Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Mollie 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.
Speaker 2: And Judge Aileen Canon has shockingly shown deferential treatment to
Speaker 2: Trump and paused some deadlines in the classified documents case.
Speaker 2: We're back from vacation to have such a great show
Speaker 2: for you today. National Memo editor Joe Connison stops by
Speaker 2: to tell us about his new book, The Longest Con
Speaker 2: How grifters, Swindler's and fraud's hijacked American Conservatism. Then we'll
Speaker 2: talk to Next Jet America's Christina Sinsoon Ramirez, who will
Speaker 2: tell us how to get young people out to vote.
Speaker 2: But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
Speaker 2: the Linked Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1: Welcome back. Two weeks of vacation for me, and now
Speaker 1: we are back with my bestie. We did actually talk
Speaker 1: while we were on vacation, not together the Rick Wilson
Speaker 1: Hello friend, Hello.
Speaker 3: My dear, how are you doing on this fine, fine,
Speaker 3: fine fine summer day.
Speaker 1: So I just want to quickly say that the reason
Speaker 1: that I ended up having to take a little more
Speaker 1: time off was because I ended up having to have surgery.
Speaker 1: It was totally fine. I don't have cancer. It was
Speaker 1: just a surgery that I had to have. But I
Speaker 1: ended up having to take an extra week off because
Speaker 1: as much as I told the doctors that I was
Speaker 1: good to podcast, they suggested that perhaps I should just
Speaker 1: slow my role.
Speaker 3: You know, it was a guy who went through a
Speaker 3: minor but highly inconvenient surgery earlier this year. I feel
Speaker 3: your pain. I really do. It's it's just like you
Speaker 3: want to be back in it like the next day,
Speaker 3: and they're like, why don't you take one day off?
Speaker 3: Why don't you take off one day off? Son of
Speaker 3: a bitch.
Speaker 1: I had surgery on Monday, and I was like, so,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking i'll be back by Wednesday, and they were like,
Speaker 1: you know, like yeah.
Speaker 3: Why don't we go ahead and review that situation, young lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's been very quiet. No news people are going
Speaker 1: to be listening this Monday morning. But I think first
Speaker 1: thing we should be talking about is this huge victory
Speaker 1: in France. Fash is a got punched in the face
Speaker 1: yet again, Mollie.
Speaker 3: Here's the thing that I find the most interesting about
Speaker 3: those results. I just spoke to an overseas reporter about
Speaker 3: an hour ago and she said, well, it was expected
Speaker 3: in England that the Conservatives would be blown out, but
Speaker 3: it wasn't expected in France. And I said, one of
Speaker 3: the great tricks of the global right is to convince
Speaker 3: people that their weak bad hand is a royal flush
Speaker 3: and that they're always winning, they're always ahead, and always
Speaker 3: they're always in control of the situation, and they're really not.
Speaker 3: And so what we saw in France was I think
Speaker 3: very telling that Macron was able to manage his own
Speaker 3: internal dynamics in his party get people who were not
Speaker 3: unified to understand that the threat they were facing required
Speaker 3: them all to come together. And I don't know, maybe
Speaker 3: that's a lesson that could be applied in other nations.
Speaker 3: I'm struggling to think of one at the moment, but
Speaker 3: it did sort of wrap. It did inspire me a
Speaker 3: bit that the good guy side of the equations and
Speaker 3: arguments doesn't have to suck.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I think that also. One of the things
Speaker 1: about France is that the polls were again overstated. The
Speaker 1: fascists understated the normals, and we saw that in the
Speaker 1: UK too, like these sure, you know, they're trying to
Speaker 1: make up for the surprise of Brexit or the surprise
Speaker 1: of Trump by sort of juicing the numbers to be
Speaker 1: more pro Trump or pro Brexit. I think an important
Speaker 1: lesson here.
Speaker 3: The idea that the minority is the majority is central
Speaker 3: to an awful lot of authoritarian movements and fascist movements
Speaker 3: and right wing politics globally, and has been so for
Speaker 3: a long time. And you did see that. You saw
Speaker 3: that they try to celebrify most of their people. Now.
Speaker 3: So in France, it wasn't cranky old right winger daughter
Speaker 3: of cranky old right winger Marine Lapin. It was young
Speaker 3: sexy Jordan Bardilla. Look at it's so beautiful. I mean,
Speaker 3: some of these people who are playing this game of
Speaker 3: our people are always twelve feet tall, covered in solid gold, heroic, brilliant,
Speaker 3: perfect geniuses, and the left are incompetent blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: Well so in two races now in Europe and two
Speaker 3: of the largest Western democracies, we have seen that again.
Speaker 3: When confronted with an existential threat, the left sometimes says, oh,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, we can settle our family business a
Speaker 3: little later. Let's go kill bad guys first.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and by kill, we don't mean kill, we mean win.
Speaker 1: At the ballad box because I don't want anyone cutting.
Speaker 3: Well, ye call me crazy, but Mark Robinson down in
Speaker 3: North Carolina, it's like I want to count bodies and
Speaker 3: stuck them up and then eat them. Now I'm skipping
Speaker 3: eat in city, eat them partner.
Speaker 1: Let's not take our cues from Mark Robinson. No, cannibalism
Speaker 1: is strictly an RFPA junior thing.
Speaker 4: Go on, I have tasted the long pig Molly, and
Speaker 4: I will never be the same. Why do you think
Speaker 4: I'm opposed to all this anti vaccent Jesus exact right.
Speaker 1: He doesn't want to eat and continue. Yes, I hate
Speaker 1: to be the grown up here, but it really does
Speaker 1: feel like there is a real salient and important point
Speaker 1: that you're making here, Rick Wilson, which is that the
Speaker 1: bad guys puff themselves up and make it so the
Speaker 1: good guys think they're gonna lose.
Speaker 3: If I'm going to use a southernism, they're a lot
Speaker 3: like a nose a hognose snake in Florida. Hognose snake's
Speaker 3: perfectly harmless, all right, but when the hognose is threatened,
Speaker 3: it puffs its face up and looks like a rattlesnake.
Speaker 3: So They're always trying to make themselves puff up and
Speaker 3: look like a rattlesnake. They're always trying to make you afraid.
Speaker 3: They're always trying to make you feel like, oh my god,
Speaker 3: these guys have got so many advantages, and they do
Speaker 3: represent the majority of the and they never do. Trump
Speaker 3: Ism is a failed ideology with the general public. If
Speaker 3: we didn't have the electoral college system another subject for
Speaker 3: another day, in this country, trumpism would be utterly irrelevant.
Speaker 3: It's about like flat Earth is in terms of hard numbers.
Speaker 3: But because we have the situation we have with our
Speaker 3: electoral college system, trump ism is viable enough to be
Speaker 3: viable in enough places to roll up the numbers. But again,
Speaker 3: what you're seeing is they're like a hog nosed snake.
Speaker 3: They're trying to pretend that they're stronger than they are,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people, a lot of our friends
Speaker 3: on the left, buy into that illusion. And I spend
Speaker 3: a lot of my day, and I know you spend
Speaker 3: a lot of your day walking them back from the
Speaker 3: cliffs saying no, no, Donald Trump cannot get four fat
Speaker 3: thosand three hundred and ninety two electoral college votes. There
Speaker 3: aren't that many.
Speaker 1: But they said, there were, and I'm afraid we don't
Speaker 1: know how to.
Speaker 3: Do you know what? You all know how to do this?
Speaker 3: They look, guys, it is even about left and right.
Speaker 3: This is about going out and treating races as they
Speaker 3: should be treated. Work with the things that work for
Speaker 3: you and your campaign, do the things you have to
Speaker 3: do to win over the middle. The edge cases on
Speaker 3: either side are never as strong as you think. And
Speaker 3: that was the secret sauce in the UK this week, right.
Speaker 1: But I also think, and again you've said this to
Speaker 1: me before, actually I have two things I want to
Speaker 1: talk about. First is the thing you always say to
Speaker 1: me that has been drilled into my brain now, which
Speaker 1: is elections are a referendum on the incumbent. If you
Speaker 1: make this a referendum on Donald J. Trump, you win.
Speaker 3: That is correct, and that is what this election can
Speaker 3: and must be. There is no alternative. You have to
Speaker 3: make it about Trump. If it's about Joe Biden or
Speaker 3: any Democrat. Frankly, our chances of winning are a lot lower.
Speaker 3: If this election is a choice about Donald Trump or America,
Speaker 3: America is going to win. But without that choice on
Speaker 3: the table, it is not as easy for voters to
Speaker 3: go into the voting with and say, Okay, I know
Speaker 3: what this is. It's not how many parts per billion
Speaker 3: of carbon are going to be the atmosphere, or or
Speaker 3: is it six weeks, twelve weeks or thirty weeks for
Speaker 3: an abortion. It's none of the policy stuff. It's all
Speaker 3: about the fundamental. Do you want a country that looks
Speaker 3: like Donald Trump in the future? Do you want to
Speaker 3: see a country where he keeps his campaign promises? And
Speaker 3: if you think that country is a country you want
Speaker 3: to live in, well I can't help you. I can't
Speaker 3: change your mind about that, but I can make the
Speaker 3: argument over and over again that trump Ism is disconnected
Speaker 3: from two thirds of the population. A lot of the
Speaker 3: things he wants to do if he's elected president again are.
Speaker 1: Deeply, profoundly unpopular.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, Molly, exactly right.
Speaker 1: I'm working on a piece for my Vanity Fair column
Speaker 1: about this project twenty twenty five, and you know I've
Speaker 1: written about it. Jesse and I did a YouTube series
Speaker 1: about it which is going to drop soon, and so
Speaker 1: we've spent a lot of time talking about it in interviewing
Speaker 1: people about it. And one of the things that is
Speaker 1: so interesting about it, besides the fact that it invokes
Speaker 1: the Comstock Act to prevent the mailing of abortion pills.
Speaker 1: It defines marriage as biblical whatever is defined in the Bible.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very Christian nationalists, and it wants to
Speaker 1: regulate IVF. And what I think is so interesting about
Speaker 1: Project twenty from five? And you tell me if you
Speaker 1: think I'm wrong. A lot of times Trump, when something
Speaker 1: comes up that's bad, he'll say, damn right, I did it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I did it, Yeah, I do it again, you know.
Speaker 1: And on this he's like, I have nothing to do
Speaker 1: with this. I don't even know what this is.
Speaker 3: So I wrote a piece over the weekend called Trump's
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five lies. The media is not seeing
Speaker 3: the forest for the lies. Right. My opening line is,
Speaker 3: when Donald Trump denies something, you should always take it
Speaker 3: as a full confession of his absolute guilt. Right. I
Speaker 3: didn't sleep with Stormy Daniels porn star. No I didn't.
Speaker 3: That means he did sleep with Stormy Daniels the porn star,
Speaker 3: maybe for only forty five seconds or so, but he did, right.
Speaker 3: And this thing with Project twenty twenty five. And I
Speaker 3: have to say our old alumni website, The Daily Beast
Speaker 3: had a piece that actually got to the guts of it.
Speaker 3: Trump ripped for denying Project twenty twenty five connections despite
Speaker 3: the evidence. So I went and I wrote down just
Speaker 3: like a half a dozen of people that I could
Speaker 3: pull up from memory that I know we're involved in
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five because this thing is and Trump's
Speaker 3: people I heard about this on Friday. Trump's people were
Speaker 3: bragging to reporters and bragging to political activists on Friday. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we got the media to write the headline we wanted.
Speaker 3: We got his headline in this Trump denies connection to
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five, right, And most of the stories
Speaker 3: might have gotten to it, like on paragraph nine, but
Speaker 3: most of those stories are page A, eight, A, fifteen whatever.
Speaker 3: The New York Times. The New York Times, as of
Speaker 3: the time we're recording this, has yet to do a
Speaker 3: story about the fact that Donald Trump is denying Project
Speaker 3: twenty twenty five. But they have posted today twelve separate
Speaker 3: stories about unnamed junior aides to Joe Biden who say
Speaker 3: he's senile and must and must go right right.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's the.
Speaker 3: Problem, you know what, guys. I try not to do
Speaker 3: media bashing I really do, because we are part of
Speaker 3: that universe. I try not to. But the frenzy in
Speaker 3: Washington right now, and folks, they are talking to fucking
Speaker 3: interns at this point about what's going on. This has
Speaker 3: become a game where junior staffers are like, I'm going
Speaker 3: to make my bones now with whoever, whether it's you know,
Speaker 3: Maggie or Jonathan or or or Peter Baker or who
Speaker 3: they're all everyone there is leaking like a sieve. So
Speaker 3: they seem like the cool kid. So they seem like
Speaker 3: they're like, ah, yes, I'm the cynical and I'm twenty six,
Speaker 3: but I'm cynical, so you should hear me out. I
Speaker 3: mean the idea that the coverage ratio to on on
Speaker 3: Trump and one of the most consequential and dangerous public
Speaker 3: policy efforts in our history, versus a Washington parlor game
Speaker 3: right about should he go? Should he still? Should day?
Speaker 3: Should he go? And unfortunately for America, the idea that
Speaker 3: the coverage is going to generate more clicks and more
Speaker 3: TV and be in the in the hamster wheel, the
Speaker 3: conveyor belt of the story, and it will somehow in
Speaker 3: a certain way. I think it's wrong, but I do
Speaker 3: think what it is is it's a common error on
Speaker 3: the media. It's part a common error on the part
Speaker 3: of a lot, a lot of all, a lot of Democrats,
Speaker 3: a common error on the part of folks on the
Speaker 3: left to believe that you can ever take a minute
Speaker 3: off of the attack on Donald Trump. He's now had
Speaker 3: a solid week where he's basically gotten to play golf.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he does love golf.
Speaker 3: It's unforgivable.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm struck by in my own,
Speaker 1: you know world, is just that it doesn't a decision
Speaker 1: that's this enormous does not need to be made in
Speaker 1: four days. You know, I'm in correct. I was on
Speaker 1: television with this. He's actually a young staffer who works
Speaker 1: who worked for two people, but his bona fides were
Speaker 1: not great, and he was saying, you know, he's got
Speaker 1: to drop out. We need him out yesterday. And it's
Speaker 1: just that is not the way to deal with a
Speaker 1: big decision like that. And I certainly always feel that
Speaker 1: if it's urgent, it's probably the wrong decision.
Speaker 3: Almost always, if I may quote the nineteen ninety five
Speaker 3: documentary Gets Shorty, there's a scene where a guy says,
Speaker 3: excuse me, bro, but who the fuck are you? I
Speaker 3: get a lot of excuse me, bro, but who the
Speaker 3: fuck are you right now from a lot of people
Speaker 3: on both sides of the equation who have not been
Speaker 3: in national campaigns, who have not been operatives in big
Speaker 3: picture campaigns, who are in either policy jobs or administrative
Speaker 3: jobs inside the administration or inside the sort of DC ecosystem,
Speaker 3: and a lot of people who I think watched a
Speaker 3: little too much West Wing or watched a little too
Speaker 3: much House of Cards, and they think things work a
Speaker 3: certain way, and you can magically just say that we're
Speaker 3: going to do this trick where everyone will agree that
Speaker 3: it's the right trick to do, and everyone will understand
Speaker 3: why we're doing it, and it will work out perfectly, and
Speaker 3: know one will leak it, fuck it up, make a mistake,
Speaker 3: do something illegal, do something stupid, do something politically fatal.
Speaker 3: All those things are actually the more likely outcome of
Speaker 3: these things.
Speaker 1: I actually wrote to Margaret Sullivan about this, and she said,
Speaker 1: creating the news is not the job of good journalism,
Speaker 1: which is to cover reality and the truth perfectly put right,
Speaker 1: Creating the news is not the job of good journalism,
Speaker 1: which is to cover the reality and the truth, and
Speaker 1: I think that that is you know, we're trying. I mean,
Speaker 1: you and I are on the opinion side, so it's
Speaker 1: a bit different. But like you know, we are trying
Speaker 1: as best we can to reflect what we see happening
Speaker 1: and not in fact, to create what we think should happen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've said this from the beginning. I know
Speaker 3: for a fact what my job and role and mission is.
Speaker 3: It is to beat the fuck out of Donald Trump.
Speaker 3: It is to beat him and defeat him. My mission
Speaker 3: is not to determine how the democratic internal dynamics work out,
Speaker 3: because you know what, if it's Joe Biden, or if
Speaker 3: it's Kamala Harris, or if it's any Rando pulled off
Speaker 3: the fucking street, you know we're still going to have
Speaker 3: to do as people in the pro democracy movement, it's
Speaker 3: to go after Donald Trump every day. You can't give
Speaker 3: him a day. There's only less than one hundred and
Speaker 3: twenty days left to go in this race. You can't
Speaker 3: give him a day off. And we've given him now
Speaker 3: a week because of a very self indulgent culture in
Speaker 3: Washington politics and the media. And this isn't all Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: With this Shakespearean drama of Joe Biden. It's a lot
Speaker 3: of it, and let's be really, really, really really honest
Speaker 3: with ourselves. Is the desire of many, many people for novelty,
Speaker 3: change and spectacle.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I also think the media wants to stay relevant,
Speaker 1: and we've not had the best time of it latelight.
Speaker 3: No, I think that's true, and I think there I
Speaker 3: think there are people at a certain major institution who've
Speaker 3: taken their vendetta because they didn't get a private interview
Speaker 3: with Joe Biden to a level that is now so obvious.
Speaker 3: When I see a lot of magas retweeting stories from
Speaker 3: that outlet, I wonder if anybody's figuring it out over there, like, oh, well, yes,
Speaker 3: you know, when you write something for gourmet magazine, you
Speaker 3: don't want it retweeted by Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay, this is
Speaker 3: not where you want to be in the ecosystem. It's like,
Speaker 3: it's not the good housekeeping seal of approval of your journalism.
Speaker 3: When it's become a part of Trump World's ongoing propaganda efforts.
Speaker 3: It is remarkable to me. And again, that source that
Speaker 3: got the story back to me said, yeah, you know
Speaker 3: what it was Chris Losovita and Tony Fabrizio and Susie
Speaker 3: who went out and they polled Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 3: And that's why Trump dropped it. And that's why Trump
Speaker 3: made the Platform Committee take out the abortion ban and
Speaker 3: the RNC Platform Committee. And by the way, fun fact, MO,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know this, but Russ Vaught.
Speaker 1: Yes, Russ Vaught, I'm writing about him today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the craziest coincidence of all. But after he
Speaker 3: finished writing Project twenty twenty five, he became the head
Speaker 3: of the Republican Party's Platform Committee.
Speaker 1: Sure, just what's a total coincidence? It's a complete coincidence,
Speaker 1: all right, Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 3: Imagine meeting you here. Thank you.
Speaker 1: Mollie Spring is here, and I bet you are trying
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Speaker 1: all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news
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Speaker 2: Joe Connison is the editor of the National Memo and
Speaker 2: author of the Longest con How Gripters, Swindlers and Frauds
Speaker 2: hijacked American conservatism.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Joe.
Speaker 5: It's great to be with you, Mollie.
Speaker 1: The Longest Con is the story of how explain to
Speaker 1: us what it is? Because I think I know, but
Speaker 1: I want you to explain it to our listener.
Speaker 6: So the Longest Con is an idea that actually my
Speaker 6: wife Elizabeth had after reading an article by historian Rick Pearlstein.
Speaker 1: I'm sure you know Rick, Yes, who's a guest of
Speaker 1: the Pod.
Speaker 6: Brilliant guy who wrote an article for a little magazine
Speaker 6: called The Baffler in twenty twelve called The Long Con.
Speaker 6: And on the surface, it was kind of an examination
Speaker 6: of the Romney campaign, which was full of dishonest garbage.
Speaker 6: I mean, He's Romney has changed his image quite a
Speaker 6: bit since then, but back in that campaign it was
Speaker 6: pretty bad. Anyway, Rick, in that article sort of digressed
Speaker 6: into the huge panoply of scams and cons and just
Speaker 6: phony campaigns that he fell into because he had subscribed
Speaker 6: to a bunch of conservative publications and so these were
Speaker 6: get rich quick schemes and miracle cures for cancer and
Speaker 6: buy gold at an inflated price, all of these things.
Speaker 1: So the things that Alex Jones sells.
Speaker 6: Yes, right him of the big supplements, all of that
Speaker 6: stuff that represents millions of dollars in profits to the right.
Speaker 6: I looked at that and she said, you know what,
Speaker 6: there's a lot more to this, and she was right.
Speaker 6: So I spent a few years writing a book about
Speaker 6: that con and I of course give tribute to Rick
Speaker 6: in the introduction. But what Rick observed back then, which
Speaker 6: I think is really true, is that it's no longer possible,
Speaker 6: and it hasn't been for a long time, to separate
Speaker 6: the con the grift, from the conservative message and the
Speaker 6: conservative movement at this point. And this is the reason
Speaker 6: that it appealed to me so much as a book project,
Speaker 6: is that it really explains a lot about how we
Speaker 6: have Trump at the head of all of it.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 6: Trump is the grifter, our excellence. He's the king of
Speaker 6: the convent. That is why he is so acceptable to
Speaker 6: them leading a movement. You know, back when he first
Speaker 6: ran for president in twenty fifteen, when he was running
Speaker 6: National Review did a series of expose as about Trump University,
Speaker 6: which is an enormous scam. He was forced to cough
Speaker 6: up a lot of money to pay people back.
Speaker 5: Because he had ripped them off so badly.
Speaker 6: Now the National Review now thinks it's fine to have
Speaker 6: this scrift as president. And why well, they feel they
Speaker 6: have no choice whatever it is. But in fact their
Speaker 6: whole movement is infected with us, and once in a
Speaker 6: while you'll see them reflect on that in conservative magazines
Speaker 6: or blog posts, substacks all of that. There are a
Speaker 6: few of them, Eric Erickson, you know, I'm sure your
Speaker 6: listeners have heard of Jim Garritty at National mL bemoan.
Speaker 6: The fact that there are so many conservatives ripping off
Speaker 6: other conservatives, usually old people who can be duped if
Speaker 6: they're say things. I mean, the whole thing is so appalling. Anyway,
Speaker 6: I decided to go back and try to figure out
Speaker 6: how this all began, How the sort of moral fiber
Speaker 6: of conservatism began to disappear, Because in olden times, molly
Speaker 6: Conservatism was a movement of moral probity, you know, or
Speaker 6: at least it was supposed to be. It was supposed
Speaker 6: to believe and civic virtue and morality. And when you
Speaker 6: look at the scams and cons that they're pulling now constantly,
Speaker 6: you know that's all gone. So how did that happen?
Speaker 6: Like when did that happen? When did that begin? And
Speaker 6: how did it develop? And so I go through a
Speaker 6: lot of that, and you know, as a kind of
Speaker 6: conceit really I start the book with Roy Cohne, who was,
Speaker 6: as you know, Trump's mentor and lawyer and role model.
Speaker 6: And the first chapter is called the role Model and
Speaker 6: it's about Roy Cohen, and it tells a lot about Roy,
Speaker 6: who I knew personally a bit.
Speaker 1: Oh you did, what did you think of Roy Cohen?
Speaker 5: He was a very bad man.
Speaker 1: No, I know what Roy Cohen? I mean, the Jongs
Speaker 1: have hated Roy Cohen, and the fast have hated ronco
Speaker 1: Generations like John pat Hornz. This is a generational Yes,
Speaker 1: my family as well. But how did you know him?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 6: I was years ago a reporter at the Village Voice,
Speaker 6: and at that time Roy was quite powerful in New
Speaker 6: York politics. He controlled a wing of the Democratic Party,
Speaker 6: a small wing, but a wing of the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: in New York City, specifically Manhattan, and he used it
Speaker 6: to gain influence from judges and from city hall and elsewhere.
Speaker 6: His dad had been a judge in the Bronx and
Speaker 6: a Democratic power broker back in the days of FDR
Speaker 6: so Roy had sort of inherited some connections and power,
Speaker 6: and he sort of leveraged both parties to his advantage
Speaker 6: by then, and he found ways to suck money out
Speaker 6: of the system that were just enormous scams. But I
Speaker 6: dated even back to when he was working for Senator McCarthy,
Speaker 6: and he and a man named David Shine, who he
Speaker 6: put on the staff of McCarthy's Red Hunting Committee, took
Speaker 6: a junket to Europe, supposedly to find subversive books in
Speaker 6: United States Information Service libraries, but really it was just
Speaker 6: a junket for these two young men to romp around
Speaker 6: Europe together in fancy hotels. A grift, a scam, And
Speaker 6: so I begin the book with that because I think
Speaker 6: it's not just a funny story, but it tells something
Speaker 6: about the beginnings of a decline in morality and probity
Speaker 6: and integrity and the right.
Speaker 1: I've read a bunch of books that have made different
Speaker 1: cases about how the right God here and your thesis
Speaker 1: is basically the right God here through scams.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean it's not just scams, it's how can
Speaker 6: you work a scam? And one of the ways that
Speaker 6: they learned to work the scam was through exciting people's hatred.
Speaker 6: So that probably fits into some of the other theories
Speaker 6: about the development of the right that you've been reading
Speaker 6: about that they discovered, as Roger Stone said, that hate
Speaker 6: is as a more powerful motivator than love in politics.
Speaker 6: That's what they really believe that, and there's some evidence
Speaker 6: that it's true, at least for some people. And if
Speaker 6: you can prey on people's hate and paranoia, you can
Speaker 6: often dupe them into sending you money. And this is
Speaker 6: what was discovered way back when by a man named
Speaker 6: Richard Vigeri, who was the king of direct mail back
Speaker 6: in the pre internet era. He was a young fundraiser
Speaker 6: for right wing causes, and he realized that after the
Speaker 6: Goldwater campaign, there was now a list.
Speaker 3: There was a.
Speaker 6: List of millions of people who had donated money to
Speaker 6: the Goldwater campaign, and this list was in the hands
Speaker 6: of the Clerk of the House, that's how things worked
Speaker 6: in those days. This was in nineteen sixty four sixty five,
Speaker 6: and he sent some women, of course, to go into
Speaker 6: the capitol and copy down the names from that list,
Speaker 6: and then they put them on magnetic tape and suddenly, bingo,
Speaker 6: you had a list of people who were very right wing,
Speaker 6: who believed all kinds of crazy stuff that you could
Speaker 6: tell him, and who were I mean, Goldwater only won
Speaker 6: the states of the Confederacy, right. A few states that
Speaker 6: he where he prevailed were Confederate states. So there was
Speaker 6: always a racial element to this. And by preying on
Speaker 6: people's paranoia and their fear of communism, their fear of minorities,
Speaker 6: their fear of all kinds of things, you could get
Speaker 6: them to send money if you knew how to write
Speaker 6: a direct mail piece that would excite their fears and
Speaker 6: they're and their hatreds. Then the next level of the
Speaker 6: scam is that you solicit money from people and then
Speaker 6: you spend very little of the money on the cause
Speaker 6: or campaign that you're telling them that they're collecting it for,
Speaker 6: and most of it goes to in Vigori's case, you know,
Speaker 6: prospecting for new suckers. In other cases it goes to
Speaker 6: quote unquote overhead. But this is the this is the
Speaker 6: root of the scam, and then it branches out into
Speaker 6: many different forms.
Speaker 1: So give us some of those forms.
Speaker 6: Well, so some of the forms are Jerry Folwell was
Speaker 6: a good example. This is how you know you saw
Speaker 6: the beginning of the whole Fallwell Empire and Liberty University.
Speaker 6: He got a hold of an email list of evangelical
Speaker 6: ministers by telling the guy who had the list and
Speaker 6: an old minister who didn't really believe that politics and
Speaker 6: religion belong together, that he was going to use it
Speaker 6: to create some sort of the Notre Dame of evangelical life,
Speaker 6: and what he was really going to do with it
Speaker 6: was start them moral majority and do an email prospect
Speaker 6: because he believed this was a way to make a
Speaker 6: lot of money. They've done this in many different ways.
Speaker 6: There are all kinds of things that they sell to
Speaker 6: people now, especially on the internet, but they know they
Speaker 6: sell them over priced gold because they convince people that
Speaker 6: we're about to go into a depression and it doesn't
Speaker 6: matter what's really happening in the economy if you capture
Speaker 6: people's attention. Hannity has done this a lot. I mean
Speaker 6: a lot of Fox personalities have gotten involved in this.
Speaker 6: Or you sell them penny stocks because you believe you
Speaker 6: can make them believe that this is the next big thing,
Speaker 6: and you believe them because you share their ideology, so
Speaker 6: you tend to believe what they tell you. And they're
Speaker 6: on TV or they're on the radio or both, and
Speaker 6: you know you trust them because they're conservatives. Is a
Speaker 6: merciless things and they've fleeced a lot of people money. Trump,
Speaker 6: of course, is the is you know, the ultimate version
Speaker 6: of this but far from the original.
Speaker 1: Yes, but he's the culmination of it.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us, as someone who worked at
Speaker 1: the Village Boys around the time Trump was learning all
Speaker 1: these things from Roy Cohen, if you could sort of
Speaker 1: sum up what you think. I mean, I hate to
Speaker 1: even ask this question because I'm so bored with Trump,
Speaker 1: but since he could theoretically be our next president, I
Speaker 1: feel like we have to talk about him. I mean,
Speaker 1: can you explain to us what you think this sort
Speaker 1: of ethos is because you.
Speaker 6: Knew him, then it's the anti ethos. I mean, Roy
Speaker 6: was a person who not only found ways corrupt ways
Speaker 6: to steal money from the city treasury, you know, even
Speaker 6: been like really petty stuff like cash from the parking
Speaker 6: violations bureau. That he had the sort of mafia types
Speaker 6: funneling thim. You know, he was a mob lawyer too,
Speaker 6: so the sort of aura of the mob around Trump
Speaker 6: is not accidental. Roy was the lawyer for real mobsters,
Speaker 6: and they used to use his office for meetings because
Speaker 6: they thought they would not be surveilled by the FBI.
Speaker 3: There.
Speaker 6: This was the world that Trump, you know, was sort
Speaker 6: of initiated into and felt, you know, was exciting for him.
Speaker 6: And you know what he learned from Roy was you
Speaker 6: don't pay taxes, You don't pay the people who work
Speaker 6: for you unless you have to. You go into litigation
Speaker 6: with the attitude that you can just draw it out
Speaker 6: and torture people and make them leave you alone. And
Speaker 6: it's all about exercising power. It has very little to
Speaker 6: do with ideology. It's just it's hedonism and power and
Speaker 6: accumulating money. And I think there's a part of it
Speaker 6: where they also like being famous. I mean, Roy loved
Speaker 6: to be in the tabloids, so did Trump. And Roy
Speaker 6: put Trump in the tabloids and on the media. And
Speaker 6: that's one of the reasons why, you know, he loved
Speaker 6: Roy Cone up until the point where he didn't. When
Speaker 6: Roy was dying of AIDS, Trump abandoned him sort of notoriously.
Speaker 1: Because he was gay or because he needed him.
Speaker 6: Because he didn't want to be associated with it. There
Speaker 6: was a stigma attached, and he just was like, I
Speaker 6: don't need this. And also at the time Roy was
Speaker 6: under was about to have his law license taken away.
Speaker 1: But Roy was like often about to have his long
Speaker 1: life it's taken away.
Speaker 6: It finally happened. I mean, it happened just before he died.
Speaker 5: In fact.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but he was able to punt it many times.
Speaker 6: He did because you see, Molly, this is the reason
Speaker 6: I talk about Roy in this first chapter, aside from
Speaker 6: the connection with Trump, is that Roy was tolerated and
Speaker 6: celebrated by the right, even though they all knew what
Speaker 6: a dirty scumbag he was. Okay, they didn't care, but
Speaker 6: people like Bill Buckley and Bill Sapphire and Abe Rosenthal
Speaker 6: at the times, and lots and lots of respectable people
Speaker 6: celebrated Rey publicly. They had big events where they would
Speaker 6: toast him and you know, celebrate him and be happy
Speaker 6: that he had gotten away with everything he'd gotten away
Speaker 6: with and expressed that their friendship and.
Speaker 5: Approval of him.
Speaker 6: And on some level, what that means is it's okay
Speaker 6: to be like him, It's okay to do the things
Speaker 6: he does because there's no social sanction attached to it, right,
Speaker 6: it doesn't matter. You can swindle your clients, you can steal,
Speaker 6: you can lie the way he did so much when
Speaker 6: he was working for McCarthy. It just doesn't matter. Because
Speaker 6: he's powerful, he has connections in the media.
Speaker 5: You know, he was very.
Speaker 6: Close to sign new House was my boss when I
Speaker 6: worked at Conde Nast, super powerful, you know, publishing mogul,
Speaker 6: and he had many powerful friends like that, and they
Speaker 6: approved of, you know, his absolutely shocking lack of morality
Speaker 6: and integrity. And I think Trump looked at that and said, gee,
Speaker 6: I could be like that. I'm not going to be
Speaker 6: punished for anything.
Speaker 1: So you think New York in the eighties made Trump worse?
Speaker 6: Oh, undoubtedly. I mean I think the connection with Roy
Speaker 6: Cone made Trump war was I would say, you know,
Speaker 6: I think Trump's dad. If you talk to Mary Trumps,
Speaker 6: I'm sure you have, you would know that Fred Trump
Speaker 6: was not exactly you know, a paragon of integrity either
Speaker 6: or decency.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So you know, there's a lot that happened to Trump's
Speaker 6: character before he met Roy, but I think Roy took
Speaker 6: him in an even darker direction. It's not an original
Speaker 6: observation by me. I just happened to know them because
Speaker 6: I was covering them, you know, in the eighties, I
Speaker 6: was writing about them. My partner at the Village Voice,
Speaker 6: my writing partner, Wayne Barrett, is the og of Trump Lore.
Speaker 1: So right, right, right right.
Speaker 6: I was around when all that was happening, and I
Speaker 6: saw it up close. I've known Trump a long time.
Speaker 1: What do you think the way to defeat Trump is?
Speaker 6: I tend to agree with our mutual friend George Conway, who.
Speaker 1: Wrote the introduction to this book, who.
Speaker 6: Wrote the forward to my book. Yes, and it's very good.
Speaker 6: I'm happy to say he loves the book. Even though
Speaker 6: we were once swords drawn enemies back in the day.
Speaker 6: Now we're friends, which is great.
Speaker 1: I mean, I love George and we're friends and we
Speaker 1: talk all the time. But the road to how he
Speaker 1: got here as lined with a lot of the people
Speaker 1: who are now the great friends of democracy, contractually obligated
Speaker 1: by being Howard fast granddaughter to say things like that.
Speaker 1: But yes, continue on.
Speaker 5: Yes, well, I understand that. I get that.
Speaker 6: When I was at The New York Observer, I was
Speaker 6: then executive editor, I also wrote a column every week,
Speaker 6: and so I did reporting, and I was reporting on
Speaker 6: Clinton and the Paula Jones case and all of that,
Speaker 6: And one of the things that I discovered was that
Speaker 6: there was a bunch of lawyers, right wing lawyers, who
Speaker 6: were secretly advising Paula Jones in her lawsuit against Clinton
Speaker 6: and trying to make sure that the lawsuit didn't get
Speaker 6: settled for political reasons. So one of them was Anne Caulter,
Speaker 6: another was a guy named Paul Rosenswick who's gotten.
Speaker 5: To be better known lately.
Speaker 6: And one of them at the leadership of that group
Speaker 6: was George Conway. The third who was then a partner
Speaker 6: at Waktel Lipton, a big democratic law firm in New York.
Speaker 1: Making millions of dollars.
Speaker 6: Yes, yes, as a tobacco lawyer, which isn't the rightest episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, some of that money he did donate to Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: so credit where credit is due.
Speaker 6: He did actually a lot. He's a different guy now
Speaker 6: in my opinion. But anyway, I exposed what they were
Speaker 6: doing in The Observer, which led to further exposure in
Speaker 6: the New York Times and got George in a fair
Speaker 6: amount of trouble. And I was trying to track him down,
Speaker 6: and I put him on the front page of the
Speaker 6: Observer and his law partners at Walktel did not like
Speaker 6: this at all.
Speaker 1: No, now, a lot of liberals at walked out.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he wouldn't really talk to me. I mean he
Speaker 6: called me once back when I was trying to track
Speaker 6: him down. But anyway, so flash forward many years and
Speaker 6: he and I are sort of following each other on Twitter.
Speaker 6: I don't know exactly why, except I thought he was
Speaker 6: really funny and I liked what he was saying. I
Speaker 6: don't know why he followed me. And it comes time
Speaker 6: my book is finished, you know, the draft is done,
Speaker 6: and again my wife says to me, you should ask
Speaker 6: Conway to write the forward. And I said, Conway, Conway
Speaker 6: hates me. Anyway, I got in touch with him and
Speaker 6: he came in and we had a drink and we
Speaker 6: got along very well, talked about old times, and I said, George,
Speaker 6: I need your advice. I need a never Trump Republican
Speaker 6: to write the forward to this book, which is about
Speaker 6: the right. And he looked at me, he's right in
Speaker 6: the eye, and he said, do you want me to
Speaker 6: do it?
Speaker 1: I was like, well, yes, Joe, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining us. This is great.
Speaker 5: Oh it's really a pleasure. Molly.
Speaker 6: I admire you greatly and really appreciate you.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 2: Christina Sinson Ramirez is the president of next Gen America.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Christina, I so tell us what
Speaker 1: do you think the Biden campaign should be doing.
Speaker 7: This is the first election cycle in our ten year
Speaker 7: track record of reaching out and connecting with millions of
Speaker 7: young voters that we fully see from the presidency down
Speaker 7: and understanding of just how important young voters are. And
Speaker 7: there is a lot that the Biden administration has done
Speaker 7: that they have delivered for young voters, but there's a disconnect.
Speaker 1: A lot of young ters don't know a lot of that.
Speaker 7: So this is the administration that's actually gotten the most
Speaker 7: progressive policy accomplished and move forward in my lifetime, including
Speaker 7: the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest investment by any
Speaker 7: country on the planet to tackle the climate crisis, historic
Speaker 7: gun safety legislation, massive student debt cancelation. These gains were
Speaker 7: all fought in one by young people also turning out
Speaker 7: in record numbers, and so I think the administration needs
Speaker 7: to be telling that story. And then we're also seeing
Speaker 7: a lot of young people not actually know foolly who
Speaker 7: Donald Trump is because some of them were just ten
Speaker 7: years old, right, rates or just to give people a
Speaker 7: frame of reference. You know, if you are eighteen years
Speaker 7: old now or will be eighteen in November, you were
Speaker 7: ten years old when Donald Trump was first elected, and
Speaker 7: so if you had good parents, they probably shielded you
Speaker 7: from the sounds of crying babies being ripped from their mothers,
Speaker 7: from the site of heather Hire being run over by
Speaker 7: white supremacists, and then are present and calling them very
Speaker 7: fine people on both sides, and then lastly saying that
Speaker 7: he liked to grab women by the pussy.
Speaker 1: Those are all things you may not know.
Speaker 7: And so there's a lot of education I think that
Speaker 7: the Biden administration and allies need to be doing to
Speaker 7: educate young people about that track record. They many don't
Speaker 7: know about.
Speaker 1: So what does that look like? I mean, how do
Speaker 1: you reach young voters?
Speaker 7: So for us at next time, this is you know,
Speaker 7: young voters gen Z plus millennials. Right, we go up
Speaker 7: to eighteen to thirty five, some people just eighteen to
Speaker 7: twenty nine. This is the largest generational voting block, and
Speaker 7: so most of them get their news from social media.
Speaker 7: It's really for us, we're going to We're already on
Speaker 7: campuses across eight states, key battleground states, but we're going
Speaker 7: to be on one hundred and twelve college and community
Speaker 7: college campuses. We're already having conversations with young people in person,
Speaker 7: and then we're working with hundreds of influencers to reach
Speaker 7: and engage young people as authentic messengers because it's not
Speaker 7: all up to the candidate or the campaign. And a
Speaker 7: lot of young people, even though they overwhelmingly vote for
Speaker 7: Democrats and progressives, also see themselves as independents and so
Speaker 7: for them, what can be often more moving is a
Speaker 7: message form one of their peers. So those college campuses
Speaker 7: that we're on, we're also working with first time ever
Speaker 7: college athletes that can now use their likeness and image
Speaker 7: from the school's soccer star or football quarterback.
Speaker 1: You name it.
Speaker 7: We're trying to engage those folks to also reach people
Speaker 7: on their platforms.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is a big question. Like we've seen some
Speaker 1: reporting where there's been you know, Biden is not in
Speaker 1: good shape with the young people, and they're mad at
Speaker 1: him about not canceling student debt the way they wanted
Speaker 1: it canceled, or they're mad at him because of Gaza,
Speaker 1: or they're mad at him because of COVID. Do you
Speaker 1: actually think that's true or do you think it's more
Speaker 1: complicated than that.
Speaker 7: I think it's a little more complicated than that. I
Speaker 7: think overwhelmingly, if you look at twenty two and where
Speaker 7: we were around this time, Biden was also underwater with
Speaker 7: young voters. He was not young voters candidate of choice.
Speaker 7: I like to say it was the other older white guy,
Speaker 7: Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite old white guys. Yes, and he
Speaker 1: came on this podcast, and I think it was the
Speaker 1: happiest he's ever been in an interview. Well that must
Speaker 1: be you, Molly, that said him at ease. No, it's
Speaker 1: because my grandfather was a famous communist who he like
Speaker 1: loved anyway, Sorry, go on, Yes.
Speaker 7: But he was very popular with young people, right. Bernie
Speaker 7: Sanders and the Biden administration understood that they were going
Speaker 7: to have to appease young voters, and they did right.
Speaker 7: They promised to take action on climate change, on student debt,
Speaker 7: on big issues that young people cared about. And we've
Speaker 7: seen his numbers rise with young people. But we're at
Speaker 7: a place again where young people are not super excited
Speaker 7: about their choices. However, I think as we get closer
Speaker 7: to the election, and we spend the time and money
Speaker 7: educating and reaching young people about what's at stake this election. Overwhelmingly,
Speaker 7: I think poles are indicators of people's sentiments. Don't necessarily
Speaker 7: think especially holes with young voters have aligned the last
Speaker 7: few elections on where their behavior is. So at next Gen,
Speaker 7: we understand polling as the way we do it and
Speaker 7: the way we look at it in our own polling
Speaker 7: is where are there opportunities and challenges that we have
Speaker 7: to address versus what does this say about what's going
Speaker 7: to happen on election day? Because you read the headlines
Speaker 7: from the New York Times, Washington Post, you name it.
Speaker 7: Over the last few election cycles, each election cycle twenty eighteen,
Speaker 7: twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, it's all doom and gloom
Speaker 7: about how young voters aren't excited about the candidates that
Speaker 7: they're likely to not turn out election happens. We've had
Speaker 7: the three highest youth voter turnouts the last three election cycles,
Speaker 7: and overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Speaker 1: No, I mean for sure, and obviously despite his being
Speaker 1: perhaps I'm sexy, Joe Biden has really delivered a lot
Speaker 1: of wins for progressives exactly.
Speaker 7: I think sometimes in progressive spaces, which is usually when
Speaker 7: most young people, lies follows as far as the policies
Speaker 7: that they care about in the world that they want
Speaker 7: to see created in the government they want to see,
Speaker 7: we sometimes don't always recognize when we're actually winning. And
Speaker 7: I think, Molly, you and I are old enough to
Speaker 7: remember the Democratic Party of the nineties that was on
Speaker 7: the wrong side.
Speaker 1: I would say, of gay rights, many many progressives issues.
Speaker 7: Yes, go on, gay rights, tax reform, criminal justice. They
Speaker 7: were all on the wrong side of those issues. And
Speaker 7: now fast forward, we have from Biden all the way
Speaker 7: up and down right people saying that we needed to
Speaker 7: tax the rich their fair share, that billionaires shouldn't pay
Speaker 7: less percentage of taxes than hardworking, working class Americans. That
Speaker 7: we have fully come to a place on many issues
Speaker 7: where the Democratic Party of the nineties is no longer
Speaker 7: the party of today. And so I think we need
Speaker 7: to recognize, like, if you like that we've gotten student
Speaker 7: debt cancelation, if you like that we got climate legislation,
Speaker 7: but you were upset about not getting everything else you
Speaker 7: want at home, means be upset, but make a political
Speaker 7: calculation and choice about which elected official, you are more
Speaker 7: likely to move. Keep organizing. Voting isn't the only way
Speaker 7: we make change. It's the most basic thing we must do.
Speaker 7: It's not the only thing we should do.
Speaker 1: The thing I've been struck by with Biden world is
Speaker 1: that the admin they have really been responsive to a
Speaker 1: lot of wish list items for Democrats.
Speaker 7: One hundred percent. I think about where we are on
Speaker 7: student debt cancelation. You know, he had promised that he
Speaker 7: was going to come in and do some student debt cancelation.
Speaker 7: He tried to do ten thousand up to twenty thousand dollars,
Speaker 7: depending on what kind of loan and income bracket people
Speaker 7: were in. And then we've of course had the right
Speaker 7: wing try and stop that with the right wing Supreme Court,
Speaker 7: and they were successful. But the Biden administration didn't give up.
Speaker 7: They kept figuring out ways to cancel student debt. They've
Speaker 7: now canceled billions of dollars in student debt for nearly
Speaker 7: five million Americans. I think of my good friend Brandon,
Speaker 7: who did public interest law for the last ten years,
Speaker 7: and he woke up and saw that his nearly two
Speaker 7: hundred thousand dollars in student debt had been canceled by
Speaker 7: the Biden administration is life changing. And if we look
Speaker 7: at folks I know that have gotten solar panels or
Speaker 7: electric cars that they were able to afford, middle class
Speaker 7: folks that thought they could never afford that because of
Speaker 7: the Inflation Reduction Act. Those are all things that were
Speaker 7: one because the Biden administration was listening to and responding
Speaker 7: to the demands and desires of young people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when you talk to young people and you sort
Speaker 1: of explain to them some of the stuff that maybe
Speaker 1: they missed, do they want to buy what you're selling? Yeah?
Speaker 7: I think young people are you know, they're savvy consumers
Speaker 7: on what they consume generally and then what they get behind.
Speaker 7: And I think politics is no different for young people.
Speaker 7: But I think young people what we've seen the last
Speaker 7: few elections, on what we saw in twenty twenty is
Speaker 7: young people a lot of them said, I'm voting for Biden.
Speaker 7: He wasn't necessarily my choice in the field of twenty
Speaker 7: close candidates. But I agree with him more on where
Speaker 7: he stands on women's rights and abortion. I agree with
Speaker 7: him more about where he stands on the climate crisis.
Speaker 7: I agree with him more about how he wants to
Speaker 7: hold gun companies accountable for our gun violence epidemic, and
Speaker 7: you can do that on many many issues. It's hard
Speaker 7: when you look at what young people care about. There
Speaker 7: is see much of any alignment whatsoever with Donald Trump
Speaker 7: and the Republican Party for the majority of young people.
Speaker 7: And I think young people, as we get closer to
Speaker 7: the election and continue making that argument and trying to
Speaker 7: reach them by the millions, they are savvy and will
Speaker 7: make the right political calculation. But we also need to
Speaker 7: understand that demographics are not destiny. I think Democrats make
Speaker 7: that mistake a lot. They are simply a core ingredient
Speaker 7: in the recipe for change. But we've got to organize,
Speaker 7: reach out to and speak to that generation's pain and
Speaker 7: power that they have.
Speaker 1: If you're looking at young voters as a voting base,
Speaker 1: what states are you the most optimistic about? You know,
Speaker 1: young people have turned out in record numbers.
Speaker 7: Young people are always generally have been the least likely
Speaker 7: to be invested in are the most likely to show
Speaker 7: up just on election day, and so we run blind.
Speaker 7: Oftentimes we try and as many people as we can.
Speaker 7: I think there are places where we feel generally more
Speaker 7: hopeful Wisconsin looks good. Arizona looks you know, challenging in
Speaker 7: its own ways. But also we have a great senatorial
Speaker 7: candidate and Rubing Diego that speaks to young people in Latinos,
Speaker 7: which is really important for that state's demographics. And then
Speaker 7: in Pennsylvania. In Michigan are two other states. Michigan is
Speaker 7: a state I think we need to make sure we
Speaker 7: do the hard work and outreach for I think that
Speaker 7: state is going to be very, very close, and I
Speaker 7: think a lot of it could come down to young
Speaker 7: people and making sure we spent the time and effort
Speaker 7: and energy fully trying to reach them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean that is for sure. You know
Speaker 1: a place where the war in the Middle East is
Speaker 1: where voters are furious. Talk to me about Nevada. Nevada
Speaker 1: is like one of those states where supposely this seni
Speaker 1: candidate there, Jackie Rosen, is actually a little bit better
Speaker 1: senate candidate than the last cycle, better at politics. I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a down ballid effect? And talk to me
Speaker 1: about Nevada.
Speaker 7: You know, Nevada is one of the states that I
Speaker 7: think we are concerned about right now. Again, polling is
Speaker 7: not like an indicator of the election or the actual
Speaker 7: outcome as an indicator of people's sentiments at that time.
Speaker 7: But polling does show that we have work to do
Speaker 7: across the board, including with young people. That I think
Speaker 7: it's a population that has been hit hard by different
Speaker 7: elements of recovering from COVID, that we see a really
Speaker 7: strong need to be spoken to about the economic pain
Speaker 7: that a lot of Americans are in. And I think
Speaker 7: that what we need to lean on is how Democrats
Speaker 7: and progressives really do have a different vision for the
Speaker 7: future economically. Most Americans do agree that, especially young people,
Speaker 7: that we should be taxing the rich their fair share,
Speaker 7: that we shouldn't just have a minimum wage, but a
Speaker 7: living wage, that women should be paid for equal work,
Speaker 7: that people should be able to unionize right that young
Speaker 7: people eighty eight percent of them support labor unions. There
Speaker 7: is only one party and one candidate at the top
Speaker 7: of the ticket that support those four issues, and that
Speaker 7: is Joe Biden and Democrats. And what we saw from
Speaker 7: Trump was a real vision for the top one percent
Speaker 7: enacted from tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans to
Speaker 7: trying to squash the power of labor unions. And that
Speaker 7: will only if you thought Trump twenty sixteen was bad.
Speaker 1: You have no.
Speaker 7: Idea how bad it will be Trump two point zero
Speaker 7: for working people in this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh for sure. So can you talk to us
Speaker 1: about there's a lot of anxiety that Trump is winning
Speaker 1: the Latino vote in a way that is unprecedented. Is
Speaker 1: that true and if so, what does that mean.
Speaker 7: My last job before running next to in the country's
Speaker 7: largest youthful organization, I spent close to twenty years organizing
Speaker 7: the Latino community in Texas for Saron workers' rights and
Speaker 7: then mobilizing young Latinos to vote. And I remember after
Speaker 7: twenty twenty getting asked a lot if Latinos were leaning
Speaker 7: more Republican or were they Democrats. So I said, you know,
Speaker 7: we need to understand the population is We're not necessarily
Speaker 7: either Republicans or Democrats.
Speaker 1: What we are is poor.
Speaker 7: You know, we are the ethnic group that is the
Speaker 7: least likely to go to college, the most likely to
Speaker 7: die on the job, the least likely to make below
Speaker 7: fifteen dollars an hour. And so when Canadas speak to
Speaker 7: our deep economic pain and spend the time and money
Speaker 7: outreaching to us, they win our vote over because we're
Speaker 7: also we live at this duality where yes, many of
Speaker 7: us are newly arrived to this country, and at the
Speaker 7: same time, in places like Texas, we were part of
Speaker 7: this country before it was even a construct.
Speaker 1: The realities.
Speaker 7: If you look at Bernie Sanders, he did amazingly well
Speaker 7: with Latino voters and brought tons of new Latino voters
Speaker 7: into the political process because he spent the time and
Speaker 7: money and energy reaching out to them. Historically, both sides
Speaker 7: hadn't done an abysmal job of that, and I think
Speaker 7: Republicans made a smart political calculation. That is, if we
Speaker 7: go speak to Latino voters about economic issues and spend
Speaker 7: the time and money on them, some Democrats have been
Speaker 7: taking them for granted and that if we're the first
Speaker 7: to outreach to them, they may come to our side.
Speaker 7: And so that's what I see as I see that
Speaker 7: Democrats to spend a lot more time and money speaking
Speaker 7: to the economic realities of Latino voters. We are still
Speaker 7: overwhelmingly Democratic voters, especially because we are young people. I
Speaker 7: just see massive opportunity because our voting power mostly lies
Speaker 7: with young people. We are also one of the youngest
Speaker 7: ethnic group in the country. So the most common age
Speaker 7: for white American is fifty five, for an African American
Speaker 7: it's twenty seven, and for a Latino American it's eleven.
Speaker 7: And today one in four American children are now actually Latino.
Speaker 7: So what are we doing to go invest into that
Speaker 7: community and their burgeoning power?
Speaker 1: Cool? I love that though. That's so hopeful and exciting,
Speaker 1: and I think that's a really good point. You need
Speaker 1: to speak to people where they are make the case right.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I mean I think that young people there isn't
Speaker 7: just you know, it's a huge demographic. We do everything
Speaker 7: we can to try and each young people where they're at.
Speaker 7: That for us as the largest det vote organization. Yes,
Speaker 7: it's being on college and community college campuses, it's organizing
Speaker 7: with influencers, it's organizing on dating apps, it's mobilizing our
Speaker 7: tens of thousands of volunteers literally to send tens of
Speaker 7: millions of calls and texts to young people. And even
Speaker 7: our new thing we've started doing, which is we developed
Speaker 7: an AI chatbot to organize on Discord and Twitch and
Speaker 7: the gaming community, especially to focus on reaching young men.
Speaker 7: We try and leave no stone unturned to reach young
Speaker 7: people that are probably never going to watch a traditional
Speaker 7: TV advertisement or radio advertisement. But make sure we're reaching
Speaker 7: in them in all the other ways possible.
Speaker 1: Yes, such a good point and so important and also
Speaker 1: a little bit heartening, right I mean, and those voters
Speaker 1: are there for Joe Biden if he can connect with them,
Speaker 1: right absolutely.
Speaker 7: I think what we've seen is when you invest in
Speaker 7: young people and spend the time and money outreaching to them,
Speaker 7: they do turn out. When we started our organization ten
Speaker 7: years ago with the idea that we could tackle the
Speaker 7: climate crisis, the largest crisis of our time, by mobilizing
Speaker 7: young people to turn out to vote, we were generally
Speaker 7: laughed at that that was a really naive thing to
Speaker 7: spend money on, that young people were not going to
Speaker 7: turn out, that they were apathetic. Well it's ten years later,
Speaker 7: we've seen the highest use going to turn out the
Speaker 7: last few elections and the largest investment ever to tackle
Speaker 7: the climate crisis. That is because of the power of
Speaker 7: young people.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Christina.
Speaker 7: Thanks so much Molly for having me and for covering
Speaker 7: the youth vote.
Speaker 1: No moment, Oh fuck on, Rick Wilson, what is your
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery?
Speaker 3: My moment of fuckery is that this week there is
Speaker 3: a absolute tidal wave, an onslaught of reporting about Joe Biden. Okay,
Speaker 3: let's just even say it's legitimate, or that it's journalism. Whatever.
Speaker 3: We'll argue that point some other day. But it is
Speaker 3: almost exclusively even in foreign newspapers and foreign media outlets,
Speaker 3: that in the release of the files, Donald Trump pops
Speaker 3: up in the Epsteine files being accused of having raped
Speaker 3: two girls to twelve year olds.
Speaker 1: Why didn't that get more mainstream media coverage? Is it
Speaker 1: not real? I don't understand.
Speaker 3: You know why they're not doing it. I'll tell you
Speaker 3: exactly why they know. If they run that story, they're
Speaker 3: going to get four thousand, good jillion tweets and emails
Speaker 3: and phone calls from Maugas saying We're gonna come burn
Speaker 3: down your building, wet you. That's why they're doing it, Okay,
Speaker 3: that's why they won't fucking cover it. And look, if
Speaker 3: you go back, you will not find me having a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of tweets over the years about the story
Speaker 3: that is alleged from these documents, because before it was
Speaker 3: only alleged. Now it is in the court filings. And
Speaker 3: I'm shocked that American reporters who are able to dig
Speaker 3: down and find a person who wrote on an airplane
Speaker 3: with Joe Biden once in twenty twenty, comparing him, he
Speaker 3: should say he thinks you should drop out. It's amazing
Speaker 3: to me. Not one of these people has fucking called
Speaker 3: Alex who Trump gave a job after the Epstein case
Speaker 3: because Alex Acosta got Jeffrey Epstein a plea bargain. This
Speaker 3: thing stinks on ice, the fact that nobody's talking about it,
Speaker 3: nobody's covering it, and I will point out that MAGA
Speaker 3: is very frequently ready to call anyone who disagrees with
Speaker 3: Donald Trump a pedophile, and now we have court testimony
Speaker 3: in which Donald Trump is a rape pedophile. I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I find it outrageous fuckery. No one's covering this at scale.
Speaker 1: Do you want to know my moment of fuckery, Rick Wilson,
Speaker 1: I do. My momentive fuckery is Charlie Gasparino, who wrote
Speaker 1: a disgusting opinion piece in The New York Post where
Speaker 1: he said that Vice President Harris was a DEI hire,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that she was the age, that she
Speaker 1: was the second black female senator ever, that she is
Speaker 1: a fucking brilliant, gifted or to our super amazing politician,
Speaker 1: great speaker, very smart lawyer, prosecuted the fake universities, was
Speaker 1: a leader in California, then went on to the Senate
Speaker 1: and is the vice president and is very much a
Speaker 1: success in her own right. Meanwhile, Charlie Gasparino yet another
Speaker 1: mediocre white guy. He is our moment of fuck.
Speaker 3: Ray couldn't agree more. And anytime you hear the phrase
Speaker 3: DEI or CRT or the sixteen nineteen project come out
Speaker 3: of Omaga, it's the inward. That's it. That's what it is.
Speaker 3: It's the inWORD. Just think of it that way and
Speaker 3: you got.
Speaker 1: It, Yes, exactly, that's it. That's it. That's it for
Speaker 1: this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
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Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.