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 the Biden administration is canceling student
Speaker 1: loans for another one hundred and sixty thousand borrowers. Representative
Speaker 1: Jim Himes stops by to talk about the Speaker of
Speaker 1: the House, Mike Johnson's chaotic rule. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: John Gantz about his new book When the Clock Broke,
Speaker 1: Convent Conspiracists, and how America cracked.
Speaker 2: Up in the early nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: But first we have Washington Post columnist Dana Melbank. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to Best Politics, my friend, my buddy, one of
Speaker 1: my favorite writers, the one.
Speaker 2: The only Washington Post Dana Milbank.
Speaker 3: Oh, Molly, thank you for that build up, but it'll
Speaker 3: only be disappointing from here on.
Speaker 2: Out' that's the hope. No, not the hope.
Speaker 1: I'm very excited to hear you because I am a
Speaker 1: fan of yours, but I so like I'm not as
Speaker 1: old as you are, obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks for that. Okay, that's you've taken back some
Speaker 3: of the good stuff from the introduction now.
Speaker 1: But you remember when politics was I don't want to
Speaker 1: say sane, because that was never sane, but was a
Speaker 1: little less insane. And I want you to talk about
Speaker 1: sort of what this feels.
Speaker 2: Like to you.
Speaker 1: You are in the Beltway, the Acela Corridor, as opposed
Speaker 1: to me, who was at the end of.
Speaker 3: The great You're in the heartland, right in the heartland,
Speaker 3: exactly discuss Well, look, I came to Washington in nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety five when you were in preschool.
Speaker 2: That's right, bab and or rehab.
Speaker 3: And I thought that something had gone terribly wrong that
Speaker 3: you know, it was in the Oklahoma City bombing and
Speaker 3: Gingrich is a Republican revolution just taken over. And I
Speaker 3: was like, wow, things are really going to hell here now.
Speaker 3: Of course, looking back, those are the good old days,
Speaker 3: you know, salad days was still function you know, I mean, yeah, yes,
Speaker 3: it was the beginning of bad stuff, but you know,
Speaker 3: come on, Clinton, then Gangritch could negotiate and strike some
Speaker 3: good deals and we still had a functioning government. They
Speaker 3: were sort of you know, kind of shadows, you know,
Speaker 3: suggesting what could come, but it still worked. And we've
Speaker 3: just it's just been one election cycle after note of
Speaker 3: deterioration with you know, with a couple of moments of
Speaker 3: reprieves in there. But you know, this was my whole
Speaker 3: last book, The Destructions, was about this. You know this.
Speaker 3: It was basically been a twenty five year crack up.
Speaker 3: And yeah, we're polarized and all that stuff, but really
Speaker 3: it has been, you know, half of our political system
Speaker 3: has gone bonkers, and unfortunately that at the moments at
Speaker 3: these seems to be the ascended part of our political system.
Speaker 2: So according to Paul's.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to watch it as a spectator to
Speaker 3: report back to the reality based community on what I'm seeing.
Speaker 3: But man, it's it's a grind these days.
Speaker 1: So Republicans have been all in on this idea that
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with Joe Biden, and they have done
Speaker 1: this since Joe Biden came back on the scene run
Speaker 1: for president against their man. Those of us who have
Speaker 1: a memory that is longer than that of a goldfish,
Speaker 1: remember that in twenty fifteen, we were told that Hillary's health.
Speaker 1: We were told by David Pecker, the National Enquirer, who
Speaker 1: recently featured prominently in Donald Trump's criminal case, that Hillary's
Speaker 1: health was the biggest issue on the agenda that she had.
Speaker 1: You'll remember that she had terrible things wrong with her
Speaker 1: and that she was quite sick. So this is like
Speaker 1: something that Trump world likes to do. Can you make
Speaker 1: it make sense?
Speaker 3: Well? Can I make anything make sense? I mean, you know,
Speaker 3: it's trying so many different things at the same time.
Speaker 3: I mean, right now, not only are we believing that
Speaker 3: Biden is demented, but he is simultaneously hatching some secret
Speaker 3: plan to assassinate the president by sending the FBI after
Speaker 3: him with orders to kill. Never mind that they searched
Speaker 3: his own house with the same orders to kill.
Speaker 2: Right, and also there was no one home when they came, right.
Speaker 3: I think it's always about keeping somebody off balance. But
Speaker 3: you know, he can't make up his mind whether it's
Speaker 3: in a sleepy Biden or crooked Biden. So here's where
Speaker 3: the problem comes in, and that is I think they've
Speaker 3: done quite a good job of convincing people that Biden
Speaker 3: isn't all there. Even a lot of Biden voters think.
Speaker 2: That, and a lot of polls show that, right.
Speaker 3: It shows that that's what people think. So they've been
Speaker 3: very successful at that, and I could kind of see it.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, the guy's got a stutter. He's definitely
Speaker 3: moving more slowly than he did a few years ago.
Speaker 3: But of course I was covering this guy back in
Speaker 3: the nineties and he sounded the same way back then.
Speaker 3: That's just who he is, so it's easy to do
Speaker 3: it to him. It sort of lends itself to that.
Speaker 3: But here's where they've got a problem. They've done such
Speaker 3: a good job of convincing people that he's not able
Speaker 3: to string two sentences together, as Trump said that while
Speaker 3: he gives the State of the Union does and they say, wow,
Speaker 3: this guy is actually sentience. And then what happens. They'll
Speaker 3: have a debate next month, and it turns out if
Speaker 3: he cans just sentence together, you know, I don't know
Speaker 3: if he'll be brilliant. But the bar has been set
Speaker 3: so low that now we Jesse, I mean, he doesn't
Speaker 3: even have to step over it to get to clear
Speaker 3: that bar. So now they've got to come up with
Speaker 3: something else.
Speaker 1: Yes, So it's interesting when we talk about this because
Speaker 1: I have this theory which Jesse and I actually fight about,
Speaker 1: which is that Joe Biden in the nineties, that this
Speaker 1: Joe Biden is actually better because he knows that he
Speaker 1: sometimes says too much, and so he's a little more careful,
Speaker 1: whereas Joe Biden the nineties would just say crazy staff
Speaker 1: discuss right.
Speaker 3: I think people will say this is like the super managed,
Speaker 3: scripted Joe Biden. But to me, this is the discipline
Speaker 3: Joe Biden.
Speaker 2: Yes.
Speaker 3: I remember watching confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court and
Speaker 3: he'd go on for like fifteen minutes and then he'd say,
Speaker 3: and now I want to get to the regular part
Speaker 3: of my remarks, you know, right, which ed is blathering.
Speaker 3: The guy just wouldn't he wouldn't shut up, and you
Speaker 3: know he was he was always putting his foot in
Speaker 3: his mouth and stepping in it. And you know he
Speaker 3: always said ridiculous things that came out that came out poorly.
Speaker 3: But yeah, so this is I don't know whether he's
Speaker 3: allowing himself to be managed so much as he's recognizing
Speaker 3: that less is more. But you know, anything will fit
Speaker 3: the narrative to say, Okay, that means he must have
Speaker 3: dementia if he's not giving a long rambling speeches. So
Speaker 3: what you know? So what do you do now that
Speaker 3: he was his sentences together and apparently the idea is
Speaker 3: going to be to say that he's on drugs Trump,
Speaker 3: you know, said after the saying he's jacked up. You know,
Speaker 3: he's high as a kite.
Speaker 2: By the way, Trump said that about Hillary too.
Speaker 3: Because he did the same thing to Hillary. There's assessing
Speaker 3: she was demented. Then what do you do when they're
Speaker 3: not demented. He's suggesting some kind of a stimulant or something.
Speaker 3: But I was just delighted that we heard over the
Speaker 3: weekend from Byron Donald's I'm going.
Speaker 2: To read the first line because I love you. Rep.
Speaker 1: Byron Donald's medical education can consist of a bachelor's degree
Speaker 1: in finance and marketing from Florida State University.
Speaker 3: Discuss, Right, but he played a doctor on television.
Speaker 2: It's not even news, it's Fox Business.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, although Maria Bartiromo, I think her Sunday Futures
Speaker 3: maybe is on regular Fox News. I mean, it's all
Speaker 3: the same to me. Right, So he's on with Maria Bartiromo. So, okay,
Speaker 3: dude's a grain of salt to start with there. But
Speaker 3: so he takes it another step further and he says
Speaker 3: Biden is getting some sort of an injection. He thinks,
Speaker 3: you know, like people are saying that makes him coherent.
Speaker 3: So it makes it totally.
Speaker 2: Can I get that inco right?
Speaker 3: An incoherent person takes this injection and is suddenly coherent,
Speaker 3: How can I get me some Yeah, it sounds amazing exactly,
Speaker 3: So you know that's what I said. Republicans have discovered
Speaker 3: this secret elixir that can take somebody who's totally demented
Speaker 3: and make them just totally at the top of their game.
Speaker 3: And yeah, I mean, can you imagine what a blockbuster
Speaker 3: this one?
Speaker 2: I want it. It's a zepic for brains.
Speaker 1: One of the things that they talk about here Byron
Speaker 1: Donald's this is part of the veep steaks, right Byron
Speaker 1: Donalds thinks he's going to be Donald Trump's number two, right.
Speaker 3: Right, And Tim Scott has gone along with the same thing,
Speaker 3: backing up Trump saying yeah, yeah, yeah, of course it
Speaker 3: sounds like Biden's on drugs. So that's sort of the
Speaker 3: standard litmus test. You have to get up and lie
Speaker 3: about Biden being on drugs, and you have.
Speaker 2: To lie about the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1: You've seen veepstakes before, never this sleazy and Mike Pens
Speaker 1: might have some thoughts on whether or not this is
Speaker 1: a good job, but predict the future for me, how
Speaker 1: do you think this is going to play out?
Speaker 2: No pressure, and if you're wrong, we're going.
Speaker 3: To clip this right. No, no, you're going to clip
Speaker 3: this and hold me to it. I don't think I've
Speaker 3: ever seen a public I mean, it's public auditioning, you know,
Speaker 3: with some Republican lawmaker up in Congress that this is
Speaker 3: Apprentice twenty twenty four. You know, they're all out there,
Speaker 3: you know, and of course they're looking ridiculous and it's demeaning,
Speaker 3: but big surprise. I mean, that is the moment that
Speaker 3: we live in. What will the outcome be? If that's
Speaker 3: the question, is asking to divine what's in Donald Trump's
Speaker 3: So I'm not much well or he doesn't know from
Speaker 3: it any given moment to moment what it's going to be.
Speaker 3: So you know, are there are there picks that could
Speaker 3: reassure people? Well, I suppose, so I don't think any
Speaker 3: of those sorts of folks are being seriously considered, though,
Speaker 3: you know, does he try to pick off more Latino
Speaker 3: voters with Marco Rubio or Black voters with doctor Byron
Speaker 3: Donalds for example, Yeah, you know, maybe that works to
Speaker 3: some extent, But you know, I don't think this election
Speaker 3: is going to be decided by whoever it is he picks,
Speaker 3: or Kamala Harris or that matter. I suppose the bar
Speaker 3: needs to be somebody who's marginally competent. But you're saying
Speaker 3: competent enough to succeed Donald Trump. So you know, if
Speaker 3: you're voting for Donald Trump in the first place, you're
Speaker 3: not so worried that the guy who might replace him
Speaker 3: is competent. So it's competence is not your highest standard.
Speaker 1: And you know Trump has said as much. Trump said,
Speaker 1: nobody cares about the vice president. You don't have to
Speaker 1: be a historian here, but talk to me about pretty
Speaker 1: recent elections and sort of how so different what Donald
Speaker 1: Trump is doing right now when it comes to vice
Speaker 1: presidential shopping.
Speaker 3: This is well, you know again, it's the visibility of it.
Speaker 3: I mean, traditionally it was you know, big mystery, ideally
Speaker 3: to be revealed at or around the convention. But the
Speaker 3: conventions don't really matter anymore.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 3: The idea was, you know, it was gonna you know,
Speaker 3: show some sort of a unification in time for the
Speaker 3: full general election season. But it's not a full general
Speaker 3: election season. We've been in a general election season right
Speaker 3: for a year or more now. So you know, it's
Speaker 3: sort of a pet peeve of mine. And you know,
Speaker 3: people say, well, based on what happened with Kennedy in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty or even what happened with Barack Obama in
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, it's irrelevant. We're not in that world anymore.
Speaker 3: So nothing is going according to those anymore. So I
Speaker 3: would say that Trump is correct that people are not
Speaker 3: going to be excited one way or the other about
Speaker 3: the vice presidential pien. And I mean Democrats are not
Speaker 3: overwhelmingly excited by either the top or the or the
Speaker 3: bottet the of the ticket that they're faced with. But
Speaker 3: that's where we are.
Speaker 1: Some of what we're seeing right now is this kind
Speaker 1: of malaise, I think, and some of it is. There's
Speaker 1: also I think I'm certainly people are coming over to
Speaker 1: me an abject panic.
Speaker 2: About these polls.
Speaker 1: You are a veteran, I mean this in a nice way,
Speaker 1: a very young veteran. But tell us what you sort
Speaker 1: of what you think of as like the May before
Speaker 1: an election, Like what should people be doing in the
Speaker 1: may before an election?
Speaker 3: I think the sort of the hand ringing or the
Speaker 3: panicking is sort of a useless emotion so I tell
Speaker 3: people who are worried about that, We'll go out and
Speaker 3: do something. Volunteer, give your money, be ready to knock
Speaker 3: on doors, and do whatever else it takes. You know,
Speaker 3: what the Biden campaign is doing while everybody else is
Speaker 3: freting about the latest poll is building a pretty massive
Speaker 3: campaign infrastructure. So I mean you can fault them for
Speaker 3: you know, being you know, not doing enough about this
Speaker 3: message or that message. I don't think that's particularly fair.
Speaker 3: I don't think they control what the message is going
Speaker 3: to be. I think they have very limited control over that.
Speaker 3: But what they do have control over is the infrastructure
Speaker 3: in investing the time and the money in that. And
Speaker 3: that's what the Republicans aren't doing. As Trump sits in
Speaker 3: his trial in New York, and you know, he's decimated
Speaker 3: the RNC to try to, you know, turn it into
Speaker 3: a vanity organization. So you know, look, I don't think
Speaker 3: anything has changed. It's going to you know, it's going
Speaker 3: to be a very close election. It looks like I'm
Speaker 3: married to a Democratic pollster, and she does spends a
Speaker 3: lot of time talking people off the ledge, you know,
Speaker 3: saying that whatever happens in the election, you know, a
Speaker 3: lot of the polling doesn't make sense. Biden's not going
Speaker 3: to lose women, He's not going to lose young voters,
Speaker 3: not going to lose suspenics. You know, the changes are
Speaker 3: happening at the margin.
Speaker 1: If these polls are right, it'll be the greatest racial
Speaker 1: realignment in the voting rights actually right.
Speaker 3: And it's probably not that. There probably are ongoing shifts
Speaker 3: that have been occurring for years, and that will probably
Speaker 3: continue to happen. So, you know, I think people oughtn't panic,
Speaker 3: but people ought to do something about it. I'm really
Speaker 3: discouraged by the lack of engagement and enthusiasm. Might you know.
Speaker 3: I've got a column coming out on people just seem
Speaker 3: to be numb even to all this you know what
Speaker 3: is blatantly fascist rhetoric. It's almost like, okay, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: we know that, but you.
Speaker 2: Know, the fascism is baked.
Speaker 3: In, right, the fascism is baked in Oh but Biden's old, right,
Speaker 3: So yeah, it's very discouraging. I expect there will be
Speaker 3: more attention paid to that, because, look, Trump can't help himself.
Speaker 3: He or his campaign needed to get a unified Reich
Speaker 3: into into that video, Belie. They need to suggest that
Speaker 3: Biden is, you know, coming after them to kill them.
Speaker 3: He needs to go after the judge's ethnicity and suggesting
Speaker 3: that because he was born in he can't be fair,
Speaker 3: he can't help himself. He's going to keep doing that,
Speaker 3: and I think attention will focus on that. I'm doing
Speaker 3: my best to focus attention on that. That's what people
Speaker 3: are going to have in mind when they.
Speaker 1: Decide, Congress you live in the swamp, no offense or anything.
Speaker 1: Congress is about to go on vacation, because why wouldn't they,
Speaker 1: But first they have a few more weeks of whatever
Speaker 1: the farm bell trying to get the leader of Israel here,
Speaker 1: pandering to whatever they can do to help Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: The Senate is going to try to pass this very
Speaker 1: restrictive immigration bill. I'm actually heartened to see Schumer trying
Speaker 1: to play the right on their game. But just talk
Speaker 1: to me about what's happening in both those hallowed halls.
Speaker 3: By and large, the must do stuff is done, not
Speaker 3: easily done the time, but you know, they sort of
Speaker 3: got there. It looks, you know, for the moment, thanks
Speaker 3: to large part of the Democrats, Johnson will have his
Speaker 3: job for now. So you know, we're sort of in
Speaker 3: we'd be sort of in the early and the silly
Speaker 3: season of you know, messaging bills, and the House Republicans
Speaker 3: are just keep coming up with ways to split the
Speaker 3: Democrats on Israel generally, or just to make them take
Speaker 3: hard votes. And I think Schumer's now trying to do
Speaker 3: the same sort of thing, you know, force Republicans to
Speaker 3: take hard votes in the Senate, and maybe that'll help
Speaker 3: at the margin, you know, people to cut ads. But
Speaker 3: I don't think anybody's going to be focusing on this,
Speaker 3: although the truth is, I could say that about absolutely anything. Now.
Speaker 3: You know, there's been NonStop coverage of Trump's trial for
Speaker 3: a month and virtually nobody's paying any attention to it.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no, I agreed, Well, some people are paying attention.
Speaker 1: And again, we never know what we'll cut through the noise.
Speaker 1: We never know if the stormy Daniel's testimony gets through
Speaker 1: the noise.
Speaker 2: We never know what will break through to the voters.
Speaker 3: We never know, except there's just no evidence, Like nobody's
Speaker 3: talking about it. You're just not hearing this. You're certainly
Speaker 3: not not seeing in the polls that Americans aren't paying attention.
Speaker 3: You're not hearing about it in focus groups or anything else.
Speaker 3: It certainly registers with some people, but those tend to
Speaker 3: be people we're paying to start with it and already
Speaker 3: had their minds made up, you know. I mean that
Speaker 3: was particularly with the Stormy Daniels trial. That was the
Speaker 3: Biden campaigns thinking they have not been engaging and making
Speaker 3: a huge deal as this throwaway lines like I hear
Speaker 3: your free on Wednesdays. By and large sort of the
Speaker 3: assumption is that it's not something that's people going to
Speaker 3: be focusing on.
Speaker 2: Dana Milbank, thank you.
Speaker 3: It's a pleasure as always. Thanks for calling this veteran
Speaker 3: in the swamp.
Speaker 1: Spring is here and I bet you are trying to
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Speaker 1: Representative Jim Hins represents Connecticut's fourth district. Welcome back, too
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, one of my favorite congress people.
Speaker 4: Jim Hines, Hi, Mollie, thanks for having me back.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about beekeeping note just kidding.
Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about first of all,
Speaker 1: it strikes me that Speaker my Johnson only has his
Speaker 1: job today because of the kindness of Democrats.
Speaker 5: Well, first of all, as a factual matter, that's absolutely right.
Speaker 5: I mean, if Marjorie Taylor Green had had her way,
Speaker 5: we would be into week two or three, whatever it
Speaker 5: is right now, of ballad after ballad after ballad of
Speaker 5: the Republican Conference unable to select a speaker. And we
Speaker 5: know that because we saw that movie once before when
Speaker 5: they booted Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't out of the kindness.
Speaker 5: Now, look, I have some respect Sneaker Johnson, which was
Speaker 5: sadly eroded by his performance in front of the New
Speaker 5: York Court the other day. But it wasn't so much
Speaker 5: out of the kindness of our hearts as that we
Speaker 5: really wanted to show the American people that it given
Speaker 5: an opportunity to sort of dance and make political hay
Speaker 5: and partisan you know, statements about dysfunction on the Republican side,
Speaker 5: we chose instead to keep the ship upright and to
Speaker 5: try to make some progress around you know, things like
Speaker 5: infrastructure and the Federal Aviation Administration, all the boring stuff
Speaker 5: of governing. And I think, you know, people need to
Speaker 5: see that, because there's not a chance in the world,
Speaker 5: Molly that had the shoe been on the other foot,
Speaker 5: that the Republicans would have stepped into in the in
Speaker 5: the service of stopping chaos.
Speaker 2: So let's go further with that.
Speaker 1: Now that Mike Johnson has kept his job for now,
Speaker 1: he has sort of a lot of stuff he's pushing
Speaker 1: to vote on that would really serve Donald Trump. I mean,
Speaker 1: it strikes me that he really does serve at the
Speaker 1: pleasure of Donald Trump. And no time was this more
Speaker 1: apparent than last week when he went to Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: criminal trial.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and the hard thing about that, you know, if
Speaker 5: you have my job, you long ago have acknowledged the
Speaker 5: very sad fact that the Republican Party is now a
Speaker 5: cult of personality, almost without exception to Donald J.
Speaker 3: Trump.
Speaker 4: You know, I had accumulated a little bit of.
Speaker 5: Respect for the Speaker because I saw him sort of
Speaker 5: ac civily and because he said, we're going to do
Speaker 5: a budget without a shutdown, We're going to pass the
Speaker 5: Ukraine eate and that's exactly what happened. And you know,
Speaker 5: he took some risks to get that done. And then
Speaker 5: I watch him standing in front of the trial of
Speaker 5: a convicted you know, sexual assaulter. The guy that we
Speaker 5: all know Donald Trump is. And here's this, you know,
Speaker 5: self professed man who is governed by the principles of
Speaker 5: the Bible, not just standing up for Donald Trump but
Speaker 5: telling lies about Donald Trump. And so you know, again,
Speaker 5: it's been quite a roller coaster with respect to my
Speaker 5: own views of Speaker Johnson.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it must be.
Speaker 1: And I know he's sort of liked in a way
Speaker 1: because he has not had a history of lying to
Speaker 1: Democrats quite the same way that Kevin McCarthy did. But
Speaker 1: you guys have some real stuff you need to do
Speaker 1: right now. The farm bell, and that's a big bill.
Speaker 1: And then also there's other stuff he wants to bring
Speaker 1: net Yahoo. Talk to us about the farm bell, and
Speaker 1: then also talk to us about this net Yahoo visit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, look, I mean exactly right on the farm bill.
Speaker 4: And remember the farm bill.
Speaker 5: People here farm bill and they think it's you know,
Speaker 5: acres of corn out in Nebraska. The farm bill is
Speaker 5: also the funding source for all of our food programs
Speaker 5: for lower income Americans who otherwise would be malnourished. So
Speaker 5: it's not just farms right, and traditionally that was an
Speaker 5: easy bill to pass because Krats got all that they
Speaker 5: wanted in terms of, you know, nutritional security, and the
Speaker 5: Republicans who represented more rural areas got all the crop
Speaker 5: insurance and all that stuff. You know, it's yet another
Speaker 5: casualty of a group of people who are more interested
Speaker 5: in social media and performative acts than actually governing the country.
Speaker 5: And so that's why we're gonna have a problem with
Speaker 5: the farm bill. But yeah, we've got real business to do.
Speaker 5: And that's again why we save Speaker Johnson, not the
Speaker 5: kindness of our hearts, but because we've got stuff to
Speaker 5: do now. Sadly, Speaker Johnson is going to take advantage
Speaker 5: of his speakership that we preserved to do a lot
Speaker 5: of messaging nonsense, some of which will be relatively benign
Speaker 5: or neutral.
Speaker 4: You know Natanyahu, right, you asked about him. Here's a
Speaker 4: guy who is enormously controversial in his own country. The
Speaker 4: last time game here, he meddled in our politics by
Speaker 4: telling the Congress that we shouldn't pass the Iran nuclear
Speaker 4: bill that the President was pushing. And so at this
Speaker 4: moment in time, when Nittanyahu needs to be one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty percent focused on getting the hostages out of Gaza.
Speaker 4: He's going to come to a bunch of partisan stuff
Speaker 4: in DC. I mean, it almost turns my stomach to
Speaker 4: think about it.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting to me because Nanyahu has some real
Speaker 1: domestic problems. I mean, you have Israeli's protesting, you have
Speaker 1: parents of the hostages begging him to take this seriously.
Speaker 1: You have really humanitarian disaster growing in Gaza. He wants
Speaker 1: to come to America to help Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: I mean he's so bartisan.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I wish it were so apparent that Netanyahu is
Speaker 5: first and foremost about preserving himself in power. He is
Speaker 5: only Prime Minister in virtue of two really awful people.
Speaker 5: I'm referring to Smotrech and Ben Gevie, right, you know,
Speaker 5: one of whom was kicked out of the IDEF. Are
Speaker 5: not permitted to be in the IDEF because they were
Speaker 5: so extreme. These guys are, you know, one hundred percent
Speaker 5: in support of the settlers violating every international law in
Speaker 5: the West Bank. I mean, these guys are trim and
Speaker 5: by the way, you know, it's uncomfortable for me to
Speaker 5: say that, but that's what most Israelis believe as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I had Bernie Sanders on this podcast. You know,
Speaker 1: I'm Jewish, he's Jewish, and he's Jewish of that age
Speaker 1: where they, you know, were born during the Holocaust, so
Speaker 1: they have real firsthand knowledge about what it's like to
Speaker 1: be murdered for being a Jew, even though he lived
Speaker 1: in the States his whole life. And so even he
Speaker 1: and I, who both know the importance of Israel as
Speaker 1: a state and as a place for us to be
Speaker 1: safe as Jews, also know that Netan Yahoo is not Israel.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right. And you know, it's funny.
Speaker 5: It's a quirk of politics that, you know, having the
Speaker 5: opinion that the majority of Israelis have.
Speaker 4: Which is Prime Minister. And look, I'm careful about this.
Speaker 4: I know Chuck Schumer decided to do something different.
Speaker 5: I'm not in the business of telling other democracies how
Speaker 5: they should select their leaders. But my point was that,
Speaker 5: you know, having an opinion which is, let's just say,
Speaker 5: a little clouded about Prime Minister Netdan Yahu, which is,
Speaker 5: by the way, the opinion that most Israeli shares. You know,
Speaker 5: here you get raised eyebrows. And I mean, I'll tell
Speaker 5: you this. As you know, I work a lot in
Speaker 5: the national security space, and as I look at it,
Speaker 5: you know, it's hard for me to think of somebody
Speaker 5: who has more damaged Israel's long term national security than
Speaker 5: Netan Yahoo. And let's forget about the massive failure that
Speaker 5: was October seventh. I mean, you know, a failure far
Speaker 5: exceeding what we failed on on nine to eleven, two
Speaker 5: thousand and one. Go back to the JCPOA which he
Speaker 5: worked and continued to work. This is the Iran nuclear deal.
Speaker 5: Eliminate and guess what, he got his way because of
Speaker 5: Donald Trump. And now you know what, it wouldn't shock me,
Speaker 5: Molly if we woke up at some point in the
Speaker 5: next year to discover that the Iranians were on the
Speaker 5: verge of testing a nuclear device. And I would tell
Speaker 5: you that would not have happened were the Iran Nuclear
Speaker 5: Deal in place. You know, one other point, it has
Speaker 5: nothing to do with oct well, it has something to
Speaker 5: do with October sevens.
Speaker 4: But here's a guy who has quietly and now explicitly
Speaker 4: dedicated himself to the destruction of the two state solution.
Speaker 4: You know, and I'm pretty humble about the way the
Speaker 4: decisions that other democracies make. But I've always asked a question,
Speaker 4: if not a two state solution, then what And there
Speaker 4: is no answer to that question.
Speaker 5: And so what you do when you take the two
Speaker 5: state solution off the table, as the Prime Minister has done,
Speaker 5: you crush the hopes and aspirations of millions of Palestinians.
Speaker 4: And you know what, millions of people with crushed hopes
Speaker 4: and aspirations is a pretty volatile thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I also think like the you know,
Speaker 1: the whole idea that you can be a democracy that
Speaker 1: deprives others is of their like liberty to live and
Speaker 1: survive is dicey.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about national security.
Speaker 1: This is the thing that I'm obsessed with and irritated
Speaker 1: with but also a little hopeful for. So this TikTok
Speaker 1: ban is a big deal, and it really shows that
Speaker 1: Congress can regulate technology if it wants to. So make
Speaker 1: it make sense how TikTok gets regulated and Facebook is
Speaker 1: able to spread lies and create fake news and force
Speaker 1: to sale TikTok makes sense?
Speaker 2: Get it? But why can't this happen in other technology companies?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: Yeah, okay, full disclosure, I voted against the forced TikTok.
Speaker 5: Why I did it for the same and remember, I'm
Speaker 5: a national security guy. Right in the ads is I
Speaker 5: was not going to be complicit in the United States
Speaker 5: of America for the first time telling its citizenry people
Speaker 5: who we trust to make the decisions.
Speaker 4: Of who to lack.
Speaker 5: I was not going to be party to the government
Speaker 5: of the United States saying I'm sorry, you can't watch
Speaker 5: this media. That is completely inconsistent in my view, with
Speaker 5: the First Amendment, which, by the way, is what the
Speaker 5: Montana courts ruled when Montana tried to block TikTok. I
Speaker 5: don't like going that route without some limiting principle.
Speaker 4: What's next?
Speaker 5: Are we going to get mad at the French because
Speaker 5: they didn't let us overfly whatever in the Iraq War, whatever?
Speaker 5: And we're not going to let Americans read Lamond That
Speaker 5: is not who we are. By the way, I have
Speaker 5: as specific an understanding as anybody about what Chinese capability are.
Speaker 4: To get information. And this leads to your second question,
Speaker 4: which is, guess what the information that we worry that
Speaker 4: the Chinese might get from byte Dance they can buy
Speaker 4: on the open market today, right, You can buy anything,
Speaker 4: including your current location. Why because and here's here's what
Speaker 4: I feel really strongly about. Number one, supporting the First Amendments.
Speaker 5: So no, molly, the federal government is not going to
Speaker 5: be in the business of identifying misinformation, disinformation and information.
Speaker 5: We just can't get into that. But number two, for
Speaker 5: God's sakes, we've got to pass a federal privacy law.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 5: Europe has done it with something called GDPR, California has
Speaker 5: done it with CCPA. The federal government has yet to
Speaker 5: work out the basic question of who owns what data
Speaker 5: Until we do that, and we should have done it
Speaker 5: five years ago. We're putting you know, it's not even
Speaker 5: the cart before the horse, right, we're just being clown
Speaker 5: like and all this other stuff.
Speaker 1: Again, the First Amendment. I'm not totally understanding how tech
Speaker 1: company is in the First Amendment. Right, you can say
Speaker 1: whatever you want, But should tech companies, I mean, shouldn't
Speaker 1: they be responsible for the things that happen on their platforms?
Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting to say that, and you're right. Look,
Speaker 5: it's not directly a First Amendment issue as that pertains
Speaker 5: to social media. Look, Facebook can choose to censor. What
Speaker 5: can happen in this country is that the government can't censor,
Speaker 5: and people get all confused and use this for their
Speaker 5: political advantage. The government is prohibited by the First Amendment
Speaker 5: from censoring anything, right, exceptions. On the end, Facebook and
Speaker 5: Twitter consents or whatever the hell they want, in the
Speaker 5: same way that at your table or at Columbia University,
Speaker 5: decisions can be made about what you can't and can't
Speaker 5: say in private contexts. Right, So it's not so much
Speaker 5: a First Amendment issue. And look, I think that Facebook
Speaker 5: and god knows, Twitter or x or whatever or el
Speaker 5: Zamusk is calling it now, should do a much better job,
Speaker 5: you know, keeping truly awful stuff off.
Speaker 4: And that's their prerogative.
Speaker 1: But it's their prerogative because Congress doesn't regulate. I mean,
Speaker 1: if Congress said tomorrow, you're responsible for everything that goes
Speaker 1: on your platform, just like NBC is responsible for everything
Speaker 1: that goes on its platform. I mean, imagine a world
Speaker 1: where NBC says, you know, we're not going to regulate
Speaker 1: First Amendment. I mean, I'm just saying, like tech companies
Speaker 1: have found themselves in this situation because Congress has not
Speaker 1: ever regulated them. So they until somebody sues them into
Speaker 1: the ground, or until they have consequences. They have much
Speaker 1: lower standards and than newspapers and cable networks, and I
Speaker 1: mean they have their ow they can basically do whatever
Speaker 1: they want, right.
Speaker 5: I think the interesting little crack in the door here
Speaker 5: is on the issue of liability. So in other words,
Speaker 5: Facebook puts up some white nationalists, or allows to be
Speaker 5: put up I should say, some white nationalists. Sort of
Speaker 5: incitement videos not impossible, probably more likely to happen on Twitter,
Speaker 5: by the way, and somebody gets radicalized and goes out
Speaker 5: and kills a bunch of people in the name of
Speaker 5: white nationalism. I like the idea that Twitter can be
Speaker 5: held liable for that. Now, by the way, that's that's
Speaker 5: a little bit inconsistent with current law undersection blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: But I think.
Speaker 4: There is really some there's an opening to the door
Speaker 4: with respect to liability for bad outcomes. Where are you
Speaker 4: start a little nervous?
Speaker 5: So what about you know, on Facebook, you don't want
Speaker 5: the government coming in and saying, you know what, you
Speaker 5: can't put up Paul Gosar's stuff. So our member of Congress,
Speaker 5: ex right winger, you know, I'm sure has attended some
Speaker 5: rallies that I would not even consider attending where is
Speaker 5: the line drawn? And if the government is doing it,
Speaker 5: the government must observe the tenets of the First Amendment.
Speaker 4: So again, I think you come back to this liability thing.
Speaker 5: If you put up some garbage that motivates somebody to
Speaker 5: go out and hurt some folks, then you ought to
Speaker 5: be held liable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it just is strange to me that
Speaker 1: there's a completely different set of I mean, they're clearly publishers, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, these websites are publishing things, but there's literally
Speaker 1: no accountability. And I think so much about like the
Speaker 1: oil companies, right, won't someone think of Exxon Oil companies
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of other companies like this
Speaker 1: have gotten huge tax incentives.
Speaker 2: They've you know, they've been able to.
Speaker 1: Harlay the federal government into dollars, whereas local news places
Speaker 1: where they really are doing a public good, they don't
Speaker 1: reap those same rewards. And curious as to sort of
Speaker 1: why that happens. I'm sorry to be a socialist here.
Speaker 4: Yeah, no, it's not socialist. Look, the difference between oil
Speaker 4: and information is that oil is not mentioned in the
Speaker 4: First Amendment, and we as a country do take the
Speaker 4: concept of free expression, really seriously, and it's codified in
Speaker 4: our First Amendment in a way that oil is not.
Speaker 1: Right, but oil gets more support from the federal government
Speaker 1: than the First Amendment.
Speaker 4: Right, Well, I'm not going to justify that.
Speaker 5: I don't think oil should get a dime of support
Speaker 5: from it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I don't either, nor should call.
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm just so struck by, like the
Speaker 1: incredible ability that lobbyists have to still push around the
Speaker 1: federal government in ways that because there's so little local news.
Speaker 1: I know, stuff just from watching c SPAN that never
Speaker 1: makes it to newspapers.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's right, and you know you highlighted local news
Speaker 5: absolutely critical. I mean, everybody who studies this stuff and
Speaker 5: the slow erosion or this rapid erosion of our democracy
Speaker 5: identifies local news is one of the real bulwarks against
Speaker 5: the insanity. And by the way, Molly, this this opens
Speaker 5: up another door that people don't always want to hear.
Speaker 5: You know, if you lean left, you sort of think,
Speaker 5: what's the government going to do about this? I don't
Speaker 5: ever in a town hall meeting miss the opportunity to
Speaker 5: tell whatever one hundred and fifty people showed up that look,
Speaker 5: we're going to work through these issues. Eventually we'll have
Speaker 5: a federal privacy law, you know, Eventually we'll be smarter
Speaker 5: about regulating garbage on the social media platforms.
Speaker 4: It will be hard to the First Amendment. But son
Speaker 4: of a gun, you're a citizen of the United States
Speaker 4: of America. You are the most fortunate political actor through
Speaker 4: human history. You live at the wealthiest, most powerful country
Speaker 4: in the world, and you make the decisions, and with
Speaker 4: that comes a great deal of responsibility. So, my friend,
Speaker 4: if you're watching Fox News six hours a day and
Speaker 4: at the end of those six hours, your hair is
Speaker 4: on fire, and you make democrats for traders, you know,
Speaker 4: or if you're quite frankly watching something way out there
Speaker 4: on the left and at the end of that you
Speaker 4: are out of your mind literally with anger and rage.
Speaker 4: You are being manipulated.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: The truth of the matter is molly that most of
Speaker 5: the things that we argue about here in DC, other
Speaker 5: than by the way, you know, whether Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: going to take us into an autocracy, our tax rates,
Speaker 5: our subsidies. You know, these arguments happen between the sixty
Speaker 5: and the forty yard lines. You know, nobody should hate
Speaker 5: anybody over agricultural policy. Or tax policy, or what percentage
Speaker 5: of our you know, GDP we spend on foreign policy.
Speaker 5: So my point is that American citizens need to step
Speaker 5: up and start being critical thinkers and start seeing themselves
Speaker 5: as stewards.
Speaker 4: Of our democracy. Because if all you're doing is thinking
Speaker 4: about politics as a mode of self entertainment, dare I say,
Speaker 4: we'll lose our democracy.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately they're not even doing that anymore because there's like
Speaker 1: a Great News blackout. If Mike Johnson starts to really
Speaker 1: dog walk Democrats, which he might try to, will you
Speaker 1: guys do a.
Speaker 2: Motion to vacate?
Speaker 1: Probably not, because you guys have the power to remove
Speaker 1: him from his job anytime.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, I suppose the way that would play.
Speaker 5: I remember we're in the minority, so we probably couldn't
Speaker 5: you know, if we tried to do a motion of
Speaker 5: VAK Weirdly, every single Republican would vote against it. But
Speaker 5: you know, no, I guess in theory, you know, we
Speaker 5: could find Marjorie Taylor Green on the floor and say, hey,
Speaker 5: we saved this guy last time, but we're not going
Speaker 5: to do it again.
Speaker 4: I suppose. So, you know, again, I'm one of these.
Speaker 5: People that really cares about about you know, functionality and progress, right,
Speaker 5: So I need to contemplate that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, again, I'm still smarting. As I told you earlier.
Speaker 5: I don't mind Speaker Johnson pushing right wing stuff, That's
Speaker 5: what happens in this building. But I just despise the
Speaker 5: fact that a guy that I thought had some integrity
Speaker 5: would stand up in front of a New York courthouse
Speaker 5: and cast out on the twenty election and propagate falsehoods
Speaker 5: that he knows are falsehoods people making right leaning policy proposals.
Speaker 5: Here is what Washington is about. Lying in the service
Speaker 5: of becoming a more senior acolyte in the Donald Trump
Speaker 5: universe is another way in which we lose our demandocracy.
Speaker 2: Congressman Hans, thank you so much for joining me.
Speaker 4: Thank you, Molly, A pleasure always.
Speaker 1: John Gans is the author of When the Clock Broke,
Speaker 1: Conman Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the early
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties. Welcome to Fast Politics. Welcome back, John Gants.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Talk to us about the book When the Clock Broke.
Speaker 4: Well, this is my book. It's coming out June eighteenth.
Speaker 4: That's called When the Clock Broke, Conman Conspiracists and How
Speaker 4: America cracked up in the early nineteen nineties, and basically,
Speaker 4: like I think a lot of political books in the
Speaker 4: past few years, this is an effort to understand the
Speaker 4: election of Donald Trump and the country at large, but
Speaker 4: instead of being about him, it goes back quite a
Speaker 4: bit in time. The inspiration for the book was a
Speaker 4: few things. Back in twenty seventeen, Rick Pearlstein, the author
Speaker 4: of Nixon Land and Reaganland. He wrote an article for
Speaker 4: The New York Times magazine trying to buy his picture
Speaker 4: of what the conservative movement had been and say that,
Speaker 4: you know, the cranks and the and the crackpots that
Speaker 4: he thought had been had been marginalized, were actually much
Speaker 4: more important than he had thought. So we called for
Speaker 4: kind of revision of the history of American conservatism.
Speaker 3: So that was one inspiration for the book.
Speaker 4: And then around the same time, I had found this
Speaker 4: essay called right Wing Populism by a libertarian economist named
Speaker 4: Murray Rothbart, which was basically kind of a sketch.
Speaker 3: It was from nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a sketch of trumpsm Before Trump became
Speaker 4: a politician, obviously, he was part of the media world
Speaker 4: and part of you know, culture back then. So I
Speaker 4: was very excited by that, and I thought I had
Speaker 4: kind of found the Rosetta stone to all this sort
Speaker 4: of stuff. I tried very hard to bring this to
Speaker 4: people's attention. I didn't know Jamel Bowie, who's you know,
Speaker 4: now my good friend and podcast partner. I didn't know
Speaker 4: Rick Pearlstein, who's now a friend and kind of my
Speaker 4: mentor at the time. And I was writing emails to
Speaker 4: people trying to get them think it's interesting because Iconic
Speaker 4: kind of found the secret. Well, no one paid attention.
Speaker 4: Turned out to be a good thing because I had
Speaker 4: to start writing by myself. I started writing a couple
Speaker 4: of articles about this for a magazine called The Baffler,
Speaker 4: and then over the years that turned into the book.
Speaker 4: And this book's about the early nineteen nineties. Is mostly
Speaker 4: about the election of nineteen ninety two and a little
Speaker 4: bit at the end of the nineteen ninety one and
Speaker 4: what happened in that time period was David Duke, former
Speaker 4: Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazi,
Speaker 4: ran for governor of Louisiana and did quite well with
Speaker 4: white voters.
Speaker 3: He won the majority of white voters.
Speaker 4: And Pat Buchannan tried to primary George H. W.
Speaker 3: Bush.
Speaker 4: He did not do that successfully, but he wounded Bush's
Speaker 4: candidacy and kind of demonstrated the existence of this right
Speaker 4: wing populist protest vote within the GOP coalition. So that's
Speaker 4: the beginning of the book. Starts with them and the
Speaker 4: kind of writers and intellectuals that surrounded them. So this
Speaker 4: book is, you know, there's a lot of different metaphors
Speaker 4: you could use. It's a prehistory of trump as a
Speaker 4: where it's the Rosetta stone of trump Ism is one
Speaker 4: way of looking at it. And this was a time
Speaker 4: when a lot of the issues that are you know,
Speaker 4: facing the country in terms of problems with the economics,
Speaker 4: problems and culture first started to assert themselves after the
Speaker 4: Cold War had ended. That's the quickest way I can
Speaker 4: describe the book.
Speaker 1: So what are the lessons of this early history?
Speaker 2: Because there's another book.
Speaker 1: I read about the sort of the rights obsession with authoritarianism.
Speaker 2: I mean, what can we learn from this history?
Speaker 4: That is very much depending on the reader. I hesitate
Speaker 4: to say in advance.
Speaker 2: What you learned?
Speaker 4: What I learned? Well, I would say that the authoritarianism
Speaker 4: of the GOP has much longer history than we might
Speaker 4: have known before. It is something that they never properly
Speaker 4: coped with. The myth of the GOP as having, you know,
Speaker 4: and the Conservative movement is having kind of pushed out.
Speaker 3: Its cranks is false.
Speaker 4: I learned that, you know, this current in American politics
Speaker 4: which sort of reappeared and then was ignored, has deeper
Speaker 4: roots than was imagined. I learned that there's an enormous
Speaker 4: amount of discontent in American life beneath the surface or
Speaker 4: not sow beneath the surface, and the right is very
Speaker 4: good at interpreting it and giving it political shape.
Speaker 1: Can we do another minute on that, because I think
Speaker 1: that's really important, the Right being able to sort of
Speaker 1: take their supporters or the people who are vulnerable to
Speaker 1: them and.
Speaker 2: Exploiting their unhappiness.
Speaker 1: And so that's like Democrats seem not completely unable, in fact,
Speaker 1: to their detriment to do.
Speaker 2: How do you think Republicans are able to do this?
Speaker 4: Well, it's a complicated question. I think Republicans are more
Speaker 4: at this time, at least the writers and the more
Speaker 4: intellectual figures that I talk about this book. We're fourth right.
Speaker 4: You know, the country was heading in an uncertain and
Speaker 4: even bad you know, there was a recession at this time.
Speaker 4: There was a lot of concern about are we talking
Speaker 4: about We're talking about nineteen ninety through nineteen ninety two
Speaker 4: pretty much. So there was a lot of uncertainty about
Speaker 4: what the country meant after the Cold War without an
Speaker 4: external enemy. You know, there was a lot of concern
Speaker 4: about the changing demographics in America. So what it meant
Speaker 4: to be American was something that wasn't very clear to people.
Speaker 4: And the Republicans, well not the Republicans, but this faction
Speaker 4: within the Republican Party in the conservative movement, you know,
Speaker 4: had an answer to it, which was, we know you're scared,
Speaker 4: we know you're angry. Your right to be scared and angry,
Speaker 4: and here's who you should be scared and angry at liberals, minorities.
Speaker 2: So they gave them an enemy.
Speaker 3: That essentially, they gave them an enemy.
Speaker 4: They said, the reason why you feel dispossessed, the reason
Speaker 4: why you feel like you're losing your country, is because
Speaker 4: these people are taking it from you. That these people
Speaker 4: could have. You know, a lot of different balances could
Speaker 4: be this group of that group, or just a vague
Speaker 4: notion of an enemy. But yes, they shaped the politics.
Speaker 4: You know, the Cold War ended. We always had an
Speaker 4: external enemy from World War Two to through the Cold War,
Speaker 4: and they began to shape the politics around domestic enmity, right,
Speaker 4: so the Cold War became domestic. It was about defeating
Speaker 4: the left, the liberals, the commists, so to speak, at home,
Speaker 4: who were esconced in the media, in academia and government.
Speaker 4: But there was another dimension to it, which is that
Speaker 4: they latched onto a real sense that the economy and
Speaker 4: the wake of Reagan was really not no longer geared
Speaker 4: in the interest of middle class people, and it was
Speaker 4: very difficult to make a living on a single income.
Speaker 4: Lots of jobs at disappeared, manufacturing jobs that disappeared, but
Speaker 4: then you know, a lot of white collar jobs were
Speaker 4: beginning to leave the country or does not exist anymore.
Speaker 4: So they observed this uncertain world that came up with
Speaker 4: a very clear picture of it and a clear enemy,
Speaker 4: and this message began to resonate. The response of the
Speaker 4: political establishment was not particularly visionary or energetic. It kind
Speaker 4: of papered over this moment that revealed a deep discontent
Speaker 4: in American life with temporary fixes and compromises, but not
Speaker 4: a broad vision of where the country should go a
Speaker 4: new deal, a new new deal or something like that.
Speaker 4: So they kind of offered a more clear image, even
Speaker 4: though it was a very negative one. It was a
Speaker 4: world that people could begin to see themselves and too.
Speaker 4: And you also have to remember this is the dawning
Speaker 4: of the age of cable TV and the dawning of
Speaker 4: the age of the radio talk show. Well not the
Speaker 4: dawning of it, but the moment where it became really dominant.
Speaker 4: Rush Limbo becomes enormously popular, and he's speaking, he says it,
Speaker 4: you know, for a lot of people who you know,
Speaker 4: economically they might be doing okay, but they feel very
Speaker 4: alienated by the culture and they feel very angry. And
Speaker 4: he's the voice of that. And on cable you know,
Speaker 4: you start to see a lot of people people Cable
Speaker 4: news is driven by, you know, incentives of entertainment and commerce.
Speaker 4: You start to see a lot of people put on
Speaker 4: TV for their entertainment value because they're outrageous and they
Speaker 4: are good TV, but maybe not it's not responsible journalism
Speaker 4: to put them front and center all the time.
Speaker 2: One of the things I was told was that one
Speaker 2: of the.
Speaker 1: Biggest get out the vote makers on the Republican side
Speaker 1: was in fact, Rush Limbaugh.
Speaker 4: Oh, Rush Limbaugh was one of the most important figures
Speaker 4: in the Republican Party from you this year until his death,
Speaker 4: to the point at which probably maybe one of the
Speaker 4: most powerful people on the right where you know, you
Speaker 4: could not criticize Rush Limbo. You criticize Rush Limbo at
Speaker 4: your own peril. If you look back over the last
Speaker 4: thirty years of people on the right who dared to
Speaker 4: criticize Rush Limbo for his vulgarity or his aggression, you
Speaker 4: will find that very controlly. Thereafter they usually apologize to him.
Speaker 4: And that's because of the enormous power that he had
Speaker 4: and the enormous connection with the grassroots constituency that lots
Speaker 4: of writers, editorial writers you know, or members of the
Speaker 4: party didn't necessarily have. So he was sort of the
Speaker 4: voice of Republicanism, which is something pat By Cannon said
Speaker 4: during this primary campaign. He said, if I'm elected, I'll
Speaker 4: make Russi Lombo my communications director.
Speaker 1: When you sort of are looking at this story of
Speaker 1: how we got to Trump, what do you think the
Speaker 1: kind of tent poles were. This is this intentionally very
Speaker 1: big question, but like think about like one of the
Speaker 1: things I would say is that there's a direct line
Speaker 1: from Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump. What other things are
Speaker 1: there that are like that? Where you when you're working
Speaker 1: in this book, you were like, oh.
Speaker 4: Shit, oh absolutely well. I think Ross Perrot is another
Speaker 4: figure in the book which is a kind of billionaire
Speaker 4: OUTSI populist. Ross Perrot was not as conservative ideologically. He
Speaker 4: was a kind of mix of unclear positions, but basically
Speaker 4: kind of had a vague message about cleaning up the government,
Speaker 4: didn't really give that much of a shit about the
Speaker 4: constitutional system or if he broke it or didn't or
Speaker 4: bald or didn't. Have a kind of vague notion of
Speaker 4: showing patriotism or nationalism that was tied into a lot
Speaker 4: of myth making about America, Norman Rockwell type imagery. And
Speaker 4: you know, he ran a campaign that was enormously popular
Speaker 4: in this time with this message and you know, having
Speaker 4: this rich guy come out of nowhere saying I can
Speaker 4: fix the country with you know, pretty much a right
Speaker 4: wing or reactionary balance the whole thing. I don't think
Speaker 4: anybody could look at that and not see, you know,
Speaker 4: foreshadowing of Donald Trump. You know, Another thing that happened
Speaker 4: in this ero, and this is one of my favorite
Speaker 4: parts of the book, is John Gotti becomes kind of
Speaker 4: a folk hero in New York. And John Gotti becomes
Speaker 4: a folk hero in New York because a lot of
Speaker 4: people aren't nostalgic for what John Gotti represents, right.
Speaker 1: Uses what murdering people or the criminality.
Speaker 4: Of course, he's a murder and a criminal, but for
Speaker 4: some reason, he represented the good old days to a
Speaker 4: lot of people, and an old way of being a
Speaker 4: proper man, of providing for one's family. And the mob,
Speaker 4: you know, seemed compared to the chaos that prevailed in
Speaker 4: the city and in the country, there was something familiar
Speaker 4: and desiral about it, even if they were, you know,
Speaker 4: just criminals when it came down to it. So John
Speaker 4: Gotti becomes a folk hero. Rudy Giuliani obviously we all
Speaker 4: think of him, as you know, in this time period,
Speaker 4: as mister Klean going after the mob. But Rudy Giuliani.
Speaker 4: In nineteen ninety two, leeds Or is part of a
Speaker 4: kind of proto January sixth where the New York Police
Speaker 4: Department besieges City Hall in a riot almost you know,
Speaker 4: storms it. Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, Now, I grew up in the city, so I
Speaker 1: know how much he sucks.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, you remember this thing. So that's another
Speaker 4: another tenpole as you as you would say, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, Juliani was also playing into these white backlash
Speaker 4: politics in his own way, and he was late occupying
Speaker 4: the same world as John Gotti on the tabloids every day,
Speaker 4: and you know, John Gotti's in the New York Post
Speaker 4: and they asked their Post readers, who do you believe
Speaker 4: the witnesses against John Gotti or John Gotty? And most,
Speaker 4: you know, more than half of New York Post readers
Speaker 4: say we believe John Gotti, you know. And the people
Speaker 4: hang up yellow ribbons for John Gotti like they did
Speaker 4: for the troops and the Gulf. And you know, Trump
Speaker 4: comes out of New York in this era where the
Speaker 4: eighties and this era, and it's really hard not to
Speaker 4: think about him coming out of that context as well.
Speaker 4: And then the other thing that happens around this time.
Speaker 4: Two signal events for the far right in this country
Speaker 4: are Ruby Ridge and Waco, where you have the extreme
Speaker 4: right more in Ruby Ridge and Waco. It's slightly more
Speaker 4: of a complicated question, but having these events of martyrdom
Speaker 4: where their story about an oppressive federal government coming after
Speaker 4: white Christian Americans begins to look plausible to a lot
Speaker 4: more people. So you have the success, in a way,
Speaker 4: or the breakthrough into mainstream culture of this kind of
Speaker 4: extreme right view of what the federal government is up to.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 4: I always say, when you kind of put all of
Speaker 4: these images on top of each other, you got the mobster,
Speaker 4: you got Rudy whipping up the cops. You got Ross Perrot,
Speaker 4: you got the far right, you know, Ruby Ridge, Waco stuff,
Speaker 4: and you got Buchanan and David Duke, who, by the way,
Speaker 4: was very enthusiastic about Donald Trump when he came along
Speaker 4: in twenty fifteen sixteen. You kind of get that perfect
Speaker 4: image of Trump, right. You got everything there. You've got
Speaker 4: the billionaire part of it, the far right, neo nazi
Speaker 4: part of it, You've got the tabloid entertainment part of it.
Speaker 4: Trump is a little bit of a mobster. So this
Speaker 4: is like Trump as a political I mean, obviously we
Speaker 4: know he's been around for a while, but as a
Speaker 4: political figure, he's sort of a crystallization of all these
Speaker 4: elements that were still scattered and he kind of embodies
Speaker 4: all of them. So that's what fascinating about it. I
Speaker 4: could just see little reflections and glimpses of the Trump
Speaker 4: movement and these various things that were going on back then,
Speaker 4: and it took almost thirty years for it all to
Speaker 4: coalesce in a single figure. But it's interesting to see
Speaker 4: it scattered and kind of gathering itself in this time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's such an interesting way to look at
Speaker 1: the party. So, I mean it seems when you look
Speaker 1: at this very recent history, you have extremism beedback by normal,
Speaker 1: extremism be back by normal, always sort of bubbling under
Speaker 1: the surface.
Speaker 2: I mean, does that seem like a fairis Yeah.
Speaker 4: I think that we have to rethink a little bit
Speaker 4: what we understand by extreme and normal, and we also
Speaker 4: have to pay. I think what the lesson here is
Speaker 4: is to be good citizens. We really actually do have
Speaker 4: to pay. I mean, the fringe is now the mainstream,
Speaker 4: so it's.
Speaker 2: Right in the GOP. But it is like interesting to me.
Speaker 1: I always whenever I interview anyone, I was pushed back
Speaker 1: when they say, well, they're like extremes on both sides and.
Speaker 4: D because I'm like, well, the extremes really took over
Speaker 4: on the on the right.
Speaker 2: And they really didn't on the left.
Speaker 1: And of anything, the center has been really good at
Speaker 1: smashing down the left, you know, in a concerted effort,
Speaker 1: whenever they've showed any kind of like real interest in
Speaker 1: criminal justice reform. I mean, there's just been such a
Speaker 1: crushing effect from the center, and for some reason, the
Speaker 1: center is unable to do that with the far right.
Speaker 3: Yes, I wonder why that is.
Speaker 4: That's a complicate why you see that in this period too,
Speaker 4: because obviously Clinton wins this election with a quite centrist message.
Speaker 4: I think it's because ultimately that stuff on the right
Speaker 4: is both not taking quite as seriously. You know, there's
Speaker 4: the problem is is that we're not very good. Whenever
Speaker 4: there's anything going on in politics, you have to kind
Speaker 4: of weigh it as a possibility that might grow. So
Speaker 4: when you see things that are very fringe, you know,
Speaker 4: the natural reaction is to say, well, that's just Kooch's
Speaker 4: out there, right. Those people are working very hard to
Speaker 4: get the message out there, and you know, they might
Speaker 4: be nothing right now, but you don't know ten twenty
Speaker 4: thirty years. So I would say my message in this
Speaker 4: book is pay very close attention to the margins. You know,
Speaker 4: that is where you see the future. It's sort of
Speaker 4: laid out, you know, when you want to find out
Speaker 4: what's coming down the pike, you can see it and
Speaker 4: what not, you know, without fail. But if you begin
Speaker 4: to learn how to read politics, you can kind of see, oh, well,
Speaker 4: this is something with a growing constituency, and this is
Speaker 4: something that may be very small or disorganized at the moment,
Speaker 4: but is speaking to more and more people who feel
Speaker 4: dissatisfied with the current way of doing things. So I
Speaker 4: think that there is too much focus. I've been criticized
Speaker 4: for focusing too much on weirdos and exotic things, and
Speaker 4: I just understand what people are saying because they're like, wow,
Speaker 4: the people with a lot of power are the normal people,
Speaker 4: and they do the harmful things. I get that's true.
Speaker 4: But these people in the margins one day may become
Speaker 4: the mainstream, and they're also always pushing the mainstream in
Speaker 4: their own direction. So I would say, what I enjoy
Speaker 4: doing and I think is interesting, and I hope the
Speaker 4: book does is to try to help people look at
Speaker 4: the whole political field and see even among the things
Speaker 4: that don't appear important or pear silly or peer weird.
Speaker 4: I mean, Trump is the app So listen to this.
Speaker 4: This guy has been hanging around politics for twenty years,
Speaker 4: seeming like a side show, launching these ridiculous campaigns that
Speaker 4: go nowhere. He's a joke, and suddenly he's not a
Speaker 4: joke anymore. So that's my message and my approach to
Speaker 4: reading politics is take the margins seriously. They represent the future.
Speaker 4: And you know, so when you're reading the paper or
Speaker 4: you're understanding the news and you see some little thing
Speaker 4: that seems marginal or minor at that time, have a
Speaker 4: little imagination of what might might happen. Is basically I
Speaker 4: hope people will take out of this book.
Speaker 2: Thank you, John Ganz, Thank you so.
Speaker 3: Much, Molly.
Speaker 4: This has been great.
Speaker 2: No moment second, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 3: Molly, John Fast.
Speaker 4: I see there's a lot of fuckery down in the
Speaker 4: Louisiana State House around birth control.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Basically, Louisiana decided that they were going to make the
Speaker 1: abortion pill metha pristone, which is super safe and used
Speaker 1: for miscarriage treatment and used for all sorts of other
Speaker 1: uterine problems.
Speaker 2: They were going to make it a controlled substance.
Speaker 1: So now it was actually an anti ulcer drug when
Speaker 1: it first started, so has multiple uses besides abortion. Now
Speaker 1: you will be able to prescribe methapristone, this is so
Speaker 1: stupid for non abortion reasons. That's still legal, but the
Speaker 1: drug will become a controlled substance. Doctors will have to
Speaker 1: have a special Drug Enforcement Administration license to prescribe these
Speaker 1: drugs in the state, will be able to track when
Speaker 1: they're prescribed, to whom and what pharmacy these prescriptions are filled.
Speaker 1: You see where this is going, right, They are taking
Speaker 1: away your right two abortion pills, and that, my friend,
Speaker 1: is our moment of fuckr it for this episode of
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Speaker 1: hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all
Speaker 1: this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
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Speaker 1: thanks for listening.