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. We are on vacation this week, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you.
Speaker 1: Columbia Journalism School Professor Alexander Still talk to us about
Speaker 1: the recently deceased former Italian President Silvio Bertiscni and how
Speaker 1: we can thank him for America's politics today, including trump Ism.
Speaker 1: But first we have former Congressmen Monde Jones. Welcome too,
Speaker 1: Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Your friend and mine. Mondere Jones, Mondair, do you have
Speaker 2: some you want to tell me? Perhaps an announcement.
Speaker 3: I do have an announcement to my district in the
Speaker 3: seventeenth Congressional up in the Lower Hudson Valley to you
Speaker 3: into the world, and that is I'm going to be
Speaker 3: running for a term in Congress to continue the important
Speaker 3: work that I started last year.
Speaker 2: Yes, what does that mean exactly running?
Speaker 3: I'm running.
Speaker 2: He's running, folks, I am running.
Speaker 3: I'm so excited to be continuing the fight to serve
Speaker 3: the people who raised me in Rockland, Westchester, Huttnam and
Speaker 3: Dutchess Counties and to Lower costs for working families, to
Speaker 3: save democracy itself from this Republican fascist takeover of our country,
Speaker 3: to make sure that we get weapons of war off
Speaker 3: the streets, and yes, to protect basic freedoms like the
Speaker 3: freedom to have an abortion. All of these things are
Speaker 3: at risk because of what we are seeing come out
Speaker 3: of Washington, particularly the House representatives, and what will likely
Speaker 3: happen with the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaker 1: So you were in Congress before explain to us a
Speaker 1: little bit about New York had a radical redistricting, eleventh
Speaker 1: hour redistricting, and you kind of let the other guy
Speaker 1: run talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3: Last year was a nightmare. I never imagined waking up
Speaker 3: and seeing a redistricting process and political machinations come out
Speaker 3: of Washington that resulted in my congressional district up in
Speaker 3: the seventeenth being torn apart and being faced with the
Speaker 3: prospect of running against a member of my own party
Speaker 3: and a colleague in Congress. In that moment, we were
Speaker 3: facing a nearly unprecedented assault on democracy by Republicans in
Speaker 3: Congress and nationally, we were looking at the freedom to
Speaker 3: have an abortion that was on its way to being
Speaker 3: taken away. We had seen the draft opinion in DBBS.
Speaker 3: We had seen so much coming from the Republican Party
Speaker 3: that I did not want to make it less likely
Speaker 3: that my constituent would continue to be represented by someone
Speaker 3: who cared about democracy, by someone who would fight to
Speaker 3: protect the freedom to have an abortion, by someone who
Speaker 3: would continue to fight for working people like the family
Speaker 3: I grew up in. And so rather than having bruising
Speaker 3: primary with the chair of the D trible seat, I
Speaker 3: decided to maximize the likely that my constituents, but can
Speaker 3: you can you continue to be well represented, And as
Speaker 3: a result ran in a different district, and that chair.
Speaker 2: Of the D triple c actually lost.
Speaker 3: He lost anyway, by eighteen hundred and twenty votes to
Speaker 3: a career political operative who will tell you anything you
Speaker 3: want to hear, but who will do anything that Kevin
Speaker 3: McCarthy and the extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress tell him
Speaker 3: to do. And that person's name is Mike Laalt.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to pause for a minute. Democrats
Speaker 1: lost a lot of seats in New York State, perhaps
Speaker 1: because of the ghost of Andrew Cuomo and his non
Speaker 1: partisan redistricting which he set up in twenty twelve, kicked
Speaker 1: the can down the road a decade, and then we
Speaker 1: found ourselves in the middle of a non partisan redistricting nightmare,
Speaker 1: and his obsession was holding onto power in a theoretically
Speaker 1: nonpartisan but really republican way. Democrats lost a bunch of
Speaker 1: seats to Republicans, ultimately causing them to lose the House.
Speaker 1: A lot of these candidates ran as not MAGA. They
Speaker 1: ran as sort of quote unquote normal Republicans. But it
Speaker 1: turns out it doesn't matter at all. They still vote
Speaker 1: with Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3: They vote with Kevin McCarthy and with the extreme mag
Speaker 3: Republicans in Congress. They are indistinguishable from that cohort when
Speaker 3: you look at their voting record. So let's run the team, right.
Speaker 3: So the first legislative vote that Mike Waller took was
Speaker 3: to repeal provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. Specifically, he
Speaker 3: voted to gut the irs so that billionaire corporations and
Speaker 3: very wealthy people could more easily cheat on their tax right.
Speaker 3: Then had the nerve a few months later to complain
Speaker 3: about the deficit after having just voted for a policy
Speaker 3: that would have reduced the revenue that the US government
Speaker 3: receives and, by the way, in the process of taking
Speaker 3: us to the brink of default as a nation on
Speaker 3: our debt, voted for a bill that would cut services
Speaker 3: to veterans and reduce funding for law enforcement in the
Speaker 3: midst of our nation's uniquely American gun violence epidemic. He
Speaker 3: voted a few weeks ago to overturn the ATF rule
Speaker 3: on gun braces, which would make us less safe from
Speaker 3: gun violence, in particular from mass shootings. He continues to
Speaker 3: oppose the freedom of women to have an abortion. He
Speaker 3: opposes a ban on AR fifteen's and other assault weapons
Speaker 3: weapons of war that have no business being in the
Speaker 3: hands of civilians, but wants to talk about crime. I'm
Speaker 3: happy to talk about crime, Miley. I relish the opportunity.
Speaker 1: To talk about public safety in this I mean, the
Speaker 1: incredible thing about the crime situation is that we have
Speaker 1: a quote unquote democratic mayor. But that is really just
Speaker 1: in quotes who is obsessed with making the case that
Speaker 1: there's a terrible crime wife. But murders are down, and
Speaker 1: a lot of these crimes are actually flat. I mean,
Speaker 1: you may have complains, but that's what it is.
Speaker 3: Well, Look, I want to be clear. New Yorkers deserve
Speaker 3: to feel and to actually be safe, and it's why
Speaker 3: I have consistently voted for historic levels of police funding
Speaker 3: every time I've gotten the chance in the United States Congress.
Speaker 2: In fact, last.
Speaker 3: Fall, I was the deciding vote on a rule that
Speaker 3: then resulted in six police funding bills getting a vote
Speaker 3: on the House floor, and I voted for every last
Speaker 3: one of them. It's also not lost on me that
Speaker 3: the Lower Hudson Valley is one of the safest places
Speaker 3: in America when you look at the US News and
Speaker 3: World Report rankings from a year or two ago. Rockland
Speaker 3: County third safist county in America, west Chester County fourbe
Speaker 3: safist county in America, Putnam County twelfth safist county in America.
Speaker 3: And at some point we had to have a discussion
Speaker 3: about how the Republican description of the Hudson Valley as
Speaker 3: this crime ridden health gape is an affront to the
Speaker 3: important work that law enforcement officers every single day to
Speaker 3: keep us safe. They're doing an outstanding job and we
Speaker 3: have to continue to support them, and so I just
Speaker 3: want to make clear my position on that. Well.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important that we talk about this,
Speaker 1: because this is not with Republicans, just like with the border,
Speaker 1: this is not about keeping people safe. If this is
Speaker 1: about finding an issue to get the base excited.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, God forbid, Republicans have to run on
Speaker 3: their record on the economy. I mean Joe Biden, for
Speaker 3: all of the criticisms that people may have about his age,
Speaker 3: perhaps in the minds of many voters, is someone who
Speaker 3: has presided over and has a record that he can
Speaker 3: take credit for of creating the most jobs, many millions
Speaker 3: of jobs in his first term, which is not even
Speaker 3: complete yet of any president in modern history, if not
Speaker 3: in the history of this great nation. You know, we
Speaker 3: have lowered the cost of prescription drugs so that by
Speaker 3: the year twenty twenty five, people on Medicare like my
Speaker 3: grandmother will not have to pay more than two thousand
Speaker 3: dollars annually for prescription drugs. And we have seen incrementally
Speaker 3: the effects of that legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act,
Speaker 3: in that in January of this year. For example, as
Speaker 3: of January of this year, no person on Medicare is
Speaker 3: paying more than thirty five dollars monthly for the cost
Speaker 3: of insulent This is a president that has, you know,
Speaker 3: along with Democrats in Congress like myself, who I actually
Speaker 3: negotiate a passage of the infrastructure law, brought the party
Speaker 3: together in that moment. He passed the largest infrastructure bill
Speaker 3: in generations, which has brought and will be bringing billions
Speaker 3: of dollars to New York State alone to repair our
Speaker 3: crumbling roads and bridges, and to complete the Gateway project,
Speaker 3: for example, which is of great interest to my constituents
Speaker 3: in the Hudson Valley. He passed a Respect for Marriage Act,
Speaker 3: which made strides and ensuring marriage equality is the law
Speaker 3: of the land. You know, this is a president who,
Speaker 3: along with Democrats like myself, helped keep small businesses open
Speaker 3: through our expansion of the paycheck protection program at the
Speaker 3: height of the COVID nineteenth pandemic, and so much more.
Speaker 3: You can tell I'm really passionate about this stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think it's really important that you know,
Speaker 1: I continually think that Biden has really been underestimated and
Speaker 1: underappreciated for many of the things he's done, including his
Speaker 1: really liberal policies. I mean, he was not my pick
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen, but he has ultimately passed a lot
Speaker 1: of really liberal legislation, and I think, you know, we're
Speaker 1: seeing right now Republicans trying desperately because they see the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall and they know Trump is going
Speaker 1: to be the twenty twenty candidate, or at least they're
Speaker 1: pretty sure, which we all are, you know, are trying
Speaker 1: to get other people to run to the left of
Speaker 1: Biden because they know that Biden. You know, Biden reads
Speaker 1: like a normal Democrat, standard Democrat, but he has actually
Speaker 1: done a lot of really progressive legislation.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't even think of it as progressive
Speaker 3: legislation or liberal legislation. I think of it as legislation
Speaker 3: for working people. When you do the poling, this stuff's
Speaker 3: extremely popular, including Republicans. Do you remember, I think it
Speaker 3: was sometime last year Congressman Byron Donald's Republican down in Florida,
Speaker 3: and I think maybe some other people were present at
Speaker 3: this private fundraiser and they got caught on the hot
Speaker 3: mic talking about how, you know, if you start giving
Speaker 3: the American people these policies, that they're going to start
Speaker 3: voting Democratic because they're so popular. That's why you hear
Speaker 3: these sort of manufactured, factually incorrect stories about new York
Speaker 3: City trying to ban pizza ovens and nonsense like that,
Speaker 3: because I don't want to talk about the bread and
Speaker 3: butter issues.
Speaker 2: That people care about.
Speaker 3: People care about how did not put food on the
Speaker 3: table for their families. And I know this intimately because
Speaker 3: I grew up poor in Rockland County and my mom
Speaker 3: worked multiple jobs to provide for our family, and because
Speaker 3: the economy wasn't working to the point where she could
Speaker 3: just work one job and have that be enough. And
Speaker 3: of course she got help raising me from my grandparents.
Speaker 3: My grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother clean homes,
Speaker 3: and because childcare was so expensive.
Speaker 2: From which it still is, if not worse now, Yeah,
Speaker 2: go on, yeah.
Speaker 3: You know often times I had to go to work
Speaker 3: with her, and then, through the grace of God in
Speaker 3: an entire community in Rockley County that raised me, made
Speaker 3: it all the way to the halls of Congress, where
Speaker 3: I got to represent the same people whose homes I
Speaker 3: watched my grandmother crane growing up. But you know, no
Speaker 3: one should have to go through what I went through
Speaker 3: as a child. This is an economy that can work
Speaker 3: for everybody, and I want to continue that fight, not
Speaker 3: not give tax breaks to billionaires and billion dollar corporations
Speaker 3: and try to play this sort of rhetorical jiu jitsu
Speaker 3: where you know, Mike Lawler, the incumbent Republican, is saying
Speaker 3: he wants to do something about the salt cap, that
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars limitation on the state and local tax deduction,
Speaker 3: and not even acknowledge that it was Republicans in December
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen. That's part of the first Trump tax scamp, right,
Speaker 3: that that put that cap into place which crush families here,
Speaker 3: and that's in Balley, right.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about that salt tax for a
Speaker 1: minute because it's such a favorite topic of mine and
Speaker 1: Jesse so loves it when I talk about it. But
Speaker 1: you know that was ultimately the goal with the salt
Speaker 1: deduction was that in a state where you had higher
Speaker 1: local and state taxes, those taxes were usually used to
Speaker 1: buttress schools, and you know they were used to create
Speaker 1: a better quality of life for the people in blue states, right,
Speaker 1: So you had higher state taxes because that money went
Speaker 1: to public schools and went to services for people. And
Speaker 1: in states like Texas where you didn't have state and
Speaker 1: local income tax, that was because they didn't give a
Speaker 1: fuck about children or public schools or anything like that.
Speaker 1: So the idea was to punish those blue states by
Speaker 1: raising their taxes.
Speaker 3: Ad I'm proud to live in a state and in
Speaker 3: a community where government invests in infrastructure and in great
Speaker 3: public schools. You know, we've still got work to do
Speaker 3: with some of our school systems, but you know, here
Speaker 3: in Nuts and Valley, we've generally got great public school
Speaker 3: and that's because we invest in creating great public schools.
Speaker 3: I wish more communities had the resources to do that.
Speaker 3: But we should not be punished by Mitch Vaccano and
Speaker 3: other Republicans in Congress because of who we vote for
Speaker 3: for president. And it is exactly what Republicans like Mike
Speaker 3: Lawa did back in December twenty seventeen, and so he
Speaker 3: doesn't get to run away from that record of his party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do think that it's really important when
Speaker 1: we talk about, you know, the way the government is
Speaker 1: supposed to work is that we are supposed to be
Speaker 1: represented no matter who we voted for, no matter the
Speaker 1: color of the state, a blue state, a red state.
Speaker 1: The president is a president for everyone. What was interesting
Speaker 1: about Donald Trump is that he had no interest in
Speaker 1: growing the electorate, which is why he didn't get reelected,
Speaker 1: and he just wanted to deliver for red states.
Speaker 2: And this is sort of a vestige of that.
Speaker 4: It is a vessage of that.
Speaker 3: And this guy is now likely to be the Republican
Speaker 3: nominated for president next year. And I want people well
Speaker 3: to really sit with that, because I know that there
Speaker 3: is concern over the president running for reelection. But as
Speaker 3: he has said, I think quite effectively, do not compare
Speaker 3: me to the perfect, compare me to the alternative. And
Speaker 3: I think that's right. This is a district here in
Speaker 3: the Lower Hudsond Valley that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump
Speaker 3: been by ten points. If we are not flipping seats
Speaker 3: that Joe Biden won by ten points, then we are
Speaker 3: simply not taking back the majority of the House of Representatives.
Speaker 3: Of those eighteen House districts that Biden won, this is
Speaker 3: his fifth largest margin of victory, so it is literally
Speaker 3: the fifth vote required to take back the House of
Speaker 3: Representatives so that we can finally pass voting rights and
Speaker 3: other democracy reform legislation, so that we can pass legislation
Speaker 3: to codify Roby Wade, so that we can pass legislation
Speaker 3: to increase the federal menmum wage, which hasn't changed since
Speaker 3: two thousand and nine, and it is an abomination at
Speaker 3: the current level. So that we can continue to lower
Speaker 3: the costs of prescription drugs, not just for people on men,
Speaker 3: but for people throughout our economy and throughout our society.
Speaker 3: Bees and so many other issues are what's at stake.
Speaker 3: And it's not lost on me that Donald Trump is
Speaker 3: even more dangerous than he was the first time that
Speaker 3: people chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump, that you know,
Speaker 3: this guy is going to pardon the insurrectionists that nearly
Speaker 3: took my life in the lives of hundreds of other
Speaker 3: members of Congress on January sixth, But he has just
Speaker 3: been criminally indicted for the second time for doing what
Speaker 3: I think few people had imagined, which was stealing and
Speaker 3: then sharing national security secrets that cut our service members
Speaker 3: and the nation at risk.
Speaker 1: Yes, and also it was funny because we're only two
Speaker 1: indictments in.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's still the fake the summer is not over.
Speaker 1: There is still the fake electorate indictment, which is coming
Speaker 1: down the.
Speaker 3: Pike it is, and then there's the January sixth investigation.
Speaker 3: After Donald Trump was indicted for the second time this year,
Speaker 3: time by the Department of Justice, Mike Lawler told the
Speaker 3: press that the FBI and the DOJ were politicized. He
Speaker 3: made that statement without any evidence, And I got to
Speaker 3: tell you, I just never imagined waking up one day
Speaker 3: and seeing my member of Congress now in this district
Speaker 3: participate in the assault on the rule of law in
Speaker 3: this country, especially coming from a guy who belongs to
Speaker 3: a party that claims to care about the rule of law,
Speaker 3: and the assault on our institution, which is an assault
Speaker 3: on democracy itself.
Speaker 2: By the way, Yes, absolutely true.
Speaker 1: So just give us the two seconds here you have
Speaker 1: a primary, when is it?
Speaker 2: Give us the sort of the TLDR.
Speaker 3: I've got a little bit of a primary that will
Speaker 3: be decided by June of next year in New York State.
Speaker 3: One of my opponents is the younger sister of the
Speaker 3: governor of the state of Michigan. I have great respect
Speaker 3: for anyone who would run against me in the primary,
Speaker 3: and so look forward to a robust exchange of ideas,
Speaker 3: and frankly, I look forward to campaigning on my record
Speaker 3: of accomplishment of delivering actual results for people in the
Speaker 3: Lower Hudson Valley these past two years. I am optimistic
Speaker 3: based on the energy on the ground, people urging me
Speaker 3: to run, urging me to restore the leadership that this
Speaker 3: district deserves, and candidly moldy a lot of people who
Speaker 3: were just really hurt by the unfair way in which
Speaker 3: people in our district were treated last year, both by
Speaker 3: National Democrats and yes by the acting Supreme Court judge
Speaker 3: up in Stuben County who redrew the congressional district and
Speaker 3: cause a lot of damage frankly to the interests of
Speaker 3: the people here. And so I'm looking forward to making
Speaker 3: right to addressing that injustice and continuing to deliver for
Speaker 3: my constituents, who again I just love so much and
Speaker 3: who took me from poverty, me to the halls of Congress.
Speaker 3: The bond that I have is one that I cherished
Speaker 3: with these people. So please, if you care about saving
Speaker 3: our democracy and protecting basic freedoms and continuing to lower
Speaker 3: costs for working people and getting weapons of war off
Speaker 3: our streets, go to Monderefourcongress dot com and smash it.
Speaker 2: Dony Bud Thank you so much, Monde. I hope you'll
Speaker 2: come back. Of course, I'll come back.
Speaker 3: I mean, there's gonna be a lot happening in these
Speaker 3: next sixteen months, and it's important to continue this discussion.
Speaker 1: Alexandra Still is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Alexandra, Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2: Very excited to have you.
Speaker 1: One of the many smart things you've written recently is
Speaker 1: a really interesting idea that, in fact, for Thosconi walked
Speaker 1: so that Trump could run.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, I mean I think that what I was
Speaker 4: down intriguing about Billisconi. When he first kind of came
Speaker 4: on the scene, A lot of people kind of just
Speaker 4: missed him as a kind of comical figure. You know,
Speaker 4: he'd been a cruoner on a cruise ship when he
Speaker 4: was a student. He was kind of loud and vulgar.
Speaker 4: He seemed like a product of a certain kind of
Speaker 4: corrupt Italian culture. And what I think I noticed early
Speaker 4: on was that he was also an extremely innovative and
Speaker 4: whether you like it or not, had pioneered a new
Speaker 4: kind of politics. That he was sort of like the
Speaker 4: first postmodern politician. He understood that we had moved out
Speaker 4: of an era of arty politics, ideology, class based politics
Speaker 4: in which people voted their economic class, and that Berlo
Speaker 4: Sconi had innovated a kind of inter class appeal. He
Speaker 4: was a billionaire populist.
Speaker 1: Tell our listeners a little bit about Italy when Berlasconi came.
Speaker 2: To power, what it looked like and how he did it.
Speaker 4: Sure, I wonder if I could just take one step
Speaker 4: back before even more.
Speaker 2: That's great?
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is you know? Bert was going? He made
Speaker 4: his first fortune in real estate and then quickly moved
Speaker 4: into television. There was no such thing as private TV
Speaker 4: before the mid nineteen seventies. Early it was the monopoly
Speaker 4: of the Italian state TV known as RYE, and the
Speaker 4: Italian High Court had ruled that there could be private TV,
Speaker 4: but on a limited basis, purely on a only local broadcasts.
Speaker 4: Berl's going. He saw an opportunity, jumped into it, brought
Speaker 4: up a lot of local stations, and then, in typical
Speaker 4: Ball was Going to Eat Fashion, skirted the rules by
Speaker 4: broadcasting the same program like three seconds apart, claiming that
Speaker 4: they were local, but then selling advertising nationally. So he
Speaker 4: quickly gained an advantage over his competitors and became the
Speaker 4: biggest figure in private TV. Brought up his two biggest competitors,
Speaker 4: and by the early nineteen eighties had literally a monopoly
Speaker 4: of private TV, ninety percent of the market of private
Speaker 4: television and a kind of what was known as a
Speaker 4: duopoly with the three state TV channels and his three
Speaker 4: private channels having like a ninety percent of audience share
Speaker 4: in the country. So that was the first really big
Speaker 4: thing that he did. And in order to establish private TV,
Speaker 4: he changed the culture of Italy and that what I
Speaker 4: think is so interesting about Berlosconi is that he changed
Speaker 4: the culture of the country and that culture then elected
Speaker 4: him as a politician. And what I mean by that
Speaker 4: is that the world before Berlosconi in Italy was a
Speaker 4: kind of austere and moralistic. It was dominated by the
Speaker 4: Catholic Church and the Communist Party, both of you which
Speaker 4: were kind of moralistic in their own different ways. You couldn't,
Speaker 4: literally for a long time, even advertise dog food on
Speaker 4: the state TV because it was considered to be a
Speaker 4: moral and Berlosconi instead realized, I'm going to make this
Speaker 4: private TV thing where anything goes. All I care about
Speaker 4: is audience and advertising. I'm going to get the cheesiest,
Speaker 4: most popular programs. I don't work educating the public, and
Speaker 4: I need to create a world of desire in which
Speaker 4: a new Italians learned to long for things they didn't
Speaker 4: even know they wanted before and them you know, so
Speaker 4: I have you know, programs like Dallas and Dynasty which
Speaker 4: create an atmosphere of luxury and wealth and material well being.
Speaker 4: And then my my viewers are going to want those things.
Speaker 4: So my advertisers are earned going to pay me a
Speaker 4: lot of money in order to advertise their products. So
Speaker 4: we created this kind of materialistic culture, which followed a
Speaker 4: long period during the Cold War of ideological struggle between
Speaker 4: left and right. There was you know, terrible terrorism in
Speaker 4: Italy during the nineteen seventies, and it's Goni promised a
Speaker 4: post ideological world, a world in which let's not worry
Speaker 4: about you know, all this politics stuff. Let's have a
Speaker 4: good time, Let's have on looking at scantily cloud women
Speaker 4: and you know, watching cheesy programs and watching Baywatch. And
Speaker 4: so he offered a different kind of society in which
Speaker 4: you didn't have to be ashamed of being rich or
Speaker 4: wanting to be rich, and that's a very important predicate
Speaker 4: to his political large. So then what happens is that
Speaker 4: in the early nineties, the political system that had sustained
Speaker 4: Berlosconi and protected his monopoly began to crumble. There was
Speaker 4: this big corruption investigation on his operation Clean Hands, which
Speaker 4: start two and suddenly left him without his political protectors.
Speaker 4: And by nineteen ninety three these people were going to prison,
Speaker 4: fleeing the country community side, and he realized, holy shit,
Speaker 4: if I don't do something fast, I'm going to go
Speaker 4: the way of these people, and so, you know what,
Speaker 4: I'm going to actually take over the political system. He
Speaker 4: did something that nobody thought was possible. One thing you
Speaker 4: have to credit Berlosconi with is with extraordinary audacity and guts,
Speaker 4: and so he basically turned what was then already the
Speaker 4: largest or the second largest private company in the country
Speaker 4: into a political war machine. All parts of the company,
Speaker 4: from the ad salesman to the people who sold mutual
Speaker 4: for auds, to the executives and the TV company all
Speaker 4: are working towards the aim of electing Berlisconi and his
Speaker 4: newly formed party.
Speaker 2: Really sounds like Trump and then it works.
Speaker 4: I mean it was. It was like Trump on steroids
Speaker 4: in a sense. It was, you know, as if you
Speaker 4: had somehow married Trump and the Murdoch Empire. And created
Speaker 4: hybrid figure you'd have Berlosconi. So one of the other
Speaker 4: things he did, which is very much should seem very
Speaker 4: familiar to American listeners, is that his media, before the
Speaker 4: creation of Fox News, created a hyperpowers and type of media.
Speaker 4: His three TV networks, his magazine group, his ropers all
Speaker 4: began flooding the zone with pro berliscone stuff and attacking
Speaker 4: anyone that dared to attack or criticize him.
Speaker 2: It's like Ruper Murdoch a little bit.
Speaker 4: Yeah, very much, very much, and it was very clear.
Speaker 4: I mean, they are one of the people who participated
Speaker 4: in these meetings and published a book in which he
Speaker 4: recorded some of the conversations, and Bertolosconi said, we have
Speaker 4: to sing in chorus so that the people who attack
Speaker 4: us are then hit with concentrated fire and they will stop.
Speaker 4: That's sort of what happened. Anytime you raise your head
Speaker 4: and criticize Berolosconi, you could count on, you know, scurless
Speaker 4: stories appearing about you, fake scandals, everything to kind of
Speaker 4: distract people from what was happening with Bertolosconi. So that
Speaker 4: ended up being a very successful model. He gets into
Speaker 4: power in nineteen ninety four and then things get very
Speaker 4: bumpy because a thing that is, in a sense, it's
Speaker 4: not unlike Trump. Trump came in promising that he was
Speaker 4: going to be the defender of the working class, and
Speaker 4: he was going to stand up for the forgotten people
Speaker 4: who didn't get represented from the coastal elites, et cetera,
Speaker 4: et cetera. And then, of course, the one economic program
Speaker 4: he actually passes is a big tax cut that goes
Speaker 4: largely to the very rich. Brosconi did the same thing,
Speaker 4: and he promised to be an economic miracle worker. He
Speaker 4: was going to be the Italian Margaret Thatcher who was
Speaker 4: going to cut bureaucracy at ape and liberate the economic
Speaker 4: engine of the country. And he didn't do any of
Speaker 4: that because he wasn't really interested in the boring, difficult
Speaker 4: work of government, and what he really cared about was
Speaker 4: protecting his media empire from regulation and staying out of
Speaker 4: prison and keeping associates up right.
Speaker 2: Like Trump very much.
Speaker 4: It's kind of a remarkable It does sort of make
Speaker 4: you realize that there's something in this particular moment of history.
Speaker 4: It produces these kinds of figures and then makes this
Speaker 4: a kind of winning formula. What he has or had
Speaker 4: that is also very much like Trump, is this ability
Speaker 4: to appeal to people who are in a very different
Speaker 4: economic class from him. So or working people who in
Speaker 4: Italy used to vote for the Italian Communist Party are
Speaker 4: suddenly voting for Bill Sconi. Why because he seems authentic?
Speaker 4: Theyn't They know that his policies may not really align
Speaker 4: with their interests, but you know, they find his personality appealing,
Speaker 4: the fact that he is tells off color jokes, and
Speaker 4: like Trump, yeah, very much. It's this idea in which
Speaker 4: you replace programs with authenticity. So you're not buying a
Speaker 4: political program, you are buying a personality, and authenticity has
Speaker 4: become the value that you prize the most, rather than
Speaker 4: let's say, ideological consistency or a program that makes sense
Speaker 4: to you.
Speaker 2: This it's incredible. I mean why I read that piece.
Speaker 1: And you know, I grew up spending a lot of
Speaker 1: time in Italy because my mother had an Italian boyfriend
Speaker 1: who I think boyfriend is a generous term for what
Speaker 1: this relationship was, and so we spent a lot of
Speaker 1: time there and I grew up during the eighties and nineties,
Speaker 1: so Berlusconi was the guy, and my mother always hated
Speaker 1: him because she thought he was a fascist. But they
Speaker 1: had a very similar you know, they were both very
Speaker 1: into sex. They were both very into dirtiness and naughtiness
Speaker 1: and whatever, and and you know, he got involved with
Speaker 1: a lot of scroll as people, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and he did really he went into office, and like Trump,
Speaker 1: he had lots of trials.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, the thing you mentioned about sex, I think is
Speaker 4: important because one of the things that he did, as
Speaker 4: I mentioned, is that he changed the culture like you
Speaker 4: would not have had you know, Nate Good or scantily
Speaker 4: cloud women on Satle before Berolosconi. And so he's completely
Speaker 4: unapologetic about doing that. He introduces the first nude game
Speaker 4: show into Italy or the world as far as I
Speaker 4: during all of his entertainment programs, even on serious subjects,
Speaker 4: you'd have a woman standing there in a kind of
Speaker 4: low cut dress showing her thighs, known as the velina,
Speaker 4: and so that people could gawk at her while they're
Speaker 4: listening to something about soccer or politics. So he introduces,
Speaker 4: you know, sex and transgression becomes part of his trademark,
Speaker 4: which is again very much like Trump. You know, he
Speaker 4: would brag about his own sexual accomplishments, made no secret
Speaker 4: of it, created you know, various scandals. You know, like
Speaker 4: he's visiting an earthquake zone with an attractive female public
Speaker 4: official who's like, you know, worrying about you know, people
Speaker 4: who have ended up homeless, and he ends up saying,
Speaker 4: you know, can I caress this woman?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Also about Claude and Kiosi, he said, so that kind
Speaker 4: of thing where he's these things that sort of right
Speaker 4: thinking people were appalled by. To a lot of ordinary Italians,
Speaker 4: it's like, okay, yeah, he's not really a traditional politician.
Speaker 4: He's somebody liked me. I might say something like that.
Speaker 4: Certainly I would have fought it. And he has the
Speaker 4: guts to say what other people think but don't say.
Speaker 4: So that's very much part of a Trump thing. Then
Speaker 4: the scandals begin to accumulate almost as soon as he
Speaker 4: gets into office, because he goes into politics in part
Speaker 4: to head off these corruption investigations that are rising up
Speaker 4: the ladder, and he knows that there are lots of
Speaker 4: skeletons in his own corporate closet, and like many businesses,
Speaker 4: he and his associates have had to pay bribes for years,
Speaker 4: and eventually these things will be found out, and.
Speaker 3: In fact they are.
Speaker 4: It turns out that Berlusconi's chief lawyer has had various
Speaker 4: judges on his payroll. Hundreds of thousands of money, hundreds
Speaker 4: of thousands of dollars are traveling from berlisconi corporate accounts
Speaker 4: into the Swiss bank accounts of a sitting judge. Twenty
Speaker 4: one billion Lira, which is about fifteen million dollars, was
Speaker 4: discovered going into the account of the socialist leader Batio
Speaker 4: Craxy things like that. So all that stuff is accumulating
Speaker 4: even as he's trying to govern, which makes of course
Speaker 4: governing impossible because he's spending all of his time putting
Speaker 4: out these fires and going from crisis to crisis. So
Speaker 4: he ends up his first government collapses partly because of
Speaker 4: these crises. But the thing about Bosconi is that you
Speaker 4: can sort of map his career in the following way.
Speaker 4: When he's in power, things go badly and he governs poorly.
Speaker 4: As soon as he's out of power, it's like Superman
Speaker 4: regaining his hours, and then he becomes an incredibly potent
Speaker 4: opposition figure fighting to get back into power. Then he
Speaker 4: gets back into power, he's bored. He starts to make
Speaker 4: mistakes governs poorly, they kick him out, and then he
Speaker 4: goes back into opposition mode. So there are these kind
Speaker 4: of alternating periods, you know, when he's in power in
Speaker 4: ninety four and then out of power until two thousand
Speaker 4: and one, back in power and then again out and
Speaker 4: then back in power in I think two thousand and
Speaker 4: eight to twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: And then he also goes to jail.
Speaker 4: No, well he doesn't. He never went to jail. He
Speaker 4: had many, many trials, right, Okay. One of the things
Speaker 4: that's unfortunately it's a little tricky to explain, but I'll
Speaker 4: keep it simple. Italy has three levels of judge of judgment,
Speaker 4: so you can't be officially convicted until you've exhausted two
Speaker 4: sets of appeals. So you can be convicted a trial,
Speaker 4: but technically you're still not convicted until an appeals court
Speaker 4: has ruled on it and then the highest court has
Speaker 4: signed off on that.
Speaker 2: So it's hard to go to jail in Italy, is
Speaker 2: what you're saying.
Speaker 4: It's hard to go to jail. But it's even worse
Speaker 4: than that because all countries have something called the statute
Speaker 4: of limitations, where you can't be prosecuted years and years
Speaker 4: after the fact. But in almost all countries the statute
Speaker 4: of limitation clock ends the moment judicial action begins, so
Speaker 4: you can't draw a case out and have it thrown
Speaker 4: out just because you've gone past the time limit. In Italy,
Speaker 4: that's not the case, and so Bert's going with his
Speaker 4: armies of lawyers and these three levels of appeal would
Speaker 4: drag these cases out until the statute of limitations had
Speaker 4: run and then he could say, hey, wait a second,
Speaker 4: I was never convicted.
Speaker 2: So he can just run out the clock on everything
Speaker 2: ran out the clock.
Speaker 4: And of course most Italians didn't grasp the distinction between
Speaker 4: running out the clock with statute of limitation because he
Speaker 4: was actually convicted numerous times at a trial level where
Speaker 4: he's been on the second level of appeal, but the
Speaker 4: case was then thrown out on statute of limitation grounds.
Speaker 4: So there are many cases of that kind, including bribing
Speaker 4: a sitting senator to get him to change his vote
Speaker 4: and bring down a government to give you an idea.
Speaker 4: He then is finally convicted and I think it's twenty
Speaker 4: thirteen of a tax fraud case, and that case makes
Speaker 4: it through all levels of judgment. He doesn't go to jail,
Speaker 4: but he is prevented from holding office for I think
Speaker 4: five years. That kind of puts in out of the
Speaker 4: game for a good period of time.
Speaker 2: Italy right now, what is happening over there.
Speaker 4: Well, I think what's happening and in a sense, the
Speaker 4: hangover of the Berlosconi era is that Berlosconi's lack of
Speaker 4: interest in governing and incompetence meant that Italy was the
Speaker 4: slowest growing country in Europe for about thirty years, and
Speaker 4: so the country has been doing really quite poorly since
Speaker 4: the early nineteen nineties. Over a million young people have
Speaker 4: left the country because they don't see a future for
Speaker 4: themselves in Italy. They are living in the US and
Speaker 4: Canada and France, England and Germany, you name it. Those
Speaker 4: who stay live with their parents until they're in their
Speaker 4: thirties or forties. So there's a really bad situation, which
Speaker 4: is meant that there's a lot of unhappiness and discontent
Speaker 4: with the political system. That's meant that they've elected a
Speaker 4: right wing government headed by Georgia Maloney together with Berlisk,
Speaker 4: what remains of Belisconi's party and another conservative party. So
Speaker 4: you can look at it as oh my god, the
Speaker 4: post fascists are back. But I think it's perhaps more
Speaker 4: useful to look at the fact that Italy is kind
Speaker 4: of flailing around looking for a solution to these long,
Speaker 4: very deep seated problems of huge public debt, slow economy,
Speaker 4: almost non existent birth rate, you know, one point two
Speaker 4: for children per woman, unhappiness of immigration, but a persistent
Speaker 4: need for immigrant labor in order to make the run.
Speaker 4: So they've got a whole lot of problems that they're
Speaker 4: grappling with, and I don't know that they have the answers,
Speaker 4: but it means at the moment that that favors a
Speaker 4: right wing government and we'll see if they can do
Speaker 4: something about these problems. But I think that the problems
Speaker 4: are much deeper than that, and Belisconi's biggest disservice to
Speaker 4: the country was failing to address all the issues that
Speaker 4: he got into politics saying he wanted to address.
Speaker 1: Maloney's government has been in for a year, Yeah, a
Speaker 1: little less than a year. Is your sense that there's
Speaker 1: anything good happening there?
Speaker 4: I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, the economy
Speaker 4: is growing a little bit, but whether that has to
Speaker 4: do with her government or not, or just picking up.
Speaker 4: These things are really hard to parse. She's taking a
Speaker 4: hard line on immigration, but immigration continues as much as ever.
Speaker 4: She wants to make it easier for Italians to raise families,
Speaker 4: but I don't see them reversing the demographic situation anytime soon,
Speaker 4: So I think it's a little bit too early to tell.
Speaker 4: But the problems are deep and are not going to
Speaker 4: be sort of solved by rhetorical positions. You can say
Speaker 4: I won't stop immigration, but I think last year, like
Speaker 4: six hundred thousand Italians died and less than four hundred
Speaker 4: thousand were born. So you have a deficit of two
Speaker 4: hundred thousand people every year of people who are dropping
Speaker 4: out of the workforce, added to the pension roles. So
Speaker 4: Italy has to come to terms with the fact that
Speaker 4: like it or not, it's going to become a multicultural
Speaker 4: society and it's not culturally ready to do that, and
Speaker 4: so that costs all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Alexander. I found this completely fascinating.
Speaker 1: I'm so just so interesting.
Speaker 4: I really appreciate you, right, my pleasure.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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