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 tourism cutbacks stand to cost the
Speaker 1: United States approximately ninety billion dollars. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. Evil Genius' author Kurt Anderson
Speaker 1: stops by to talk about Trump crossing the lines of lawlessness.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to documentarian Alex Gibney about his latest documentary,
Speaker 1: The Dark Money Game, a documentary about how dark money
Speaker 1: influences our politics. But first the news Smiley.
Speaker 2: Many people are saying that now we're in the lawless groupicon,
Speaker 2: that we've really really really stepped in it with Trump
Speaker 2: giving the middle finger to the Supreme Court and saying
Speaker 2: that this is a foreign affair that they don't have oversight.
Speaker 1: So this is again like one of the parlor games
Speaker 1: we play now, is are we in a constitutional crisis?
Speaker 2: I like to call it as shorten your's constitutional crisis.
Speaker 1: That's all right, both in and out, alive and dead.
Speaker 1: Even having to ask that question, I think is a
Speaker 1: pretty good sign that you're in a lot of trouble.
Speaker 1: What we have here is like a semantic argument that
Speaker 1: we see the Trump administration doing, which is exploiting the
Speaker 1: law as much as possible. So they have been told
Speaker 1: to bring Garcia back to the United States, but they
Speaker 1: hadn't been quite clearly told how and sort of the timetable.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of obfuscating and trying not to do
Speaker 1: everything that they should be doing. And you know, this
Speaker 1: is a great example of this administration's lawlessness. But I
Speaker 1: think it is worse looking at this and realizing that
Speaker 1: the reason why Trump keeps losing in the courts is
Speaker 1: because the stuff they want to do is not lawful.
Speaker 1: And so when you're a Harvard University or your MIT,
Speaker 1: or you're one of these many universities it's being targeted
Speaker 1: by the Trump administration, you can remind yourself that Trump
Speaker 1: will lose in court because this is actually unlawful, and
Speaker 1: so you don't have to go along with this, right
Speaker 1: you can push back against these unlawful requests, and that's
Speaker 1: what you need to do. And we're going to see
Speaker 1: Trump is going to try to do this more and
Speaker 1: people are going to have to stand up to things
Speaker 1: that are unlawful in a peaceful and calm way. And
Speaker 1: that's what Harvard did today. And that's what MIT did,
Speaker 1: and that's what all of our universities are going to do,
Speaker 1: because if there's one lesson that we can learn from
Speaker 1: Columbia University, it is the lesson that trump Ism is
Speaker 1: very much not legal, and very much that if you
Speaker 1: acquiesce to them even a little bit, they will not
Speaker 1: be satisfied. In fact, that they will just decide that
Speaker 1: they want more, and so don't comply, don't obey, peacefully
Speaker 1: and smartly pushback.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and our lotmakers should be doing much more than that,
Speaker 2: And it seems that some of them are discussing going
Speaker 2: tell Salvador to really push back on this because this
Speaker 2: is just such an egregious step over the line.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, it's good that they're doing that, and
Speaker 1: I'm glad to see Democrats finally doing the kind of
Speaker 1: stuff that we've been wanting them to do, the kind
Speaker 1: of pushback that needs to happen. Senator Chris van Holland,
Speaker 1: who is by the way, pretty I would say straight
Speaker 1: not mister woke by any start of the imagination. Right,
Speaker 1: He's a Maryland Democratic Senator. He says that he's going
Speaker 1: to go if Garcia is not returned by midweek. The
Speaker 1: Senator will travel to Salvador. I just want to bring
Speaker 1: up something which I think is actually quite important. These
Speaker 1: things that Trump is doing are not popular, and I'm
Speaker 1: going to read you a little bit of polling which
Speaker 1: I think is actually quite important. So here's a poll
Speaker 1: from Quinnipiac and it says more Americans now disapprove of
Speaker 1: Trump on immigration than it's fifty percent to forty five percent.
Speaker 1: Majority of Americans now disapprove of Trump on deportations fifty
Speaker 1: three to forty two. So here's the deal. This is
Speaker 1: not popular, right, This is not popular, This is not okay.
Speaker 1: This is voters more than three to one see Trump's
Speaker 1: tariffs hurting US economy in the short term but less
Speaker 1: parish on the long term. This is real. Right on
Speaker 1: the short term, seventy two percent of voters think the
Speaker 1: tariffs will hurt the US economy. That's because it will. Well,
Speaker 1: only twenty two percent think the TIFFs will help you
Speaker 1: as economy. This is a president who's doing really unpopular
Speaker 1: things that people do not want and do not like.
Speaker 1: And that is why it's so important. It is so
Speaker 1: incredibly important to push back on all of this because
Speaker 1: nobody wants it yeah.
Speaker 2: And speaking of them pushing the limits, we now have
Speaker 2: a report that a US born attorney says she was
Speaker 2: told to immediately self deport from the DHS.
Speaker 1: Yeah. They send out these like very dogey and also
Speaker 1: quite dodgy form emails to everybody who was like, you know,
Speaker 1: an immigration lawyer, or I mean this woman had her
Speaker 1: grandparents were born in this country. I mean, this is
Speaker 1: the other thing, and this is really important to remember.
Speaker 1: These people are incompetent. They are sending form emails telling
Speaker 1: people to self deport people who are American citizens for
Speaker 1: many generations. These people are incompetent. Do not I mean,
Speaker 1: don't be scared. They are very, very, very bad at
Speaker 1: what they do. Thank god.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: She was born in Newton, works in Boston and has
Speaker 1: no idea how she ended up on the government's list.
Speaker 1: Was told she had seven days to leave the US.
Speaker 1: According to the email, do not attempt to remain in
Speaker 1: the United States. The federal government will find you. I've
Speaker 1: been here my whole life, she told the Boston station.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I have an idea how she got
Speaker 2: on that list. It's called AI is not very accurate
Speaker 2: and makes mistakes all the time.
Speaker 1: I don't know. AI says that I have chronic illnesses,
Speaker 1: so I think.
Speaker 2: That's kind of a good good So my good news
Speaker 2: for you and I who've been calling for this for
Speaker 2: many years. Hakim Jeffries, this is our Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can't. I can't control myself. I'm so excited
Speaker 1: about tho.
Speaker 2: Hakeem Jeffries backstock trading ban. After sure Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 2: buys the market tip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, who the fuck knows if Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green is insider trading, but you know who is in trading?
Speaker 1: A lot of other people Like this is sketchy as hell.
Speaker 1: This is so bad. I don't want it. I don't
Speaker 1: like it. Stop it, stop it, stop it right now. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it is enough with the members of Congress should not
Speaker 1: trade stocks. If you want to trade stocks, then don't
Speaker 1: go work in Congress. Like period paragraph. There is no
Speaker 1: absolutely no reason that this should happen. Absolutely nothing about
Speaker 1: this is klosher. Yes, yes, ban it. Way to go, Jeffries.
Speaker 1: And by the way, when we have normal elections and
Speaker 1: Democrats win back the House, the first thing that needs
Speaker 1: to happen, literally, the first thing that needs to happen
Speaker 1: is there needs to be anti corruption. Lots of different
Speaker 1: anti corruption initiatives past, and one of the most important
Speaker 1: ones I think will be that members of Congress can
Speaker 1: no longer trade stocks. This is not okay, this is
Speaker 1: not what the job is. You are not supposed to
Speaker 1: be a day trader on the side. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: no more members trading stocks. That is over.
Speaker 2: And the American people need to realize this is why
Speaker 2: we get such shitty people's This is why their get
Speaker 2: rich schemes and why they think they should do it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's partially, I think, because it's a low key
Speaker 1: grift and it opens the door to all other grifts. Right,
Speaker 1: this is why those stupid things that Trump World used
Speaker 1: to always laugh at, which they still do, like the
Speaker 1: Hatch Act where you're not right, the hatchet you know
Speaker 1: people really well. We can't talk about the campaign because
Speaker 1: the Hatch Act and they may seem old fashioned, but
Speaker 1: they're what keeps us from being a kleptocracy. And so
Speaker 1: if Democrats win back the House, which I think they will,
Speaker 1: this has to be job one. Nobody wants. People don't
Speaker 1: want their representatives making money off of them.
Speaker 2: I try out a theme for you for getting the
Speaker 2: hatchet to the head if you disobey the Hatch Act.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is that's not going to do it. But
Speaker 1: that is not going to do it. Kurt Anderson is
Speaker 1: the author of Evil Geniuses and the co creator of
Speaker 1: Command Zine. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Kurt Anderson.
Speaker 3: Always a pleasure, even as it gets more and more nightmarish,
Speaker 3: or especially.
Speaker 1: Perhaps it's so interesting because it's like Trump one point zero.
Speaker 1: It's the difference between VEEP and a housive cards, right,
Speaker 1: there's still a lot of VP incompetence, right, like Trump
Speaker 1: bumbling his way into a trade war with China which
Speaker 1: we can't possibly win it all, like nope. But there
Speaker 1: are also other ways in which it is much much scary.
Speaker 1: And I'm thinking about.
Speaker 3: House of Cards edging toward Man in the High Castle.
Speaker 3: If we're sticking with top analogies. Yeah, no, it's it's
Speaker 3: awful and it's interesting. I've been talking to people in
Speaker 3: the last days, of course, about this, and people who
Speaker 3: were you know, not Mogans, but like you know, centrist,
Speaker 3: even right leaning in a couple of cases, who said,
Speaker 3: like I really didn't believe it was going to be
Speaker 3: this bad, and all the liberals were right, which is
Speaker 3: something I guess, you know, I mean, better late than never,
Speaker 3: I suppose, But yes, it is horrible.
Speaker 1: And edging toward the it's really scary.
Speaker 3: Well, and the disobeying the judiciary, which is the only
Speaker 3: thing we got right now, you know, getting closer and
Speaker 3: closer to disobeying Well. Has disobeyed and ignored several now
Speaker 3: district court orders and has done nothing to obey last
Speaker 3: week's Supreme Court order. So yeah, it's been getting very
Speaker 3: quickly too, as bad as a guess.
Speaker 1: But there are bright spots, for example, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about a thread you did three days ago
Speaker 1: in which you listed the hero firms suing the Trump
Speaker 1: administration Wilmer Hale, Perkins, Cole, Sussman, Godfrey, Generin Block and
Speaker 1: the coward firms capitulating to autocracy Kirknells, Latham, Scatt, and Simpson, Thatcher,
Speaker 1: Paul Weiss. I don't think these people realize just how
Speaker 1: unpopular trump Ism is.
Speaker 3: Well, they're not politicians in that sense, and so they
Speaker 3: probably do. It's worse than that in other cases, and
Speaker 3: I know people at some of those firms, and I've
Speaker 3: talked to them. In the cases of people I spoke
Speaker 3: to who fought on the side in their firms of
Speaker 3: not caving and not capitulating and not giving up on
Speaker 3: the rule of law. And they're despairing and depressed. And
Speaker 3: I don't think how unpopular he is, and he's getting
Speaker 3: more so by the minute. Has been in there, thinking
Speaker 3: they panic because these firms in which the corporate partners.
Speaker 3: You can oversimplify, but it's pretty simple.
Speaker 1: It seems it's a business.
Speaker 3: Well, it's a business. And the litigators who are and
Speaker 3: consider themselves in BUI large r people who care about
Speaker 3: things other than how many millions or tens of millions
Speaker 3: of dollars in some cases they make. And the litigators
Speaker 3: were at these firms that I know about, fighting the
Speaker 3: good fight and lost. So that's it. And the argument
Speaker 3: was simply, okay, you corporate partners at the top make
Speaker 3: by the way, this shock me as much as twenty
Speaker 3: five million dollars a year. Oh yeah, and so a
Speaker 3: lawyer really, I mean my dad was a lawyer.
Speaker 1: I mean, come back, they need another beach house or.
Speaker 3: Several more wives or whatever it is. Yeah, but it
Speaker 3: was really, wait, okay, this is going to last forever
Speaker 3: unless you capitulate and make it last longer. But you know,
Speaker 3: your personal income won't go down from twenty five million
Speaker 3: to nineteen for a few years. What are you thinking?
Speaker 3: That was the argument, and they said, no, no, all
Speaker 3: we care about is money. It was it was that.
Speaker 3: It was that, and that's you know. I mean, in
Speaker 3: my Pollyanna guy from Midwest way, I've continued to be
Speaker 3: like surprised, and this surprised me, aknew as the Republicans
Speaker 3: in Congress were surprising me starting eight years ago. Like really,
Speaker 3: And in that case, basically, it's not that good of
Speaker 3: a job that they're worried about losing. It's purely about money.
Speaker 3: But again I wonder with them, with the senior partners
Speaker 3: and law firms. I mean, do they just think, Okay,
Speaker 3: this will end one way or the other and sure
Speaker 3: I will go back to normal. Whatever they think? What
Speaker 3: are they thinking of the endgame? The legacy of not
Speaker 3: just their firms, which are in the case of Paul
Speaker 3: White's probably already besmirched permanently, but just themselves and their
Speaker 3: children and their grandchildren. What do you do in the war, daddy?
Speaker 3: All that stuff? I just I don't get it.
Speaker 1: And you know, it's funny because it's like we are
Speaker 1: so from the same moment in American history of my
Speaker 1: grandfather held his head up on like he went to
Speaker 1: jail for three months, but then he could go anywhere.
Speaker 1: And so many of the people who behaved cowardly during
Speaker 1: the McCarthy redhunt did not. You don't have to be
Speaker 1: brave to do what's right. You can feel scared and
Speaker 1: do it anyway.
Speaker 3: Well, and that is brave. But yes, exactly right. And
Speaker 3: you have standing via your grandfather and unlike say Ki
Speaker 3: Abrego Garcia accused of being a member of a gang
Speaker 3: falsely and sent off to prison. I mean, you know
Speaker 3: your grandfather was what he was, a communist and just
Speaker 3: didn't go along with didn't put up with it. I
Speaker 3: do take hope in small acts and large acts in
Speaker 3: some cases of doing the right thing, which comes across
Speaker 3: in these last three months as bravery. As Harvard did
Speaker 3: the other day.
Speaker 1: For instance, Harvard has learned a really good lesson from Colombia,
Speaker 1: which is you cannot give up. You cannot because they
Speaker 1: will never be enough for them. Say more about what
Speaker 1: you're thinking here?
Speaker 3: What you say, well, no, exactly, I mean that's the thing.
Speaker 3: I mean, we think you're going to make a deal
Speaker 3: and do this and let him half run your university,
Speaker 3: or maybe now in his next negotiator renegotiation run it.
Speaker 3: You think this is going to do it, it's not.
Speaker 3: If you're cooperating with this illegal set of obeying the
Speaker 3: federal government's demands, it's not going to stop. It's going
Speaker 3: to keep going. But the Republican Commerce are not going
Speaker 3: to something, and says, hey, wait, they agreed to your deal.
Speaker 3: We got to put a stop to this. The courts will.
Speaker 3: And then again that's why I get back to that.
Speaker 3: I thought for eight years this will be the bulwark,
Speaker 3: and they were eight years ago, right, and have more
Speaker 3: than not been. But once he says, no, you know,
Speaker 3: Supreme Court, federal judiciary, I'm not going to obey you.
Speaker 3: I don't have to.
Speaker 1: This is a war.
Speaker 3: Whatever he says, whatever, nonsense, whatever, meretricious, bullshit he says.
Speaker 1: What.
Speaker 3: Then even a month or two ago, I was saying, oh,
Speaker 3: it's not going to get to that so quickly. Well,
Speaker 3: here we are on the verge.
Speaker 1: Here we are. One of the things that I want
Speaker 1: to talk to you about is that I actually think
Speaker 1: the tariffs, which are such a great example of how
Speaker 1: Trump is both bompy and impetuous, two things you really
Speaker 1: don't want in a president. I Completely unchecked, an unfettered
Speaker 1: president is a really good opportunity for pushback because it
Speaker 1: is something that is getting even some of his staunchest allies.
Speaker 1: Not the Maga crowd, because that crowd is not ever
Speaker 1: coming back, but even some of his staunchest allies don't
Speaker 1: like this.
Speaker 3: Oh well, first of all, I mean the supporters, the
Speaker 3: farmer here, the small business person there. I think at
Speaker 3: this point already most of US Americans know somebody whose
Speaker 3: life is suddenly well, how's this going to work out?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 3: I can't get these hangars that are on the boat
Speaker 3: right now from China. I mean that's a literal one.
Speaker 3: In my case, there's the people, many of whom voted
Speaker 3: for them. But then there's yeah, they're rich guys in
Speaker 3: the Wall Street guys and the CEOs who, in their
Speaker 3: amral to quasi moral way capitulated quickly and said no,
Speaker 3: And we love them because it's going to be great,
Speaker 3: and we're gonna get rid of regulation, and the taxes
Speaker 3: are going to get stay alone, all that, all that stuff,
Speaker 3: which has been of course the worst Republican bargain, Faustian
Speaker 3: bargain for years and years, which is will take Trump
Speaker 3: and just as we will will take you know, the
Speaker 3: Southern strategy of racism fifty years ago, because you know
Speaker 3: they're more on our side. For economics, well, you know,
Speaker 3: the tariff seems to have gotten them to a place
Speaker 3: where wait, no, this is crazy, this is nuts and
Speaker 3: so wildly. You know, you talk about Veep, it's so
Speaker 3: beyond that, it's three stooges. It's crude and changing their
Speaker 3: minds or his mind every day. And you realize, I
Speaker 3: mean as we knew, but you realize even more how
Speaker 3: in Trump won the adults in the room, all of
Speaker 3: whom ended up calling him an idiot and more terrible
Speaker 3: and all that they have and do, they were saving
Speaker 3: him from himself and then saving America a little bit.
Speaker 3: I mean again, I don't want to stay there. And
Speaker 3: there were heroes and John Kelly, thank good. I'm not
Speaker 3: saying that, but we do see the evidence of when
Speaker 3: you have total Pam Bondy JD Vance types as your minions,
Speaker 3: you know you're just going to do whatever nutty thing
Speaker 3: you get in your mind to do.
Speaker 1: I think that's really true, and I think it's a
Speaker 1: really important point. I wonder about this idea of Americans
Speaker 1: obsession with fantasy. Right, we elected a reality television host
Speaker 1: once because we believed whatever, something happened, and then the
Speaker 1: second time we had amnesia again. And I think we're
Speaker 1: seeing a lot of people sort of waking up. But
Speaker 1: how does this fit into your broader thesis about a
Speaker 1: country that is obsessed with fantasy and.
Speaker 3: Not just obsessed with in some benign ways and more
Speaker 3: and more, And that was the point of my book.
Speaker 3: Fantacy Land is in terrible ways where it gets into
Speaker 3: this realm, the public sphere. Fine, have your Disneylands, play
Speaker 3: your video games all day, all that that, whatever. Have
Speaker 3: your in myndview crazy religion, fine, whatever, But when you
Speaker 3: start having this whole alternative set of facts, as I
Speaker 3: was arguing this book nine years ago, eight years ago,
Speaker 3: it becomes really problematic. And when you have you know,
Speaker 3: if we had to make a list of the five
Speaker 3: most culpable enablers of this horrible, horrible, nightmarish place we've
Speaker 3: gotten to and are getting to, it is, of course
Speaker 3: Fox News, who enabled it and had the power more
Speaker 3: than once to drive it back and push it back.
Speaker 3: But here we are by far the largest audience you know,
Speaker 3: news channel in the United States of America, most of
Speaker 3: the time presenting a mostly false narrative of what is
Speaker 3: going on. The free press was supposed to be like
Speaker 3: the gatekeeper, which was the press for all of its
Speaker 3: flaws forever. We never had well, we never had a
Speaker 3: party as crazy as the Trump Republicans have become, but
Speaker 3: we've never had a giant media entity pushing it on
Speaker 3: several million people a day who watch it and beyond.
Speaker 3: So that's the problem. And you know, and again that's
Speaker 3: the thing that is hard to imagine, how that whenever
Speaker 3: we reached end of this, and we will reach, it's
Speaker 3: hard to imagine. As I've said to people who asked
Speaker 3: me about the fantasy thing, like, well, how can we
Speaker 3: stop this? I said, we can stop it from getting worse.
Speaker 3: But I don't think we turned back. But as I
Speaker 3: talked about in fancy Land in that context about the
Speaker 3: what led to two thousand and eight and to you know,
Speaker 3: the meltdown and financial panic and worldwide great recession, then
Speaker 3: was the good thing a good thing, A great thing
Speaker 3: about free market economics is that it's based on reality.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's based on momentary fantasies of this mean
Speaker 3: stock is going to do this or this this crazy
Speaker 3: meme stock like say Donald Trump media is going to
Speaker 3: do this. But sooner or later, in that case, this
Speaker 3: house of cards of credit default swaps and the mortgage
Speaker 3: bubble collapsed. In this case, the tariffs are already not
Speaker 3: only making it impossible for small businesses and large businesses
Speaker 3: to decide what they're going to do next, which is
Speaker 3: a fast path to recession and paralysis economically, it's so incompetent. It's,
Speaker 3: as I said the other day, it's well fascism famously
Speaker 3: in Germany was oh, well, at least he made the
Speaker 3: trains run on time. Well, no, he's derailed the trains
Speaker 3: as well, you know. I mean, so you can't spin
Speaker 3: and fantasize about the reality of economics when they start
Speaker 3: hitting big people, small people, all kinds of people, you know.
Speaker 3: And that's the hopeful thing is when it comes to
Speaker 3: things that don't really affect people's lives, they can ignore
Speaker 3: them and buy them and go about their business. But again,
Speaker 3: I think of the warnings and fears about all kinds
Speaker 3: of things that Trump was doing. But until the ROV
Speaker 3: Wade happened and Dobbs in twenty twenty two, and suddenly people,
Speaker 3: women especially, we're saying, my god, what an important premise
Speaker 3: of my life is? Though Overturn has always saw that,
Speaker 3: because suddenly it was all kinds of people feeling affected,
Speaker 3: same thing here or a different thing here, and anything
Speaker 3: here is as we all know from in my case
Speaker 3: listening to way too many remedial economic podcasts the last
Speaker 3: two weeks. So I now understand what tariffs are. It's
Speaker 3: beyond the tariffs and the madness and economic problems they caused,
Speaker 3: the larger thing of like, well, no one's going to
Speaker 3: trust us. No one is going to trust us. Every
Speaker 3: economy and every economic system and the global economic system
Speaker 3: are based on basic trust. And this is how it works. Oh,
Speaker 3: there's ups and downs and black swans and blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: But it's just hard to see in the most charitable,
Speaker 3: you know, right leaning or right his view possible, how
Speaker 3: this not only doesn't end well, but how it ends well,
Speaker 3: but how it doesn't damage unfortunately. And this is a
Speaker 3: hobbyhorse of mind, is what damage can be fixed as
Speaker 3: soon as he's gone, and what damage takes a year?
Speaker 3: What damage takes five years, ten, you know, a lot
Speaker 3: of it's longer, and whether it's economic trust or whether
Speaker 3: it's science. I've talked to neuroscientists friend of mine about
Speaker 3: can this just be fixed as soon as we get
Speaker 3: sanity back? She said, no, really, because things are if
Speaker 3: for the next year, two three years, people are going
Speaker 3: to Canada, not in doing this, not going into the
Speaker 3: It's a longer term damage than just what he's doing
Speaker 3: until you know he's gone.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, And I think that's really the most pertinent point.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, Thank you. Kurt Anderson.
Speaker 3: My pleasure, I guess that's my pleasure, but it is
Speaker 3: always my pleasure to talk to you, so thank you.
Speaker 1: Alex Gibney is a legendary documentary producer and director of
Speaker 1: films like Going Clear, Zero Days, and his latest The
Speaker 1: Dark Money Game, which is out now. Welcome Alex Gibney
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Thanks Molly, good to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm so glad to have you with this movie. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm always glad to have you because you're so small
Speaker 1: and you're constantly sort of investigating all the stuff that
Speaker 1: I think about and freak out about. But this is
Speaker 1: such an important topic, especially where we are right now.
Speaker 1: So explain to me about this movie, why you decided
Speaker 1: to do it, and how you got here.
Speaker 4: I mean, I kind of got here for two reasons.
Speaker 4: One is I was kind of enraged over the Dobbs decision,
Speaker 4: and at the same time, I had also just finished
Speaker 4: a couple of films called The Crime of the Century
Speaker 4: about the opioid crisis, the conclusion of which was that
Speaker 4: unless we do something about money and politics, none of
Speaker 4: our worst problems are ever going to change. And so
Speaker 4: it really motivated me to get into it. And as
Speaker 4: my co conspirator, I had turned to a longtime friend,
Speaker 4: Jane Mayer, who had written the book Dark Money. And
Speaker 4: while this doesn't follow the book, you know, there are
Speaker 4: a few things you might recognize from it, it's very
Speaker 4: much inspired by it. And so as a result, I
Speaker 4: leaned in because I do feel like this is topic A.
Speaker 4: Unless we solve this problem, we're not going to solve
Speaker 4: anything else.
Speaker 1: My first question was going to be about Chain, who
Speaker 1: is brilliant and amazing and also who has basically, I mean,
Speaker 1: she does a lot of different work, but it feels
Speaker 1: to me like Dark Money is kind of her through
Speaker 1: line and all her work. I first interviewed you about COVID, right,
Speaker 1: but the Trump presidency really is a story of dark
Speaker 1: money's success. And I wonder if you could sort of
Speaker 1: tie these two things together, Dobbs and also Trump's ongoing presidency,
Speaker 1: because all of these have been enabled by this conservative
Speaker 1: win at the courts.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: So this series that I've done, it's two films. Really.
Speaker 4: One is called Ohio Confidential and one is called Wealth
Speaker 4: of the Wicked. Ohio Confidential is about how money and
Speaker 4: politics works now and how basically corruption has become virtually legalized.
Speaker 4: And then Both of the Wicked is how we got here,
Speaker 4: and that really focuses on the corruption of the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: And that's how Dobbs gets into it, because one of
Speaker 4: the things I learned about Dobbs was how much money
Speaker 4: was involved in terms of trying to pack the court.
Speaker 4: And also the other odd thing about the story that
Speaker 4: we tell in Wealth of the Wicked is this unholy
Speaker 4: alliance between very wealthy, very conservative business types who wanted
Speaker 4: to rip apart the regulatory state that was erected not
Speaker 4: only going back to Roosevelt, but also you know, in
Speaker 4: the wake of the corruption of the Nixon administration. They
Speaker 4: wanted to figure out how to rip it apart. But
Speaker 4: it turned out that their prescriptions, like allowing companies to
Speaker 4: pollute freely, hiding the connections to cancer that cigarette makers
Speaker 4: clearly had, trying to bust unions, all of those things
Speaker 4: weren't terribly popular. Question was, how do you mind a
Speaker 4: vein of deep emotional fervor that gets you some popular support,
Speaker 4: and that turned out to be the anti abortion movement
Speaker 4: and evangelical Christians. So joining forces together is the way
Speaker 4: that these big time conservative capitalists would fund the anti
Speaker 4: abortion movement and help propel their progress through the courts.
Speaker 4: And at the same time, these evangelicals, while you know,
Speaker 4: if you think about Christianity, you don't automatically think like
Speaker 4: Jesus didn't think about how to enable the rich and
Speaker 4: amiserate the poor. It was just the opposite. But nevertheless,
Speaker 4: in this context, they were so exercised over the idea
Speaker 4: of abortion as murder that they joined forces with these
Speaker 4: very conservative business people in order to try to see
Speaker 4: if they could corrupt the court. And that's the story
Speaker 4: we tell.
Speaker 1: And I think that it very much worked. I mean,
Speaker 1: Dobbs did a really great example of how they got there,
Speaker 1: And I mean, I just wonder once they got Dobbs,
Speaker 1: was that enough. Was there a moment where they were like,
Speaker 1: we've done it or.
Speaker 4: Now no, now they would turn to all of the
Speaker 4: economic regulations that they wanted this, and not only that,
Speaker 4: but also to maybe the crowning achievement, if you can
Speaker 4: call it an achievement, was their decision to basically give
Speaker 4: total immunity to the president of the United States. And
Speaker 4: once you do that, you're fundamentally undermining the rule of law,
Speaker 4: because if we're not all equal under the law, and
Speaker 4: if you have the person the Coppo D two D
Speaker 4: copy who's able to run the presidency like a mob
Speaker 4: boss and only reward loyalty rather than good policy, then
Speaker 4: we've reached a very perilous moment. So it was just
Speaker 4: the beginning. And one of the things we talk about too,
Speaker 4: is that it all kind of started with the Supreme
Speaker 4: Court decision which helped both things, which was Citizens United.
Speaker 4: That's the decision that allows money to flood in to
Speaker 4: the political system. And then Citizens United is coupled with
Speaker 4: that allowed money to flow into super packs and they
Speaker 4: were supposed to be allegedly independent of the candidate, which
Speaker 4: was always an invitation to corruption. Gives an indication to
Speaker 4: those soto voce conversations that people have. They're not written
Speaker 4: down on email there, you know, just somebody from the
Speaker 4: candidates camp and somebody from the superpack. Oh, of course
Speaker 4: it's corrupt. But coupled with the increasing use of five
Speaker 4: oh one c fours, which are nonprofit organizations that can
Speaker 4: literally shield people from seeing the contributions that are coming
Speaker 4: into them. And so you use five oh one c
Speaker 4: fours to fund super packs and suddenly you have no sunlight.
Speaker 4: That's the story we tell in the Ohio segment because
Speaker 4: you at a utility company called First Energy, which dumped
Speaker 4: sixty million dollars into a five oh one C four
Speaker 4: for the personal use of the person who ultimately became
Speaker 4: Speaker of the Ohio House, Larry Householder, and he used
Speaker 4: that to enhance his political ambitions, and the quid pro
Speaker 4: quo was that then he would jam through a bill
Speaker 4: in the Ohio legislature that would give First Energy one
Speaker 4: point three billion dollars, so great return on investment. But nobody,
Speaker 4: you know, because it was a five oh one C four,
Speaker 4: nobody really knew that the money was coming from First Energy,
Speaker 4: so it took a long time to figure that out,
Speaker 4: became the source of a criminal investigation and was only
Speaker 4: discovered by accident, which is why we know about it.
Speaker 1: There's a lot to despair about when it comes to
Speaker 1: Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: We have these two very fox new zy justices Alito
Speaker 1: and Thomas, who basically, as far as I can tell,
Speaker 1: they're basically like elderly versions of Tucker Carlson. You can
Speaker 1: pretty much get them to rubbers damp anything Donald Trump
Speaker 1: wants to do. Gorsich and Kavanaugh sa same with the
Speaker 1: exception that Gorsich likes Native Americans. Okay, But then you
Speaker 1: have Justice Amy, who is a little bit of a
Speaker 1: wild card. Putting in these Supreme Court justice it has
Speaker 1: been such a win for him, and they have been
Speaker 1: so empowered, and they have acted in such lockstep with
Speaker 1: the exception of Justice Barrett. Do you see push back
Speaker 1: there at all? And again, I'm not saying she's great.
Speaker 1: I'm just saying there used to be a thing where
Speaker 1: Supreme Court justices, when they would get on the court,
Speaker 1: they would become a slightly less partisan. The only time
Speaker 1: we've seen this now has been with Amy Connie Barrett.
Speaker 1: The other ones are just partisan hacks all the way through.
Speaker 1: Have you seen pushback to that? And also do you
Speaker 1: think that sort of the powers that be that are
Speaker 1: funding this whole organization have sort of feelings about that.
Speaker 4: I don't know yet. I mean, she has pushed back
Speaker 4: on a couple of things. Just yesterday she pushed back.
Speaker 4: She was the fourth vote in descent on you know,
Speaker 4: this extra judicial attempts by the Trump administration. But so
Speaker 4: I don't know. I mean, you know, she falls in
Speaker 4: line to the profile in the sense that she's so
Speaker 4: a Catholic. Like that's the other mind boggling thing in
Speaker 4: terms of a kind of conservative Catholicism that all of these,
Speaker 4: many of these justices seem to share. And even Gorsuch,
Speaker 4: who I believe is episcopalian now was raised athletic I.
Speaker 1: Believe, yeah, the only one.
Speaker 4: So I don't know, I will see. I mean, it
Speaker 4: has been eliminating, and some of her descents, I must say,
Speaker 4: have also been kind of excoriating. You know, there's been
Speaker 4: a certain bite to her descents. In some cases she
Speaker 4: seems to be saying, like, you know, have you guys
Speaker 4: left the reservation here that is the rule of law reservation.
Speaker 4: She seems to have a tether to that.
Speaker 1: Still, it's very very strange and interesting. Part of I
Speaker 1: think some of how we got here was that there
Speaker 1: was a real allergy towards some of the anti corruption
Speaker 1: laws post Nixon, and instead of implementing them, they weren't implemented.
Speaker 1: In fact, more of them were taken apart. If we
Speaker 1: ever do get normal life back and we have Democrats
Speaker 1: in charge, since you've studied this so much and you
Speaker 1: understand it so well, what would you say are the
Speaker 1: things that, if you're rebuilding this demand or se you
Speaker 1: want to be focused on.
Speaker 4: I think Congress has to get its act together and
Speaker 4: focus on legislation which design anti corruption laws in a
Speaker 4: rigorous way. But it's very hard to imagine that as
Speaker 4: long as they're beholden to sponsors or contributors, funders whose
Speaker 4: interests lie in just the opposite. They want quid pro
Speaker 4: quoth so long as it's for them, So that I
Speaker 4: think it is the trick. You know. One of the
Speaker 4: decisions we look at very briefly in Wealth of the
Speaker 4: Wicked is the decision related to an Indiana mayor who
Speaker 4: awarded a purchase of garbage trucks to the Peterbilt Company,
Speaker 4: and after he awarded it, the Peterbilt company sent him,
Speaker 4: you know, a kickback. Right after he was convicted of bribery.
Speaker 4: The Supreme Court overturned it because, in their wisdom, it
Speaker 4: was not a kickback. Oh no, haven't. It was a gratuity.
Speaker 4: And just like you would hip a waiter. We can't
Speaker 4: have waiters going to prison because they're being tipped. But no,
Speaker 4: it was an obvious kickback. The essence of their decision,
Speaker 4: I think, was to say, when it comes to business,
Speaker 4: they should have latitude to bribe because that's how you
Speaker 4: get stuff done, which is mind boggling to me, but
Speaker 4: I think that's kind of where we've ended up. So
Speaker 4: I think, to me, the hope is that people see
Speaker 4: and understand this is bribery, pure and simple, and I
Speaker 4: think most on a gut level don't think it's appropriate
Speaker 4: for people to bribe for their personal advantage at the
Speaker 4: expense of the rest of us. And once we begin
Speaker 4: to see it that way, we can demand at the
Speaker 4: state level and ultimately in the federal level, that some
Speaker 4: of this be cleaned up, because otherwise, you know, all
Speaker 4: sorts of backroom deals are going to be made at
Speaker 4: our expense and for the profit of a few.
Speaker 1: That case is an incredible case because they ultimately say
Speaker 1: it wasn't goods for services because it happened after At
Speaker 1: least in my mind, it really proves that the corruption
Speaker 1: was not limited to Trump, that there's an entire ecosystem
Speaker 1: outside of him, this sort of Leonard Leo crew that
Speaker 1: Trump is a natural extension of that.
Speaker 4: That's right. I mean, he's kind of their figurehead. He's
Speaker 4: the guy that delivers the votes. The ideological infrastructure or
Speaker 4: superstructure is the federal Society and people like Lenard Leo
Speaker 4: and others, and also very wealthy businessmen people you know,
Speaker 4: like the Koch brothers and others that Jane Mayers does
Speaker 4: such a good job of describing, because what they want
Speaker 4: is a world where there are no rules and restrictions
Speaker 4: on corporate behavior. And it's interesting. You know, there's an
Speaker 4: interesting figure in Wealth of the Wicked, the one we
Speaker 4: do about the corruption of the Supreme Court, a guy
Speaker 4: named Bob Schenk who was an evangelical minister's very radical.
Speaker 4: You know, he was one of those guys who would
Speaker 4: show up with aborted fetuses at rallies, and very vicious
Speaker 4: had a change of heart completely on that issue. But
Speaker 4: in so doing he was able to talk to us
Speaker 4: about how they would corrupt the justices. Sort of in
Speaker 4: the back room. They would send they called faith based
Speaker 4: missionaries in to see the justices. They were very wealthy
Speaker 4: businessmen who were also religious, and they would hang with
Speaker 4: the justices, and they would take them on expensive trips,
Speaker 4: and lo and behold, the justices seemed to start becoming
Speaker 4: hypnotized by their work to such an extent that they
Speaker 4: then their decisions then begin to represent this long continuum
Speaker 4: of an attempt to destroy the regulatory state.
Speaker 1: I see that with Thomas, right, Thomas has been on
Speaker 1: all these trips, He's been given wine, his mother's house
Speaker 1: has been turned into a museum. I mean, just the
Speaker 1: sort of level of corruption there is kind of staggering.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you about something that I think
Speaker 1: is quite interesting, that feels relevant. So Leo and the
Speaker 1: surviving Koch brother have now fun a case that is
Speaker 1: an anti tariff case that will go to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: It's hard to pick a side on this one, right,
Speaker 1: but that is going to challenge Trump's constitutional authority to
Speaker 1: enact tariffs to talk to me, well, I don't.
Speaker 4: Know how to say it. I mean, it is it's
Speaker 4: coming from exactly the opposite end of the political spectrum
Speaker 4: that you would expect. But the one thing I think
Speaker 4: big business leaders were shot by in this Trump presidency
Speaker 4: was this kind of tariff nuttiness. I mean, I'm not
Speaker 4: opposed to you know, targeted tariffs myself, but this tariff nuttiness,
Speaker 4: and so it's bad for business. Ultimately, that's why we
Speaker 4: call it, you know, the dark money game. Ultimately, all
Speaker 4: of this stuff is just about money. You know, once
Speaker 4: you decide that all you care about is money and
Speaker 4: nothing else matters, well then you just go where the
Speaker 4: money is. You follow the money, and so that Leonard Leo.
Speaker 4: I mean, in a way, I'm on their side in
Speaker 4: this particular instance, but I'm suspect of their motives because
Speaker 4: I think their motives is like, these taiffs are bad
Speaker 4: for business.
Speaker 1: But it seems like that crew has a lot more
Speaker 1: sway with the justices and Trump does.
Speaker 4: Hard to know, I mean, the justices seem to be
Speaker 4: giving so much deference to Trump and his executive power
Speaker 4: and none of this I don't think would be happening
Speaker 4: without that horrific decision giving him absolunity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Alex, give me always a delight and a pleasure.
Speaker 1: And you know, I'm just a fan so.
Speaker 4: Well, Molly, I'm a fan of yours too, So great
Speaker 4: to talk.
Speaker 1: Thanks Alex. There no Moscly, Jesse Cannon, Molly.
Speaker 2: We have been talking about this for so many months.
Speaker 2: We've had Justice Allison Riggs on this podcast numerous times,
Speaker 2: and the fuckery keeps getting worse in her race that
Speaker 2: is still undecided and it is April.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it should be decided for her. And
Speaker 1: now what's happening is that basically this is conservatives in
Speaker 1: North Carolina trying to rig it for him. And this
Speaker 1: is why everything matters. Right. A federal court should have
Speaker 1: heeded the advice of Justice Anton Scalia in the two
Speaker 1: thousand Bush biku Or case about not following a questionable
Speaker 1: redo a vote totals to be announced before there's a
Speaker 1: ruling on the legality of the redo. The judges orders
Speaker 1: in North Carolina could well lead people to believe the
Speaker 1: Supreme Court election was stolen. No matter what happens, and
Speaker 1: by the way, Justice Riggs won, this is like this
Speaker 1: guy is a very sore loser, and now he's trying
Speaker 1: to throw out votes from different places.
Speaker 2: Mostly military votes, which that's cute.
Speaker 1: Yeah it is. I mean, these people are serving our country,
Speaker 1: risking their lives, and the Republicans want to throw out
Speaker 1: their votes. I don't get it. They do not get it.
Speaker 1: I really hate school.
Speaker 2: Yeah really, he seems like your type of guy.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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