Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics. Well,
Speaker 1: we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's
Speaker 1: best minds.
Speaker 2: And Donald Trump has raged truth, the words that will
Speaker 2: soon bring him much misery in his existence. I hate
Speaker 2: Taylor Swift. We have such a great show for you today,
Speaker 2: Kick Konger and Ryan Max dot By to talk to
Speaker 2: their new book character Women, how Elon Musk destroyed Twitter.
Speaker 2: Then the nineteenth Samanda Becker will tell us about her
Speaker 2: new book You Must Stand Up the Fight for Abortion
Speaker 2: rights and post dobs America. But first we have the
Speaker 2: host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: For Wilson, why do you sound so for Lauren Kamala
Speaker 3: Harris kicked the ever loving shit out of Donald Trump
Speaker 3: up and down that stage just three nights ago, like
Speaker 3: he was a rented mule. I mean, listen, you should
Speaker 3: be in a happy place right now. We got dogs
Speaker 3: and cats living in sin together. Oh, are being eaten
Speaker 3: one of the two?
Speaker 1: I don't know, no one's eating dogs. And then they
Speaker 1: went to well, maybe not dogs, but geese. And then
Speaker 1: they went to, well, maybe not geese, but there's this woman.
Speaker 1: They just have nothing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they have one crazy person who's not a Haitian.
Speaker 1: Who in a different town.
Speaker 3: Yeah right, and a differency may have done something with
Speaker 3: a cat. But I mean the whole thing is, I know,
Speaker 3: you're shocked to hear this, a farrago of lies and horseshit.
Speaker 1: Shocking, shocking, Yes, was shocked because those guys are known
Speaker 1: for being legit, and there's some possibility that taking Laura
Speaker 1: Lumer with you.
Speaker 3: Listen, Laura Lumer. I like to think of her now
Speaker 3: as the campaign's general consultant, which I really like. I
Speaker 3: think it's going to make the campaign much more efficient.
Speaker 3: If Donald Trump really has waited this long to bring
Speaker 3: Laura Lumer into the family, it's been a mistake. I mean,
Speaker 3: she is so brilliantly able to catch the mood of America,
Speaker 3: the sweet spot of American politics. I mean, yesterday calling
Speaker 3: out Lindsay Graham for being gay, being a nine to
Speaker 3: eleven truther, being a monstrous shit bag human being the
Speaker 3: first order. I mean, there's nothing about Laura Lumer honestly
Speaker 3: that doesn't make America say this is the right choice
Speaker 3: for president, because he's going to surround himself with the
Speaker 3: very best people.
Speaker 1: Also, I would like to add that it was nine
Speaker 1: to eleven this week and he went to the nine
Speaker 1: to eleven services he went to.
Speaker 3: I mean he was there, but was he really there?
Speaker 1: And she was on the plane, so I don't know
Speaker 1: that she went to the events.
Speaker 3: No, she was on the plane for the debate.
Speaker 1: Also, Yeah, she's been going around to a lot of
Speaker 1: places with him.
Speaker 3: Yes, and he's been not wearing his wedding ring. I'm
Speaker 3: not saying that Alina Habba has anything to worry about,
Speaker 3: but you know, tongues are wagging. You have me here
Speaker 3: to perform just that kind of stunt.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, let me ask you a question. I actually
Speaker 1: am in a bad mood and worried more not in
Speaker 1: a bad mood, but more worried about a little stay
Speaker 1: called Pennsylvania. Yeah, so talk me off the ledge about Pennsylvania.
Speaker 3: I will tell you Pennsylvania is the lynch pen of
Speaker 3: the campaign. That's real talk. I'm not going to bass
Speaker 3: you and tell you that Pennsylvania is not super super
Speaker 3: super important. It is very important. Without Pennsylvania, the world
Speaker 3: falls apart and we're all living as mutants in a
Speaker 3: radioactive healthscape that makes Mad Max look like sound of music.
Speaker 3: It is not great if we don't win Pennsylvania. But
Speaker 3: I think we're gonna win Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: Okay, tell me why.
Speaker 3: I do not believe that we are in the same
Speaker 3: spot that they think we are. I think Pennsylvania, particularly
Speaker 3: in Bucks County, has a big, big number of pro
Speaker 3: choice Republican women and independent leaning conservative women who are
Speaker 3: pro choice. And I know we're working very much there
Speaker 3: at the moment. We're going to be in there with
Speaker 3: a lot of resources. We're feeling like there's a degree
Speaker 3: of economic uplift you're going to get when the rate
Speaker 3: cut kicks in in a week or so, when the
Speaker 3: Fed kicks the raids down. Pennsylvania's an area that's been
Speaker 3: hard hit by housing, the explosive housing costs. It's going
Speaker 3: to be close run thing. I feel much better about
Speaker 3: Michigan and Wisconsin than I have in the past. I'm
Speaker 3: optimistic about North Carolina. I'm optimistic about Georgia. Don't quote me,
Speaker 3: but I'm even starting to feel much better about Nevada,
Speaker 3: which I was not super happy about for a long time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, tell us why.
Speaker 3: I think it's starting to come into a position in Nevada.
Speaker 3: So Pennsylvania's going to be tough. We got to win it.
Speaker 3: And there's a lot of angry, pissed off white bros there.
Speaker 3: That's a real talk, that's a real fact.
Speaker 1: And she has been going to Pittsburgh, right, Explain to
Speaker 1: us the thinking there.
Speaker 3: She's been going to Pittsburgh, She's been going to Philadelphia.
Speaker 3: She's been in the Tea that area between Pittsburgh and
Speaker 3: Philadelphia a couple times. Now Walls is there. I think
Speaker 3: he probably lives there now. He's everything but a permanent resident.
Speaker 1: Now, well he should because he's the perfect person for there. Right, absolutely,
Speaker 1: explain to us why he.
Speaker 3: Scans as a regular suburban, middle class white guy. He
Speaker 3: does not scan as a Democratic Party elite ready to
Speaker 3: make you eat insect low for whatever the fuck fantasy
Speaker 3: of them at the moment. And all of this is
Speaker 3: going to come down, I think too. You know, do
Speaker 3: we end up with meaningful African American turnout in the
Speaker 3: Caller counties around Philadelphia and those Coller counties are Look,
Speaker 3: Hillary Clinton must be very very blunt. Her campaign did
Speaker 3: a terrible job activating African Americans in those Coller counties.
Speaker 3: And that's why Trump won the state. He did not
Speaker 3: win the state in twenty twenty. I gotta tell you,
Speaker 3: does anybody believe that there are more Trump voters now
Speaker 3: than there were in twenty twenty.
Speaker 1: No? Are there?
Speaker 3: No, there are not. They are a declining stock. They're
Speaker 3: a dying breed.
Speaker 1: Why Biden did better in Pennsylvania is because they knew
Speaker 1: him in Pennsylvania, because Delaware shares a media market connects.
Speaker 3: With Pennsylvania voters. And in fact, you've got in Walls
Speaker 3: a guy who is a familiar flavor. He's biden Esque
Speaker 3: in that regard. He is somebody they get. They know
Speaker 3: who this guy is, they know the type of guy
Speaker 3: he is, and he doesn't scare them. It's real hard,
Speaker 3: it's real hard for the Trumpers to go. Tim Walls
Speaker 3: is a communist socialist from liberal California. That Tim Wall's
Speaker 3: plan to make it to seize the means of production.
Speaker 3: I mean, come on, get the fuck out of here.
Speaker 3: That guy does not scare people. And they hate it.
Speaker 3: But he doesn't scare people. They really hate it. They're like,
Speaker 3: they're frustrated as shit. They've been looking for, like any
Speaker 3: opo punch to hit Tim Walls with. For weeks now,
Speaker 3: and they can't make it happen. They can't make the sell.
Speaker 1: Do you think that JD. Vance being in the state
Speaker 1: actually hurts Trump?
Speaker 3: Well, look, I tell you one thing. JD. Vance being
Speaker 3: in Ohio, being from Ohio has hurt Trump in Ohio.
Speaker 3: The number one lesson of every vice presidential candidate is
Speaker 3: that your job is to go to weddings and funerals.
Speaker 3: As a general rule, do no harm is the primary
Speaker 3: mission of a vice presidential candidate. And he has done harm.
Speaker 3: He has hurt Donald Trump in his home state of Ohio.
Speaker 3: And for all that Trump is a guy who loves
Speaker 3: people who suck up to him, what did we see
Speaker 3: from Trump the other night with JD Vance? He sold
Speaker 3: him down the river. I didn't talk to jd about that.
Speaker 3: Who I think he's an intern, maybe a coffee boy.
Speaker 3: He may have been on the campaign for five minutes,
Speaker 3: but I've never spoke to him, met him, or know
Speaker 3: anything about him. That is all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so very good. Alec Baldwin doing.
Speaker 3: Trump Molly, That's all I can do.
Speaker 1: You know, it's very impressive.
Speaker 3: I'm a man with many, many severe limitations, and that's
Speaker 3: one of them. Don't have a good Trump imitation.
Speaker 1: But here's a question for you. So let's just game
Speaker 1: this out. North Carolina early voting has been disturbed by
Speaker 1: the worst person in the world, RFK Junior.
Speaker 3: Discuss Look, the early voting has been problematic because we
Speaker 3: have RFK fighting to get off the ballot and to
Speaker 3: review the ballots right now. You also have today the
Speaker 3: Trump folks and their allies. They are trying to bring
Speaker 3: lawsuits to forbid college students and state workers and other
Speaker 3: people from voting early. The whole thing is, of course,
Speaker 3: exactly what you would have expected their usual fuckery.
Speaker 1: Okay, does it work?
Speaker 3: I don't think it works in the end. You know why.
Speaker 3: It's September. There's plenty of time to have early voting
Speaker 3: continue to successfully give us a real, meaningful lift for Harris.
Speaker 3: I don't think there's anything that's gonna stop that, given that,
Speaker 3: given that Trump has been such a bad candidate lately,
Speaker 3: has had no good days. I mean, Trump does not
Speaker 3: have good days anymore, real talk. I mean this in
Speaker 3: a serious way, not a dark way. Trump's best day
Speaker 3: was the day he got shot. That was the last
Speaker 3: moment that his campaign felt like there was something there
Speaker 3: beyond just the angry, shitty conspiracy theory, crazy talk bullshit.
Speaker 1: Well it felt new, yeah, right, Well.
Speaker 3: It didn't feel it wasn't new, but it felt purposeful
Speaker 3: at least, right. Yeah, But right now, all it feels
Speaker 3: like is complaint to palooza and lies and weird shit,
Speaker 3: because right now it is just weird shit, and weird
Speaker 3: shit doesn't sell after a certain point.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you feel like North Carolina, that's not going
Speaker 1: to be a huge disturbance.
Speaker 3: No, I look, I would I like it to be
Speaker 3: slightly less full of fuckery? Yes, of course, is it
Speaker 3: disqualifying levels of fuckery? Not really? I think again. Trump
Speaker 3: has a problem that he cannot solve with women voters.
Speaker 3: He did not solve it the other night in the
Speaker 3: debate when he tried to bs his way past and
Speaker 3: gave probably the most damaging single answer about abortion I
Speaker 3: could have conceived.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk about that answer.
Speaker 3: It was so broken brained. I'm still marveling, because look,
Speaker 3: what do we know about Trump? He wants to brag.
Speaker 3: He wants to say, oh, I killed Rivy Wade. I
Speaker 3: put them on the court. Their active bravery on the
Speaker 3: court shows how great I am. Sorry, I'm doing it again,
Speaker 3: you have to just sorry going on with then he
Speaker 3: knows he Trump's feral animal cunning and his awareness. He
Speaker 3: knows just how bad, just how shit the the National
Speaker 3: Band stuff is. He knows just how bad and how
Speaker 3: dangerous all the things the Republicans have done in the
Speaker 3: States has become to him. He recognizes that he's stupid,
Speaker 3: but he's not that stupid, if that makes sense. He
Speaker 3: is not in a good place, okay, he is in
Speaker 3: a bad, bad place. That bad place is getting worse
Speaker 3: by the day, and he understands it. He really does know.
Speaker 3: He knows how bad it is. But he couldn't get
Speaker 3: out of his own way with that answer. He couldn't
Speaker 3: not do the I'm the greatest thing since prepared mustard,
Speaker 3: I'm the God king answer. And so you know, here
Speaker 3: we are with Trump pissing off the evangelicals on the
Speaker 3: one hand and pissing off the rest of America on
Speaker 3: the other. It was a bad play. It was a
Speaker 3: terrible play. So that those people are going to make
Speaker 3: a big difference in Pennsylvania in particular.
Speaker 1: The thing that gets me incensed about Trump and Trump
Speaker 1: is and the way that people talk about Trump, including
Speaker 1: in the media, industrial complex of which we are members.
Speaker 1: Is that they always say, like, he just needs to
Speaker 1: get disciplined. Well, he just has to stick to script.
Speaker 1: Has no one been here for the last decade?
Speaker 3: Right, Welcome to the Year of Our Lord twenty twenty four.
Speaker 3: We are nine years and five months into this fucking bullshit.
Speaker 3: Have you not noticed that Donald Trump has the personal
Speaker 3: discipline of an incontinent drunkard. Donald Trump cannot focus on
Speaker 3: anything for longer than it gives him an erection, a
Speaker 3: belief he's going to make money off of this, or
Speaker 3: some sort of cruelty. Nothing. In Trump's world. He is
Speaker 3: the ultimate add candidate. He has no ability to focus.
Speaker 3: There is no better Trump. There is no better iteration
Speaker 3: of Trump. There is no Donald Trump where where he
Speaker 3: wakes up in the morning and says, why yes, I
Speaker 3: believe I should sit down with my policy advisors and
Speaker 3: develop a coherent rationale for this argument. Instead, it's like
Speaker 3: Laura Lumer tell me they're eating the cats, they're eating
Speaker 3: the dogs, and Stephen Miller, I think he has some
Speaker 3: blood in his mouth. He may have eaten the dog,
Speaker 3: but I believe him. And it's all fucking crazy town.
Speaker 3: He will never be better no Republican who is empowered
Speaker 3: and enabled and kissed his ass for as long as
Speaker 3: they have has any excuse at all whatsoever. There is
Speaker 3: no excuse there. It is over, it is done. He
Speaker 3: has poisoned them in a way that they don't even
Speaker 3: understand how deep the rot runs in their own brains
Speaker 3: and their own party, because they're still rationalizing it. They're
Speaker 3: still trying to say, like, well, one of the people
Speaker 3: in the Reuters focus group was undecided and said that
Speaker 3: Harris didn't have enough granularity on her policy. Trump's policy
Speaker 3: was to stand up there and talk about eating dogs
Speaker 3: and executing the Central Park five. The madness levels here
Speaker 3: are off the charts.
Speaker 1: And I would say the false equivalency here is pretty amazing,
Speaker 1: like continually always expected to be normal, and Republicans are
Speaker 1: allowed to be insane, not.
Speaker 3: Just allowed to be insane mally. Let's remember the mainstream
Speaker 3: media has consistently said things like Trump's energetic and transgressive performance,
Speaker 3: this appeal to middle class voters. You know what, There
Speaker 3: are some voters that they have appeals to, But there
Speaker 3: are some people that like to go to the zoo
Speaker 3: and watch monkeys throw shit at them.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that got me upset was
Speaker 1: there was a Republican senator I've never heard of, which
Speaker 1: in itself has not nothing. He's in I think North
Speaker 1: Dakota maybe, and he was saying that he wasn't sure
Speaker 1: they were going to certify the election.
Speaker 3: That's Mark Wayne Mullen. That's all one name, Mark Wayne.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Who the fuck is that Mark Wayne Mullen. Okay, first off,
Speaker 3: let's be very clear. Mark is a staggering, epic, world
Speaker 3: class dipshit the worst Mago cuckoo pants people are like, yo,
Speaker 3: Mark Wayne dial batshit back man, that's too much, brother.
Speaker 3: He is one of the worst human beings in that body.
Speaker 1: Has he been there a long time? I never even
Speaker 1: heard of him.
Speaker 3: No, he's only been there like four years now.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 3: He is a guy you can count on Mark Wayne
Speaker 3: to be the shittiest human being on earth. He's a
Speaker 3: guy who ran and cowered under a bench on one
Speaker 3: to six, but now is like the heroes of January sixth,
Speaker 3: must fight against the deep state imprisoning our beloved allies.
Speaker 3: Fuck this guy. He is a epic, epic piece of shit.
Speaker 3: There is a real possibility these people will vote to
Speaker 3: not certify the election. There's a very real possibility that
Speaker 3: that's what's going to happen. I think I think it's
Speaker 3: like a seventy percent possibility. You're going to have people
Speaker 3: in the Senate who do not certify the election. We're
Speaker 3: going to have a constitutional crisis because Donny dipshit will
Speaker 3: not say to his people, I lost. Okay, you're right,
Speaker 3: you got me. I lost, and we're going to end
Speaker 3: up with an absolute horror show going into next year
Speaker 3: is going to be terrible. And everybody right now who
Speaker 3: thinks somehow that Donald Trump will be dignified, correct proper,
Speaker 3: that he will say, why, yes, you're right. For the
Speaker 3: good of the country, I must declare that I I
Speaker 3: have lost this election and accept my defeat. On the
Speaker 3: field of battle. She could beat him by four hundred
Speaker 3: Electoral College votes, and that fucker is going to go
Speaker 3: out and go It was stolen. Stalin stolen. One of
Speaker 3: those things I like the dictator and the pastry. Also,
Speaker 3: the election was stalin.
Speaker 1: Are we worried that this will kip to the Supreme
Speaker 1: Court and that they'll overturn the election results.
Speaker 3: Yes, we should be. That is why the defeat has
Speaker 3: to be in such a scope it does have to
Speaker 3: be like Obama McCain, not like Biden Trump. She has
Speaker 3: to beat Trump in a scope well beyond how Biden
Speaker 3: beat him. I hate saying that because it's hard.
Speaker 1: Do you think that can happen?
Speaker 3: No, wait, it's going to be very difficult to get there.
Speaker 3: I wanted to. I'm working every day to make it happen.
Speaker 3: But we should not mistake that this is a very
Speaker 3: precarious moment in our history where you have a party
Speaker 3: and a president who will do anything to win. They
Speaker 3: will lie, cheat, and steel. We have to fight them
Speaker 3: every step of the way. Harris is running a great campaign,
Speaker 3: running the best campaign that we've seen in our lifetimes.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean that Trump will not try to steal it.
Speaker 3: He will try to steal it. There is no chance
Speaker 3: on earth that Donald Trump. Just like people say, oh well,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump needs to be mature, someone says Donald Trump
Speaker 3: needs to be a person who respects the constitution of
Speaker 3: the rule of law. Will good luck with that? Have
Speaker 3: fun storm in that.
Speaker 1: Castle, Rick Wilson, Now I'm stressed out again.
Speaker 3: Well, Molly, all we can do is just keep kicking
Speaker 3: his ass.
Speaker 2: We have even more tour dates for you. Did you
Speaker 2: know the Lincoln Projects, Rick Willson have Fast Politics Bali
Speaker 2: Jug Faster. Are heading out on tour to bring you
Speaker 2: a night of laughs for our dark political landscape. Join
Speaker 2: us on August twenty sixth at San Francisco at the
Speaker 2: Swedish American Hall, or in la on August twenty seventh
Speaker 2: at the Regent Theater. Then we're headed to the Midwest.
Speaker 2: We'll be at the Vivarium in Milwaukee on the twenty
Speaker 2: first of September and on the twenty second will be
Speaker 2: in Chicago with City Wiry. Then we're going to hit
Speaker 2: the East coast September thirtieth, We'll be in Boston at
Speaker 2: Arts at the Armory. On the first of October, we'll
Speaker 2: be in Affiliates City Winery, and then DC on the
Speaker 2: second at the Miracle Theater. And today we just announced
Speaker 2: that we'll be in New York on the fourteenth of
Speaker 2: October at Citywinery. If you need to laugh as we
Speaker 2: get through this election and hopefully never hear from a
Speaker 2: guy who lives in a golf club again, we got
Speaker 2: you covered. Join us in our surprise guests to help
Speaker 2: you laugh instead of cry your way through this election
Speaker 2: season and give you the inside analysis of what's really
Speaker 2: going on right now. Buy your tickets now by heading
Speaker 2: to Politics as Unusual dot bio. That's Politics as Unusual
Speaker 2: dot bio. Ryan Mack and Kate Kunger are the authors
Speaker 2: of Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics Cade. Thank you and Ryan.
Speaker 5: Hey, Molly, So you.
Speaker 1: Guys did a book together. First of all, just give
Speaker 1: us everything about this book.
Speaker 6: Well you said earlier twenty minutes right.
Speaker 7: So the book is Character Limit, How Elon Musk Destroyed Twitter,
Speaker 7: and we take you through the saga that has been
Speaker 7: Twitter over the last several years, starting with sort of
Speaker 7: the twilight era of the company, the end of Jack
Speaker 7: Dorsey's tenure as CEO and Perogue Algarol's brief period as
Speaker 7: a CEO, and then Elon Musk of course swoops in,
Speaker 7: makes it offer to buy it, says he doesn't want
Speaker 7: to buy it anymore, says he wants to buy it again,
Speaker 7: and then we finished the story with the aftermath of
Speaker 7: Elon's takeover in the way that he changed and transformed
Speaker 7: the company.
Speaker 1: Yes, so this feels like the kind of book where
Speaker 1: you get going on it and you're shocked at how
Speaker 1: much worse it really is then you even thought is
Speaker 1: it discussed?
Speaker 5: So the genesis of this book was we're reporters at
Speaker 5: the New York Times. Kate is the b reporter for
Speaker 5: Twitter now x I cover accountability and cover you know,
Speaker 5: billionaires and figures in Silicon Valley, and we reported on
Speaker 5: this deal from its start to the takeover, and yeah,
Speaker 5: we were getting so much reporting that we simply couldn't
Speaker 5: put it into every single one of our stories.
Speaker 3: Like we just couldn't.
Speaker 5: We couldn't do a justice, you know, right, And there
Speaker 5: were things we'd love to expand upon from you know,
Speaker 5: elon try to pull out of the deal, for example,
Speaker 5: or even after the deal, the types of cuts he made,
Speaker 5: things like not having toilet paper in the bathrooms because
Speaker 5: he cut the janitorial service, Like just details like that
Speaker 5: that we're just so confounding to us and so bizarre
Speaker 5: and so unprecedented in a takeover like this where one
Speaker 5: man could you know, essentially buy a company for forty
Speaker 5: four billion dollars, you know, at the sap of his fingers.
Speaker 1: Did you think it would happen? And were you shocked?
Speaker 1: It's sort of the process that it took, you know.
Speaker 7: This is so funny because I think if you had
Speaker 7: asked me on any given day during that summer of
Speaker 7: twenty twenty two whether or not the deal was going
Speaker 7: to close, I would have given a different answer. And
Speaker 7: even up to the moment that everyone's seen online where
Speaker 7: Elon walked into the Twitter building with a sink and
Speaker 7: made that hokey joke about let that sink in, I
Speaker 7: was still not sure that he was actually going to
Speaker 7: do it, because at that point it had just been
Speaker 7: such a chaotic process that it seemed like he might
Speaker 7: still pull the rug out from under the whole thing.
Speaker 7: And I think a lot of the people on the
Speaker 7: Twitter side of the deal felt that way too. You know,
Speaker 7: even as he was there in the building saying he
Speaker 7: was about to buy the company, they weren't willing to
Speaker 7: leave him until they saw the money in the bank account.
Speaker 1: Yeah. This reminds me a little bit of the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: It seemed improbable, impossible, undoable. It got done, but in
Speaker 1: a very haphazard way with a lot of unhappy people involved.
Speaker 1: Is it similar in that way?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I don't know.
Speaker 5: I didn't do much reporting on the Trump administration. I
Speaker 5: know the stories of like you know, he didn't expect
Speaker 5: to win, and then they find themselves in twenty sixteen
Speaker 5: having to run a government. If that's the framework that
Speaker 5: we're thinking of, then with musks takeover, there are a
Speaker 5: lot of similarities. Like you made an offer kind of
Speaker 5: on a whim. He tried to pull out. Everyone remembers
Speaker 5: the bot argument. You know, there's so many bots, there's fraud.
Speaker 3: On this platform.
Speaker 5: I'm not going to buy it. He tries to back out.
Speaker 5: He's then forced to buy it at the price he
Speaker 5: admits to overpaying for forty four billion dollars, and he
Speaker 5: kind of comes in shooting from the hip. There's really
Speaker 5: no plan here for what he's going to do with
Speaker 5: this thing. He's he's talking about these kind of pie
Speaker 5: in the sky concepts, building a quote unquote everything app
Speaker 5: wanting to bring in payments to Twitter, but fundamentally misunderstanding
Speaker 5: that this is a social platform and a very human platform.
Speaker 5: You're connecting humans to talk to each other, and when
Speaker 5: people talk to each other, there's all these messy things
Speaker 5: that happen, And you know, I think that misunderstanding is
Speaker 5: led to the cast that we see today, from the
Speaker 5: multiple rounds of layoffs to the issues with governments all
Speaker 5: around the world to just the loss of advertisers and
Speaker 5: the decrease in valuation. I mean the company is now
Speaker 5: worth internally less than twenty billion dollars. You know, that
Speaker 5: is a stunning kind of devaluation over two years, done
Speaker 5: by the man who's supposed to be one of the
Speaker 5: best businessmen in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 7: I think there are just a lot of parallels between
Speaker 7: him and Trump. I mean, both of them just sort
Speaker 7: of command Internet attention. Both of them have this sort
Speaker 7: of rotating cast of characters surrounding them, where people are
Speaker 7: in one day and then cast out the next. And
Speaker 7: there's even this one photo I think it is from
Speaker 7: when Elon Musk attended the met gala, but he's in
Speaker 7: a tux and he's given the thumbs up post.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I saw.
Speaker 7: That photo, I was like, whoa, they look eerily early
Speaker 7: similar when he's in the right costume and doing the
Speaker 7: right post. I think there's a lot of parallels between
Speaker 7: the way that they conduct themselves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I knew some people inside Twitter. I
Speaker 1: mean there was a sense there it felt to me
Speaker 1: like they had sort of built this little paradise and
Speaker 1: that it couldn't be destroyed so easily. And then it
Speaker 1: really was what is the feeling of the people who
Speaker 1: are in there or were in there because most of
Speaker 1: them are gone.
Speaker 5: Probably part of the reason why we wanted to write
Speaker 5: this book is we wanted to kind of dispel this
Speaker 5: myth that like everything at Twitter was perfect Elon.
Speaker 3: This was a.
Speaker 5: Company that had a lot of issues, from its balance
Speaker 5: sheet and its business to employee happiness, I guess, and
Speaker 5: content moderation decisions. You know, this is a company that
Speaker 5: had to deal with COVID misinformation and the platforming of
Speaker 5: President Trump. I mean, these were the New York Post
Speaker 5: article about Hunter Biden, monumental decisions that drew it a
Speaker 5: lot of flack. And you know, the company was a
Speaker 5: lightning rod constantly. So I don't know if i'd call
Speaker 5: it a paradise. I mean, it certainly wasn't what it
Speaker 5: is today. You know, this kind of mess under Elon,
Speaker 5: But it wasn't a happy place. It was, you know,
Speaker 5: a lot more stable. It was a place where you
Speaker 5: could build a career.
Speaker 7: Yeah, and I think Twitter is such a unique place
Speaker 7: even within the tech industry, and I think pretty much
Speaker 7: any tech job you get the founders or the CEO
Speaker 7: is going to try to convince you to come with
Speaker 7: a real sense of mission, right.
Speaker 6: But I think you know, a lot.
Speaker 7: Of Google employees, for instance, feel pretty divorced from the
Speaker 7: notion that they are there to like help people access
Speaker 7: and catalog the world's information, Right. But I think Twitter
Speaker 7: was the place where people who worked there really grasped
Speaker 7: onto the mission and believed in it in a way
Speaker 7: a lot of other tech employees are just kind of
Speaker 7: like rolling their eyes. And I think Bright and I
Speaker 7: shared that sense that there was something uniquely important about
Speaker 7: what Twitter was doing as a company. In the way
Speaker 7: that it was creating this platform for political speech was
Speaker 7: really fascinating. But as Ryan said, we also wanted to
Speaker 7: portray some of the bumps and lumps that were in there,
Speaker 7: problems that were going on at the company, because that
Speaker 7: narrative just got very distilled down into like good Twitter
Speaker 7: and evil Elon and and we want to take that
Speaker 7: a little bit.
Speaker 5: I don't think we can discount how much there were
Speaker 5: a group of employees in the company who were excited
Speaker 5: about Elon's takeover, or at least wanted to give him
Speaker 5: a chance. You know, this is a company that had
Speaker 5: stagnated with product production, like they couldn't launch a product
Speaker 5: if their life depended on it in some way, you know.
Speaker 5: He Compared to some of the other tech companies out there,
Speaker 5: things were going really slow. There was little innovation, and
Speaker 5: they thought that Elon was the guy who would kickstart
Speaker 5: all this. You know, he had electrified cars, he had
Speaker 5: put rockets into space. Why couldn't we do better things
Speaker 5: under him? And they saw this as kind of the
Speaker 5: lightning bolt that they needed to get things going again.
Speaker 5: But it was the lightning bolt that essentially started an
Speaker 5: inferno inside the company and burn the place down.
Speaker 1: So yeah, right, it totally did. And I know there
Speaker 1: was a lot of that. And also like fundamentally the
Speaker 1: business was not profitable, right.
Speaker 6: Yes, that's pretty much true.
Speaker 7: There was a period of profitability that the company had,
Speaker 7: I want to say, pre COVID, and then during COVID
Speaker 7: actually they were doing fairly well and then had kind
Speaker 7: of fallen off of their numbers by the time Elon
Speaker 7: came in and proposed the acquisition.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, this is a company that gets compared
Speaker 5: to Facebook or Meta a lot, you know, and that's
Speaker 5: a company that has more than a billion I think
Speaker 5: it's close to two billion users across all its platforms now.
Speaker 5: Twitter at its peak had hundreds of millions. You know,
Speaker 5: this was a company that wasn't drawing in the ad
Speaker 5: revenue that a meta draws in, and it was just
Speaker 5: kind of this kind of floating business. It was stagnant
Speaker 5: in some ways, it floated along, and it was kind
Speaker 5: of ripe for the picking for someone like you On
Speaker 5: to come and swoop in and make an offer.
Speaker 1: The large request I feel like with Elon was to
Speaker 1: try to make or as Trump call him Leon, to
Speaker 1: try to make Twitter profitable, right, And he's done a
Speaker 1: number of different things to try to do that. He
Speaker 1: has done a lot of businesses, and many of them
Speaker 1: have struggled with like actual profitability or being priced for
Speaker 1: what their ebuita is. To talk to us about that, sure.
Speaker 5: I mean Tesla was not profitable for years. I mean,
Speaker 5: the car business is incredibly hard. It's why a lot
Speaker 5: of car startups fail. And he went through periods where
Speaker 5: he was on the verge of bankruptcy almost to his
Speaker 5: last dollar, and was able to pull it out. You know,
Speaker 5: I think as something like twenty eighteen, for example, where
Speaker 5: he can't manufacture enough Model three cars, this kind of
Speaker 5: low cost car, mass market car, and is in this
Speaker 5: thing called production hell. And he's really, you know, kind
Speaker 5: of at his wits end, sleeping on the factory floor
Speaker 5: or on the couch in the factory, trying to make
Speaker 5: enough cars. You know, it's part of his mythos. And
Speaker 5: he gets out of that period and the company survives,
Speaker 5: and you know, the stock price shoots to the roof,
Speaker 5: and he is where he is today with this net
Speaker 5: worth of more than two hundred and fifty billion dollars.
Speaker 5: But he's kind of lived life on the edge and
Speaker 5: making these big bets on the idea that these companies,
Speaker 5: you know, are going to be worth hundreds of billions
Speaker 5: of dollars. SpaceX the same way. It's still private, but
Speaker 5: it went through periods where was on the bridge of bankruptcy.
Speaker 5: If you know, the next rocket exploded, they wouldn't have
Speaker 5: any more capital to build the next one. And he
Speaker 5: sees himself as this kind of hero, this kind of
Speaker 5: generational entrepreneur who can do things better and more efficient
Speaker 5: than the last. That's how he came into Twitter. He
Speaker 5: thought Twitter's past management was inept, corrupt, fraudulent, and he
Speaker 5: thought he could do these things way more efficiently and
Speaker 5: just simply cut and cut and cut and cut and
Speaker 5: get things to where he thought they needed to be,
Speaker 5: as well as you know, generate these unthought of business lines,
Speaker 5: things like selling the verification badges, which he thought he
Speaker 5: could do for millions of people. He thought millions of
Speaker 5: people would buy these badges at eight dollars a month
Speaker 5: and create this new revenue stream for the company, And
Speaker 5: that's just been a complete disaster and miscalculation. This idea
Speaker 5: of must being a generational entrepreneur has become under fire
Speaker 5: with this takeover. You know, it's kind of chewed away
Speaker 5: at as mythos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems to me that he was doing a
Speaker 1: lot lot better before he bought Twitter because there was
Speaker 1: this sort of deniability about his political beliefs. It was
Speaker 1: a certain right. I mean, now it's all out there.
Speaker 1: Do you think that this myth kind of has hurt him?
Speaker 7: It has to some extent, you know, I think in
Speaker 7: buying Twitter, I think, you know, Elon sort of put
Speaker 7: himself in the dangerous position that a lot of people
Speaker 7: in the media industry that have done where now spending
Speaker 7: time on Twitter.
Speaker 6: It's supposedly part of his.
Speaker 1: Job, right, It's true. It is a good point.
Speaker 5: You know, Hey, that is it is part of my job.
Speaker 5: Don't take that red from my kit, but it is.
Speaker 1: He really does need to sort of touch grass, right,
Speaker 1: I mean that's what you're saying.
Speaker 7: It's on Twitter all day, every day, and I have
Speaker 7: notifications turned on for his account, and it got to
Speaker 7: the point I used to have like an older iPhone,
Speaker 7: like a iPhone eight or something, and I had to
Speaker 7: upgrade because it was killing my battery because I got
Speaker 7: so many notifications about you. He's prolific, and I think
Speaker 7: it has hurt his public image. I think it's also
Speaker 7: really started to chip away at his fan base within Tesla,
Speaker 7: which is at financial risk for him. You know, his
Speaker 7: Tesla shareholders are not happy about the amount of time
Speaker 7: and attention that he spends on x rather than at Tesla.
Speaker 7: And because he is such a big PERSDA, that's a
Speaker 7: big draw for retail investors to Tesla, and so Tesla
Speaker 7: actually has a disproportionate number of retail investors who are
Speaker 7: invested in the company because they like Elon.
Speaker 6: They're drawn to him, they think he's cool.
Speaker 7: And so as he chips away at that public persona
Speaker 7: and kind of bursts the bubble for people. That affects
Speaker 7: Tesla's stock a little bit more than it might if
Speaker 7: it was a different company.
Speaker 5: I also think, you know, this has hurt his mythos,
Speaker 5: this idea that he is this great entrepreneur. And I
Speaker 5: don't think we can and take this away from him
Speaker 5: that he ushered in the electric car revolution in the
Speaker 5: United States, and he put rockets in a space and
Speaker 5: privatize the space industry. But just because you can do
Speaker 5: those things and build kind of generational companies doesn't necessarily
Speaker 5: make you the best fit to run a social media company.
Speaker 5: And I think it was that hubris that he came
Speaker 5: in with, you know, why can't I do this? Why
Speaker 5: can't I run Twitter? It must be so much easier
Speaker 5: than putting a rocket into space and have it land
Speaker 5: on a platform. These are different problems, and these are
Speaker 5: you know, some some are engineering problems. You know, some
Speaker 5: are electrical engineering problems. But this is a human problem.
Speaker 5: This is a social interaction problem, and I think not
Speaker 5: grasping that has really hurt his image in the public eye.
Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure, Explain to me where the company is
Speaker 1: now and where he is now.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think X is in very precarious shape
Speaker 7: at this point, and he obviously cut the company back
Speaker 7: a lot, and now I think his engineering time, energy
Speaker 7: resources are somewhat split between x the social media platform
Speaker 7: and xai, the sort of AI company slash chatbot that
Speaker 7: he's trying to build. And you know, the platform itself
Speaker 7: is increasingly partisan and focused on Musk's politics in particular,
Speaker 7: and it's also in you know, pretty decayed financial shape.
Speaker 6: You know, we've seen.
Speaker 7: AD revenue continue to fall and fall on fall. Some
Speaker 7: of these big projects that the company has tried in
Speaker 7: order to bring back AD dollars have sort of faltered.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 7: One of those was doing these long form video shows
Speaker 7: with big personalities, and I think Tucker Carlson is probably
Speaker 7: the only example there of someone who's had a successful
Speaker 7: show built on X and even he has kind of
Speaker 7: migrated and started airing his show on his own platform
Speaker 7: around his own website now, I believe, so they really
Speaker 7: struggled to figure out a way to counteract that decline
Speaker 7: in revenue, and at the same time, you know, I
Speaker 7: think there's there's a core set of users who are
Speaker 7: attracted to the partisanship of the platform, but more and
Speaker 7: more that alienates people and drives them to competitors like threads.
Speaker 1: Can he just keep this going forever? Will he need
Speaker 1: to sell the platform at some point? Or can he
Speaker 1: just ride into the bottom?
Speaker 6: I think Ryan and I disagree about this.
Speaker 1: Good, Yeah, just tell us about that and then we're.
Speaker 7: I kind of don't know if there is a bottom, honestly.
Speaker 7: I mean, I think he can just keep going should
Speaker 7: he choose to do so, and has the financial resources
Speaker 7: to do it, and certainly the interests.
Speaker 6: Right, and then that's not a lot of seat fail.
Speaker 6: But I don't know. I think Ryan disagrees a little
Speaker 6: bit on this that.
Speaker 5: There is no bottom, or there is a bottom.
Speaker 1: That he'll have to sell it at some point.
Speaker 5: I don't think he'll have to sell. You know, we
Speaker 5: haven't really talked about the debt payments that he has.
Speaker 5: By the way, he raised billions of dollars in debt
Speaker 5: he has.
Speaker 6: I think he.
Speaker 5: Services to service that debt. He pays more than a
Speaker 5: billion dollars in interest payments a year, which.
Speaker 4: Is kind of this.
Speaker 5: Yeah, can you I don't if you can relate to that.
Speaker 5: That seems like a lot of money.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeahs are lower.
Speaker 5: I don't know what your credit card bill feels are
Speaker 5: looking like, but but yeah, I mean, like I think
Speaker 5: that that's if we're talking about pain points for Elon,
Speaker 5: that is certainly one of them. This is not a
Speaker 5: guy who has a lot of cash on handy. I mean,
Speaker 5: he has a high net worse, don't get me wrong,
Speaker 5: more than two to fifty billion dollars. But he's not
Speaker 5: liquid on that. That's a lot of tied up in
Speaker 5: a lot of equities in Tesla at SpaceX. He leverages
Speaker 5: his Tesla shares to raise money and cap and cash essentially,
Speaker 5: which is allowed. But you know, we're talking about unrealized
Speaker 5: gains right now in the election. It's exactly that, and
Speaker 5: I think he'll start to feel those pain points. Whether
Speaker 5: or not he'll sell it is another question. I think
Speaker 5: he still personally drives a lot of value from the platform.
Speaker 3: I think the.
Speaker 5: Platform is exactly what he wants it to be. I
Speaker 5: don't know what price you can put on that kind
Speaker 5: of personal enjoyment.
Speaker 1: In the end. Do you think there's some conclusion to
Speaker 1: this or do you think this is just him like
Speaker 1: having a hobby.
Speaker 7: You know, I think in all of our reporting, we
Speaker 7: were never able to find what the greater plan was
Speaker 7: for Twitter. In fact, over and over again, you see
Speaker 7: these moments of just his sort of profound impulsivity and unpreparedness,
Speaker 7: the things that he encounters during the deal. And I
Speaker 7: think that his political leanings are similar of just this
Speaker 7: is something that interests him and fascinates him, and he's
Speaker 7: just kind of dabbling and going with the flow. And
Speaker 7: I don't think that there is some sort of grand
Speaker 7: master plan tacked up on the wall with all the
Speaker 7: red yarn behind him.
Speaker 5: I think he's just I think the way to view
Speaker 5: him is how we view him when he build his companies.
Speaker 5: There is this kind of centered hero complex. He is
Speaker 5: the man who's going to bring us to Mars. But
Speaker 5: if you view it, you know, in this, in this relationship,
Speaker 5: he is the man who is going to help stop
Speaker 5: the immigration crisis at the southern border. He's the man
Speaker 5: that's going to solve election fraud and all these and
Speaker 5: wokeness and all these things that he thinks ails the company,
Speaker 5: and the way to do that is by supporting Donald Trump.
Speaker 5: And it's that hero complex that has serving well in
Speaker 5: the past, and it's how he views the world, and
Speaker 5: I think it's how it's going to serve him in
Speaker 5: the future. So I think that's the kind of number
Speaker 5: one way to analyze what he's thinking about this election.
Speaker 1: So interesting. Thanks you guys, Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: This is really great.
Speaker 1: Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how
Speaker 1: awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we,
Speaker 1: which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make
Speaker 1: a limited series with the experts on what a disaster
Speaker 1: Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now,
Speaker 1: we have just released the final episode of this five
Speaker 1: episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly Jong
Speaker 1: Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you
Speaker 1: are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber,
Speaker 1: you can hit play and put your phone in the
Speaker 1: lock screen and it will play back just like the podcast.
Speaker 1: All five episodes are online now. We need to educate
Speaker 1: Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do
Speaker 1: to this country, so please watch it and spread the word.
Speaker 2: Amanda Becker is the Washington correspondent for the nineteenth and
Speaker 2: author of You Must Stand Up, The Fight for Abortion
Speaker 2: Rights and Postdobs America.
Speaker 1: Welcome Back, too fast politics. Amanda Becker, Hi, thanks for
Speaker 1: having me. We're delighted to have you. I want you
Speaker 1: to talk about the Nineteenth for a minute. Sort of
Speaker 1: just give us this landscape of the Nineteenth. A lot
Speaker 1: of us know about it and have been big fans
Speaker 1: of it for a long time, but not everyone. So explain.
Speaker 4: Yeah, So, The Nineteenth is a nonprofit, independent newsroom focused
Speaker 4: on the intersection of politics, policy, and gender. We started
Speaker 4: about four and a half years ago and officially law
Speaker 4: about four years ago, and I have been there since
Speaker 4: the beginning as the Nineteenth Washington Correspondent. So we are
Speaker 4: really focused on the women and LGBTQ people in politics,
Speaker 4: on the policies that matter to them. And so, you know,
Speaker 4: we're covering everything from you know, the fall of Row
Speaker 4: and kind of the chaos that has followed that, it's
Speaker 4: impact on the elections, all of the anti trans legislation
Speaker 4: in the States, and really anything that's important to women
Speaker 4: and LGBTQ people.
Speaker 1: You know, Harris is a Democratic presidential candidate. She's a woman.
Speaker 1: There has been some discussion about the sort of shift
Speaker 1: from Hillary Clinton, you know, when she was the candidate.
Speaker 1: She's also a woman. We live in this country of
Speaker 1: sort of hyper misogyny that a lot of it's really,
Speaker 1: I think, institutionalized. And how have you seen a change
Speaker 1: since twenty sixteen?
Speaker 4: You know, I've been thinking about this a lot, Molly,
Speaker 4: And actually my family was texting me when I was
Speaker 4: standing on the floor at the Democratic National Convention kind
Speaker 4: of watching Vice President Kamala Harris give her a speech.
Speaker 4: It just felt different. And I've been trying to explain
Speaker 4: to myself even kind of what felt different about it.
Speaker 4: And you might have some ideas about this as well,
Speaker 4: but I think that she is felt as like a
Speaker 4: new generation of leaders. You know, she's not that much
Speaker 4: younger than Clinton, but I think that that difference matters
Speaker 4: in terms of their ages. And it just felt really different.
Speaker 4: I mean, I was with Clinton following her campaign for
Speaker 4: two years in twenty fifteen and twenty sixteen, and now
Speaker 4: I'm covering this election, you know, a little bit less
Speaker 4: day to day as I was then, as I was
Speaker 4: at a wire service at the time, But it just
Speaker 4: felt really different. And I think that women in this
Speaker 4: country have realized the impact of Donald Trump being elected
Speaker 4: over Hillary Clinton in a very real way, right because
Speaker 4: it led to the loss of forty nine years of
Speaker 4: abortion rights in this country, and there's really no denying
Speaker 4: that that is evident in the way people are thinking
Speaker 4: about voting now, and so I think that also has
Speaker 4: something to do with the enthusiasm for Kamala Harris's candidacy.
Speaker 1: I agree, but I'm just trying to sort of figure
Speaker 1: this out. If this is true, which you know, this
Speaker 1: would mean sort of that the women can make up
Speaker 1: the difference. Like one of the things I've seen in
Speaker 1: this campaign is Trump has gone like all in on misogyny.
Speaker 1: So like he's going on these far right podcasts of
Speaker 1: young podcasters, he's selling NFTs. I mean that I think
Speaker 1: maybe more scamm than misogyny. But like you know, he's
Speaker 1: got Whule Cogan. So many of the speakers at the
Speaker 1: RNC had like allegations of domestic violence, right, Like this
Speaker 1: was like if you were it was like big divorce
Speaker 1: dad energy, right. Bill Ackman is his greatest champion. Like
Speaker 1: you know, anyone on their first wife is not going
Speaker 1: to necessarily respond to this message. But how do you
Speaker 1: think that, Like, I mean, I think his calculus is
Speaker 1: that he's going to be able to run up the
Speaker 1: numbers with divorce Dad energy and that he'll get enough
Speaker 1: white women so he'll be able to win. There certainly
Speaker 1: are white women who identify more with their race than
Speaker 1: their gender. I mean, do you think that's shifting.
Speaker 4: So if you look at polling, and I know pulling
Speaker 4: is incredibly imperfect, we are seeing shifts among white women
Speaker 4: and among married women, and that would be different than
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen or even in twenty twenty because right
Speaker 4: white women have broken for Trump the past two elections.
Speaker 4: And I know that's hard for a lot of liberal
Speaker 4: white women's stomach, but that is the truth. I remember
Speaker 4: getting hate mail in twenty twenty when I wrote about
Speaker 4: how white women back to Trump. That is something. Honestly,
Speaker 4: I think that that is one of the stories of
Speaker 4: this election. Unfortunately, you know, it takes six months or
Speaker 4: so to get the validated voter data, so all we're
Speaker 4: going to have close to the election to kind of
Speaker 4: look at what happened is except pulling, which is you know,
Speaker 4: just as imperfect as any other type of poll. I
Speaker 4: think this election has the potential to be the one
Speaker 4: in which white women break for the Democratic candidate. And
Speaker 4: I don't know how much of that will end up
Speaker 4: being because it's Kamala Harris. I don't know how much
Speaker 4: of that will end up being because this is the
Speaker 4: first presidential election without Roe v. Wade in place, or
Speaker 4: a combination of things, including what we're hearing from the Republicans,
Speaker 4: which is you have Trump's kind of strain of how
Speaker 4: he looks at gender and masculinity, and then you also
Speaker 4: have Jad Vancis, when this is somebody who has talked
Speaker 4: openly about what he sees as the negative impacts of
Speaker 4: the sexual revolution. He thinks no fault divorce can be
Speaker 4: a bad thing. And these reflect larger trends in the
Speaker 4: right wing of the Republican Party that you know has
Speaker 4: floated legislation and states to kind of roll back no
Speaker 4: fault divorce and a variety of other things that we're
Speaker 4: seen as empowering women over the past fifty years.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, vance was really a choice to double
Speaker 1: down on that. I think a lot of us wondered
Speaker 1: if picking someone like Nikki Haley might give again, Like
Speaker 1: so much of this election on the hair side, anyway,
Speaker 1: has been about creating a permission structure to give Republicans
Speaker 1: to vote for a Democrat. So, for example, Dick Cheney
Speaker 1: endorsement is not for liberals, It's not even necessarily for
Speaker 1: normal voters. It's for very far right people who can't
Speaker 1: stop MacDonald Trump and who you know, see Dick Cheney
Speaker 1: as that permission. So on the Hair side, we've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of that. On the Trump side, we've seen
Speaker 1: none of that. So the question is right, like, he
Speaker 1: could have picked Nicki Haley as a vice president and
Speaker 1: he was like new go. He did nothing to sort
Speaker 1: of grow the electorate. Now there's a world in which
Speaker 1: that doesn't matter. But don't you think that eventually that
Speaker 1: comes back to bite him.
Speaker 4: I had to say, I was shocked when he chose
Speaker 4: jd Vance. I'm from Ohio, I grew up there, so
Speaker 4: I followed the politics there pretty closely still. Actually his
Speaker 4: grandparents are from the same region of Kentucky that my
Speaker 4: grandparents are from. They settled in Cincinnati, has settled in Middletown,
Speaker 4: which is about, you know, twenty five miles away from
Speaker 4: where my family is. And so I followed his story
Speaker 4: right over the years. And his story has shifted, of course,
Speaker 4: and he frames it in different ways.
Speaker 1: Yes, like his name, his story has shifted, yes.
Speaker 4: Yes, And when Trump chose him I just thought to myself, frankly,
Speaker 4: what is he thinking, Because from my perspective, picking jd
Speaker 4: Vance did nothing and not only didn't hunting to bring
Speaker 4: in any more people who weren't already backing Trump. It
Speaker 4: was a play to like the base. It was potentially
Speaker 4: a move that would alienate people in the middle. And
Speaker 4: I have to just think it was related to the
Speaker 4: assassination attempt and kind of like flying high after recovering
Speaker 4: from that and coming out of that and feeling invincible,
Speaker 4: and of course Joe Biden was still on the top
Speaker 4: of the Democratic ticket, thens they just thought this was
Speaker 4: a lock. But I don't see how jd Vance boosts
Speaker 4: Trump's chances in any way in November, and could potentially
Speaker 4: in fact hurt them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's my sense. But again, it just
Speaker 1: seems like a calculus with no thought of growing the electorate.
Speaker 1: But Trump has never had much interest in growing the
Speaker 1: elector right.
Speaker 4: No, I think what they're going to have to rely
Speaker 4: on is the loyalist and churning out as many of
Speaker 4: them as possible, you know, running kind of a fear
Speaker 4: campaign based on immigration in particular and the economy as well.
Speaker 4: To a certain extent, and hope that that's enough and
Speaker 4: that they can get enough men and drive up enough
Speaker 4: men and maybe get some men of color in there
Speaker 4: that didn't support.
Speaker 6: Them the last time.
Speaker 4: I think we could potentially see a bigger gender gap
Speaker 4: than we've ever seen. And there's been a gender gap
Speaker 4: in politics and it's been growing, and I think that
Speaker 4: that will only be exacerbated this year.
Speaker 1: So talk to me about your book.
Speaker 4: Yes, So, it came out last week. It's called You
Speaker 4: Must Stand Up The Fight for Abortion Rights and Post
Speaker 4: Dobbs America. It is the first year. It opens in
Speaker 4: June twenty twenty two at a clinic in Tuscaloosa as
Speaker 4: the Dobbs decision comes out, and it ends a year
Speaker 4: later at that same clinic talking about kind of what
Speaker 4: could be next. It's primary geographic settings along with Tuscaloosa, Alabama,
Speaker 4: our Phoenix, Arizona to a slightly lesser extent Maryland, and
Speaker 4: then also some chapters from places like Wisconsin, Kentucky, Massachusetts,
Speaker 4: Ohio to just show the absolute chaos in the.
Speaker 1: First year after Dobbs.
Speaker 4: Told from the perspectives of doctors, healthcare providers, people working
Speaker 4: at clinics, but also lawyers, students, moms, friends, everyday voters
Speaker 4: who were mobilizing trying to protect abortion rights in kind
Speaker 4: of that pivotal first year after we lost to the
Speaker 4: federal right to an abortion.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I take a moment to talk about how I
Speaker 1: was right and glowed. This is one of them. I
Speaker 1: was right, and I hate it when the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: let SBA ride right when they took it on the
Speaker 1: shadow dock it and did not overturn it in Texas.
Speaker 1: When Texas overturned Row a year before the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: officially put the knife in the legislation, what did you think?
Speaker 1: Did you think it was the end? I thought it
Speaker 1: was the end, but I'm very negative, so.
Speaker 4: I also thought it was the end. I think anyone
Speaker 4: working in this space, whether they were at a clinic
Speaker 4: and in a clinical setting or you know, working on
Speaker 4: policy at the national level, also thought it was the end.
Speaker 4: The title of my book, You Must Stand Up is
Speaker 4: from a doctor in Arizona, and it's from a blog
Speaker 4: that she wrote in I believe it was twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: may have been twenty nineteen, but I think it was
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen. So, you know, while the Dobbs decision in
Speaker 4: the fall Row took many kind of rank and file
Speaker 4: on the Americans by surprise, for the people who are
Speaker 4: working in this space or in space is adjacent to
Speaker 4: reproductive health. They saw this coming even before SB eight,
Speaker 4: but certainly when the Supreme Court let sbight go into effect.
Speaker 4: That is when, for example, the chapter I have set
Speaker 4: in Massachusetts, which is really a chapter about how can
Speaker 4: a state where the vast, vast majority of its residents
Speaker 4: support abortion rights, how can they make sure that they're
Speaker 4: delivering for the people in their state and giving them
Speaker 4: what they want. Massachusetts SB eight was when they mobilized,
Speaker 4: was when they got a coalition back together that had
Speaker 4: worked on this issue before, because they thought, you know,
Speaker 4: this is the end, and it doesn't matter that this
Speaker 4: is in Texas, it doesn't matter that it's going to be,
Speaker 4: you know, worse in red states. They're going to try
Speaker 4: to come for people in Massachusetts too. And so they
Speaker 4: got together and passed one of the strongest abortion provider
Speaker 4: shield laws we have in this country.
Speaker 6: Right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, when you look at this, how this happened, What
Speaker 1: do you think the greatest driver was of the push
Speaker 1: to get rid of row overturning Row?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it really depends whether you're talking about
Speaker 4: the average person who might oppose abortion or be represented
Speaker 4: by some of the groups or some of the kind
Speaker 4: of behind the scenes architects. There are many people in
Speaker 4: this country, including women, who believe abortion is wrong, and
Speaker 4: they you know, it has been a fifty year project
Speaker 4: to overturn Row. The anti abortion movement wanted to establish
Speaker 4: beetle personhood back when Roe was decided. That is still
Speaker 4: their end goal, and they've been working for that, and
Speaker 4: they truly believe that they are working on kind of
Speaker 4: like the moral fight of their time. Now I am
Speaker 4: not convinced. Let's say that a lot of the funders
Speaker 4: of this are motivated by that same moral conviction necessarily
Speaker 4: and a lot of arts behind the scenes. I think
Speaker 4: what this is about is power. Who has power, who
Speaker 4: can amass more power, who can take away power from
Speaker 4: other people? And it's about politics. And you know, abortion
Speaker 4: was not a political issue until the eighties and even
Speaker 4: into the nineties. You know, it is when it really
Speaker 4: took hold, and that was a story about power, right
Speaker 4: they were reorganizing. It was a few Republican strategists who
Speaker 4: were trying to make evangelicals a reliable voting block for
Speaker 4: Republican candidates, and it's related to kind of the decline
Speaker 4: in the acceptability of fighting for segregated schools. And they
Speaker 4: came up with, you know, being anti abortion as a
Speaker 4: new way to appeal to those voters. Now, that was
Speaker 4: just about winning races, right, So it all comes back
Speaker 4: to power, and so they knew if they kind of
Speaker 4: combined that new voting block of Evangelical Christians with US
Speaker 4: Catholics that had traditionally been Democrats or trended democrat, they
Speaker 4: could get a lock on power. And so this is
Speaker 4: a story about power, and this is story about what
Speaker 4: it means to be an American and what rights you
Speaker 4: have as an American.
Speaker 1: So interesting and I think really important. There's so much
Speaker 1: in this story, but what's the solution to the real problem.
Speaker 4: So if you are someone who supports abortion rights and
Speaker 4: would like to see something row like back in place,
Speaker 4: that's kind of what my book is about. The second half.
Speaker 4: It's people trying to figure out. I like to think
Speaker 4: of it as the book is a story about democratic
Speaker 4: erosion and how we got to a place where much
Speaker 4: of the country has laws in place that the citizens
Speaker 4: do not support. But also it's showing you people in
Speaker 4: a variety of roles who have figured out what their
Speaker 4: role is to play in strengthening our democracy. So it's
Speaker 4: everything from doctors and even medical students realizing that it's
Speaker 4: not an option to not be an advocate or an activist.
Speaker 4: It's actually an essential part of your practice if you're
Speaker 4: going to be an bgyn and want to take care
Speaker 4: of patients. It is young mothers in Kentucky who found
Speaker 4: out about how they could get involved through a Jewish
Speaker 4: women's group and started trying to defeat a ballot measure
Speaker 4: there that would have you know, abortion is already banned
Speaker 4: in Kentucky, but there was an effort to actually add
Speaker 4: that to the constitution. They were able to push back
Speaker 4: on that amendment and defeat it. They actually took to
Speaker 4: the streets, one of them for the first time, to
Speaker 4: go canvassing and door knocking for that issue. I think
Speaker 4: if you talk to the people who the legal strategists,
Speaker 4: they say that we're in a kind of spaghetti at
Speaker 4: the wall moment where, you know, the abortion rights movement
Speaker 4: on a national level has been accused by some of
Speaker 4: being kind of gatekeepers on strategy for the past couple decades,
Speaker 4: and you're seeing kind of the universe of organizations bringing
Speaker 4: really high profile cases expand beyond kind of the one
Speaker 4: or two usual groups that were doing that and the
Speaker 4: build up to Dobbs. A lot of people across the
Speaker 4: political spectrum, include being a main character in my book,
Speaker 4: have started likening the period we're in right now to
Speaker 4: prohibition right and looking the repeal of prohibition as a
Speaker 4: template for how we could restore abortion rights in this country.
Speaker 4: Because what we're seeing with these ballot measures right across
Speaker 4: the country, any time a ballot measure has been put
Speaker 4: before the people, abortion rights has won. There are ten
Speaker 4: states that right now that are going to be voting
Speaker 4: on abortion rights ballot measures in November. And while that's
Speaker 4: great for the people in those states, and the reason
Speaker 4: they're doing it is because voters have realized, like legislation
Speaker 4: can be fleeting, it can be overturned, it can be
Speaker 4: the best way to protect a right is to have
Speaker 4: it in your constitution. While that's great for the people
Speaker 4: in the states who have a citizen referred ballot measure process,
Speaker 4: not every state has that, So in Alabama that's not
Speaker 4: an option for them. And so when I was talking
Speaker 4: to one of the women who works at the clinic
Speaker 4: in Alabama. She was saying, I actually think you know,
Speaker 4: ultimately what we need is a constitutional convention and anment
Speaker 4: to the US Constitution that is related to bodily autonomy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that's right. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you, No, no moment good.
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery is one of these classic high
Speaker 3: order mistakes. New Coke Land War in Asia, Parachute Pants.
Speaker 3: The magas have decided that they're going to take on
Speaker 3: the cultural juggernaut that we all know and love. S
Speaker 3: Taylor Swift. I welcome this decision on their part because
Speaker 3: it is truly one of the dumbest things I've ever
Speaker 3: heard in my life. The idea that jadvancewroled and said,
Speaker 3: I don't think anyone's going to be persuaded by a
Speaker 3: billionaire entertainer, like, bitch, have you met your boss?
Speaker 1: But he's not a billionaire. That's somewhat difference.
Speaker 3: That is an effering and a distinction. But look, she's
Speaker 3: going to be a force multiplier in this campaign. It's
Speaker 3: not going to decide the campaign, but she's going to
Speaker 3: be a major force multiplier in the campaign. It is
Speaker 3: going to make a big difference because there is a
Speaker 3: generation of young girls who grew up with Taylor Swift
Speaker 3: who are now voting age this generation of their moms
Speaker 3: who grew up with Taylor Swift and taking their daughters
Speaker 3: to Taylor Swift. You know, Andrew Breitbart was not right
Speaker 3: about a lot of things, but he said one time
Speaker 3: that politics is downstream of culture, and that's why Republicans
Speaker 3: are always so desperate to get any kind of star.
Speaker 3: And even like these d minus celebrities, We've got Scott Poe,
Speaker 3: but she is the biggest cultural icon of our time.
Speaker 3: She is a big deal. And their sense of denial
Speaker 3: and despair about this is just sweet, sweet maga teers
Speaker 3: flowing in a beautiful river of fuckery. They're attacking her,
Speaker 3: they're bitching about her, they're complaining, I'm here for all
Speaker 3: of it, all of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem like the party that is at
Speaker 1: war with women right as at war about Troyce.
Speaker 3: I mean, why not go to war with the most
Speaker 3: beloved female pop star. Oh, I don't know of you know,
Speaker 3: since Madonna. It is a painful I'd argue of all time.
Speaker 3: You can make the all time argument. Yeah, you could
Speaker 3: you absolutely could.
Speaker 1: She does a thing that Madonna doesn't do, which is
Speaker 1: she's wholesome. Yeah, so here they are going to war
Speaker 1: with the wholesome, self made American billionaire.
Speaker 3: I'm pro Madonna and I vote, but I take your point. Yeah.
Speaker 1: If she were even the slightest bit Maga, they would
Speaker 1: be obsessed with her, right, She's the dream. Remember the
Speaker 1: news cycle when they thought when they discovered she wasn't
Speaker 1: Maga and they were so upset.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well now they're so upset at a level that
Speaker 3: makes that look like they couldn't find a parking space.
Speaker 3: They are losing their minds on her. And please, guys,
Speaker 3: I want you to continue to call her a dumb
Speaker 3: slut and call her a failure and call her stupid,
Speaker 3: because nothing could ever go wrong with the Swifties finding
Speaker 3: out about what Mauga's doing to Taylor. Nothing could ever
Speaker 3: go wrong there. Guys, y'all just keep tearing it up.
Speaker 3: You just keep criticizing her all you want, Just go for it.
Speaker 3: I await your capitulation on the field of battle because
Speaker 3: she is undefeated.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Rick Wilson, all right, all right, Jesse Cannon.
Speaker 2: Molly Jong Fast, jd Vance he's really showing that he's
Speaker 2: a member of the Trump administration because he's taken on
Speaker 2: Trump's trade he let the mask slip.
Speaker 1: No, I disagree. I actually think that by admitting you
Speaker 1: were lying, that's like not what you're supposed to do.
Speaker 1: Like you like, what Trump would have done is he
Speaker 1: would have said, yeah, no, that's what I said. You know,
Speaker 1: something along the lines of Paul Mattaford right where you'd
Speaker 1: make enough confusion so that you never really admit that
Speaker 1: you're lying, even if everyone knows you're lying. This was actually,
Speaker 1: I think like one of the I mean, I would
Speaker 1: say it rare, but it's all missteps with Jada Vance,
Speaker 1: Dana Bash did a really excellent job of asking him
Speaker 1: a very specific question and then following up.
Speaker 8: The American media totally ignored this stuff until Donald Trump
Speaker 8: and I start talking about cat means. If I have to,
Speaker 8: it's just mean, create stories so that the American media
Speaker 8: actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.
Speaker 8: Then that's what I'm gonna do. Dana, Because you just
Speaker 8: said that you're creating the public policy.
Speaker 6: Sorry, you just said that you're creating the story.
Speaker 1: Is that, Dana, you just said that this is a
Speaker 1: story that you created, so that the eating dog re acting.
Speaker 8: Not we are creating, we are, Dana. It comes from
Speaker 8: first hand accounts from my constituents. I say that we're
Speaker 8: creating a story, meaning we're creating the American media focusing
Speaker 8: on it.
Speaker 1: What I thought was really interesting about this was obviously
Speaker 1: it's not happening, but it's also they finally just you know,
Speaker 1: for whatever reason, but Vans couldn't keep it going. And
Speaker 1: then Mike DeLine, who remembers the governor of Ohio and
Speaker 1: ran about twenty points ahead of Vance, even though Vance's
Speaker 1: campaign had to pour money into it. Dwine actually really
Speaker 1: just set him, you know, really, he said, I think
Speaker 1: it's unfortunate that this came up. But let me tell
Speaker 1: you what we do now. We know that Haitians in
Speaker 1: Springfield are legal. They came to Springfield to work. Ohio
Speaker 1: is on the move in Springfield has made it great.
Speaker 1: The point is that this was meant to be a
Speaker 1: sort of standard other the way Trump often does it,
Speaker 1: you know, the same as what he did to Muslims,
Speaker 1: the same as what he did to Mexicans, the same
Speaker 1: as what he did to all these other ethnic groups.
Speaker 1: He targets, but instead in this one, they just went
Speaker 1: too far and they made up a completely insane lie
Speaker 1: which is now debunked, and that is our moment of
Speaker 1: fuck Ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
Speaker 1: a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.