Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and This is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds and Elon Musk's own AI labels him
Speaker 1: one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X
Speaker 1: Kurt Anderson stops by to talk about the fantasy land
Speaker 1: that we're in now. Then we'll talk to Randy Weingarten,
Speaker 1: president of the American Federation of Teachers. He's going to
Speaker 1: give us her reaction to Donald Trump's attack on America's
Speaker 1: education system. We don't have news today because it's just
Speaker 1: too much snakes and we needed to take a tiny break.
Speaker 1: We will be back on Monday with lots of news
Speaker 1: and lots of fuckory, and sometimes we just have to
Speaker 1: take a tiny break. So we love you guys, and
Speaker 1: we know how hard this is, and we hope that
Speaker 1: you'll spend the weekend watching movies and eating cookies and
Speaker 1: trying to regroup because January is coming. Kurt Anderson is
Speaker 1: the author of Evil Geniuses and the co creator of Commandsy. Kurt,
Speaker 1: thank you so much for joining me today. You know,
Speaker 1: there was only one person who I wanted to talk
Speaker 1: to about the fantasy land that we now live in
Speaker 1: and that was Kurt Anderson. So true.
Speaker 2: Hi, Mollie, it's so good to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry Court Anderson for asking you to record so
Speaker 1: early in the morning, but I'm going to Washington, so
Speaker 1: I had to get you when I could get you.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it was of all the weeks and
Speaker 2: all the special day periods, this one seemed up my alley.
Speaker 2: So thank you for seeing. I'm a chronicler of madness.
Speaker 1: Yeah, as an author of a book called Fantasy Lane,
Speaker 1: and the fact that we are now across the rubicon
Speaker 1: into what is going to be four years of at
Speaker 1: best fantasy Land and at worst dystopia Land, which would
Speaker 1: just technically be dystopia.
Speaker 2: Well, and my other book that's kind of a companion
Speaker 2: to it, of course, is called Evil Geniuses. So you
Speaker 2: got your Fantasy Land and you got your Evil Geniuses in.
Speaker 1: The What's so interesting to me about round two of
Speaker 1: this is that we have all of this sort of
Speaker 1: earnestness of Round one, where we were like, these are institutions,
Speaker 1: this cannot happen, is gone, and now we have gone
Speaker 1: full into this sort of nihilism that is the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, I don't know if it's the nineteen nineties. What
Speaker 2: I realized actually thinking about this the last boy for
Speaker 2: hours is that it's the forty seven ad to an
Speaker 2: extreme degree. I mean, people in the past, I think
Speaker 2: it said, oh, Trump is like Nero. Trump is like Caligula,
Speaker 2: the Caligula thing, where these appointments of Tulca Gabbard and
Speaker 2: Matt Gates and Pete tag Seth, it's just so beyond.
Speaker 2: I mean, the first national security people he announced were
Speaker 2: just you know, second tier conservative Republicans, quasi ormy, okay,
Speaker 2: like let's soften everybody up. And lots of friends of
Speaker 2: mine said, oh, this is kind of reassuring. This is
Speaker 2: not bad, right.
Speaker 1: Democracy will not end with Marco Rubio appointment.
Speaker 2: Let's not forget Robert F. Kennedy junior my freshman year
Speaker 2: in college. Drug dealer, a coped dealer. But Trump has
Speaker 2: been successful because he's not like a conventional politician. From
Speaker 2: the beginning, he's anti establishment to the max. Well, this
Speaker 2: is not anti establishment in the way that I don't
Speaker 2: know John Fetterman is or Bernie Sanders is or those
Speaker 2: kinds of people. It is mocking all expertise and experience
Speaker 2: and judgment and seriousness and virtue and making a travesty
Speaker 2: of it and saying it doesn't matter, and saying you're
Speaker 2: all full of shit, you people who actually have careers
Speaker 2: and know things, and if any things, this is I mean,
Speaker 2: if anybody's ever seen the various movies John Herger, other
Speaker 2: actors playing Calicula, he was this this corrupt, unstable, cruel,
Speaker 2: extravagant sexual freak and love spectacle. And he was mister
Speaker 2: Gladiator and probably nuts and you had to worship him,
Speaker 2: and at least allegedly at least joked about making his
Speaker 2: horse a senator. It was he going to be as
Speaker 2: good as senator as you, and made the senators Roman
Speaker 2: senators grovel literally grovel, didn't kiss his feet. So here
Speaker 2: we are.
Speaker 3: Man.
Speaker 2: You got a literary, metaphorical thing. It's it.
Speaker 1: Well, you know what I was so struck by is
Speaker 1: that in twenty sixteen, right Republicans refused to stand up
Speaker 1: to Trump. They felt they didn't need to, or they
Speaker 1: didn't want to, or you know, it wasn't worth. The
Speaker 1: calculus was like, I don't want death threats, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be booed at the airport. I just want to,
Speaker 1: like tow the line and not to make my life difficult.
Speaker 1: And even like Mitch McConnell, could have ended this whole
Speaker 1: thing by saying to Republicans that they could vote to
Speaker 1: convict Dan Trump would have been ineligible to run for
Speaker 1: president again, and that would have been done complete. But instead,
Speaker 1: here we are. There are four seats that Democrats would
Speaker 1: need to swing to tank any of these nominations. Trump really,
Speaker 1: I think, has made many overtures that he would like
Speaker 1: to make these reciss appointments. I'm not sure if he'll
Speaker 1: be able to, but maybe he will. You know, if
Speaker 1: I've learned anything, it's underestimate Trump at your own peril.
Speaker 2: Right, No, absolutely, And you know, and we look for
Speaker 2: these gloomers of hope. Well it's John Foon instead of
Speaker 2: somebody worse as the Senate majority leader. So maybe he's
Speaker 2: more of an institutionalist than a normal fellow. Maybe he'll
Speaker 2: do the right thing. We'll see, Yeah, betting on the
Speaker 2: Republicans electeds in Washington doing the right thing obviously ausing bet, yes,
Speaker 2: has not.
Speaker 1: I've been fruitful.
Speaker 2: Freight ear well, see I did get pleasure and not
Speaker 2: just shutting freud, but like, okay, when the various senators,
Speaker 2: especially Republican senators as well as Republican House members, came
Speaker 2: out about Matt Gates just saying, are you fucking kidding me?
Speaker 2: This guy is this ex trafficker? This guy can't be
Speaker 2: you know. So there is more at this Roseveldt date,
Speaker 2: and with these extreme egregious human nominations, some at least
Speaker 2: rhetorical emission of the truth of the horror of this
Speaker 2: idiocracy animal house unqualified madness that he's proposing.
Speaker 1: Idiocracy is a really good word for what we're about
Speaker 1: to embark on if we talk about the Senate and
Speaker 1: the House too, But it's not quite the same. The
Speaker 1: Senate built on the idea that these people, at least
Speaker 1: the thing that they are these moral pillars.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: The thing about the Senate is it's a lot of
Speaker 1: work to get there and quite a bit of work
Speaker 1: to stay there. It would be easier just to go
Speaker 1: into investment banking. So these people have kept these jobs
Speaker 1: because on some level or not, maybe hypocritically whatever, but
Speaker 1: they think they care about American government. So here we
Speaker 1: are now in a moment where it doesn't matter, right,
Speaker 1: these people have to pretend that this is normal or
Speaker 1: something else.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, that is the thing. And of course the
Speaker 2: Senate has always been. It was in the Constitution, was
Speaker 2: as the framers were framing it, talked about the center
Speaker 2: versus the house as being this place that would you know,
Speaker 2: cool the tea cup of the house, where it was
Speaker 2: all nutty and crazy, all and hot all the time.
Speaker 2: That was this the thing. And of course the US
Speaker 2: Senate and therefore senators are all about this. We are
Speaker 2: the dignified people in Washington. We look down on the House,
Speaker 2: and so occasionally, like now and in the last eight years,
Speaker 2: that dignity has called to be more than just how
Speaker 2: they act and look and dress. And yeah, Mitt Romney,
Speaker 2: you look, you'll identify your central casting. But like dudes,
Speaker 2: now's the time to really hump, try to do the
Speaker 2: right thing and not let this go into this decadent
Speaker 2: imperial rome thing that he's he's really trying to take
Speaker 2: us to. No, we'll see. You know, you only need
Speaker 2: Susan Collins again, betting on Susan Colly as well, or Rakowski.
Speaker 2: You need you say four, I guess you need four
Speaker 2: people to say no, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1: Cornyan, maybe Langford, maybe Mitch McConnell. Maybe I mean, well.
Speaker 2: Mis McConnell is retiring in two years and is gone,
Speaker 2: Like yeah, okay, it's time to atone a little bit guy.
Speaker 1: And don't sleep on Tom Taylus because Tom Taylus is
Speaker 1: in a rapidly purple in state. But again, like this
Speaker 1: is such wish casting. Like even in twenty sixteen, like
Speaker 1: if we just step back from minut in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: you had some Republicans who were actually less insane and
Speaker 1: they were chased out of the party. And again, insane
Speaker 1: is relative, but they had more of a sort of
Speaker 1: sense of what all, you know what. The previous generation
Speaker 1: had a certain like traditionalism. So I'm talking about Jeff
Speaker 1: Blake or you know. But again, it's hard for me
Speaker 1: to imagine that it's hard to imagine that this ends
Speaker 1: up being Okay.
Speaker 2: No, I hear you, And I again, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to be the you know, my habitual temperamental fifty one percentist,
Speaker 2: which I've all that is the thing, like okay, barely optimist. Okay,
Speaker 2: it doesn't necessarily work, and I you know, you don't
Speaker 2: want to be Charlie Brown and is having the ball
Speaker 2: kicked out, having a your.
Speaker 1: But you also want you can't give up, and you
Speaker 1: can't give into despair.
Speaker 2: No exactly. Again, my hopeful view perhaps is that, yeah,
Speaker 2: the Jeff flakes at all have been kicked out. I
Speaker 2: mean think did not entirely capitulate for a year, right,
Speaker 2: I mean it wasn't just immediately on in January twenty seventeen. Okay,
Speaker 2: whatever the guy says, I'll do, I'll suck whatever is required.
Speaker 2: So we'll see it is eight years later and they
Speaker 2: do know him no longer like wow, this guy won,
Speaker 2: I got whoh oh, So that they are aware, and
Speaker 2: some of them are leaving soon, some of all of
Speaker 2: them in six years. So he is not yet going
Speaker 2: to be called a lame duck, that is to say,
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. And you can come back and say, well,
Speaker 2: he may try to serve another term, let's leave that aside.
Speaker 2: He's gonna be a lame duck. He's gonna be out
Speaker 2: of there in four years, and in certainly in two years,
Speaker 2: people are going to start calling him lame duck. And
Speaker 2: here we are less than two weeks after the election,
Speaker 2: and the clown train is already going toward the cliff
Speaker 2: who We're barely there. So if this is a preface
Speaker 2: foreshadowing of what the administration going to be like. There's
Speaker 2: no reason to think it isn't this is not going
Speaker 2: to go well, and all these things that we thought,
Speaker 2: I mean, the story of thing phenomenon is, oh, this
Speaker 2: is going to kill him. Oh he said this about McCain.
Speaker 2: All's Oh this pen never does it never does. But
Speaker 2: we'll see if enough of them have enough courage to
Speaker 2: do this very very simple and obvious. I think in
Speaker 2: these three or four worst appointments, for instance, just for starters.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean I would also add, you know, for
Speaker 1: the people who are listening, who are like me, do
Speaker 1: not despair. Right. The federal government is an enormous entity.
Speaker 1: It has never been known for changing quickly.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 1: My one bright spot here, believe it or not, is
Speaker 1: that these three appointments are so crazy because he is
Speaker 1: signaling that nothing here is going to be normal. Give
Speaker 1: me this thought experiment for a minute. Okay, if Trump
Speaker 1: had nominated Marco Rubio and then more normal Republicans but
Speaker 1: then quietly bullied them into doing insane things, it would
Speaker 1: have been much much harder to make the case that
Speaker 1: this stuff was insane. Like RFK junior taking over ATSs, Like,
Speaker 1: this is a person who does not believe in vaccines.
Speaker 1: Now he's taking over government science, right, Like this is
Speaker 1: going to be a thing that is very clearly what
Speaker 1: it is and not you know, like I go back
Speaker 1: to Justice Roberts. Right, Roberts cuts away at things in
Speaker 1: order to undermine them. Right, he says, you know, he
Speaker 1: undermines Citizens United, he undermines Roe v. Wade, he undermines
Speaker 1: you know, ultimately ends up. You can give as much
Speaker 1: money as you want to candidates, you know, so we
Speaker 1: have billion dollar presidential campaigns, and also we have Roe v.
Speaker 1: Wade eventually gets overturned. So that kind of stuff is
Speaker 1: much harder to explain to the American people than stuff
Speaker 1: like this guy doesn't believe in vaccines and now he's
Speaker 1: running government science.
Speaker 2: No, one hundred percent. And of course that is because
Speaker 2: several reasons, I mean, less consequentially is he likes the
Speaker 2: show he Donald Trump, So this is going to control
Speaker 2: the world. They're going to let's do it walls. There's that,
Speaker 2: but it's also really it is like Caligula saying to
Speaker 2: the center is no, literally, lick my feet, get down there,
Speaker 2: lick my feet. It's so much about that. And like
Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy, who I have known for you know, fifty
Speaker 2: years and followed and written about for ten about his
Speaker 2: descent into conspiracy theory and vaccines are evil all that,
Speaker 2: I'll move on from him. But he has said many times,
Speaker 2: as he was being the anti vaccine guy the last
Speaker 2: twenty five years, that people like the Fauci's, the leading pediatricians,
Speaker 2: the leading vaccinologists, immunologists in America, should be behind bar
Speaker 2: and he said that's not hyperble, I mean it. They
Speaker 2: should be in throw away the keys, talking like Trump,
Speaker 2: you know, long before Trump was around as a president.
Speaker 2: And then last year, of course he says COVID nineteen
Speaker 2: was targeted to attack black people and Caucasians and that ALEXH. Konazzi,
Speaker 2: Jews and Chinese are are immute. This guy really making
Speaker 2: in charge of this shit anyway. The other thing I
Speaker 2: realized this week is the just brilliant, enduring truth of
Speaker 2: the maybe the two most famous lines as well that
Speaker 2: came out as he was running for president before he
Speaker 2: was president. But one is, of course, when you're a star,
Speaker 2: they let you do it. Well, he's showing that again.
Speaker 2: I'm a star, they let me do it. I can
Speaker 2: appoint Tulca Gabbert and Matt Gates and Pete Hegzeth and
Speaker 2: Bobby Kennedy to these jobs, these important crucial jobs in
Speaker 2: the American government, for which they are obviously and plainly
Speaker 2: not qualified, And I can stay in the middle of
Speaker 2: fifth I don't shoot somebody, and I wouldn't get loser
Speaker 2: the voters. It's well, he says, So these are the
Speaker 2: explanatory things, and he is never I mean again and
Speaker 2: again we say yep, uh huh, yep. This is a new,
Speaker 2: next level version of that.
Speaker 1: No exactly, and I think that is ultimately how we
Speaker 1: got here, right. I've been thinking a lot about like
Speaker 1: what I got wrong, you know, when I was like,
Speaker 1: she's gonna win with a mandate. One of the things
Speaker 1: that I think I got so wrong was this idea
Speaker 1: like Trump, he spends one hundred and eighty percent of
Speaker 1: his time doing pr right, so he's outward facing, he's
Speaker 1: doing interviews. Again, he's saying insane stuff, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily matter. And then Democrats elect a guy who does
Speaker 1: almost no interviews for whom boringness is the defense, and
Speaker 1: then he is unable to get coverage for all of
Speaker 1: the really I think great accomplishments of his administration. It
Speaker 1: just was sort of a snowball, like if you're going
Speaker 1: to run against Trump and again, hopefully Trump decides that
Speaker 1: his second term is the end of it and that
Speaker 1: he does not try to run for a third term,
Speaker 1: which you could certainly see him trying to do. I
Speaker 1: hate that I just said that, but you know that
Speaker 1: I'm really I mean, I hate that, but I do
Speaker 1: think Democrats right now have to start messaging members of Congress,
Speaker 1: senators need to get on. You know. Part of the
Speaker 1: only thing left that standing between us and total autocracy
Speaker 1: is these Democrats who don't have control of the federal government,
Speaker 1: but do have the ability to go on.
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan, Yes, exactly. Well, and the thing about, as
Speaker 2: you starkily put it, and it's true about Biden and
Speaker 2: the Democratic generally, the Democratic machines, for whatever sort of reasons,
Speaker 2: ineffectiveness at getting out look at what we've done. Look
Speaker 2: how great this is, as opposed to him being the
Speaker 2: news and doing whatever it takes to be you know,
Speaker 2: the story every day. It is the problem or one
Speaker 2: of the problems of how we've been and how especially.
Speaker 2: I mean, maybe maybe it will change it, Maybe that
Speaker 2: will change now because of the results of the selection
Speaker 2: that you understand. You have to be a friend. My
Speaker 2: brilliant wife, Van Kramer, when Biden actually became president four
Speaker 2: years ago, wrote a brilliant long memo to a good
Speaker 2: friend of ours who had been in the Obama administration
Speaker 2: in a very very high, you know, deputy cabinet position, saying,
Speaker 2: here's what they have to do. Trump knows how to
Speaker 2: make a show. We're not saying just you know, do
Speaker 2: crazy stuff, but like, here's some ways. You know, she
Speaker 2: was in television, no show business, and he said, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is brilliant, this is great. They're never going to
Speaker 2: do anything like this because they're basically still living in
Speaker 2: the nineteen nineties as though it's normal town.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: That's one of the things that they have to figure
Speaker 2: out and get right, and maybe maybe now they will.
Speaker 2: The other thing you mentioned mandate is your mistakenness about
Speaker 2: that Kama Harris will be elected with the mandate. And
Speaker 2: you know, as I say about so many things, it
Speaker 2: was pretty to think. So the hyperbole of describing Trump's
Speaker 2: win lass to be ratchet out. He got it out
Speaker 2: of control. Yes, it's Donald Trump being lenched again. Oh
Speaker 2: my god. Sure. But in terms of historical margins of victory,
Speaker 2: which is his is now in the popular vote, or
Speaker 2: as we would call it any other country, the vote,
Speaker 2: it's one and a half percent and drop it. We'll
Speaker 2: see when the final million and a half votes in
Speaker 2: California how that goes. But where is that in the
Speaker 2: rank of all presidents who've ever won the popular vote,
Speaker 2: of whom they're fifty five, number fifty. That's where it is,
Speaker 2: number fifty to fifty five. Even in the electoral college margin,
Speaker 2: where of course Republicans including him are get this kick
Speaker 2: you know, this bonus still low. It's still in the
Speaker 2: lowest quarter of those ever. So it ate a landslide.
Speaker 2: It's bad, and he's bad and all that. I'm not no,
Speaker 2: but it's not a mandate. It's just important not to
Speaker 2: get that into our heads that, oh the Americans oken
Speaker 2: in this is it? No, it's two percent? You know, No.
Speaker 1: I agree, And that's a really good point, and I
Speaker 1: really appreciate you saying that, probably the most important point
Speaker 1: we have going for us part Anderson, if we don't
Speaker 1: get sent to Gitmo, will you please come back on
Speaker 1: my podcast.
Speaker 2: Well, whenever I have enough of a head of steam
Speaker 2: and things and do nothing doins me more than getting
Speaker 2: up at five point thirty in the morning, coming on.
Speaker 1: You're sorry, by the way, let the record show we
Speaker 1: started at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2: Well Pacific time, though, even though I'm in New York.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, you're right, you're at five am Pacific.
Speaker 2: I'm always delighted. And no, it's good for me because
Speaker 2: then I can have a whole work day now and
Speaker 2: instead of having coffee, I talk to you.
Speaker 1: Yes, all right, it's you and Lawrence are not early
Speaker 1: morning people. But let the record show I have pen
Speaker 1: up since six am. I really appreciate you. Thank you,
Speaker 1: Kurt Anderson. Please come back soon.
Speaker 2: My pleasure.
Speaker 1: Randy Winingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Speaker 4: Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winmarten.
Speaker 3: How are you holding up, my dear Mollie.
Speaker 1: I am in a.
Speaker 4: Period of quiet reflection or because it's me, loud reflection
Speaker 4: where I'm trying to figure out what I got wrong
Speaker 4: and try to figure out how to make sense of
Speaker 4: the stuff that I got wrong, learn from what you
Speaker 4: know my blind spots were, and just take as much
Speaker 4: information as possible.
Speaker 3: What about you, I'm doing the same thing. I mean,
Speaker 3: I was hoping against hope that Harris would win, but
Speaker 3: in diving into all of what happened, this was my fear.
Speaker 3: I want to make sure that we learned the right
Speaker 3: lessons out of it, as opposed to the finger pointing
Speaker 3: and the recriminations that one is seen. And I do
Speaker 3: feel like there's a lot of lessons learned that would
Speaker 3: actually be helpful not only in saving and then strengthening
Speaker 3: our democracy, but also in listening to what people were
Speaker 3: actually saying about their lives. And I think it is
Speaker 3: both a clarion call for not only both political parties,
Speaker 3: but for the civic leadership, the business leadership in the
Speaker 3: country and in the world about what work and families
Speaker 3: really need. And obviously I don't feel great about the
Speaker 3: results and about the chaos and everything that's about to
Speaker 3: happen to people and people's rights, but I do think
Speaker 3: that there is more and more and more. I am
Speaker 3: starting to see a through line that actually can be
Speaker 3: explained by a couple of the economic charts that I
Speaker 3: have seen in the last few days, including two of them.
Speaker 5: One was the Steve Ratner chart that he did in
Speaker 5: warning Joe you may have been on at the time.
Speaker 5: And the other is a chart that I think I
Speaker 5: saw from EPI or from Robert Rechent, not quite sure
Speaker 5: what the sources anymore. That chart basically said that the
Speaker 5: people who earned the least in this country voted for
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. And then the second chart, which I thought
Speaker 5: was equally both heartbreaking but also as instructive, is that
Speaker 5: people no longer make more more than their parents made.
Speaker 5: The promise of America, you know, has always been an
Speaker 5: economic one, much more than almost anything else. You know,
Speaker 5: It's been about freedom, but it's really been that. You know,
Speaker 5: you think America is going to be a country that
Speaker 5: has such great economic engines that every succeeding generation is
Speaker 5: going to do better than the one before it. And
Speaker 5: that promise has been broken. And I think that that frankly,
Speaker 5: the first party that actually is going to be able
Speaker 5: to both get fairness and growth, right, you know, economic
Speaker 5: fairness and economic growth.
Speaker 3: Right. There's a race between that success and whether or not,
Speaker 3: you know, we will have authoritarianism.
Speaker 4: I hear what you're saying, and it's super interesting. The
Speaker 4: thing I might, yes and you is I just want to,
Speaker 4: like bap up to the beginning of your answer, which was,
Speaker 4: I agree that.
Speaker 1: It's such an early moment, like less than two weeks
Speaker 1: from this election.
Speaker 4: So what I would say is, in my mind, it's
Speaker 4: not time for recrimination, but more like time for sort
Speaker 4: of taking stock of where we are and you know
Speaker 4: where we're going, and I think that is super important.
Speaker 4: And also just like there are so many lessons to
Speaker 4: be learned, like Harris lost, right, but she did in
Speaker 4: fact deliver senate candidate. It's down ballot in almost every
Speaker 4: single one of these swing states, with the exception of
Speaker 4: maybe Pennsylvania, though it's now gone to recount. My question
Speaker 4: is sort of like I understand the hand ringing, but
Speaker 4: I wonder how much And again you've been doing this
Speaker 4: longer than I have, but I just wonder how much
Speaker 4: of it was a Trump brand being uniquely powerful, because
Speaker 4: remember they haven't been able to recreate this in any
Speaker 4: which way, versus is a Democratic brand being uniquely not powerful.
Speaker 3: I fanger you all the time, Molly.
Speaker 5: So I read a lot of what you do and
Speaker 5: think a lot about what you say, but I found
Speaker 5: your article in terms of kind of like reflecting on
Speaker 5: this uniquely incisive because I think you.
Speaker 3: Recognized in there the unique brand that Donald Trump brings.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's a lot of you know, I may
Speaker 3: say a few things that are really really really really
Speaker 3: really controversial because it kind of puts some of the
Speaker 3: normal thinking, you know, turns it on its head. But
Speaker 3: I do. So let me just start by saying Donald
Speaker 3: Trump got his experience not only as a real estate
Speaker 3: developer in New York, which is a tough town in
Speaker 3: which to be successful, even if you start with a
Speaker 3: silver spoon in your mouth, which he did, and he
Speaker 3: early on was able to do things like withstand discrimination
Speaker 3: complaints and other kinds of things, you know, and he
Speaker 3: was often the talk of the town in New York
Speaker 3: regardless of all of that stuff. But what he did
Speaker 3: which was uniquely different than probably any other candidate, but
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan. He's an actor, and he learned how to
Speaker 3: use those skills that he developed on the Apprentice. And
Speaker 3: one may agree or disagree with him, but he became
Speaker 3: one of the most effective communicators in our generation, maybe
Speaker 3: in a century. And at the same time he's learned
Speaker 3: how to master or he's worked with the tech industry
Speaker 3: in such a way that they have developed new forms
Speaker 3: of communication in some ways. Kennedy and television, Hitler and radio.
Speaker 3: He's learned how to do this.
Speaker 4: Yeah, here's what I want to ask you. You are
Speaker 4: very much in his crosshairs. He is going war with
Speaker 4: public education. You are the head of the teachers union,
Speaker 4: you are an icon of public education.
Speaker 1: How does this work?
Speaker 6: I giggle a little bit because public education has been
Speaker 6: in the crosshairs of the established marketeers and top down
Speaker 6: ideologues or trickle down ideologues forever, but.
Speaker 3: Not from the members of the Republican Party and not
Speaker 3: from the people on the ground, which is part of
Speaker 3: the reason why they have to create culture wars. I
Speaker 3: go back to I invoke what Chris Ruffo said a
Speaker 3: while ago at Hillsdale College. I know that, you know,
Speaker 3: people don't know that name, but he made sure we
Speaker 3: knew what their strategy was, which was their strategy was
Speaker 3: and is to create universal distrust in public schools so
Speaker 3: that they can essentially balkanized and basically end the public
Speaker 3: schooling as we know it. And they've done that to
Speaker 3: try to create vouchers, which was now defeated in three
Speaker 3: essentially red states. So I think that the answer to
Speaker 3: this is understanding the landscape is really important. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, the real question is going
Speaker 3: to be this, If you really represent the public that
Speaker 3: elected you, then you will care about strengthening public schools,
Speaker 3: and you'll care about creating as many opportunities for people
Speaker 3: to join labor unions and to actually engage in collective
Speaker 3: bargaining and to actually lift wages as possible. If you
Speaker 3: really care about the people of America, that's what you're
Speaker 3: going to do. And so that's going to be where
Speaker 3: we lean into how do we help kids have the
Speaker 3: opportunities that you know, we every single day say they
Speaker 3: so richly deserve. How do we help working families have
Speaker 3: the opportunities to get ahead? And so I think what
Speaker 3: you've seen in the last two years is that when
Speaker 3: we've called that question and when we've actually not only
Speaker 3: did the advocacy for it, but we've been on the
Speaker 3: ground giving out books as other people banned them, We've
Speaker 3: been on the ground really trying to create these ladders
Speaker 3: of opportunity or pathways from classroom to career, like in
Speaker 3: advanced manufacturing. That's what people really want, that's what they
Speaker 3: want for their families. We're going to try to do
Speaker 3: more and more of that, and hopefully it's not going
Speaker 3: to be a big choice. It's not going to be
Speaker 3: a big contrast. Maybe this is what they're going to do,
Speaker 3: but if not, that's what we're going to do. And
Speaker 3: you know, I suspect just like we saw in Kentucky
Speaker 3: and Nebraska and Colorado when people voted not to defund
Speaker 3: their public schools. I suspect when we saw across the country.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you look at all the down ballot
Speaker 3: races across the country, seventy to eighty percent of the
Speaker 3: pro public education candidate in Minnesona won their races. Twenty
Speaker 3: one or twenty three out of the twenty five levees
Speaker 3: in Florida for public schools, one North Dakota refuse to
Speaker 3: give up their property tax to defund their state. So
Speaker 3: the real issue becomes, how do we every day not
Speaker 3: make this election to election, but how do we every
Speaker 3: day work with the coalition of people who really do
Speaker 3: want a better life for themselves than their kids, And
Speaker 3: how do we do that and how does that force
Speaker 3: then become a force in elections that doesn't get scared
Speaker 3: or anxious by you know, a commercial that's intended to
Speaker 3: scare or create anxiety, but where they're really working for
Speaker 3: that latter of opportunity for themselves and others. And that's
Speaker 3: what I'm going to do, and that's what my members
Speaker 3: are going to do, and that's what our leaders are
Speaker 3: going to do.
Speaker 4: But what about like, for example, the Department of Education,
Speaker 4: Like that is a hot.
Speaker 3: I'm laughing because I'm going to surprise you and my answer,
Speaker 3: which is this, in nineteen seventy seven, my predecessor, as
Speaker 3: you know, Al Schanker, was not my immediate processor, although
Speaker 3: I knew him pretty well he was. But Al Schanker
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy seven and the AFT in nineteen seventy
Speaker 3: seven actually oppose the creation of the Department of Education.
Speaker 3: We actually believed that the Department of Education should stay
Speaker 3: in h EW because we thought we needed to actually
Speaker 3: deal with whole children and whole families and not pull
Speaker 3: education out, but really do it all together. And so
Speaker 3: the issue for us is not the symbolism of all
Speaker 3: of this stuff. The issue and obviously we care about
Speaker 3: the people who work at the Department of Education, We
Speaker 3: care about the families that work there. We don't want
Speaker 3: people fired But the issue really is what happens to.
Speaker 1: What they do?
Speaker 3: Like what they do is they actually send to states
Speaker 3: a lot of money. Ten percent of school district's budgets,
Speaker 3: particularly for poor kids and kids with disabilities, come from
Speaker 3: funds that they meet out. The real you is, let's
Speaker 3: stop talking about form over. You know who's going to
Speaker 3: get things done? Like, so, what happens to the money
Speaker 3: that basically more red states get than blue states. What
Speaker 3: happens to that money the poor kids in Tennessee are
Speaker 3: in Mississippiate, Like, what happens to that money that kids
Speaker 3: with disabilities get? So I haven't seen a plan yet.
Speaker 4: I think it's very unlikely that you're going to see
Speaker 4: a plan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3: So they're going to try to get everybody up and
Speaker 3: outrage land about the symbolism about whether they're going to
Speaker 3: close the Department of Education versus not. The craziness here.
Speaker 7: Is, look how many people are vuying for the job.
Speaker 3: Of being the head of the Department of Education. And
Speaker 3: the other craziness is I saw Donald Trump's ten point plan.
Speaker 8: In that ten point plan, there's a whole lot of stuff,
Speaker 8: Like half of it were words that I have said,
Speaker 8: like project based instruction, and how do we have career
Speaker 8: based learning, and how do we have internships? And how
Speaker 8: do we do all this stuff? Only the public schools
Speaker 8: can really actually do that. And then he says, well,
Speaker 8: we're going to close the Department of Education and move
Speaker 8: everything to the States. But if a school doesn't do
Speaker 8: what I wanted to do, I'm going to close it down.
Speaker 8: That sounds like actually more control, not less control. So
Speaker 8: we have to separate out their rhetoric which is intended
Speaker 8: to create chaos and fear from Okay, are you really
Speaker 8: going to take money away from kids with disabilities? A
Speaker 8: whole lot of Republican parents have kids with disabilities.
Speaker 3: Are you going to take that money away or not?
Speaker 3: If Donald Trump tries to take money away from parents
Speaker 3: or from kids with disabilities, I'm going to be out
Speaker 3: there fighting against that. If Donald Trump tries to take
Speaker 3: money away from kids in Mississippi or New York City
Speaker 3: that need that power professional in a classroom to help
Speaker 3: that kids learn to read, I'm going to fight against that.
Speaker 3: So what are they really saying.
Speaker 1: What are they really saying?
Speaker 3: We don't know what they're really saying.
Speaker 4: They don't want public education to thrive because they want
Speaker 4: people to be in religious schools and also in educating
Speaker 4: people as dangerous, right, I mean, is that really what
Speaker 4: it is?
Speaker 3: I would actually ask it as a question, why do
Speaker 3: they fear education? I understand we've seen this for forty
Speaker 3: or fifty years. It stopped for a little while because
Speaker 3: of all the stuff that was going on in terms
Speaker 3: of yeah, sure, but let me tell you a little secret.
Speaker 3: Since I've been around for a long time, it used
Speaker 3: to be like places like New York, Cardinal O'Connor. Cardinal
Speaker 3: O'Connor and the Catholic Diocese worked pretty well with the
Speaker 3: public schools. And I was around enough that we actually
Speaker 3: work together. We honored religious education. But we need to
Speaker 3: actually fund our job, America's job, states jobs. We have
Speaker 3: an obligation to fund a public school system that is
Speaker 3: available for everyone. Now, if people want religious education, you know,
Speaker 3: my grandmother used to say, zygozint, let them have religious education.
Speaker 3: Let them do that. They want to do it, constitutionally,
Speaker 3: they should have your right to do it. But they
Speaker 3: can't take money from the public system that goes to
Speaker 3: everybody for a separate system. And that's really a question here.
Speaker 3: And what's happened is you see it in a bunch
Speaker 3: of people. What with these voucher cases that are going
Speaker 3: on right now, these voucher moves and state legislators.
Speaker 7: Most of the money is going to kids and families
Speaker 7: who will already send their kids to private schools. And
Speaker 7: most of the money is going to rich parents and
Speaker 7: rich people who already send their kids to private schools.
Speaker 7: So instead of this being about all kids, what we're
Speaker 7: saying is that's where the money in these Baucher states
Speaker 7: are going to, and it has actually hurt the rest
Speaker 7: of the kids. And our job, my job is to
Speaker 7: make sure there's a public school system that every single
Speaker 7: parent wants to send their kids to, every kid is
Speaker 7: engaged in and thrives, and teachers want to be.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly. Randy Winegarden, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 4: It sounds like we're going to have a long for yours.
Speaker 3: Yes, but thank you for your podcast and thank you
Speaker 3: for communicating with people, because I think you are one
Speaker 3: of the few people on the progressive side that really
Speaker 3: understands that this kind of sense of a podcast where
Speaker 3: you have people on and you talk to people and
Speaker 3: people then listen to it. That's what Joe Rogan does
Speaker 3: all the time. So I just really also wanted to
Speaker 3: say that this communication vehicle how we communicate with people,
Speaker 3: that is also part of what we have to learn.
Speaker 1: Right now, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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