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 Democrats have voted with the Republicans
Speaker 1: to pass a transgender sports fan Good work everyone, We
Speaker 1: have such a great show for you today. And by
Speaker 1: the way, I mean good work, bad work, don't do that.
Speaker 1: The New Yorkers Evan os Nos stops by to talk
Speaker 1: about where we are an American democracy. Spoiler no, We're good.
Speaker 1: And then we'll talk to Slate's Dahlia Lettwick about Pam
Speaker 1: Bondi's confirmation hearing.
Speaker 2: But first the News, Somali, As you stated at the
Speaker 2: top of the show of the News, it's just going
Speaker 2: great today. The confirmation hearings continue. But you know, there
Speaker 2: was a moment yesterday after retape with Mark Wayne Mullen
Speaker 2: defending peak takest that I think deserves a little more attention.
Speaker 1: Republican Mark Wayne Mullen is from Oklahoma. He is very
Speaker 1: much the Marjorie Taylor Green of the Senate, taking any
Speaker 1: chance to defend one of Trump's people. He defended hegseeth
Speaker 1: against charge of drunkenness and womanizing by suggesting that his
Speaker 1: colleagues were equally culpable. How many Senators have shown up
Speaker 1: drunk to vote at night? Have any of you guys
Speaker 1: asked them to step down and resign from their job?
Speaker 1: By the way, as someone who's sober since they were nineteen, yes,
Speaker 1: let's do it. Let's I'm happy. If you're an active alcoholic,
Speaker 1: perhaps you should not be running our government. And don't
Speaker 1: tell me you haven't seen it, because I know you have.
Speaker 1: And how many senators you know have gotten a divorce
Speaker 1: for cheating on their wives? Again, kick all those people out.
Speaker 1: But also, more importantly, the idea, you know, we've gone
Speaker 1: down this rabbit hole with Trump where since nothing is
Speaker 1: disqualifying for Trump, the thought process with a lot of
Speaker 1: these Republicans is nothing is disqualifying for his nominees. Very annoying,
Speaker 1: very crazy, and also I might add just completely and disturbing.
Speaker 1: But this is where we are so welcome. That's pretty
Speaker 1: much how these hearings are going.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of other fun stuff, turns out that doing
Speaker 2: bad things in Magaworld gets you much bigger book deals.
Speaker 1: This is Christy Noom from the Great State of South Dakota.
Speaker 1: She she had to file some financial disclosures because she
Speaker 1: is going to be Trump's pick for Homeland Security Secretary.
Speaker 1: She has confirmations coming on Friday. In her disclosures, she
Speaker 1: revealed that she made one hundred and thirty nine thousand
Speaker 1: dollars advance for her twenty twenty four book. That was
Speaker 1: the book where she talked a lot and in great
Speaker 1: detail about shooting her dog and burying it in the
Speaker 1: gravel pick. Again, this continues to be a baffling kind
Speaker 1: of play. Why writing about you know, it was America.
Speaker 1: All we like are dogs, right, And I mean that's
Speaker 1: the one thing all Americans can agree on is that
Speaker 1: dogs are great. Except South Dakota Governor Christy Nome does
Speaker 1: not think that anyway.
Speaker 2: The question really is is are there more secrets buried
Speaker 2: in this new book?
Speaker 1: Yeah? And our first in the gravel pit.
Speaker 2: Yes. On that note, I'll move to another subject to
Speaker 2: save us from our bad jokes. So let's see, we've
Speaker 2: seen merk Garland be quite toothless. We've talked that one
Speaker 2: to death. Hopefully we will not think about him much
Speaker 2: anymore in the next week. But the SEC is now
Speaker 2: going to demonstrate what their teeth look like as they
Speaker 2: sue Elon Musk over Twitter related securities violations for his
Speaker 2: forty four billion dollars.
Speaker 1: Purchase, the purchase of Twitter now called X. What I
Speaker 1: think is interesting about this is we had wondered how
Speaker 1: Elan had gotten so maga and why he had gotten
Speaker 1: so maga, and this sort of provides a really interesting motivation. Right,
Speaker 1: So Elon knew that he was going to get sued
Speaker 1: by the securities regulators. He knew that was coming. He
Speaker 1: probably has known this for a while. While this is
Speaker 1: going to be the final act of Gary Gensler, who
Speaker 1: he has a department chair, who he's been raging about forever,
Speaker 1: and he's saying that Mosk violated securities laws by amassing
Speaker 1: a large doc position in the social media company without
Speaker 1: filing the proper notification. The complaint said he had waited
Speaker 1: eleven days before filing the required disclosures with the sec
Speaker 1: So this is this is really like the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that Martha Stewart went to jail over, right.
Speaker 2: A lot of people have calling to jail over this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So it's one of those administrations that really like said
Speaker 2: detail sewn up properly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is where we are. It's incredibly unsurprising, perhaps.
Speaker 2: But that's where we are, SAMAI. Mister Trump has done
Speaker 2: a lot of braggadocious things about getting the war in
Speaker 2: Israel to stop. But it's looking like there may be
Speaker 2: a ceasefire, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So it looks like there's going to be a
Speaker 1: a ceasefire for Israel. I don't know what that looks
Speaker 1: like exactly. I don't know. We don't really know a
Speaker 1: lot of the details. This is sort of breaking news,
Speaker 1: but it looks like Biden world has negotiated seasfire right
Speaker 1: before the presidency ended a little too late for all
Speaker 1: of those people in Gaza and also many of the hostages,
Speaker 1: but it looks like we have.
Speaker 3: Some kind of seasfire.
Speaker 1: Evan Osnos is a writer for The New Yorker and
Speaker 1: the author of Wildland, The Making of America's Fury. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Evan Osnos, thank.
Speaker 3: You very much, Molly jump Past. I'm pleased to be here.
Speaker 1: I am so excited to have you because I am
Speaker 1: a longtime listener of the New Yorker podcast, which is excellent,
Speaker 1: which has you.
Speaker 3: Bless you, thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm not even a listener, I'm like a super fan,
Speaker 1: and so I do things like write your boss emails
Speaker 1: about my hottest takes about what you guys should be doing,
Speaker 1: which I'm sure he loves.
Speaker 3: We've gotten some of them. They've been on passed to
Speaker 3: use the term in the journalism business. And I don't
Speaker 3: mean to dangle something, but you might have some very
Speaker 3: cheap and disposable swag coming your way if this keeps up.
Speaker 1: My god, you have never known anyone to be more
Speaker 1: impressed with free stuff than me. And you would think,
Speaker 1: as someone who is not you know, has not just
Speaker 1: fallen off the turnip truck, that I would be cynical
Speaker 1: about getting free stuff, but in fact, I am just
Speaker 1: so incredibly impressed by it. So send me free.
Speaker 3: Step I'm with you. I'm sitting here taping in my
Speaker 3: closet wearing swag from an ungodly number of entities. That's
Speaker 3: just how I roll. I'm clad in swag. There we
Speaker 3: are so.
Speaker 1: Just for the very few people who don't read The
Speaker 1: New Yorker but listen to this podcast, Evan is one
Speaker 1: of the smartest political writers I think, period paragraph and
Speaker 1: what I love about the podcast you're on, which if
Speaker 1: anyone is looking for another podcast after they've listened to
Speaker 1: me four times a week. It's not you know that
Speaker 1: you and Jane Mayer, who is just a wonderful human
Speaker 1: being but also just have been doing this and gets
Speaker 1: the scoops, and Susan Glasser who really knows her stuff,
Speaker 1: and just to hear the three of you talk about stuff,
Speaker 1: you know, talk about things that are really important historical
Speaker 1: references that nobody else remembers.
Speaker 3: Well, I thank you. You know those two are as
Speaker 3: we say national treasures, I might be a regional treasure,
Speaker 3: which is a less coveted title, but honestly, it is
Speaker 3: a genuine treat to get on there every week. And they,
Speaker 3: the three of us, if you put our meager brains together,
Speaker 3: you get some assemblage of memory of politics over the
Speaker 3: last generation or so, so that we try to talk
Speaker 3: about that a bit too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very smart stuff. So anyway, here we are in
Speaker 1: the middle of the confirmation hearings. I'm just going to
Speaker 1: read you the title of a email I got last
Speaker 1: night from Politico, which really, you know, I don't read
Speaker 1: every email I get when I get all of these emails,
Speaker 1: but this one it just I was somewhere and I
Speaker 1: just it stabbed me in the heart. The death of
Speaker 1: the Senate confirmation hearing. Yeah, discuss.
Speaker 3: Look, I have to say I too have been known
Speaker 3: to miss the occasional email newsletter. However, that one did
Speaker 3: catch my attention to because I was listening yesterday to
Speaker 3: the Hegseth confirmation hearing, because I have a vibrant socialize,
Speaker 3: but also because there is something true in that description
Speaker 3: that there has always been something theatrical about the confirmation process.
Speaker 3: But part of that theater has been at least the
Speaker 3: suggestion that the person who's testifying is going to try
Speaker 3: to answer the question, is going to try you know,
Speaker 3: of course they do the usual evasive historyonics, but that
Speaker 3: there will be some ultimate effort to try to satis
Speaker 3: by the public's expectation that information will be asked and answered.
Speaker 3: And I think we've just entered this phase now where
Speaker 3: it is like a series of parallel, non intersecting performances,
Speaker 3: some of which I've found actually quite interesting. I mean
Speaker 3: to see Alyssa Slotkin or Tim Kaine, that was good
Speaker 3: hearing conduct. That's what you.
Speaker 1: Do, Tim, and then Tammy Duckworth.
Speaker 3: Tammy Duckworth I've been fascinated by for years. I mean,
Speaker 3: I started my career at the Chicago Tribune. So there's
Speaker 3: sort of some Illinois in the blood. And I think
Speaker 3: there's a way in which her life, the fact that
Speaker 3: she was injured while serving overseas during the American Wars
Speaker 3: of the twenty first century, makes her a uniquely powerful
Speaker 3: voice in this moment. So I found that to be
Speaker 3: just sort of almost thinking as a playwright or something,
Speaker 3: as a novelist, there's something really extraordinary which ultimately drives
Speaker 3: home how frustrating it was to see heg Seth really
Speaker 3: not acknowledge the dignity of this process and to just
Speaker 3: say now I'm going to just kind of Fox and
Speaker 3: Friends my way through it.
Speaker 1: Agreed. I also think like this is a moment where
Speaker 1: Democrats need to adapt. I say this as a partisan.
Speaker 1: One of the things I truly hate about this current
Speaker 1: reality is that there were people I knew who were like,
Speaker 1: this will be good for business, and I was like,
Speaker 1: it will be until there's the business is shut down, right,
Speaker 1: And I actually didn't even say that because I said,
Speaker 1: you know, you can't play chicken with things like American democracy.
Speaker 1: And what I see as I'm watching this is like
Speaker 1: democrats need to adapt to whatever this is they're not
Speaker 1: going to necessarily be able. I mean, they have a
Speaker 1: math problem, right that Republicans have a hardened maga Senate
Speaker 1: with very few normal senators left.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have to tell you you've hit on one
Speaker 3: of the things that I have privately, I don't think
Speaker 3: I've talked about it, but privately been kind of enraged about,
Speaker 3: which is that there is a pretty sizable chunk of
Speaker 3: the business, the journalism business, that is actually eager for
Speaker 3: the fight to be back, for the Trump years, to
Speaker 3: allow the rage to get back into the news, meaning
Speaker 3: for readers and viewers and listeners to tune in out
Speaker 3: of sheer contempt. And I find that to be a
Speaker 3: disastrous kind of cynicism. The idea that this is a
Speaker 3: good thing for us as an industry or as a
Speaker 3: country is a big piece of my fundamental beef with
Speaker 3: political journalism. You know, it's a business I'm in, but
Speaker 3: I find that piece of it to be kind of,
Speaker 3: in some ways the pure distillation of what it is
Speaker 3: that Americans actually really hate about us, and their right
Speaker 3: to hate that just because we talk about it as
Speaker 3: a game sometimes doesn't mean that it should be. And
Speaker 3: I think that people pick up on how distasteful that
Speaker 3: is because it has real impact in their lives. So
Speaker 3: I'm with you on this one. I find that to
Speaker 3: be a real problem.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really disgusting, and I also think
Speaker 1: it's really how wet here Like Elon Musk has a
Speaker 1: tweet that he loves I have not been subject to
Speaker 1: it yet, but it's coming where he says, you do
Speaker 1: not hate the mainstream media enough, right, Like, this is
Speaker 1: the fever dream of all of Silicon Valley is to
Speaker 1: get the people against the media because we are the
Speaker 1: you know, by reporting on the corruption, we are the corruption.
Speaker 1: But the larger question is the gamification of what is
Speaker 1: happening to our federal government is real.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, it's interesting I've been recently. I was
Speaker 3: going back and looking at a piece that I wrote
Speaker 3: some years ago about Mark Zuckerberg. I did a profile
Speaker 3: of him back in like twenty nineteen, and what's amazing
Speaker 3: to see now in contrast to where he is is
Speaker 3: At the time, he was still engaged in a pantomime
Speaker 3: of respect for the press that he was for one thing.
Speaker 3: After much haranguing and harassment and stalking, he'd eventually agreed
Speaker 3: to this sit down to some interview and then ultimately
Speaker 3: but it was clear that he was sort of doing
Speaker 3: it through grated teeth. And now we're in an era
Speaker 3: where he and his cohort Elon Musk to some degree
Speaker 3: some of the others, that they just refuse to acknowledge
Speaker 3: that the press is a meaningful part of power and
Speaker 3: of conversation. What they do acknowledge of it is that
Speaker 3: they have contempt for it. I remember actually a billionaire
Speaker 3: in Silicon Valley who said to me a couple of
Speaker 3: years ago, he said, do you think that anybody out
Speaker 3: here is ever going to agree to a New York
Speaker 3: or profile again? And I thought that was such an
Speaker 3: interesting tell, because they were beginning to back out of
Speaker 3: the existing call it, the existing apparatus of accountability, and
Speaker 3: the press is a part of that. And we now
Speaker 3: are living in the world in which they don't want
Speaker 3: any part of that. And so they're actively as you
Speaker 3: described with Musk's tweet, you know, as he says, we
Speaker 3: are the media now. I mean that is their moment
Speaker 3: of feeling free, feeling that they've thrown off the yoke
Speaker 3: of that kind of visibility and scrutiny. I will say
Speaker 3: one thing, though, which is, you know, this is laying,
Speaker 3: but true history is long, and these periods don't tend
Speaker 3: to endure for very long. That they may find themselves
Speaker 3: under a new kind of scrutiny and they may not
Speaker 3: like that much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, by the way we are the media now,
Speaker 1: it's like, you really want to be us because you
Speaker 1: don't want to be as you know, the billionaire on
Speaker 1: his jet, who's who is the richest man in the world,
Speaker 1: is like, I'm going to take down. It's like stepping
Speaker 1: on an ant.
Speaker 3: Well, which is a fascinating kind of asymmetry of power.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's one of the things that drives them crazy,
Speaker 3: is this idea that somebody who makes in a lifetime
Speaker 3: what they'll make in a day now is able to
Speaker 3: be sort of nettlesome in the way that a kind
Speaker 3: of a gnat flies in the face. But I think
Speaker 3: it's a reality, and that's one of the things that
Speaker 3: they've gone after now in a profound way. And I'm
Speaker 3: not quite sure where that leads. I mean, I really don't.
Speaker 3: I do think we're at a real moment of collision though,
Speaker 3: between what Politico discription today is the billionaire boys Club,
Speaker 3: the guys who are going to be attending the inauguration
Speaker 3: as part of the pro Trump team, and then and
Speaker 3: the press. So that is one of the things I'm
Speaker 3: most conscious of over the next couple of months and
Speaker 3: then going into this administration is is how much does
Speaker 3: a musk or somebody like him, actually how much is
Speaker 3: he able to accommodate himself to the realities of politics,
Speaker 3: of the press, of things like that, or does he
Speaker 3: just end up getting self ejected and does he just
Speaker 3: go back and say the hell with this, I'm going
Speaker 3: back to my cars and my rockets.
Speaker 1: I mean, that is I think the big question. And
Speaker 1: we see him sort of cycling through different countries, right
Speaker 1: like I thought, well, he's really invested now in Doge
Speaker 1: and then it's like and also German elections, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like and I sleep at night, so I don't know.
Speaker 1: But none of these men sleep at all. Trump doesn't sleep,
Speaker 1: Elon doesn't sleep. None of these people sleep. If I
Speaker 1: get less than six and a half hours, I'm like
Speaker 1: a zombie.
Speaker 3: But can I give you a data point on this?
Speaker 3: A fascinating one from my you know, as you I
Speaker 3: spend part of my life thinking about China. And writing
Speaker 3: about China and so on. And there's a fabulous little
Speaker 3: detail from Chinese history that at this absolutely crucial moment
Speaker 3: in Chinese history when Mao Zedong undertook this massive purge
Speaker 3: that ended up being a signpost to catastrophe. Later followed
Speaker 3: all kinds of purges and led to the Culture Revolution
Speaker 3: and so on. But when you later went back and
Speaker 3: looked at the transcript of what he said about his decisions,
Speaker 3: he said, I was tossing and turning all night. I
Speaker 3: couldn't decide what to do about this, and so I
Speaker 3: took a pill. And then I still couldn't sleep. So
Speaker 3: I took another pill, and I still couldn't sleep, So
Speaker 3: I took yet another pill. And what we discover is
Speaker 3: that like actually a fair piece of China's most terrible dialogebollical,
Speaker 3: kind of darkest moments of authoritarian madness, we're really the
Speaker 3: product of pharmaceutical experimentation. Part of it insomniac.
Speaker 1: I shouldn't laugh, Well, it.
Speaker 3: Doesn't bode well for us. No, it's a I mean,
Speaker 3: you have to laugh in a dark way. That The
Speaker 3: reason I think that's interesting is that the interplay between
Speaker 3: the private idiosyncrasies or frailties or madnesses of these men
Speaker 3: at the top. They are men of our system. Will matter,
Speaker 3: they will shape the course. You know, human history is
Speaker 3: shaped partly by events and partly by human nature, something
Speaker 3: my dad often says, and I think he's right about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean it's funny because sleep is such a
Speaker 1: trope in my life. Anyway. The point is, I'm about
Speaker 1: to like launch into stories for my memoir, which isn't
Speaker 1: out till June. So and the kennel does not like it.
Speaker 3: So well, I'm excited for that, by the way, And
Speaker 3: I do think as an as a fellow insomniac, that's
Speaker 3: like hot content. I'm excited.
Speaker 1: It's very short, you tell it's very Somebody said it's
Speaker 1: very quick read, but it has very dark topics like
Speaker 1: death and mostly deaths and people getting cancer, et cetera.
Speaker 1: And so they were saying it's like a Jewish beach read.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm a fan of that type, and I will
Speaker 3: see that is I do think people want short right now,
Speaker 3: and along the lines of great short Jewish beach reads
Speaker 3: about death. Can I recommend Calvin Trillin's amazing book about Alice,
Speaker 3: which was about his beloved in ly wife. You know,
Speaker 3: it is one of the all time greats.
Speaker 1: Calvin he was known bud right was exactly Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so but anyway, just back to the death of American democracy. Sure,
Speaker 1: so my theory of the case is that we need
Speaker 1: to see democrats adapt to this new trumpefied world. And
Speaker 1: so I think what should happen is And I was
Speaker 1: looking at the Tammy Duckworth conversation today because I thought
Speaker 1: it was well done, but there was an oppert tunity
Speaker 1: that she missed. So she asked him right here, she
Speaker 1: is blackhawk helicopter pilot lost her legs, she says to him,
Speaker 1: and really knows. So shit says, can you name this
Speaker 1: is these Asian this association of Southern Asion. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: he says, I know, we have allies in South Korea
Speaker 1: and Japan.
Speaker 3: Right, and Australia he named Australia. Also not a member of.
Speaker 1: Australia the United Kingdom in the US. Okay, So none
Speaker 1: of that is.
Speaker 3: Right, right, correct, You're right?
Speaker 1: And more importantly, because I just looked this up, it's
Speaker 1: not even close, right, the countries in it are. I'm
Speaker 1: sure you know this. This is different between the New
Speaker 1: York But they are you know, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's Southeast Asia essentially.
Speaker 1: Right, it's the Philipines, function, Yeah, Vietnam, Thailand. So she
Speaker 1: says to him, none of those three countries are in it.
Speaker 1: And then she says, I suggest you do a little homework. Now,
Speaker 1: here's my question for you. In a previous world, you
Speaker 1: could have said that and it would have been like zing.
Speaker 1: But my question now is should she have just kept
Speaker 1: pushing and trying to get him, trying to show how
Speaker 1: little he knew in order to sort of enter into
Speaker 1: the public record that he didn't really know what he
Speaker 1: was talking about.
Speaker 3: It's true, I happen to say I loved that approach.
Speaker 3: It's what what I thought of as the sort of
Speaker 3: Katie Kirk Sarah Palin approach where you know, you got
Speaker 3: to hear Pete Hegsas say, I love all the all
Speaker 3: the all the aussion countries. You have any specific ways
Speaker 3: all of them?
Speaker 4: I read?
Speaker 3: You know. So in a way, that was she did
Speaker 3: real work on behalf of the American public there by
Speaker 3: exposing what he doesn't know. And you know, because he'll
Speaker 3: make reference to these aussion alliances or these these agreements
Speaker 3: without having the foggiest notion of the time. So I
Speaker 3: do think you're right it would have been productive to
Speaker 3: continue down this kind of essentially remedial education component of
Speaker 3: the hearing and to demonstrate what he how much has
Speaker 3: slipped through his tender grasp. But I thought that was
Speaker 3: very smart, That was effective, and it'll reverberate in Asia.
Speaker 3: That will work. You know, that's going to play on
Speaker 3: all kinds of Asian programming for a while, particularly when
Speaker 3: he gets on a plane and flies over there. He's
Speaker 3: going to have to suit of practically really bone up,
Speaker 3: like Encyclopedia Brown on ossion time comes.
Speaker 1: Clearly a lot of Democrats were mad about him saying
Speaker 1: that women can't serve as the daughter of a second
Speaker 1: wave feminist. I get their irritation. I mean, it's a
Speaker 1: very fucked up thing to say, But my question is
Speaker 1: more like, is yelling at him about that going to
Speaker 1: move the needle. I almost wonder if you had pushed
Speaker 1: harder on the timeline. And this was something I thought
Speaker 1: that was smart that we saw Senator Tim Kaine do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the once and future next Vice President United States.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yeah, where he did more of a sort
Speaker 1: of adultery time table discussion. I thought they did better
Speaker 1: when they went in small and worse when they went
Speaker 1: in big.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I thought that the one area that in some
Speaker 3: ways blended those two was when Elizabeth Warren asked if
Speaker 3: he would commit to not taking a job in the
Speaker 3: defense industry after serving as Secretary of Defense, which is
Speaker 3: something that he has called for among generals that he
Speaker 3: said they shouldn't be able to do it for ten years.
Speaker 3: And she hammered him on this, She said, yeah, though
Speaker 3: you called on this for generals, but what about for yourself?
Speaker 3: And he refused to commit to that. He ended up saying, well,
Speaker 3: I'm not a general, which I thought it might have
Speaker 3: been useful to point out you certainly are not. And
Speaker 3: that also is a way of demonstrating whether he has
Speaker 3: enough history and stature and experience to be suited for
Speaker 3: this job. So I look, I think part of this
Speaker 3: gets back to what one of the early things you mentioned,
Speaker 3: which is this interesting question whether the structure and the
Speaker 3: mechanics of the hearing process are collapsing. And part of
Speaker 3: going after him out adultery about his contempt for women
Speaker 3: in combat is, you know, some of this was about
Speaker 3: reminding people of the childless cat ladies stuff. That was
Speaker 3: quite effective, I think for a while in focusing on
Speaker 3: the vulnerabilities of this administration's ideas, and this is in
Speaker 3: its way an extension of that. But ultimately I do
Speaker 3: think that the most durable revelations really were when Tammy
Speaker 3: Duckworth showed that this is a man who is really
Speaker 3: not at all prepared to even look up the right
Speaker 3: part of the encyclopedia when it comes to how to
Speaker 3: do this job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was really interesting because he was in
Speaker 1: some ways so well prepared.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he's very smooth, you know. I interviewed him a
Speaker 3: couple years ago when I was doing a story about
Speaker 3: Dan Bongino, the right wing talker.
Speaker 1: Everyone who listens to this podcast knows exactly who.
Speaker 3: Yes, I know that, But as part of that I
Speaker 3: spoke to Hegseth and I remember at the time he
Speaker 3: was a TV host, and I just remember thinking, I
Speaker 3: don't think I've heard the last of this guy. He's
Speaker 3: going to be back around, because it was there was
Speaker 3: a kind of confident smoothness about his contempt for so
Speaker 3: much of what actually is familiar about how power is
Speaker 3: held accountable in Washington, and he said to me at
Speaker 3: one point, he said, you know, look, I used to
Speaker 3: carry a weapon in the military, and now I'm involved
Speaker 3: in information warfare and correct he said, Bungino is one
Speaker 3: of our generals. So there was that was the first
Speaker 3: hint that that was a world that I hadn't previously
Speaker 3: understood the terrain of and they but they were already
Speaker 3: in a way deployed on it.
Speaker 1: Evan Osnos, I hope you will come.
Speaker 3: Back, my pleasure, Molly, I'd love to come back.
Speaker 1: Dahlia Luthwat is a senior editor at SLAT and the
Speaker 1: author of Lady Justice, Women, The Law, and the Battle
Speaker 1: to Save America. Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, Dahlia.
Speaker 5: I'm Molly.
Speaker 1: I like I love you so much, and I listened
Speaker 1: to your podcast Amakis and I'm a special member. I
Speaker 1: listened to the special episodes too, so I really am
Speaker 1: both a you know whatever anyway, a superman.
Speaker 4: My children's or Sadansha. Thanks you, and I'm very sorry
Speaker 4: because I feel like the show has taken a like
Speaker 4: really broken tigger turn in the last couple of weeks.
Speaker 4: But I think as have all the shows.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I.
Speaker 1: Think we all feel pretty much like that. So I'm
Speaker 1: hoping you could talk to Oz about we are in
Speaker 1: the middle of the hearing fiasco. Let's talk.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I made the mistake of watching Pete Hegseth yesterday, which
Speaker 4: just broke me because it was like Brett Cavanaugh two
Speaker 4: point zero right, it was pay no attention.
Speaker 1: To Brett Kavanaugh. He actually got upset, whereas Hegsats was like,
Speaker 1: this is a speed bump by my way to better things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, I think I'm just thinking of like
Speaker 4: the process problem, which is you have this quote unquote
Speaker 4: FBI report that doesn't quote unquote interview any of the
Speaker 4: alleged victims. And then you're like, I mean, he keeps
Speaker 4: saying this thing. I don't want to like perseverate on this, Molly.
Speaker 4: But he keeps saying that he was exonerated or somehow
Speaker 4: exculpated or cleared of the alleged sexual drunken sexual assault.
Speaker 1: He was never.
Speaker 4: Cleared of anything. They didn't The fact that you are
Speaker 4: not criminally prosecuted does not mean there was a legal
Speaker 4: process that cleared you. And I guess I just feel
Speaker 4: like I don't want to go down this rabbit hole.
Speaker 4: But like, oh my god, I was like, yes, I
Speaker 4: was a sinner, but saved by the love of a
Speaker 4: good woman. But also I will not tell you any
Speaker 4: of the things I ostensibly did wrong, like gaslight me harder.
Speaker 4: Which good woman was that his wife, his wife who
Speaker 4: he hexeth, was like very very very effusive about the
Speaker 4: ways in which he has now redeemed, and he mentioned
Speaker 4: the Lord many many times. And then you know his wife,
Speaker 4: who he forgot to like say, is also like raising
Speaker 4: our blended marriage family and taking care of my children.
Speaker 4: But it's just this idea that women can't serve in
Speaker 4: the military, stipulated, and yet women's only job is to
Speaker 4: lift up, you know, alleged assaulters and abusers of alcohol
Speaker 4: and runners of charitable veterans organization into the ground. And
Speaker 4: all you need to know is that my wife loves me.
Speaker 5: And I don't know. I feel like I'm in.
Speaker 4: Some weird like medieval you know, testimonial thing as opposed
Speaker 4: to are you fit to run the Pentagon? So that
Speaker 4: was crazy making, But that wasn't your question. You asked
Speaker 4: about Pambondi.
Speaker 1: Right, well, it is fresh in our minds, that insane hearing.
Speaker 1: I did notice there was a lot of Christian There
Speaker 1: were a lot of Christian nationalist undertones yesterday, And in fact,
Speaker 1: he wanted to guard Biden's inauguration but wasn't allowed to
Speaker 1: because of his tattoo. That was a surprising I don't
Speaker 1: know how you fact check that, but I wondered I
Speaker 1: would have liked to have seen a fact check on that.
Speaker 1: And perhaps it is true, it seems bizarre.
Speaker 4: I mean, I guess I just the last thing I
Speaker 4: could possibly say about Pete Hegseeth is that he is
Speaker 4: so manifestly unfit for this job and so unbelievably materially
Speaker 4: not in a position. I mean, you couldn't answer just
Speaker 4: simple questions about the job in the military, and yet
Speaker 4: he is so certain of his entitlement to it. And
Speaker 4: to have that guy going on and on about wokeness
Speaker 4: and DEI and women in the military and lowered standards
Speaker 4: for minority it's just like utterly crazy making to hear
Speaker 4: a person simultaneously say this job is mine because I'm
Speaker 4: like a white Fox News guy.
Speaker 5: And I want it.
Speaker 4: And anyone else who has ever succeeded in the military
Speaker 4: as a person of color, or a gay service member
Speaker 4: or a woman only got it because standards were lowered.
Speaker 4: I want to live in his world like I just
Speaker 4: for five minutes, want to sit in that level of
Speaker 4: self regard and entitlement.
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you a quote from the Financial Times,
Speaker 1: which I think speaks very much to what we witnessed.
Speaker 1: I feel liberated, said a top banker. We can say
Speaker 1: retard and pussy without the fear of getting canceled. Dot
Speaker 1: dot dot. It's a new dawn, right.
Speaker 4: Anonymously, not courageous enough to say it. Listen, we are
Speaker 4: in some kind of crazy, upside downy world where as
Speaker 4: long as like Mark Zuckerberg feels liberated, it doesn't matter
Speaker 4: what happens to the rest of us. And I don't know,
Speaker 4: I mean, I you know.
Speaker 5: It was.
Speaker 4: It was very impressive, as it always is, to see
Speaker 4: extraordinary dams on that committee with Hegsaff and again today
Speaker 4: extraordinary deems on the Senate Judiciary Committee with Pam Bondy
Speaker 4: trying to kind of.
Speaker 5: Center over and over and over again.
Speaker 4: Look like these are the real stakes, Like stop saying
Speaker 4: woke and stop saying deep state, and like understand that
Speaker 4: the greatest threat to the United States of America is
Speaker 4: not wokeness in the military. And it is not, you know,
Speaker 4: all due respect to Pam Bondy the search of mar
Speaker 4: al Lago, uh, says Chuck Grassley of you know, for
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's papers that he.
Speaker 5: Refused to turn over.
Speaker 4: It's such a small, cramped vision of what actual existential
Speaker 4: threats are that it makes your head explode. And it is, nevertheless,
Speaker 4: I think, really pretty cool to watch Senate Democrats say
Speaker 4: over and over and over again like these are the stakes,
Speaker 4: these are the stakes. I don't know if it breaks through,
Speaker 4: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, I wish they would be a little more
Speaker 1: calculating about how they do it. There's only so much
Speaker 1: they can do, do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Yes, And this has always been like my critique.
Speaker 4: I've watched so many Judiciary committee hearings, and there's a
Speaker 4: way in which everybody is kind of free range, you know, freestyling, doing.
Speaker 1: Their exactly and I don't think people should be doing that.
Speaker 1: I think they should stop and be like, we have
Speaker 1: a very small window here.
Speaker 5: Correct.
Speaker 4: And also, you know, always the problem always always in
Speaker 4: these hearings, you know. Or just an hour before you
Speaker 4: and I talked, BONDI was asked, what did you mean
Speaker 4: when you said you were going to prosecute the prosecutors,
Speaker 4: and she, you know, her first take is and she
Speaker 4: said this over and over again about cash Betel and
Speaker 4: you know, his claims that he was going to have
Speaker 4: an enemy's list and the FBI was going to go
Speaker 4: after them. And there seems to be some kind of
Speaker 4: like television immunity, like something that was said on TV
Speaker 4: we're not supposed to take seriously. But then her answer
Speaker 4: to like prosecuting the prosecutors, which she said on television
Speaker 4: literally was well, the end of that quote was I
Speaker 4: will only prosecute the prosecutors if bad, as like the
Speaker 4: qualifier if bad makes it okay. And what made me
Speaker 4: nuts was the follow up question is please define bad,
Speaker 4: miss Bondi. And it didn't been for them, No, didn't happen.
Speaker 5: Wasn't sad?
Speaker 4: Like does bad mean somebody who doesn't believe?
Speaker 5: As she that was the other thing.
Speaker 4: Mollie, oh my god, straight up asked like, did Trump
Speaker 4: in fact win the twenty twenty election? She can't answer it.
Speaker 4: Her answer is Biden's president.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm maysign Well, they're so brave, but they're really
Speaker 1: not very brave, are they?
Speaker 5: Not so brave.
Speaker 4: You and I have talked about this a million times,
Speaker 4: but I think we are in this like really frightening
Speaker 4: move from like the executive presidency.
Speaker 5: You know that the immunity decision.
Speaker 4: You know, Trump has all, you know, power to this
Speaker 4: really scary thing in both Hegseth's hearing and Bondi's, which is, Oh,
Speaker 4: I don't mean the executive I mean Donald Trump personally
Speaker 4: is perfect and like the degree to which they are
Speaker 4: willing to use these hearings to bend the knee to him.
Speaker 4: This isn't about the executive branch or the presidency. This
Speaker 4: is about Donald Trump. And if you can't say the sentence, yeah,
Speaker 4: he lost the election. Of course she can't say it
Speaker 4: because she was part of the denialism right she was
Speaker 4: on the ground in Pennsylvania trying to steal the election.
Speaker 4: But I just think this is no longer about the
Speaker 4: office of the President of the United States. We are
Speaker 4: now seeing people Hegseth did it yesterday too, just effusively
Speaker 4: saying that if Trump wants to break the law, that
Speaker 4: would be okay.
Speaker 1: I want to go back. So we got Bondie, We
Speaker 1: got lots of different hearings going. They have Russ Bott,
Speaker 1: who I actually think is probably the scariest of that crew,
Speaker 1: and he's going to sail right through.
Speaker 4: Right, And maybe a good thing to say here is
Speaker 4: and we really saw this. I mean, I think like
Speaker 4: he is in fact terrifying. But I think what we
Speaker 4: saw with HEG. Sath was the template, which is he
Speaker 4: was supposed to be the guy who got the roughest ride.
Speaker 1: HEG.
Speaker 4: Sath right credibly accused of multiple abuses against women. You know,
Speaker 4: ran his charitable organizations financially into the ground. My friend
Speaker 4: Rebecca Traster and yours like wrote this week, you know
Speaker 4: he hasn't managed this staff the size of an Applebee's
Speaker 4: much less, you know, the size of the US military.
Speaker 5: Why is he going to sail through?
Speaker 4: And I think the answer is we were told right
Speaker 4: about Joni Ernst. We were told, like anybody who doesn't
Speaker 4: support him, Trump is going to call his friend Elon
Speaker 4: Musk and have that primary. And I think what you're
Speaker 4: saying about seeing people sail through, even people who look
Speaker 4: there was always this fanciful notion that like, only you know,
Speaker 4: they're only going to deffect on two or three people, right,
Speaker 4: That was the Matt Gates theory that, oh, we've only
Speaker 4: got about three people they'll defect on. And I don't
Speaker 4: know where that came from, but I think the minute
Speaker 4: you're getting threatened with, you know, a high dollar account primary,
Speaker 4: everybody's falling in line for everyone. And what's really creepy
Speaker 4: about all of these hearings is that the truly terrifying
Speaker 4: ones like you know, Robert Kennedy and Tulsea Gabbard, and
Speaker 4: I would say Cash Patel and.
Speaker 1: Cash Baatel I think is the scariest.
Speaker 4: But yes, they're getting treated exactly the same as like
Speaker 4: Ron de Santis.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, so I would say that's why I
Speaker 1: think Democrats should try as much as possible to sort
Speaker 1: of make a play and figure out who sort of
Speaker 1: focus on who is the scariest and go for that,
Speaker 1: do you know what I mean?
Speaker 4: And I think that some of these are existential. Right,
Speaker 4: You've got Cash Betel swanning around first of all, lying
Speaker 4: about things like Donald Trump declassified documents with his brain, right,
Speaker 4: like you've got like serious, serious problems, and I mean,
Speaker 4: Telsey Gabbert, you know these are existential. In my view,
Speaker 4: I think exp is existential and to have it all
Speaker 4: sort of slopped together. As you know, we're going to
Speaker 4: go into every single hearing kind of sort of loaded
Speaker 4: for bear, but not making, as you said, a concerted,
Speaker 4: unified across the board's effort to disqualify somebody or to
Speaker 4: at least really make a point about what the stakes are.
Speaker 4: And I think that there's just again, I know you
Speaker 4: and I talk about this all the time, Molly, but
Speaker 4: there's this kind of reverter to businesses. You this is
Speaker 4: how we've always done hearings, and this is how we
Speaker 4: will always do hearings. And it's not quite rising to
Speaker 4: the level of the sort of Tim Snyder anticipatory obedience.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: It's not taking the knee. But what it's not is
Speaker 4: saying if I don't like, take the gloves off and
Speaker 4: go like crazy like animal on the Muppet Show. Right now,
Speaker 4: I am signaling this doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: I really love Tim Snyder and think he's very very
Speaker 1: Tim Snyder is very, very, very smart. And I think
Speaker 1: the obeyon advance line has been used done every like
Speaker 1: everything right the in American media has been just completely
Speaker 1: done to death at this point. But that said, they
Speaker 1: certainly the Republican Senators are I mean, they're basically like
Speaker 1: I don't want any problems. I don't want them to
Speaker 1: pay for extra security. It's not worth it to me
Speaker 1: to go up against this guy, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: what they're saying.
Speaker 4: Plays in my head, like in the two hours of
Speaker 4: night that I sleep anymore. Molly. Is that Mitt Romney interview,
Speaker 4: you know in The Atlantic where he describes Republicans who
Speaker 4: all along knew that Donald Trump should be impeached, Like
Speaker 4: all along, you know, we're sniggering into their like you know,
Speaker 4: lattes on Capitol Hill about how ridiculous Trump was and
Speaker 4: who were just scared, like who are just like I
Speaker 4: don't want my kids to be threatened. I'm terrified, Like
Speaker 4: there's crazy vigilantes out there. And what I keep thinking
Speaker 4: about is if everybody is afraid, right, if everybody is
Speaker 4: simply terrified, then I don't have a sense. It kind
Speaker 4: of goes back to your who's going to get roughed
Speaker 4: up in these hearings questions? But like, if everybody is
Speaker 4: afraid all the time, there is no reason they will
Speaker 4: ever defect on anything. And that's what we're starting to see.
Speaker 1: I think, I mean yes, And also I might add
Speaker 1: and again I know because I listened to your podcast
Speaker 1: yesterday that you don't necessarily agree with this, but Mark
Speaker 1: Joseph Stern, who's your co host, who I feel like,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're all pessimistic, because pessimism in this moment
Speaker 1: is just accurate. But Donald Trump does not have the
Speaker 1: rubber stamp he thought he did with his Supreme Court right.
Speaker 4: So Mark and I had a little, tiny, little slap
Speaker 4: fight on the show last week because, you know, by
Speaker 4: a narrow five to four margin, let the record reflect
Speaker 4: the Supreme Court. You know, in the wee hours of
Speaker 4: the night, right before Donald Trump was set to be
Speaker 4: sentenced in front of Judge Marshaan said yes, you actually
Speaker 4: have to go ahead and be sentenced. And Mark saw
Speaker 4: that as evidence of oh, look at here's the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court blinking, or at minimum, here's Amy Cony Barrett and
Speaker 4: the chief right John Roberts joining with the three liberals
Speaker 4: and saying, like, dude, it's a zoom hearing. It's twenty minutes. Yes,
Speaker 4: you'll show up. And you know, that was one of
Speaker 4: the two bases for letting it go forward. The other
Speaker 4: one you have an appellate process, you can you know,
Speaker 4: argue this out there. But the fact that there were
Speaker 4: four justices who were willing to have a like Donald
Speaker 4: Trump exclusively laws is one thing to like chill you
Speaker 4: to the bone. I think my point with Mark was,
Speaker 4: I just think the headline on every single story for
Speaker 4: the next four years should start with the implicit. And
Speaker 4: John Roberts wrote the opinion that gave us the immunity,
Speaker 4: like I think, having done the truly heinous thing, not
Speaker 4: just in the immunity case right, but in Fisher, the
Speaker 4: case about the January sixth statutes, and in the Colorado
Speaker 4: right case about ballot removal, the insurrection clause case. John
Speaker 4: Roberts wrote all those opinions, and he wrote them in
Speaker 4: the broadest way possible. And so for me to be
Speaker 4: like John Roberts is a hero of modern democracy because
Speaker 4: while he was willing to break everything, he forced Trump
Speaker 4: to like get sentenced to nothing.
Speaker 5: By the way, No, I'm not there.
Speaker 1: Oh I agree, I mean and oh yeah, but more
Speaker 1: just my no, no, this is how we got here,
Speaker 1: for sure. But I'm just more. The question is sort
Speaker 1: of he's not completely in the time for Trump, which
Speaker 1: is a pathetic, but at least it's something, though not much. Dahlia,
Speaker 1: please please please come back.
Speaker 4: Always anytime, anytime. And I don't know about you, but
Speaker 4: I'm going to go back to watching Pam Bundy because man,
Speaker 4: she is I mean in all the ways that hag
Speaker 4: Seth was kind of like, man, how many push ups
Speaker 4: can you do? Like nobody's asked Pambundy that she's pretty
Speaker 4: impressive as a witness, but she is like man, like
Speaker 4: nailing jello to a tree.
Speaker 5: It is it is good fun.
Speaker 1: No, no moment second, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: My young fast. You know, there is performative people who
Speaker 2: really do drama in our governing body. But Nancy Mace,
Speaker 2: she's out that Oscar. She's going for Best Actress of
Speaker 2: the Year. Yesterday in the altercational Jasmine Crockett, she really
Speaker 2: was trying to show off her drama.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Nancy Mays is sort of trying to be
Speaker 1: Lauren Beaupert or Marjorie Taylor Green or one of those ladies.
Speaker 1: Her big thing now is fighting with Jasmine Crocket. Jasmine
Speaker 1: Crockett has become a real star. It almost feels to
Speaker 1: me like when Tommy Lauren was like fighting with people
Speaker 1: were much much more famous than she was. It almost
Speaker 1: feels like cloud chasing. But Nancy mays she's obsessed with
Speaker 1: trans people and preventing them from using bathrooms and being
Speaker 1: in sports and whatever other terrible things she can do
Speaker 1: to trans people. So she had a sort of whole thing,
Speaker 1: a whole soliloquy for Jasmine about how terrible trans people are.
Speaker 1: Nancy mays, it's like, I feel like we're just watching
Speaker 1: the same you know. It's just someone who really, really
Speaker 1: really wants attention.
Speaker 2: I like that. Jasmine called her out for trying to
Speaker 2: boost her fundraising with this, which it's both that and
Speaker 2: the cloud.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune
Speaker 1: in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
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