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 thirteen former Trump administration officials have
Speaker 1: signed on to an open letter backing up John Kelly.
Speaker 1: We have a show that includes two different lawrences MSNBC.
Speaker 1: MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell stops by to try to calm our
Speaker 1: nerves are fraid pre election nerves. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig about his left field take on
Speaker 1: why VP Harris might actually need fake electors.
Speaker 2: So, mally I thought hacking would be a very big
Speaker 2: part of the selection, but it really feels like the
Speaker 2: final chapter before we vote, the hacking is really coming
Speaker 2: into view. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Who knows? Chinese hackers targeted data from phones used by
Speaker 1: former Prescident Donald J. Trump and his running mate Senator JD.
Speaker 1: Vance of Ohio. It is a wide ranging intelligence collection effort.
Speaker 1: Maybe they released it, Maybe they just use it to
Speaker 1: manipulate them if they get into power. Who knows, Or
Speaker 1: perhaps they hack the material and then as you'll remember,
Speaker 1: newspapers decide not to release it. You'll remember that is
Speaker 1: opposed a stark contrast to twenty sixteen, when they made
Speaker 1: a big deal of releasing everything from John Podesta's Risotto
Speaker 1: recipe to Kuma and Hillary talking about whether or not
Speaker 1: they should be bad and have the krimboulet. So I
Speaker 1: don't know they're haacking. They targeted the phones. We'll see
Speaker 1: what happens. Stay tuned to our sound depressed.
Speaker 2: So I'll tell you what makes me depressed That billionaires
Speaker 2: have this much power, and unfortunately they have to fund
Speaker 2: all of our media outlets and Jeff Bezos. People are
Speaker 2: not happy with them today, are they?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: The Washington Post is first time since nineteen sixty they're
Speaker 1: not endorsing a candidate. You know why they're not endorsing
Speaker 1: a candidate because the billionaire who owns them decided it
Speaker 1: would be too much trouble. They had a endorsement of
Speaker 1: Harris because she's the normal candidate who doesn't want to
Speaker 1: end American democracy. It was all teed up and the
Speaker 1: newspaper decided not to publish it. The decision not to
Speaker 1: publish was made by the Post owner. Perhaps you remember him,
Speaker 1: Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He owns huge amount of companies
Speaker 1: and stuff and has billions and billions of dollars in many,
Speaker 1: many yachts. He has. In twenty nineteen lawsuit, Amazon claimed
Speaker 1: it lost ten billion dollars in Pentagon cloud computing and
Speaker 1: a contract to Microsoft because Trump used improper pressure to
Speaker 1: harm his perceived political enemy. Well, Jeff Bezos isn't going
Speaker 1: to let that happen again, and he has given up
Speaker 1: the endorsement. Timothy Snyder, the Yale professor, talks about this
Speaker 1: and calls it complying in advance. It's one of the
Speaker 1: things you're not supposed to do when you're fighting authoritarianism.
Speaker 1: Stay tuned, so Mallya.
Speaker 2: As we hinted in the opening of the show, thirteen
Speaker 2: former Trump administration officials have released an open letter on
Speaker 2: Friday amplify in the warnings of Trump's former chief of staff,
Speaker 2: John F. Kelly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know John Kelly, Trump's longest serving chief of staff.
Speaker 1: It was a marine, He was very well respected. He
Speaker 1: came out and did these tapes with Mike Schmidt from
Speaker 1: the New York Times. They're on the New York Times
Speaker 1: website and they and they have General Kelly describing Donald
Speaker 1: Trump as an authoritarian and as a fascist. Someone who
Speaker 1: doesn't like democracy. He also tells his anecdote about how
Speaker 1: he thought that Hitler had good generals and that maybe
Speaker 1: you know, he had some musings about Hitler. You never
Speaker 1: want to have musings about Hitler in case you're wondering.
Speaker 1: It really was a brave thing. And remember, these military
Speaker 1: guys are try to be non political. It takes a
Speaker 1: lot to get them to come out and say something
Speaker 1: political like this. So this is a very big deal.
Speaker 1: So today, after being attacked by all of Trump World
Speaker 1: and all of Trump's people, thirteen former Trump administration officials,
Speaker 1: which this is really a big deal, released an open
Speaker 1: letter on Friday amplifying the warnings of John F. Kelly,
Speaker 1: donald Trump's longest chief of staff. And this is really
Speaker 1: quite a big deal. These are lifelong Republicans who are
Speaker 1: taking a stand against this, and the people who have
Speaker 1: signed it are people like Alyssa Griffin, Stephanie Grisham, Adam Kinsinger,
Speaker 1: Miles Taylor, Olivia Troy Scaramoucci. This is a very unusual
Speaker 1: thing to have, and everyone is trying to make the
Speaker 1: make it clear that what Donald Trump wants to do
Speaker 1: is not normal and none of this is what happens
Speaker 1: normally in American democracy.
Speaker 2: One of Trump's great techniques every election season is he
Speaker 2: tries to play both sides of many issues and blur
Speaker 2: the lines so people can make a decision to just
Speaker 2: vote for him. And he's tried to do this with
Speaker 2: Israel versus Hamas and Hezbala, but things get complicated because
Speaker 2: he runs his mouth weird and weird ways. What are
Speaker 2: you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So Donald Trump has said that he would be better
Speaker 1: for Arab Americans than Harris. He says that you should
Speaker 1: vote against Harris because it's too stupid to go into.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Trump allies they feel they have this opportunity
Speaker 1: to lure away young Muslims. You'll see that a lot
Speaker 1: of the polling shows they're pretty tight there. But he
Speaker 1: has expressed support for Israel's offensives against Hamas and Hezbela
Speaker 1: in a recent call with the country's prime minister, a
Speaker 1: position that could complicate his campaign's outreach to Arab Americans.
Speaker 1: You guys, if it's Donald Trump, it's transactional. And if
Speaker 1: he gets back in the White House, he's going to
Speaker 1: let nat Yahoo do whatever he wants to Palestine. Who
Speaker 1: thinks otherwise is sadly mistaken.
Speaker 2: So Maally. We knew as this election came to a
Speaker 2: close that North Carolina is one of the states that
Speaker 2: has traditionally always had some of the biggest voting fuckery.
Speaker 2: They will make students walk miles to their voting locations
Speaker 2: and change point places on the day of the election.
Speaker 2: Republicans have long fucked around there, but this is a
Speaker 2: new height.
Speaker 3: What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: So this is the House Freedom Caucus. The chair of
Speaker 1: the conservative House Freedom Caucus in North Carolina member of
Speaker 1: Congress named Andy Harris. I mean, this is so insane,
Speaker 1: he said. It makes a lot of sense that given
Speaker 1: the distraught wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part
Speaker 1: of the state, that he wants to preemptively award electoral
Speaker 1: votes to Trump. So that means, if you live in
Speaker 1: North Carolina, this member of the Republican Freedom Caucus wants
Speaker 1: to make sure that your votes do not count because
Speaker 1: of the hurricane. He would like to just give all
Speaker 1: of your votes to Republican electors and award the state
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump before anyone's even been voting. This is
Speaker 1: so incredibly destructive, not what we do in this country,
Speaker 1: and absolutely so just insane and really shocking. Andy Harris
Speaker 1: and this was reported in Politico. Such a crime, and
Speaker 1: this is what Republicans want to do, and they keep
Speaker 1: telling you. Lawrence O'Donnell is the host of the Lawrence
Speaker 1: O'Donnell Show on MSNBC, So welcome back, Lawrence very much.
Speaker 1: You have so eloquently explained to the moment in American
Speaker 1: life that we're in. But just one more time for
Speaker 1: the people in the back, could you.
Speaker 3: Remind me I don't remember a word I say. This
Speaker 3: moment is one we've been in before, and it's the
Speaker 3: one the show business is in twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 3: every day, and it's the William Goldman moment of nobody
Speaker 3: knows anything. And that is the famous line from his
Speaker 3: the single best book, possibly only good book about show business,
Speaker 3: Adventures in the Screen Trade, by Oscar winning screenwriter William Goldman,
Speaker 3: and he takes you through explaining the business and why
Speaker 3: it's not a business and why it's all so crazy,
Speaker 3: and it all comes down to nobody knows anything. No
Speaker 3: one knows what movie is going to work. No one
Speaker 3: knows literally like what's going to happen next, what to
Speaker 3: do next? And that's where we are now. The New
Speaker 3: York Times has officially given up. They've done their last
Speaker 3: poll and said, we give up the basic headline of
Speaker 3: the poll as we give up. We've wasted all of
Speaker 3: our money in our time on all of this polling.
Speaker 3: It has led us to nowhere. No poll has told us,
Speaker 3: you know, what was going to happen next, even in
Speaker 3: the polls, and so like New York Times is saying
Speaker 3: to you, Okay, thank you for reading all of our
Speaker 3: massive coverage about this and how every little thing might
Speaker 3: change the course of the of the election and all that,
Speaker 3: and thanks for studying every little detail of our polls.
Speaker 4: We have no.
Speaker 3: Idea who's going to win, and we give up. And
Speaker 3: you know, I could have suggested that they give up
Speaker 3: a lot earlier on the polling, because it was pretty
Speaker 3: clear that the polling did not have any gravitational forces
Speaker 3: in it that made any sense right up to you know,
Speaker 3: the present, where you can have a candidate on the
Speaker 3: record praising Hitler and it has no effect. So when
Speaker 3: you live in that political universe, you shouldn't expect the
Speaker 3: polls to be helpful. They're not going to be helpful.
Speaker 3: And so I kind of love that The Times has
Speaker 3: in effect fully admitted that that nobody knows anything, and
Speaker 3: all these pollsters don't know anything, and here we are,
Speaker 3: and so you know, it's the way life used to
Speaker 3: be before meteorology. You didn't know if it was going
Speaker 3: to rain in the afternoon or you just everybody lived
Speaker 3: life in a perfectly reasonable way without knowing what was
Speaker 3: going to happen next. I've been able to accept for
Speaker 3: a very very long time that I don't know what's
Speaker 3: going to happen in the future. That should not be
Speaker 3: a hard thing for people to come to grips with.
Speaker 3: And so in this case, the future is you know
Speaker 3: what eleven days away, and it's upon us, and you know,
Speaker 3: the last time nobody knew anything, Joe Biden won.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I would love you for two seconds. I
Speaker 1: know this is a stupid question, but I feel like
Speaker 1: our listeners need to sort of just have.
Speaker 3: Let me just say at eleven in the morning, which
Speaker 3: we can reveal this is this is before noon. Yes,
Speaker 3: stupid questions are the only kind I want. I'm not
Speaker 3: awake enough for a serious question.
Speaker 1: Excellent reading Early voting is like trying to read runs,
Speaker 1: especially in an election that has a tent big enough
Speaker 1: to include Harris and Liz Cheney, do you agree.
Speaker 3: Well, early voting used to you know, when the craziest,
Speaker 3: stupidest candidate in history was urging people not to early vote,
Speaker 3: which is the stupidest thing he could possibly have said.
Speaker 3: When he was doing that, early voting was indicative, you know,
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty of oh boy, look at the size
Speaker 3: of the early voting. We know that's not Trump voters,
Speaker 3: or you know, mostly not Trump voters. And now I
Speaker 3: think it's trickier, you know, because they've changed the tune.
Speaker 3: Trump's not out there preaching against early voting, so you
Speaker 3: definitely are going to have a larger participation of Trump
Speaker 3: voters in early voting. I do think it's not unreasonable
Speaker 3: for the Harris side to take encouragement from big early
Speaker 3: voting numbers.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, So that's a really good point. It's a
Speaker 1: genre of article is the nervous Democrats and the confident Republicans.
Speaker 1: You know, there have been a ton of articles in
Speaker 1: Axios and you know, axios like publications about the anxiety
Speaker 1: the Democrats have.
Speaker 3: Can I just say parenthetically here, yes, please help me
Speaker 3: so bioccupation. I am mired in these subjects. I never
Speaker 3: read Axios. And I don't mean this as any kind
Speaker 3: of offense against Axios, but all the information you needed
Speaker 3: to be fluent in this field existed before Axios was born,
Speaker 3: and before most of the people working at Axios was
Speaker 3: were born. Okay, so when people send me these things, oh,
Speaker 3: I read this and I read that, the first thing
Speaker 3: I say to them is, why are you reading that?
Speaker 3: Why would you read that? The field is just now
Speaker 3: overflowing with junk stuff? That is a business. You got
Speaker 3: to remember, Axios was invented to make people rich. It
Speaker 3: was not invented to clarify how you should think about things.
Speaker 3: You know, same thing with Politico. The world was fine
Speaker 3: without Politico, it was fine. I've learned nothing, absolutely nothing
Speaker 3: since the invention of Politico. Nothing. It hasn't added a
Speaker 3: thing to my understanding of anything. I've read very very
Speaker 3: little from Politico over the years, you know, since it
Speaker 3: was started. And again that was started as a get
Speaker 3: rich business. It had all the same integrity as an
Speaker 3: Elon Musk enterprise. It was just to make money. And
Speaker 3: so if you're you know, taking a reasonably frequent look
Speaker 3: at the New York Times, you're not going to learn
Speaker 3: anything more you're not going to get smarter by reading
Speaker 3: beyond that stuff. And we all know the limits now
Speaker 3: in political coverage of the New York Times itself, you know,
Speaker 3: in the Washington Post itself. But they haven't those people
Speaker 3: have not come along and figured out how to do
Speaker 3: this better than the New York Times or the Washington Post.
Speaker 3: I will certainly want that defense of the New York
Speaker 3: Times in Washington Post. So I just sorry I heard
Speaker 3: the word axios, and I just say this for all
Speaker 3: my friends who and by the way, most of my
Speaker 3: friends do overly obsess and they pick up all this
Speaker 3: little junk stuff you know that's out there, and it's
Speaker 3: an utter waste of time. But by the way, it's
Speaker 3: a condition of nervous Democrats and confident Republicans. That has
Speaker 3: been the case for every single presidential election after nineteen
Speaker 3: ninety six. Bill Clinton had an eighteen point lead over
Speaker 3: Bob Dole in the summer of nineteen ninety six, and
Speaker 3: for the first time in history, the Democrats were not nervous. Okay,
Speaker 3: by the way, one other time the time prior to that,
Speaker 3: when the Democrats were not nervous was when Michael Dukakis
Speaker 3: had a seventeen point lead over George H. W. Bush,
Speaker 3: and the Democrats made the mistake of not being nervous.
Speaker 3: And so but ever since then, you know, al Gore
Speaker 3: got more votes in any reasonable fair reading of the situation,
Speaker 3: al Gore won and beat George W.
Speaker 1: Bush.
Speaker 3: The Supreme Court didn't see it that way. And you know,
Speaker 3: and it was panic for Democrats right right down to
Speaker 3: the wire, you know. And and it was never panicked
Speaker 3: for the Bush side, like never. They were never worried,
Speaker 3: you know. And I think it's I think it's almost temperamental.
Speaker 3: And I mean it wasn't really a public pose. I mean,
Speaker 3: those actual Bush guys, those Bush people, you know, those
Speaker 3: Jim Bakers, they they just weren't. They just don't worry.
Speaker 3: Those people, you know, And they're constitutionally different. You know.
Speaker 3: This modern set of Republicans are not like that. They
Speaker 3: do worry, they do panic, but they are smart enough
Speaker 3: to simply, like a football team, you know, going into
Speaker 3: the Super Bowl, never express any doubts, right And the Democrats, like,
Speaker 3: my god, if the Democrats were in the Super Bowl
Speaker 3: and doing all those press conferences two weeks before the game,
Speaker 3: you'd have like half of them going well, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I don't know, but it just and so they haven't
Speaker 3: figured that out. You know that it's an athletic thing.
Speaker 3: Like you, the best thing you can do, no matter
Speaker 3: how nervous you are in this field is you know,
Speaker 3: it's just feign confidence if you have to.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And there has been some you know this, there's
Speaker 1: been some incredible reporting that has come out and I'm
Speaker 1: even thinking about today this Elon Musk has been talking
Speaker 1: to Vladimir Putin story which came out from the Rupert
Speaker 1: Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal. And you do really see
Speaker 1: why Republicans are so anti reporting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and by the way, you also see the kind
Speaker 3: of thing that feeds their confidence. Right, So they've got Musk, like, man,
Speaker 3: that's a confidence builder. This guy, you know, runs Twitter
Speaker 3: and twists it to your advantage. He's prepared to give
Speaker 3: people a million dollars, you know, to you know, sign
Speaker 3: up to vote. He's you got all that Musk money.
Speaker 3: I mean, that's that's a pretty big deal. He's highly
Speaker 3: influential with a kind of person who is not a
Speaker 3: wise voter. You know, these kind of goofy thirty two
Speaker 3: year old males which I used to be and you know,
Speaker 3: so that's you know, you could see where that kind
Speaker 3: of thing does build a certain kind of confidence without calculating,
Speaker 3: without noticing. Oh, by the way, it doesn't seem to
Speaker 3: be making any difference in the polls.
Speaker 1: Right. You would think that giving away a million dollars
Speaker 1: a day would be illegal, right.
Speaker 3: But it turns out it is, which is why they stopped.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's true. I mean, it's so crazy that this
Speaker 1: guy has security clearance, he has.
Speaker 3: A Let's just remind all of our Tesla driving listeners
Speaker 3: out there, every single one of you has contributed to
Speaker 3: the Trump campaign, every one of you and you know,
Speaker 3: friends of mine in California years ago when Musk started
Speaker 3: trying to violate labor law there and started then getting
Speaker 3: rid of their teslas. You know, there was a very
Speaker 3: varying degrees of consciousness of what Musk was up to
Speaker 3: in California, just in the factories. But that's where it began,
Speaker 3: the getting rid of the Tesla thing. But buying a
Speaker 3: Tesla now, is that's a political action. You know, there
Speaker 3: are there are other electric cars, and there are other
Speaker 3: cars that can give you whatever kind of thrill you're
Speaker 3: trying to get out of a machine, and so Tesla owners,
Speaker 3: you have contributed to the Trump campaign, whether you wanted
Speaker 3: to or not. And if you're planning on, you know,
Speaker 3: buying one to borrow, or if you bought one last month,
Speaker 3: then you very directly contributed to the campaign.
Speaker 1: And there is a sense in which government regulation has
Speaker 1: a lack of government regulation has allowed Elon Musk to
Speaker 1: sort of take over huge swaths of the federal government.
Speaker 3: Well, it's the problem of the number of vendors.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 3: If you're trying to stick something up in space, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: you know, we really don't have another place to go.
Speaker 3: I'd love to have another place to go. If you're
Speaker 3: trying to do satellite communication, if you're trying to provide
Speaker 3: emergency telephone service, you know in Ukraine, starlink is it.
Speaker 3: There isn't another one, you know, and that's your problem.
Speaker 3: It's the problem of monopoly in an arena that the
Speaker 3: government actually needs. So the government's what's what's the government
Speaker 3: going to do, like crack down on starlink for being
Speaker 3: a monopoly it needs it. You know, in North Carolina,
Speaker 3: they needed the you know, EPA needed to distribute that
Speaker 3: stuff so people could communicate. You know, they're not going
Speaker 3: to do a monopoly crack down on the only real
Speaker 3: company that can deliver pretty big payloads into space. So
Speaker 3: you are just stuck. It won't last forever, you know,
Speaker 3: it never does. You know, at some point there'll be
Speaker 3: other ways of doing all the things that the musk
Speaker 3: companies do. But for now, it's it's a nightmare scenario
Speaker 3: of outright crazy billion an who's active, who's actually and
Speaker 3: this is really you couldn't possibly have imagined this. He's
Speaker 3: actually crazier than Henry Ford, actually crazier than Henry I mean,
Speaker 3: Henry Ford was a classic American hardcore anti semi of
Speaker 3: which there were millions in Henry Ford's day. In fact,
Speaker 3: I would suggest the majority of Americans were kind of
Speaker 3: minimally anti Semitic in their in their language. They didn't
Speaker 3: think anything of it. They didn't if you ask them
Speaker 3: if they were anti Semitic, they'd say no, and they
Speaker 3: would use Jew as a verb in the next sentence.
Speaker 3: And you know, so, so there was that, and then
Speaker 3: there's the virulent kind, which was what Henry Ford was
Speaker 3: and Lindbergh and those people, and you know, other than that,
Speaker 3: which is a pretty big. Other than that, you know,
Speaker 3: Henry Ford was a pretty rational operator. He didn't think, oh,
Speaker 3: let me buy some company so I can destroy it
Speaker 3: and turn it turn its value into nothing, you know,
Speaker 3: like Twitter. Right, he didn't do that. But really it's
Speaker 3: prior to Musk. Henry Ford was our greatest shame as
Speaker 3: an American rich guy. And now there's another one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, Henry Ford is such a really important
Speaker 1: historical parallel. And one of the things that I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time doing when I think about this
Speaker 1: moment in American life, is trying to sort of connect
Speaker 1: parallels to it. Elon Musk and Henry Ford. They're so
Speaker 1: similar except for the irrationality right of Elon Musk, which
Speaker 1: Henry Ford didn't necessarily have that kind of or at
Speaker 1: least we didn't see it right. He wasn't public facing
Speaker 1: the way Elon is. But there are so many precedents.
Speaker 1: Trump is in himself unprecedented. But a Republican party that
Speaker 1: cowers and refuses to stand up for what's right.
Speaker 3: Is not no, not no. But this level of stupidity, yes,
Speaker 3: is brand new, you know. I Mean the last time
Speaker 3: we were stupid tariffs was one hundred years ago. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, really wildly stupid about tariffs. It was one
Speaker 3: hundred years ago. But that's one hundred years ago in economics, okay,
Speaker 3: and one hundred years ago in economics, most economics professors believed,
Speaker 3: you know that Smoot Holly tariffs were a very very
Speaker 3: bad idea. But it wasn't that clear to the world
Speaker 3: or to our politics. You know. Then we did Smoot
Speaker 3: Holly tariffs. They were a disaster, and both Smoot and
Speaker 3: Holly were defeated in their reelection campaigns because it was
Speaker 3: crazy and stupid. That's the kind of growing pain in
Speaker 3: the learning of economics, which was a relatively new discipline
Speaker 3: one hundred years ago, that you go, Okay, we're not
Speaker 3: making that mistake again. What you are really stupid about
Speaker 3: is making stupid mistakes again, you know, after we've shown
Speaker 3: them to you. But Trump's you know, ignorance level is
Speaker 3: brand new too. That is brand new. Like we've never
Speaker 3: ever ever had anybody that ignorant, you know, anybody that stupid.
Speaker 3: He does have the processor, Like if you gave him,
Speaker 3: if he was less ignorant, he still wouldn't be able
Speaker 3: to manage it in a you know, in a cognitive
Speaker 3: way and come out with the right answer. But he
Speaker 3: doesn't have either the information or the ability, you know,
Speaker 3: to process, and so you're you're stuck with this level
Speaker 3: of just rank stupidity that we've never seen before. And
Speaker 3: it does, you know, very much, seem to be getting worse.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a believer in the cognitive deterioration of
Speaker 3: that guy over time. He's a stupid or crazier person
Speaker 3: today and will be stupider and crazier tomorrow and next week.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and he's diminished too, I mean he has trouble
Speaker 1: keeping the same schedule.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's what I mean. Nobody's getting smarter in their
Speaker 3: late seventy like nobody.
Speaker 1: As I had it into my late forties. Not late yet,
Speaker 1: but I can attest.
Speaker 3: Oh no, you know, sorry, your past, your Nobel prize.
Speaker 3: You know, when you see those Nobel prizes come out, invariably,
Speaker 3: it's for work that the person did when they were
Speaker 3: thirty two or twenty seven or so, and they're getting
Speaker 3: it when they're fifty seven, because it takes that long
Speaker 3: in chemistry or you know, some of these fields to
Speaker 3: realize the importance of that work. It takes a couple
Speaker 3: of decades usually in economics for people to say, oh,
Speaker 3: that was a really really important discovery, because look, it's
Speaker 3: proven true over two decades. And so so those Nobel
Speaker 3: prizes for those gray haired people are almost always for
Speaker 3: things they did decades earlier. You know, they're almost like
Speaker 3: professional athletes. It's almost like, yeah, yeah, he was a
Speaker 3: great pitcher when he was twenty seven, but not.
Speaker 1: Will you leave us with something a little bit optimistic?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the indicators if you actually look inside this
Speaker 3: New York Times poll where they kind of throw up
Speaker 3: their hands, you know, the indicators inside that are good
Speaker 3: for the Harris campaign, and that's all. Well, you know,
Speaker 3: that's all you can look for, is that? So I
Speaker 3: think everybody should just go about their business on the
Speaker 3: assumption that Kamala Harris will be present for the next
Speaker 3: four years, and if next week there's some counter information
Speaker 3: to that, you'll have plenty of time then to start
Speaker 3: feeling bad about that.
Speaker 1: Thank you. Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: and how awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so
Speaker 1: are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart
Speaker 1: to make a limited series with the experts on what
Speaker 1: a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's
Speaker 1: future right now. We have just released the final episode
Speaker 1: of this five episode series. They're all available by looking
Speaker 1: up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube,
Speaker 1: and if you are more of a podcast person and
Speaker 1: not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put
Speaker 1: your phone in the lock screen and it will play
Speaker 1: back just like thet All five episodes are online now.
Speaker 1: We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term
Speaker 1: would or could do to this country, so please watch
Speaker 1: it and spread the word. Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard
Speaker 1: professor and co author of How to Steal An Election.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Lawrence.
Speaker 4: Great to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: I think of you as someone who is not a
Speaker 1: radical leftist, okay, if that's the understatement of the year.
Speaker 1: And I'm hoping you could talk to us just about
Speaker 1: where you are right now. You've written so much, You've
Speaker 1: taught at so many important places, you have such an
Speaker 1: important and meaningful academic career. Talk to us about where
Speaker 1: you are right now and your kind of I feel
Speaker 1: like you've had a little bit of a political movement too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, my thought is not unique. I think
Speaker 4: we're at a catastrophic moment with our democracy, and we're
Speaker 4: being a act on two fronts at once. One front
Speaker 4: is the deeply unrepresentative system we have for democracy, polluted
Speaker 4: most dramatically by the corrupting influence of money. So I've
Speaker 4: been an activist in trying to figure out how to
Speaker 4: flip that. I think we have a really exciting opportunity
Speaker 4: in main this election to pass an initiative that's going
Speaker 4: to tee up the opportunity for the Supreme Court to
Speaker 4: say what they've never had a chance to say, which
Speaker 4: is the First Amendment does not protect super PACs, that
Speaker 4: super PACs are not actually part of our constitutional armada.
Speaker 4: So that's, you know, I think we'll be progress on
Speaker 4: that front. But the second front is just recognizing how
Speaker 4: the business model of media is against the business model
Speaker 4: of democracy, Like the media makes money when it turns
Speaker 4: us into crazy people who hate each other, and when
Speaker 4: the reality of that, I think begins to be clear.
Speaker 4: I think what we have as a really important challenge
Speaker 4: about how do we move democracy into a place where
Speaker 4: it's not vulnerable to these corrupting systemic effects from the
Speaker 4: way media works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, we are having this conversation in the
Speaker 1: backdrop of decision. I assume you and I are both
Speaker 1: reacting to this devastating news today that the Washington Post,
Speaker 1: known as a real beacon of democracy with a motto
Speaker 1: that says democracy dies in darkness, has decided not to
Speaker 1: endorse because their billionaire owner has decided it's not worth
Speaker 1: a headache to piss off Donald Trump, which again Timothy
Speaker 1: Schneider writes about, is this obeying in advance one of
Speaker 1: the rules of if you're going to fight authoritarianism, you
Speaker 1: never do stuff.
Speaker 4: Like this, right. Obviously, newspapers feel the pressure of the
Speaker 4: current moment in a couple of important ways that the
Speaker 4: market is won, but the political response from an authoritarian
Speaker 4: regime is another that is quite terrifying. You know, I
Speaker 4: think Post in the New York Times, you know, at
Speaker 4: the time of the Pentagon papers, or the time that
Speaker 4: stories around Nixon came out, like took a gamble to
Speaker 4: assume that they could behave the way we want newspapers
Speaker 4: to behave and that they wouldn't be punished for it.
Speaker 4: And the reality was they weren't punished for it by
Speaker 4: the administration in a way that was devastating, But I
Speaker 4: get the fear. I just it's terrifying and depressing that
Speaker 4: they seem to be responding to it so directly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I feel like because my grandfother went
Speaker 1: to jail refusing to name names in the house and
Speaker 1: non American activities, Howard Fast and you know, was he
Speaker 1: a great guy, not especially cheated on every wife he
Speaker 1: ever had, and was you know, very selfish in a
Speaker 1: lot of ways. But you know, at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, he could not not stand up for what
Speaker 1: was right. And I think all of us are a
Speaker 1: little shaken by the idea that billionaires are such bad actors.
Speaker 1: But should we be.
Speaker 4: No, we shouldn't be. I mean, you know, I think
Speaker 4: that there's a psychological dimension to this in an obvious
Speaker 4: economic dimention. So the psychological dimension is this weird you
Speaker 4: know what Jared Linier refers to as kind of quitter poison,
Speaker 4: like this weird phenomenon of like what happens when you
Speaker 4: have these these technologies that give you this constant, adilating
Speaker 4: a feedback from attention. And you know, people like Trump
Speaker 4: and and Elon have also obviously become addicted to this
Speaker 4: and it changes them that's Lanier's point, like changes them
Speaker 4: into much worse people than they were before this has happened.
Speaker 4: So so that's that's one part of it. But the
Speaker 4: other is just you know, they recognize that there's an
Speaker 4: opportunity for enormous power when you've got a particularly authoritarian
Speaker 4: character like Trump. You know they wouldn't you know, It's
Speaker 4: not like you pick, like should I pick Harris or
Speaker 4: should I pick Trump? And the return to the billionaire
Speaker 4: would be the same, because obviously Harris's administration is going
Speaker 4: to be one much more constrained by traditional rules of
Speaker 4: law and like the necessity of behaving appropriately. I'm his
Speaker 4: is going to be like crazy crazy town, and you know,
Speaker 4: I'm terrified about what it will actually mean to have
Speaker 4: Elon Musk in the government, not to mention Rfk Junior
Speaker 4: in the government with this guy at the top. Now,
Speaker 4: the other you know possibility is it could be that
Speaker 4: these billionaires, you know, Peter Teel, he's an extremely intelligent
Speaker 4: strategic player, is actually kind of counting on Trump burning
Speaker 4: out pretty quickly, Like the twenty fifth Amendment could be
Speaker 4: invoked on day one. Then we have Jady Vance for
Speaker 4: twelve years as president because he fills out Trump's term,
Speaker 4: and then he gets to be elected twice. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's a genius play if what you're trying to do
Speaker 4: is the power of just a couple powerful people.
Speaker 1: There are a number of things I would say to
Speaker 1: address this, but you're someone who's who's done a lot
Speaker 1: of work in like sort of the norms that constrain.
Speaker 1: When Trump picked Jadaman's I thought to myself, Jadavans is
Speaker 1: going to twenty fifth amendment him right away. But I
Speaker 1: now have a new theory, which hopefully won't have to happen.
Speaker 1: But I think there's a scenario where the one piece
Speaker 1: of good news about Donald Trump is that Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is not easy to manipulate. Well, he's easy to manipulate,
Speaker 1: but he's not easy. He won't necessarily do what you want.
Speaker 1: And I've seen this historically, right Like, there are so
Speaker 1: many members of that cabinet who thought that this guy
Speaker 1: isn't so smart, and we'll just get him to do this,
Speaker 1: this and this. But you know, he's got a sort
Speaker 1: of chaos theory around him. For whatever reason, he's not loyal,
Speaker 1: And so I could see a world where they try
Speaker 1: to twenty fifth amendment him and he tries to destroy
Speaker 1: all of them.
Speaker 4: You know, the dynamic of the twenty fifth Amendment is
Speaker 4: they would say he needs to step aside, he says no,
Speaker 4: I'm fine. Then that goes to Congress, and Congress needs
Speaker 4: to vote. And if two thirds say he's got to go,
Speaker 4: he's got to go. Now, what are the Democrats going
Speaker 4: to do? Like, if you have a chance to get
Speaker 4: rid of Donald Trump, even though none of us would
Speaker 4: like Jady Vance, would you rather Jadi Vance? Jady Vance
Speaker 4: is not like he's not I mean.
Speaker 1: He's not a chaos actor, but he's a bad guy.
Speaker 4: Is it bad? Yeah? And he's connected obviously to money
Speaker 4: in a way that's really troubling. But the point is,
Speaker 4: like I would think today that Democrats would say, yeah,
Speaker 4: but all of this is premised on this decline that
Speaker 4: we're seeing continuing to a point where any fair person
Speaker 4: could look at him and say, look, you have come
Speaker 4: to a stage of your dementia that no longer is
Speaker 4: it's appropriate for you to be president. I think that's happening.
Speaker 4: I don't think you could have planned on that happening,
Speaker 4: but I think that's certainly happening. And if it happens,
Speaker 4: then the Democrats are like, yeah, you've got to go.
Speaker 4: And then who would be fearful of him? He can't
Speaker 4: run for anything again. I mean, you know, then Republicans,
Speaker 4: all those Republicans who just hate to live in his
Speaker 4: shadow and live under his control would have a chance
Speaker 4: to for you know, independent fair reasons. Hey, he's got
Speaker 4: to go. And then is jd Vance?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there are so many really terrible possible scenarios.
Speaker 1: I'm wondering if there are so many. But let's talk
Speaker 1: about this book he wrote about how to Steal an Election,
Speaker 1: written before Trump was the nominee, and sort of walk
Speaker 1: us through what's happening right now.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the scariest so we went through nine scenarios.
Speaker 4: We had six that were possible I think for our
Speaker 4: live to keep me awake. But the one I'll focus
Speaker 4: on because it's just a total unforced error, is the
Speaker 4: one related to so called fake electors. You know, so
Speaker 4: after twenty twenty, you know, four states, Georgia and Wisconsin,
Speaker 4: in Michigan and Arizona prosecuted the so called fake electors
Speaker 4: and created this standard that basically said there was completely
Speaker 4: wrong for those fake electors to meet and cast their ballots. Well,
Speaker 4: I think Fates has a sense of irony, and I'm
Speaker 4: fearful that we're going to be in a position in
Speaker 4: this election where Harris needs some fake electors because like,
Speaker 4: let's take a scenario, imagine Georgia, Harris is slightly ahead.
Speaker 4: Then a judge rules it a whole bunch of ballots
Speaker 4: have to be thrown out because the absentee ballots, whatever
Speaker 4: bullshit they say. Then the law, the new Electoral count
Speaker 4: Reform Act, forces the governor to certify six days before
Speaker 4: the electors are supposed to vote. So Camp has to certify,
Speaker 4: and he certifies who's ever ahead at that moment, and
Speaker 4: so that happens to be Trump. And so then the
Speaker 4: first question is what do the Harris electors do? Do
Speaker 4: they show up and vote and be called fake electors
Speaker 4: because you know, Georgia has prosecuted the fake electors who
Speaker 4: showed up under Trump, they're not certified. If they don't vote,
Speaker 4: then the appeal of the ballots that were thrown out stops.
Speaker 4: It becomes moot at that one. And so if they
Speaker 4: do vote, then the law doesn't have any provision assuming
Speaker 4: that you know they're successful and the appeal concludes that
Speaker 4: the ballots should be counted and so therefore Harris is
Speaker 4: the winner. Then there's no provision in the law for
Speaker 4: recertifying the winner of the election in Georgia, so that
Speaker 4: the result of this is that you would have Trump
Speaker 4: certified even though the votes came out for Harris, And
Speaker 4: then you've got to count on Congress doing the right thing,
Speaker 4: which you know, is not something one would count on
Speaker 4: in a context of a very close election where everybody's
Speaker 4: accusing everybody of what kind of fraud? I think this
Speaker 4: is the one that I'm most fearful of, and it's
Speaker 4: completely unforced error because like in prosecuting the fake electors,
Speaker 4: I think people were more focused on how do we
Speaker 4: punish the Trump electors than how do we, you know,
Speaker 4: create a safe process for picking the next president. And secondly, Congress,
Speaker 4: in amending the Electoral count Reform Act, increase the pressure
Speaker 4: by shortening the period where people got to adjudicate these
Speaker 4: questions and thereby created and incentive to kind of slow
Speaker 4: it down or to throw it from one side to
Speaker 4: the other side and exploit this kind of problem of certification.
Speaker 4: So this dynamic, I think is the one that if
Speaker 4: we're very close. We need to be prepared to respond
Speaker 4: to and they're very few people that can respond to it.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, all the Democrats have said it's
Speaker 4: totally appropriate to have been prosecuting these electors. I think
Speaker 4: I'm the only one. I've written four expert reports or
Speaker 4: three expert reports, and these various litigations about why it
Speaker 4: was wrong to be prosecuting these electors. So you know,
Speaker 4: I think I'm the only one who's taken this position.
Speaker 4: But you know, that's a pretty weak foundation to build
Speaker 4: a resistance to the obvious move people are going to make,
Speaker 4: which is you're not allowed to vote hiros electors. You
Speaker 4: have to stay home, right.
Speaker 1: No, I mean that is a really terrifying scenario that
Speaker 1: I hadn't even thought of. I appreciate you for bringing
Speaker 1: up something so incredibly crazy but also very possible. I mean,
Speaker 1: we are really through the rabbit hole here with the
Speaker 1: idea that the fake electors could be the real electors.
Speaker 1: Is something I had not thought about, but is really
Speaker 1: quite scary. Some of the poort cases, you know, Republicans
Speaker 1: have done a ton of cases. A lot of them
Speaker 1: have actually been settled for the good. Right, can you
Speaker 1: talk us through that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean they've been settled for the good, but
Speaker 4: they're causing their intended harm. Like the point of these
Speaker 4: cases is to begin to create the chaos environment, Like,
Speaker 4: you know, they want to be able to say, look,
Speaker 4: we've had to fight forty five cases or one hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty five cases to address all the problems in
Speaker 4: this election, and they're just getting going. Like the difference
Speaker 4: between this election and twenty twenty is that the infrastructure
Speaker 4: of litigation on the Republican side is much more advanced
Speaker 4: and much smarter. And that's terrifying because you know, Matt Seligman,
Speaker 4: my co author on that book and I in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty taught a course called Wargaming twenty twenty where the
Speaker 4: students like played through every single game they could play
Speaker 4: to flip the election. Of course we didn't imagine the
Speaker 4: Storm the Capitol on January sixth play, which you know
Speaker 4: was literally the dumbest play they could have played. But
Speaker 4: the point is they were so inept on all the
Speaker 4: other plays through the course of like the election in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty. They're not going to be inept this time.
Speaker 4: I think they're very strategic, and I think we've got
Speaker 4: to be. You know, I'm actually worried that our side
Speaker 4: is a little bit insufficiently strategic in recognizing exactly the
Speaker 4: kind of move they're going to make.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's really scary and for sure. I mean, the
Speaker 1: reality is, we have one party that no longer believes
Speaker 1: in American democracy, right, And I don't know how long
Speaker 1: you can go on like this in a country it's
Speaker 1: a two party system. One party wants democracy, the other
Speaker 1: is really And if you ask these Trump supporters the
Speaker 1: East will say they want to toocracy, they want that.
Speaker 1: How did this happen so quickly? And also it feels
Speaker 1: like we're in a death spiral. Make me feel better, please, Yeah.
Speaker 4: No, I can't do that. I'm not going to do that.
Speaker 4: I mean, you know, the reality is, I think there's
Speaker 4: a great statistic that Pugh has been collecting since nineteen
Speaker 4: ninety seven, asking Americans whether they're confident in Americans political judgment.
Speaker 4: So in nineteen ninety seven, two thirds of Americans said yes,
Speaker 4: we're confident in Americans political judgment, and today two thirds
Speaker 4: say they're not. And this is not a surprising change
Speaker 4: because in the period since nineteen ninety seven until today,
Speaker 4: we've grown a media that constantly shows us the crazies
Speaker 4: on the other side, like we are convinced, we are saying,
Speaker 4: and there are just crazies on this other side, and
Speaker 4: it's vice versa the same. So the very premise for
Speaker 4: democracy that we kind of believe in our our capacity,
Speaker 4: whether we're entitled to or not, our capacity to like
Speaker 4: government is being eroded by as a byproduct of a
Speaker 4: business model to sell fricking ads. Like the idea that
Speaker 4: we're throwing away democracy because where you know, these companies
Speaker 4: are trying to maximize ad revenue is astonishing to me.
Speaker 4: But that, I think is really what's happening here.
Speaker 1: But the media. And I don't want to defend the
Speaker 1: media because as a member of it, we're such a disaster,
Speaker 1: but it does seem to me like the media is
Speaker 1: almost a meaningless rounding era at this point. And technology
Speaker 1: is really.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're just using different words. By media, I mean
Speaker 4: the infrastructure of information feeding systems that we've got, so
Speaker 4: the Internet and cable and broadcasting these and newspapers and
Speaker 4: like podcasts whatever. This is all there. But the point
Speaker 4: is at the center now is a business model of
Speaker 4: engagement and the byproduct of the business model of engagement
Speaker 4: is the weakening of democracy, because the most engaging content
Speaker 4: is the content that convinces us that the other side's
Speaker 4: crazy and that we are saying, well, that dynamic is poisonous,
Speaker 4: just like you know, processed food, ultra processed food is poisonous.
Speaker 4: It's profitable but poisonous. And this is profitable but poisonous,
Speaker 4: and we don't have a simple way to imagine changing
Speaker 4: that dynamic.
Speaker 1: But the way we got here, and this is my
Speaker 1: own passion project, so maybe I'm wrong, but the way
Speaker 1: we got here is that the government refused to regulate anything.
Speaker 4: Well, it's true the government doesn't regulate anything, but in fact,
Speaker 4: I don't think the government under our First Amendment would
Speaker 4: be able to regulate anything. The old fairness doctrine was
Speaker 4: premised on the idea that you were using public airways
Speaker 4: and as a quid pro quo for using public airways,
Speaker 4: you had to provide meaningful public information service.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And that argument that was defended in a case
Speaker 4: called Red Lion was pretty shaky as it was nineteen
Speaker 4: sixty nine, it was not clear it really made sense.
Speaker 4: But the point is, once they started building their own infrastructure,
Speaker 4: cable and fiber. Then the premise of the government's power
Speaker 4: is taken away. Like in the old days, yes, it's
Speaker 4: a common resource you're using, so quid pro quo, give
Speaker 4: us good service. But today they'd say, screw your common resource.
Speaker 4: Like we build these wires, like it's our wires. We
Speaker 4: get to put across ours whatever we want. So it's
Speaker 4: like we're allowed to publish in the New York Times
Speaker 4: paper whatever we want, right, And the point is, I
Speaker 4: think the Supreme Court would agree with them. So the
Speaker 4: idea that we can just imagine a new FCC with
Speaker 4: a new newt minnow who's going to stand up and
Speaker 4: like force media to behave I just think is a fantasy.
Speaker 4: It's not possible under our constitution Right now. We've got
Speaker 4: to think of other strategies to get us to a
Speaker 4: place where people love or respect or even entertain the
Speaker 4: idea that democracy could work.
Speaker 1: Right, And what is that? Yeah, I'm sorry, it's like
Speaker 1: the meanest question. Can you answer all of our problems? Now?
Speaker 1: In the last three minutes.
Speaker 4: I've become a real fan of the citizen assembly movements
Speaker 4: that you see these sparking, you know, pretty important changes
Speaker 4: in Ireland and in France and in some parts of
Speaker 4: the United States. But you know, that's we're just at
Speaker 4: such the early early beginning of that that you know,
Speaker 4: I don't think there's any solution in the next ten years.
Speaker 4: I think there's lots to do in the next ten years,
Speaker 4: but we're not going to get to a place that
Speaker 4: feels like it felt when we felt maybe democracy was
Speaker 4: broken in manageable ways. Now it just feels broken in
Speaker 4: unmanageable ways. And I don't know how we're going to
Speaker 4: deal with this now. Obviously, this election is critical because
Speaker 4: like if we if we get this election wrong, then
Speaker 4: it spins into a kind of insanely crazy way. So
Speaker 4: if we get this one right, I think, you know,
Speaker 4: we can buy more time, but it's not going to
Speaker 4: be pretty. This next election or the next election after
Speaker 4: that is just going to be as corrupted by both
Speaker 4: the money on the one side and the structure of
Speaker 4: media on the other.
Speaker 1: Do you think that the Supreme Court sees how bad
Speaker 1: it says?
Speaker 4: I think Roberts is like the only conservative who certainly
Speaker 4: sees how bad this is. Maybe Amy Coney Barrett. I
Speaker 4: don't know her, but you know, I think you've got
Speaker 4: people like Alito, whose view is screw it, I'm going
Speaker 4: to get We're going to get whatever we can get,
Speaker 4: and our white Christian nationalism is going to be advanced
Speaker 4: in an aggressive and self conscious way. And as long
Speaker 4: as we have five votes, I mean probably have six votes,
Speaker 4: but as long as we have five votes, that's all
Speaker 4: we need.
Speaker 1: Is this the last bast of Christian nationalism? Is this
Speaker 1: this sort of death now of white supremacist stuff? Are
Speaker 1: they seeing in a country that they can no longer
Speaker 1: control and have their claw marks in it? Or am
Speaker 1: I being overly optimistic?
Speaker 4: Well? I do think that this is the election to
Speaker 4: win that fight, because you know, the next eight years
Speaker 4: will shift enough that it will not make sense to
Speaker 4: be white supremacist anymore. It's not to say that the
Speaker 4: conservative movement, you know, is dead, I mean, because you
Speaker 4: know Latino's are I think our natural conservative. They're going
Speaker 4: to move to the conservative movement, and they would move
Speaker 4: quickly if they would just give up their racism, Like,
Speaker 4: so give up the racism, then you can begin to
Speaker 4: attract a bunch of naturally conservative people. And you know,
Speaker 4: quite frankly, I'm a liberal, but I would love a
Speaker 4: politics where we had a healthy conservative like think about
Speaker 4: the old days where what we were trying, we were
Speaker 4: finding about whether John McCain should be president or not.
Speaker 4: For God's sake, Imagine how wonderful it would be if
Speaker 4: the choice was Barack Obama or John McCain, or Mitt Romney.
Speaker 1: Or Barack Obama every day.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean you can. It's not so hard to
Speaker 4: imagine getting to a place like that. But it requires
Speaker 4: a radical remake of the Republican Party, and I think
Speaker 4: ejecting the racism is going to be the first step.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, no moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon Smay.
Speaker 2: One of the things that I think shook a lot
Speaker 2: of Democrats about Petslvidia was that Republicans at these insaley
Speaker 2: high voter registration numbers in Pennsylvania. Well, it turns out
Speaker 2: there might be a reason why. What do you see
Speaker 2: it here?
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania officials are investigating fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County.
Speaker 1: Election workers identified issues with as many as twenty five
Speaker 1: hundred forms during a routine review. You're going to be
Speaker 1: shocked to know in Lancaster County and guess who's involved.
Speaker 1: You're going to be shocked.
Speaker 2: Would it be someone who's a little too online.
Speaker 1: It would be Scott Presler. You'll remember Scott Presler. He's
Speaker 1: a conservative activist with long hair who's an actor and
Speaker 1: his group Early Vote Actions seek to register Republicans in
Speaker 1: swing states like Pennsylvania. And he says that it has
Speaker 1: nothing to do with him, but we don't think so,
Speaker 1: so we'll see what happens. But not very surprising. He
Speaker 1: brought his two voter registration message to Lancaster County and
Speaker 1: it's reviewing twenty five hundred voter registration applications for possible fraud.
Speaker 2: Great stuff.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.