was asked, do you want
Speaker 7: to investigate the story and bring this up to date.
Speaker 7: We're working with Marie and we want to update this
Speaker 7: in time for the reconsideration of the Farm Bill and
Speaker 7: make people aware that all of these things that Marie
Speaker 7: reported on all those years ago are still happening now,
Speaker 7: if they're not worse at this point. It took about
Speaker 7: ten minutes for me to realize that they were correct.
Speaker 7: The things that Marie was writing about, in terms of
Speaker 7: the treatment of labor, the relationship of capitalism to inequality,
Speaker 7: the relationship of corporations to our environment, all of those
Speaker 7: things are perhaps worse than they were when Marie's article
Speaker 7: appeared in Vanity Fair. So yeah, I immediately jumped on it.
Speaker 1: So, Marie, when you wrote this article in Vanny Fair,
Speaker 1: what were the sort of top lines that you were
Speaker 1: so shocked by?
Speaker 5: For me, personality is always the key to history, and
Speaker 5: I was so shocked by the absolute, massive extent of
Speaker 5: sugar what it has been in American politics. Remember this
Speaker 5: was the year nineteen ninety nine, two thousand, when Gore
Speaker 5: was running for president. You had the Bush by Gore fight.
Speaker 5: And here you had in South Florida, in Miami and
Speaker 5: Palm Beach, and in this tiny little town called Belglade
Speaker 5: where this alleged slave almost slave labor shorting of the
Speaker 5: Jamaican workers that had come in to farm the fun
Speaker 5: Houl sugar plantations for years. You know, we're all based
Speaker 5: and it was you know when in retrospect, what was
Speaker 5: going on in nineteen ninety nine was an absolute canary
Speaker 5: in the coal mine for where we are now in
Speaker 5: South Florida politics. Because these two brothers that you always
Speaker 5: see in the magazines, Peppi and Alfi fun Houl, one
Speaker 5: gave millions to the Republican Party, the other gave millions
Speaker 5: to the Democratic Party. And for that, you know, it
Speaker 5: was believed by many that they were getting all kinds
Speaker 5: of favors in terms of sugar subsidies. And Celesti you
Speaker 5: did so much great research on this and really brought
Speaker 5: it up to date.
Speaker 2: But this company controls.
Speaker 3: Forty percent of sugar in America?
Speaker 2: Is that the number?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 7: I think so it tages all the time depending on sales,
Speaker 7: et cetera.
Speaker 3: But yes, but their.
Speaker 5: Influence extended right down to the final Supreme Court you
Speaker 5: know Bush v.
Speaker 2: Gore fight.
Speaker 5: So there was one of their lawyers just sitting in
Speaker 5: seat number two. And you know when when Bush v.
Speaker 5: Gore was argued, So catch an extraordinary example of corporate bigfooting.
Speaker 5: And for me, you know, it was just so tragic
Speaker 5: to see these incredibly educated Harvard law Yale law lawyers
Speaker 5: who had just set their caps on this, you know,
Speaker 5: trying to get fairness for these hundreds and hundreds and
Speaker 5: hundreds of Jamaican workers who were really paid about half
Speaker 5: what they should have been paid. And you know, they're
Speaker 5: at the fond goals with their massive yachts and their
Speaker 5: massive houses in the society pages, you know, just allowing
Speaker 5: this to go on. It's really how they made their
Speaker 5: money in America.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, that is such a crazy story. So
Speaker 3: how has it stayed the same or gotten worse a thing?
Speaker 7: It's gotten worse in the same way that we see
Speaker 7: throughout corporate America. Inequality has gotten worse. Right, A few
Speaker 7: things have changed that since the case ended, most if
Speaker 7: not all, of US sugar production has been mechanized. They
Speaker 7: aren't harvesting sugar using machetes in the US anymore. It
Speaker 7: is being harvested by hand in many places throughout the world. However,
Speaker 7: sugar is still rife, fetaled, rife with wage slavery throughout
Speaker 7: the world. The industry itself. It is still environmentally detrimental,
Speaker 7: you know. And we drove down to Florida, went to
Speaker 7: one of the fields that they had set on fighter
Speaker 7: which is what they do after the sugar is harvested.
Speaker 3: Jesus why it's the most effective way.
Speaker 7: You don't have to All you have to do is
Speaker 7: shut the cane on fire and then you're ready to
Speaker 7: replant it the next season. Right, And we parked in
Speaker 7: the parking lot of an elementary school, which is right
Speaker 7: next door to this cane field, and you saw all
Speaker 7: the critters, the frogs and the little the bunnies and
Speaker 7: creators trying running away from the flames. And I step
Speaker 7: out of the car and I was covered in ash,
Speaker 7: this greasy, thick ash. And I looked to my right
Speaker 7: and the playground, all of the slides and the playground
Speaker 7: equipment is also covered in this ash. All of the
Speaker 7: things that Marie was talking about in terms of the
Speaker 7: effect of the impact on the environment, the impact on neighborhoods,
Speaker 7: you know, but you go to this town where generations
Speaker 7: of workers have been employed by the sugar industry, and
Speaker 7: we're talking about generations of poverty, and you can see
Speaker 7: what that does to a community when they're relying on
Speaker 7: these jobs in order to survive.
Speaker 3: It's devastating.
Speaker 7: And then you drive just down the road to mar
Speaker 7: A Lago and up the road from there is where
Speaker 7: Alfi von hul lives, and behind his multi multi million
Speaker 7: dollar house is his enormous yacht bobbing in the waters.
Speaker 7: And despite our best efforts, we were never able to
Speaker 7: speak to either of the fund rules. And we tried.
Speaker 7: There's a long montage in the podcast of our producers
Speaker 7: calling and calling I hung out outside their building. We
Speaker 7: even tried to just get to the receptionist to hand
Speaker 7: them the letter. We couldn't even get to the front
Speaker 7: desk of the company. Like, if you are rich enough
Speaker 7: in this country, you don't have to answer questions.
Speaker 3: You don't have to.
Speaker 7: Answer for the decisions that you make, because you can
Speaker 7: completely shelter yourself behind enough layers of other people that
Speaker 7: you can stay far away from anybody who wants to
Speaker 7: make you accountable for the decisions you make, the things
Speaker 7: that you do, the wealth you accrue.
Speaker 1: Right, tell us a little bit about this farm bell,
Speaker 1: either of you, and what it could do to Big Sugar.
Speaker 7: Well, so the farm bell only comes up every five years,
Speaker 7: So phone me. Just go back a little bit in history,
Speaker 7: the farm bill, of course began. The sugar program part
Speaker 7: of it, of course, began after in World War two,
Speaker 7: and there was a real concern that the United States
Speaker 7: didn't want to have.
Speaker 3: To rely on other countries for its sugar, right.
Speaker 7: We wanted to make sure that we always had enough
Speaker 7: sugar here in the United States growing, and so they
Speaker 7: incentivized it. They may guarantees that the cost of sugar
Speaker 7: would never fall blow out a certain amount price, which
Speaker 7: basically is just subsidizing the growth of sugar. Obviously, we
Speaker 7: don't actually need that. It's not like sugar is not
Speaker 7: a profitable commodity. We don't have to incentivize people to
Speaker 7: grow sugar. We're not talking about kale, but it's worth
Speaker 7: billions and billions of dollars. The Cato Institute calls it
Speaker 7: a candy coated cartel at this point. And these are
Speaker 7: a very small number of companies. We're not talking about
Speaker 7: a really diverse group of companies. We're talking about it
Speaker 7: very small number who get billions of dollars of corporate welfare. Now,
Speaker 7: the thing is is that not only they're getting billions
Speaker 7: of dollars subsidies, but also sugar in through the farm bill.
Speaker 7: The sugar United States is more expensive here than it
Speaker 7: is in almost any other industrialization. So they're getting billions
Speaker 7: and taxpayer dollars from the farm bill. Then they're getting
Speaker 7: a lot more because we pay more when we could
Speaker 7: go to the grocery store. Then there's not a lot
Speaker 7: of environmental regulations forcing them to comply expensively with environmental regulations.
Speaker 7: The US taxpayer is having to comply with those in order,
Speaker 7: you know, the Everglades in other areas, those are other
Speaker 7: place of which the US taxpayer is having to pay
Speaker 7: for the sugar industry. And in terms of labor, you know,
Speaker 7: we have to pay for the people who are not
Speaker 7: perhaps making enough to come up to a certain living standard.
Speaker 7: So the US taxpayer is really really paying a lot
Speaker 7: for the sugar habits. And that doesn't even that doesn't
Speaker 7: even include healthcare costs, because for a very very long time,
Speaker 7: the sugar industry got itself involved in the science behind
Speaker 7: what caused obesity, what caused cardiovascular problems, what caused heart disease,
Speaker 7: to sort of mask or downplay the relationship between sugar
Speaker 7: and all of those various related health problems, which probably
Speaker 7: has a very high cost when it comes to our
Speaker 7: hospitals and life expectancy and various problems in that place
Speaker 7: as well.
Speaker 5: So it's super expensive. So on the human levels, I mean,
Speaker 5: what Celeste says is so riveting. But dial this back
Speaker 5: now to nineteen ninety nine and imagine a twenty two
Speaker 5: four year old just out of Yale Law School named
Speaker 5: Sarah Cleveland going to Belglade, Florida for the first time
Speaker 5: to work on this fellowship at this rural public interest
Speaker 5: law a migrant legal project, and meeting her future husband,
Speaker 5: Edward Tuttenham, a romantic, idealistic, optimistic, Harvard Law School educated lawyer.
Speaker 5: And those two along with several other lawyers who are
Speaker 5: you know, They've given their life to fighting the sugar industry,
Speaker 5: all of them, Celeste interviewed for the podcast Imagine this drama.
Speaker 5: It is a you know, what I walked into was
Speaker 5: this extraordinary case that had dragged on for over several
Speaker 5: years even at that period, and was in its kind
Speaker 5: of final stages, and this love story that was going
Speaker 5: on at the same time, and the impossibility of these lawyers,
Speaker 5: with their backpacks and their ideals going against the fan
Speaker 5: Houle Enterprise. ALFI Fonhull was able to get then President
Speaker 5: Bill Clinton on the telephone to badger a tugger policy
Speaker 5: at a moment of intimacy he was having with Monaco
Speaker 5: No Yes, and this was famously talked about. Now this again,
Speaker 5: it's all on the podcast. This was famously when he
Speaker 5: went and mispronounced Alfi Fought Bull's name as mister Fon
Speaker 5: Jewel was you know, hello, miss Jewel on the time.
Speaker 5: But the power of these guys, that's so insane. This
Speaker 5: all came out later and so this is what I
Speaker 5: walked into in nineteen ninety nine. It was one of
Speaker 5: the most riveting stories of corporate America. There was one
Speaker 5: moment in the courtroom, and we talk about this in
Speaker 5: the podcast too. There was one moment in the court
Speaker 5: where they were in their final stages. It was the
Speaker 5: closing arguments, and I walk in and I see, you know,
Speaker 5: these incredibly educated lawyers who just, you know, like they're
Speaker 5: just trying to get these workers the money that they deserve.
Speaker 5: And they all are literally carrying their backpacks and they're
Speaker 5: in their chinos, and they're on one side and there's
Speaker 5: only about four or five, maybe six of them, and
Speaker 5: then on the other side, the rows are packed with
Speaker 5: these incredibly elegant du Bean American stiletto'keel wearing you know,
Speaker 5: beautifully dressed wommen. Then they're you know, these incredibly attractive
Speaker 5: and high power lawyers. And then in the midst of
Speaker 5: all of this, you know, they bring in an African
Speaker 5: American lawyer named Willie Gary who flies in, who's been
Speaker 5: brought in to help represent them, and he flies in
Speaker 5: on his own plane. What's it called, Celeste, The Wings
Speaker 5: of Glory or the Going Off that it was one
Speaker 5: of the most American of epics of the you know,
Speaker 5: of you know, the Right against Might, you know, David
Speaker 5: against Goliath and there you go, you know, like they
Speaker 5: lost and the farm workers who had somehow managed to
Speaker 5: stay in America, these Jamaicans. Celeste interviewed several of them
Speaker 5: for the podcast, and I had interviewed them, you know,
Speaker 5: twenty years ago, and they were so compelling about you know,
Speaker 5: literally how they were treated, how they were like they
Speaker 5: couldn't get into America without having their hands checked, you know,
Speaker 5: almost like it was like slave trade and that work
Speaker 5: is so backbreaking. I mean, Celeste, you were so good
Speaker 5: talking about that in the podcast.
Speaker 3: Well, these men had such stories that sell Tella. It's
Speaker 3: about some of those stories.
Speaker 7: What surprised me with some of them, was they They
Speaker 7: would talk about these things happening with absolutely just monotone inflection,
Speaker 7: you know, they would say and then you know, and
Speaker 7: then even he took the sheddy and I would look
Speaker 7: over and he had cut off his finger, and so
Speaker 7: we then you know, he shouted out and he screamed
Speaker 7: in the mantel, and I would be like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 7: go back, sorry what happened. But you know that, oh,
Speaker 7: those years, those months of that was how it was treated.
Speaker 7: That those kinds of injuries were part of the job,
Speaker 7: and so that's how they had to cope. That's the
Speaker 7: kind of sort of disengagement from suffering they had to
Speaker 7: learn in order to survive those jobs. And they would
Speaker 7: write these letters home to their families, and many of
Speaker 7: them didn't include any of those details in those letters
Speaker 7: because the people at home in Jamaica were counting on
Speaker 7: even the small amount of money they were sending home,
Speaker 7: and they didn't want them to know what they were
Speaker 7: suffering in order to get send that money back. You know,
Speaker 7: their stories were just you know, you just can't hear
Speaker 7: their stories without you know, feeling moved. And then the
Speaker 7: fact that especially the von RULs, who had so much
Speaker 7: these Cuban princes who lost everything, but they lost palaces
Speaker 7: when Pastro took over. Right, these are not in any case. Yes,
Speaker 7: Alfi was kidnapped at one point by Castro's man and
Speaker 7: held at gunpoint. His father had gotten out before, and
Speaker 7: he Alphie at age eighteen or seventeen or ninety something
Speaker 7: is in college, was left to run the sugar companies
Speaker 7: before he led. But you know what was interesting, I
Speaker 7: too chased the fond Buls for a long time that
Speaker 7: they finally did agree to be interviewed because they wanted
Speaker 7: to get their side of the story out. And at
Speaker 7: one point I asked, Alfi, fund whichever, consider setting up
Speaker 7: an education fund for the children of these Jamaican workers.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that's a good idea.
Speaker 5: You set up any kind of a restitution fund, even
Speaker 5: though you're going to win this case. You know, meanwhile,
Speaker 5: you know they're sitting on this hundreds and hundreds of
Speaker 5: millions of dollars. He couldn't even imagine the question. He said,
Speaker 5: why would.
Speaker 2: I do that?
Speaker 3: And I said, because it's.
Speaker 5: Probably the right thing to do, and he said, no,
Speaker 5: we've given them an opportunity to work in America and
Speaker 5: again as soles said, it was a kind of preview
Speaker 5: of the astonishing disparity that we are living now in
Speaker 5: this country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean incredible stuff.
Speaker 1: Tell me one last thing that why you should listen
Speaker 1: to this podcast.
Speaker 3: And okay, so I'll tell you one last thing. Look,
Speaker 3: we're all journalists.
Speaker 7: We know that there's a lot of really important things
Speaker 7: that people don't have time to think about, or learn
Speaker 7: about or be educated about.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 7: We know that everybody can't know stuff about everything they
Speaker 7: probably should know about.
Speaker 3: But every once in a while, things bubble.
Speaker 7: Up that you have to pay attention to, and as
Speaker 7: journalists we try to point those things out and say, Okay,
Speaker 7: it's time. It's time to think time to think about
Speaker 7: climate change, it's time to think about racism.
Speaker 3: Now's time.
Speaker 7: This is the time the farm bills up. It only
Speaker 7: comes up once every five years, so it's time.
Speaker 3: This is that moment.
Speaker 7: When you really do have to listen in and learn
Speaker 7: about what this does. Learn about the sugar industry, learn
Speaker 7: about how that sugar gets to your table and into
Speaker 7: your coffee or your tea, and understand how this works
Speaker 7: so that you could call you your representatives and your
Speaker 7: senator and take some action.
Speaker 5: The legal drama, rivals, anything out of a John Grisham novel,
Speaker 5: I would say, is that not quite a celibate clent.
Speaker 5: It's a riproaring yarn of American power and politics and
Speaker 5: so dramatic. And again, Celeste, you know you have done
Speaker 5: such great reporting on the lawyers themselves and the battles
Speaker 5: between them that you know went on that just for
Speaker 5: the sake of sheer summer entertainment.
Speaker 2: It is a great, great story.
Speaker 3: It is. It's this started out as a great story
Speaker 3: with Murray. It's still a great story now.
Speaker 1: So I think the top line is listen to the
Speaker 1: podcast Big Sugar during your vac and then call your
Speaker 1: rep and your Senator and talk to.
Speaker 3: Them about the farm bill and subsidies for billionaires. It's
Speaker 3: time to end that. Yeah, thanks to both of you.
Speaker 3: Thanks in a moment perfectly Jesse Cannon Milli Jong Fast.
Speaker 6: Trump is trucing it up, which is always ironic because
Speaker 6: he's not usually saying anything that's true when he does that.
Speaker 1: We've been on vacation for a week, and during that time,
Speaker 1: Trump is at another set of indictments. He's taken to
Speaker 1: the social media site that he is stuck on because
Speaker 1: he made a deal with them, and he has continually
Speaker 1: been truthing, and he's threatened the judge, he has threatened
Speaker 1: the witnesses, and he has asked for a change of venue,
Speaker 1: as one does with all caps.
Speaker 3: That's not how any of this is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: And for that, our former president number forty five in
Speaker 1: all caps, trucing away is our moment of fuck Ray.
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.