Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Donald Trump has been booted off
Speaker 1: Bloomberg's Billionaire's list. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today. The Washington Post Caroline Kitchener tells us about
Speaker 1: the disinformation around women's reproductive health. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Maracoba County, Arizona reporter and Republican Stephen Richer about his
Speaker 1: defamation suit with not Arizona Governor Carrie Lake. But first
Speaker 1: we have the New Republics Greg Sergeant. Welcome back to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics. New Republics, Greg Sergeant.
Speaker 2: Great to be here, as always, Molly, such.
Speaker 1: A weird time in American life. Right now? Should we
Speaker 1: start by talking about the Republicans in the House. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean yesterday what they kept failing at rules vote.
Speaker 1: What happened here is that Kevin McCarthy put Maga on
Speaker 1: the rules and turns out that Maga is not so
Speaker 1: good on the rules committee.
Speaker 2: Huh, Yeah, they're really not. Here's what I keep wondering though,
Speaker 2: And tell me if you agree with me. I don't
Speaker 2: find a lot of takers for this right and I
Speaker 2: get trolled whenever.
Speaker 1: I say it even better.
Speaker 2: Yeah, right, It seems to me that Mike Johnson wants
Speaker 2: to hold a vote on the Ukraine eight.
Speaker 1: Yes, I think so you do.
Speaker 2: Okay, great, I'm not entirely alone on this then, Okay,
Speaker 2: a number of things right. One, there are significant powerful
Speaker 2: Republicans in the House who want it, like these committee
Speaker 2: chairs Mike Turner, people like that, right, And these are
Speaker 2: major players. They're not maga noisemakers. So we don't talk
Speaker 2: about them ever. We only talk about Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 2: and Matt Gates. And I don't know why that's the
Speaker 2: only thing we'd ever talk about. But so, like these
Speaker 2: committee chairs want this vote, Mike Johnson is talking to
Speaker 2: world leaders seemingly pretty regularly, and they're telling him all
Speaker 2: all of them are telling the same story, which is
Speaker 2: that if we don't do this, we're in much more
Speaker 2: trouble later. Right, Mike Johnson has a bit of a
Speaker 2: Reagan night past as opposed to a mega kind of
Speaker 2: the inclination. Seems to me he is a Christian nationalist
Speaker 2: and he's willing to endorse great replacement theory. But like
Speaker 2: on national security and foreign policy, he's much more in
Speaker 2: the Reagan nite mold. And then right, he's got the
Speaker 2: good intelligence too, so he's got the top intel people
Speaker 2: telling him what the real deal is there, and you
Speaker 2: got to think the stuff weighs on him. And it
Speaker 2: looks to me like it is.
Speaker 1: It's reauthorizing a rule that allows the American government to
Speaker 1: wiretap calls of non citizens without a warrant, basically, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what it is. And this was a
Speaker 1: Republican idea, right as part of the Patriot Act, or
Speaker 1: at least it came about during that period when America
Speaker 1: wanted to have more of a you know, in arsenal
Speaker 1: when it comes to prosecute and collecting information on our
Speaker 1: foreign adversary. So it's a republican idea like the idea
Speaker 1: that Mike Johnson is for. This would make more sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just recently that MAGA has decided that
Speaker 1: they don't, you know whatever, they're not so interested in
Speaker 1: foreign intervention maybe though who even knows what they really
Speaker 1: believe in. But what I think is interesting is like
Speaker 1: when Johnson, he was remembering, he was like a low
Speaker 1: ranking Republican, but once he was sort of given the information,
Speaker 1: and once he went into leadership, he sort of understood
Speaker 1: why it was so important.
Speaker 2: Right. I want to pick up on something you said there,
Speaker 2: which is whether they're really opposed to foreign intervention, because
Speaker 2: I feel like it's an important subject. You've probably noticed that,
Speaker 2: like a lot of news accounts call mega isolations, they
Speaker 2: called Trump isolationist, right, and I just I don't think
Speaker 2: that's what they are.
Speaker 1: No. I just don't take them at their word for anything.
Speaker 1: I just want to fact check for one second. It's
Speaker 1: called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it's not part
Speaker 1: of the Patriot Act. I was wrong. It was enacted
Speaker 1: in the year of my birth, nineteen seventy eight, and
Speaker 1: the legislation was a congressional response to exposure during multiple
Speaker 1: committee hearings of previous abuses of US persons privacy rights. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it actually is not part of the Patriot Act.
Speaker 1: I was wrong, continues right.
Speaker 2: No, No, absolutely right. We shouldn't take them at their word.
Speaker 2: I think what's going on. I actually did a podcast
Speaker 2: with Julia Yaffi about this, and she was just so
Speaker 2: eloquent about it. They support the idea of Putin style government, right,
Speaker 2: They oppose Ukrainian democracy. They want Putin to win. I
Speaker 2: wouldn't attribute that sentiment to all of them, right, I
Speaker 2: think it's complicated, and it's a little shifty and it's
Speaker 2: a little murky, but right, someone like Marjorie Taylor Green
Speaker 2: I think has a genuine ideological affinity with Putin style governance,
Speaker 2: White Christian nationalist strong man rule, all about crushing the woke,
Speaker 2: the secular liberals, right, all about kind of crushing Western
Speaker 2: liberal democracy wherever possible they want. They see a Putin
Speaker 2: victory as a victory for their kind of access of autocracy.
Speaker 2: That it really dovetails very directly with their sense of
Speaker 2: what they'd like to do here domestically. Right, So Trump
Speaker 2: admires Putin. We all know that. What's funny to me, though,
Speaker 2: is like Trump isn't exactly where Marjorie Taylor Green is
Speaker 2: on Putin or JD. Vans, who's also in the Marjorie
Speaker 2: Taylor Green camp. I think for Trump, what he admires
Speaker 2: is the strongman dictator part of Putin. He probably doesn't
Speaker 2: care so much about the crushing of the LGBTQ and
Speaker 2: woke and all that, Whereas Marjorie Taylor Green and Jade
Speaker 2: Events probably wants something like theocratic rule here and see
Speaker 2: strongman rule as the way to get it. Trump doesn't
Speaker 2: really care about that. But they kind of are in
Speaker 2: alliance on this, right, they're all kind of weirdly vaguely
Speaker 2: pro putin. And that's not isolationism, it's side with an
Speaker 2: access of autocrats out there.
Speaker 1: Well, Juliaffi had this incredible scoop right where Michael McCall,
Speaker 1: you know, high ranking chair in Congress Republican. He comes
Speaker 1: out and says, Republicans are absolutely repeating Russian propaganda. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is wild.
Speaker 2: It absolutely is. It's absolutely crazy. And what he means,
Speaker 2: I think, is he means to rebut this idea that
Speaker 2: there are kind of these isolationists who just simply don't
Speaker 2: want to spend our blood and treasure abroad, right, which
Speaker 2: makes it sound so tame and so admirable. Right, they're
Speaker 2: just isolationists. They're anti war, they're not right, they're not Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, that's what he means. He's
Speaker 2: essentially saying what Julia Yaffi said on the podcast and
Speaker 2: what we're saying now, which is that in some very
Speaker 2: basic sense, a sizable swath of the Republican Conference is
Speaker 2: at best and indifferent to the fate of Ukraine and
Speaker 2: just fine with Putin crushing the Ukraine out of existence,
Speaker 2: and at worst tacitly or maybe even overtly wants Putin
Speaker 2: to win.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But I think what's interesting to me is here
Speaker 1: we are. Republicans have the House, they have a one
Speaker 1: bowl majority. They have a speaker who was number five
Speaker 1: in leadership. She came into this job and he's getting crushed.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's a really hard job. I Mean one
Speaker 1: of the things I think is, like when you think
Speaker 1: about people didn't like Nancy Pelosi, they had complaints about
Speaker 1: Nancy Pelosi, whatever, whatever, But like you really see, after
Speaker 1: we had Nancy Pelosi and then Republicans won the House,
Speaker 1: we had Kevin McCarthy and now we have Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: and both of them show it's actually a pretty hard job.
Speaker 2: It really is. And Nancy Pelosi is really good at
Speaker 2: the job too. I mean I always come back to this,
Speaker 2: but she essentially presided over two impeachments of Trump, right,
Speaker 2: which has never happened. Yeah, And I think if I'm right,
Speaker 2: she lost a grand total of three votes among Democrats
Speaker 2: on two impeachments. That's some pretty impressive party unity right there.
Speaker 2: And right, like on social people always black Pelosi as
Speaker 2: neoliberal or democratic establishment. She focuses too much on kitchen
Speaker 2: table issues. But like, winning House seats in some of
Speaker 2: these swing districts is hard, right, Yeah, And under her,
Speaker 2: they took the House in two thousand and six and
Speaker 2: again in twenty eighteen. Now they lost it, but by
Speaker 2: a far smaller margin than we expected. I think Mike
Speaker 2: Johnson maywell just kind of lose the House in his
Speaker 2: first crack at this if he's even there at the
Speaker 2: end of this year.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, he could lose the House before the
Speaker 1: actual election, which is not you know, it's unlikely, but
Speaker 1: not impossible.
Speaker 2: It's basically gone, right. I think one interesting way to
Speaker 2: think about this is that they don't really have a
Speaker 2: garning majority, right yeah, So what is the Martian now too?
Speaker 1: One?
Speaker 2: It's down to one, right, it's down to one now,
Speaker 2: And so right there just simply is not a group
Speaker 2: of Republicans who are united in any sense and who
Speaker 2: also constitute a majority of the House.
Speaker 1: Now and one of the things like I'm struck by
Speaker 1: when we talk about Nancy Pelosi is you know, she
Speaker 1: knew that the House is about getting re elected. So
Speaker 1: if you were a Democrat in a swing state, in
Speaker 1: a swingy district, she would really make sure that you
Speaker 1: didn't have to vote against your interests, right, you didn't
Speaker 1: have to do something that would mess you up. In
Speaker 1: two years now we have these Republicans, these House Republicans
Speaker 1: in New York, Mike Lawler, Nick Lloda, and in California
Speaker 1: who are in Biden districts desperately trying to hold onto
Speaker 1: their seats. As someone like Mike Lawler has had to
Speaker 1: vote and Nick Kloda too, voted for two impeachments, one
Speaker 1: the first impeachment of a member of the in one
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty years, right.
Speaker 2: And they didn't want to vote for that. They really
Speaker 2: didn't know.
Speaker 1: This week we saw Mike Lawler on CNN talking to
Speaker 1: Kayln Collins and she said, well did you vote? She said,
Speaker 1: who'd you vote for in the primary? And he said,
Speaker 1: I voted for Trump? Right, So you have a party
Speaker 1: nominee who, by voting for him, you can no longer
Speaker 1: make the case that you are a moderate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's not allowed right in this party.
Speaker 2: It really goes back to the basic theory of politics
Speaker 2: that Mega and Trump follow, right, which is that you
Speaker 2: can win only with mega, Right. When it really comes
Speaker 2: down to that, that's what they actually believe. Right. And
Speaker 2: so even though we have had a test of this
Speaker 2: in two national elections, right in twenty twenty and twenty
Speaker 2: twenty two, they actually did surprisingly well in the House
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty, right, we all know that story. But
Speaker 2: then in twenty twenty two, they dramatically underperform and a
Speaker 2: bunch of the Mega candidates for statewide office squandered a
Speaker 2: whole swath of winnable races. These were really winnable races, right,
Speaker 2: Like we kind of forget that. But like Arizona Senate,
Speaker 2: Arizona Governor Blake Masters. Yeah, I mean, like everyone made
Speaker 2: fun of Blake Masters, but like he looked to me
Speaker 2: like a pretty good candidate in a lot of ways, right,
Speaker 2: But he really ran on this insane maga message about immigration.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you saw any of his ads.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, yes, talk about it, talk about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's one one of his ads literally has machine
Speaker 2: gun fire at the border. It looked like a video game, right,
Speaker 2: call of duty or something. Yeah, Right, like there's this
Speaker 2: sort of weird maga space where all this stuff is
Speaker 2: real to them. Right, the border is a combat video game, right,
Speaker 2: or you know, there was a I think his opening
Speaker 2: introductory ad, like a two minute spot had him kind
Speaker 2: of running through the desert in some way, like he
Speaker 2: was kind of patrolling it. So they made immigration absolutely
Speaker 2: central to his campaign in a border state in Arizona,
Speaker 2: which is the state where some of the most ridiculously
Speaker 2: hardline anti immigrant policy has been hatched.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 2: Trump went to Arizona in twenty sixteen to deliver his
Speaker 2: big introductory speech round immigration. It's got a whole history, right,
Speaker 2: and they couldn't win. He lost by what five points? Yeah,
Speaker 2: And so that it doesn't tell you that you can't
Speaker 2: win with just maga. I don't know what does.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What I'm struck by is this maga like they
Speaker 1: can't scale. You know, they win these primers, but then
Speaker 1: they can't win the generals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, look, the funny thing about some of
Speaker 2: these mega can that it says they actually they lack
Speaker 2: what Trump has, right, And this is a dynamic. I
Speaker 2: feel like I don't understand well enough. Maybe you can
Speaker 2: help me on this, right, So there's nobody, presumably who's
Speaker 2: more magan than Trump. He's Trump, right, He's very maga, right,
Speaker 2: but he does really, really pretty well in Pennsylvania, whereas
Speaker 2: Doug Mastriano does terribly and gets blown out right, And
Speaker 2: so what's the difference there. I think it's that on
Speaker 2: some level, Trump has this kind of charisma and he
Speaker 2: has this capacity to communicate to voters that it's all
Speaker 2: kind of a joke, right when he dabbles in Christian nationalism,
Speaker 2: it's all sort of a little bit of a joke.
Speaker 2: I mean, Trump, he's not a Christian, right look at him.
Speaker 2: And whereas Doug Mastriano looks like a crazy extremist. So
Speaker 2: in a weird way, these guys are more maga than
Speaker 2: Trump without the positives, right, without the charisma, without the
Speaker 2: kind of wink wink, nudge nudge sense that it's all
Speaker 2: a big show. And that's just a weird dynamic to me.
Speaker 1: So what I think it is is two things. One
Speaker 1: of the reasons why Trump won in twenty sixteen, which
Speaker 1: we don't talk about, but is I think really important,
Speaker 1: or is at least very relevant, right, is that Trump
Speaker 1: won because he made a case that you didn't really
Speaker 1: know what he believed in. He had no voting record,
Speaker 1: he had been a Democrat. One of the reasons why
Speaker 1: we see all of these sort of last gasp attempts
Speaker 1: at trying desperately at Republicans trying desperately to pass all
Speaker 1: this weird religious stuff is because they sort of know
Speaker 1: right that their demographic is dead right, like that America
Speaker 1: is not a white Christian nation anymore, and you know,
Speaker 1: people aren't going to church the same way. There is
Speaker 1: much more, you know, diversity, it's not you know, they're worried.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is the last gasp against a multi
Speaker 1: racial democracy. So what I think worked for Trump was
Speaker 1: he was very famous. A lot of people knew who
Speaker 1: he was, but nobody really knew what he was going
Speaker 1: to do. It was sort of a normalcy bias. He
Speaker 1: can't possibly be that crazy. He's saying all this crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: but you know, he's a rich guy, so he's not
Speaker 1: going to do anything crazy. And he obviously he knows
Speaker 1: about the economy, and he's had all these wives, so
Speaker 1: he's you know, and who even knows, you know, he
Speaker 1: had this mistress, you know, so obviously he's not going
Speaker 1: to do all this crazy stuff. So there were people
Speaker 1: who held their nose and voted for him because they
Speaker 1: were like, we want the tax cuts, and besides, it's
Speaker 1: more business as usual. And I think after twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: you could never make that case again.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. We had Sarah Longwell on the podcast too,
Speaker 2: and folks check out our podcast, man, it's called The
Speaker 2: Daily Blast that's in the New Republic, and she said,
Speaker 2: he still codes as moderate on abortion and on a
Speaker 2: bunch of the stuff. And here's the supreme irony of
Speaker 2: it that really kind of confirms what you're talking about.
Speaker 2: He codes as moderate because he's a sleazy, nasty, philandering,
Speaker 2: you know, amoral piece of you know what, right, right,
Speaker 2: That's why he codes moderate. People think, oh, he probably
Speaker 2: paid for ten abortions himself, so he can't possibly be
Speaker 2: anti abortion.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Meanwhile, he's saying to evangelical voters, boasting of creating the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court that overturned a fifty year right.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I think he thinks that those evangelical
Speaker 1: voters won't abandon him, and so now he's trying to
Speaker 1: pivot to the center. You know, that abortion answer was
Speaker 1: him trying to pivot to the center.
Speaker 2: So good and really like for Arizona Republicans to kill
Speaker 2: an effort to repeal the eighteen sixty four law. I mean,
Speaker 2: by the way, right, there was so much predulous puntry
Speaker 2: and journalism saying that Trump has managed to you know,
Speaker 2: pick the law pieces again right when you're staying Rix,
Speaker 2: when he put out that video saying I forget exactly
Speaker 2: the phrase, but right the video essentially said he believed
Speaker 2: it should be left to the states and all that
Speaker 2: like a lot of I think everybody pounced on the
Speaker 2: New York Times for taking that at face value. And
Speaker 2: now immediately after that, right immediately after journalists and pundits
Speaker 2: said Trump has shown that there's a moderate position, what
Speaker 2: actually got confirmed is that Trump is going to have
Speaker 2: to answer for every extremist lurch that happens in the States.
Speaker 1: Now, now, Greg, thank you so much, really appreciate you
Speaker 1: always fun.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Mollie Spring is here and I bet you are trying
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Speaker 1: Caroline Kitchener is a national reporter covering abortion at the
Speaker 1: Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Power Politics, Caroline.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Molly, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: You write about abortion for the Washington Post. I think
Speaker 1: of you as like the go to, quietly doing the
Speaker 1: reporting that the rest of us need to understand what
Speaker 1: the landscape looks like and to base our little opinion
Speaker 1: pieces on. Today, you have a new story which I
Speaker 1: feel like it's like the marriage of the two biggest
Speaker 1: crisises of right now right, which are disinformation and abortion.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about that story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, those are the story that I've wanted to do
Speaker 3: for over a year. I just kept talking to women
Speaker 3: in states with abortion bands. They were ordering pills online
Speaker 3: or kind of getting them in other ways, figuring out
Speaker 3: however they could ways to navigate around the bands, but
Speaker 3: they were having really difficult experiences just you know, not
Speaker 3: obviously we know that abortion pills are safe, but it
Speaker 3: can be scary when you're alone, you're in a state
Speaker 3: where it's illegal, you feel like you're breaking the law.
Speaker 3: Even though I think it's important to say, you know,
Speaker 3: under these bands, the women taking the pills themselves can't
Speaker 3: be prosecuted. They don't know what to expect, and they
Speaker 3: don't know who to call. That, I would say was
Speaker 3: the thing that I heard from every single person that
Speaker 3: I talked to, just I didn't know who to call.
Speaker 3: I didn't know who to talk to, because you know,
Speaker 3: they were afraid that if they tried to reach out
Speaker 3: to a doctor or you know, even went to the
Speaker 3: er just to make sure that everything was okay, that
Speaker 3: they would be arrested.
Speaker 1: Right. What I think is interesting about the story is
Speaker 1: there is a real concerted effort on the right from
Speaker 1: these anti choice groups to undermine the information that these
Speaker 1: women are getting. So absolutely explained to us what that
Speaker 1: looks like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I spoke with a lot of people
Speaker 3: that described frantically googling trying to figure out what was
Speaker 3: safe and what was okay, because you know, they would
Speaker 3: often run into, you know, anti abortion information that would
Speaker 3: say that the pills were highly dangerous or even deadly,
Speaker 3: and that you know, obviously understandably is extremely scary. You know,
Speaker 3: we know that those are false claims, but they're very widespread,
Speaker 3: and some of these women too, in these states with
Speaker 3: bands now the only place you know, many of them said,
Speaker 3: I just wanted to go and talk to somebody in person,
Speaker 3: Like I just wanted to like, you know, before I
Speaker 3: took these pills, I just wanted to talk to somebody.
Speaker 3: And often the only place to go in these states
Speaker 3: now is crisis pregnancy centers, which are you know, anti
Speaker 3: abortion centers that really are designed to dissuade women from
Speaker 3: having abortions. You know, in the first place, let's.
Speaker 1: Do two seconds on what a crisis pregnancy center is.
Speaker 1: Because they're often funded by relig groups, right, they tend.
Speaker 3: They very often are have some sort of religious affiliation.
Speaker 1: They advertise themselves though, as a place to get a
Speaker 1: pregnancy test and talk about your options. So talk about
Speaker 1: sort of how they advertise themselves versus what they are.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think that it's sort of hard
Speaker 3: to paint them all with a broad brush because oftentimes
Speaker 3: there are sort of these much more institutionalized ones, but
Speaker 3: then there's also sort of lots of kind of mom
Speaker 3: and pops, smaller ministry kind of things.
Speaker 1: Right, yet another thing the federal government does not regulate.
Speaker 3: Right, many of these ones that are more i would say,
Speaker 3: more sophisticated and more sort of professionalized, they have recognized
Speaker 3: that the sort of message of free ultrasounds, free pregnancy
Speaker 3: tests is very appealing to people, so they'll often put
Speaker 3: that on a big sign. They definitely do a lot of.
Speaker 1: Google Search algorithm. Exactly what Carolyn's talking about is this
Speaker 1: idea that they do a Google SEO, so they come
Speaker 1: up in these searches in the Google search.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can explain that a little bit. So oftentimes
Speaker 3: these places like work with you know, somebody that can
Speaker 3: manipulate search and make sure that for example, if somebody
Speaker 3: in Texas types in, you know, need abortion Texas now
Speaker 3: something like that, then you know, the first thing that
Speaker 3: would come up would be the Crisis Pregnancy Center with
Speaker 3: you know, information about you know, get your abortion consultation.
Speaker 3: That's typically a word that they use, or you know,
Speaker 3: your free ultrasound or something like that.
Speaker 1: A lot of what I know about this is from
Speaker 1: Robin Marty ran an abortion clinic in the state of Alabama,
Speaker 1: and she talked about how, you know, now she does
Speaker 1: STIs treatment and you know that kind of thing, but
Speaker 1: that these centers really just are trying to get you
Speaker 1: to not have an abortion. Yeah, so what happens to
Speaker 1: these women they want to take the pill, the abortion pill.
Speaker 1: They get it, and then they can't get good information
Speaker 1: about it, or or they can't get it.
Speaker 3: The people that I talked to for the story, they
Speaker 3: were able to get it. But the word that I
Speaker 3: heard all the time was like, is this legit? Like
Speaker 3: how do I know if this is legit?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 3: Because if you're in a state with a band, you know,
Speaker 3: you're you know that there's this law, and so you know,
Speaker 3: even if you go online and you can find these
Speaker 3: places that say that they're going to send it to you,
Speaker 3: it feels a little sketchy, right, Like, even if we know,
Speaker 3: we know that certain of these organizations they're very you know,
Speaker 3: they are very legitimate, and they are doing this in
Speaker 3: like really big numbers. But if you are that young
Speaker 3: woman somewhere on your own googling around, you know, you
Speaker 3: can see how it would feel scary.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I'm struck by as we
Speaker 1: talk about this is this idea that these pills are
Speaker 1: much safer than the right wants us to believe. And
Speaker 1: they've been working really hard to work the rafts. Mattha
Speaker 1: pristone has been available in this country since two thousand.
Speaker 1: It was available in France since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3: Right, this is not new, it's you know, over two
Speaker 3: decades now that this has been approved by the FDA,
Speaker 3: And you know, there is just no question from any
Speaker 3: leading medical association or any you know, major study that
Speaker 3: these pills are extremely safe. And I think it's important
Speaker 3: to say too that they are safe even when taken
Speaker 3: somewhat independently. And there have been a lot of really
Speaker 3: good recent studies that show that even if you're not
Speaker 3: having a face to face with a doctor to get them,
Speaker 3: they're still extremely safe. The safety numbers don't really change there.
Speaker 3: So what these women are doing, you know, when they
Speaker 3: order the pills online, it is safe, but they don't
Speaker 3: necessarily know that or feel that.
Speaker 1: One of the points in the article is that if
Speaker 1: you are in a state where abortion is illegal, which
Speaker 1: means which more than a third of all American women are,
Speaker 1: if you take the pills, there's some anxiety about going
Speaker 1: into a hospital. So talk to us about that.
Speaker 3: One thing that studies have shown is that, you know,
Speaker 3: the serious adverse events numbers are just tiny, tiny, tiny
Speaker 3: for abortion pills. It's like less than one percent a
Speaker 3: larger abortion, not a huge number, but typically between the
Speaker 3: studies range from one point three percent to eight percent
Speaker 3: of people that take abortion pills.
Speaker 4: Go to the er.
Speaker 3: And you know, that is a number. Those are numbers
Speaker 3: that have been really co opted by the anti abortion
Speaker 3: groups to say, look, look, how many people are going
Speaker 3: to the er. But the really important context for those
Speaker 3: visits is that women are often going for a gut.
Speaker 1: Check because it's scary.
Speaker 3: Like you're bleeding a lot, right, You're cramping a lot,
Speaker 3: and it's really painful, and you don't know what's normal,
Speaker 3: and so you want to go somewhere and just make
Speaker 3: sure that everything is okay. I think that's like a
Speaker 3: very sort of natural human instinct. But when you're in
Speaker 3: a state with a ban, even though these laws are
Speaker 3: not written to allow prosecutors to go after the women
Speaker 3: that are taking the pills, that's the sort of a
Speaker 3: very weird thing to understand, and it's a very that's
Speaker 3: like really an intricacy of the law. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm only of all the women that I talked to
Speaker 3: for this story, only one of them understood that under
Speaker 3: the band sheep personally could not be prosecuted. Everybody just
Speaker 3: assumes that they can be, and so they are terrified
Speaker 3: to go to the er.
Speaker 1: And Trump has said that he believes there should be
Speaker 1: some form of prosecution for women who have abortion. I mean,
Speaker 1: then he walked it back, but you know, I was
Speaker 1: on with Chris Matthews and we were talking about that,
Speaker 1: so I mean he did say it, so you understand
Speaker 1: why this does not exist in a vacuum, right.
Speaker 3: And I think it's also important to note that like
Speaker 3: women who have taken pills and self managed their own abortions,
Speaker 3: they have been charged under other laws in the past
Speaker 3: other than abortion bands, like laws around disposed little feel
Speaker 3: remains and things like that, especially when they're later in pregnancy.
Speaker 3: So it's not like there's no legal risk at all.
Speaker 3: Their right to worry obviously a very difficult situation to
Speaker 3: be in well.
Speaker 1: And I also think when you talk about abortion, this
Speaker 1: issue really just collide with the with the misinformation and
Speaker 1: disinformation ecosystem that we're living in right now. And it
Speaker 1: is also like a personal thing, you know, it's not
Speaker 1: like something you want a crowdsource on Facebook exactly.
Speaker 2: It's such a good point.
Speaker 1: And it's like just not that easy to bring it up.
Speaker 3: One of the women that I talked about, like she said, man,
Speaker 3: I just wish I had a group chat, Like I
Speaker 3: just wish I could talk to people about this in
Speaker 3: a group chat with friend, but I can't if nobody
Speaker 3: can know.
Speaker 1: One of the things in the article that you talk
Speaker 1: about is that if you go to a hospital and
Speaker 1: you've self managed an abortion, doctors cannot tell if you
Speaker 1: are having a miscarriage or self managed abortion. Will you
Speaker 1: talk about that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that is something that all of the hotlines and
Speaker 3: different abortion rights groups are telling women because that's not
Speaker 3: I think something that isn't too to know. But you know,
Speaker 3: if you present with the bleeding and cramping of a
Speaker 3: medication abortion, unless you took the pills vaginally, which is
Speaker 3: sort of a more rare way to take them, there
Speaker 3: is no way for a doctor to know whether you
Speaker 3: miscarried or whether you had a medication abortion. So folks
Speaker 3: are telling women to say, you know, just say I
Speaker 3: had a miscarriage, I just started bleeding, I don't really
Speaker 3: know what's going on, and then not say anything else.
Speaker 1: So this is not in the article, but since you
Speaker 1: are really in it, I'm wondering if you could talk
Speaker 1: about this Rise Louisiana Report. I'm sure you read it. Too.
Speaker 1: I Mean, what's so interesting is women's health. You know,
Speaker 1: we don't get so much research like men's health. Right.
Speaker 1: Imagine if men had to take a pill it caused
Speaker 1: bleeding and is sometimes painful, like, they would never.
Speaker 3: You know, there would be a better way.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, they'd be like, no, no, just come into
Speaker 1: this ATM and we'll you know. So I'm wondering. Like
Speaker 1: one of the things a Rise Louisiana report talked about
Speaker 1: and a thing I've heard on totally from obgyns is
Speaker 1: the incredible anxiety about treating in the first trimester from doctors.
Speaker 1: Are you hearing that on the ground that there's just
Speaker 1: like the doctors have really changed the way they treat
Speaker 1: pregnant women in these stays. If you're seeing that or
Speaker 1: you're hearing that, or maybe you're not, but I'm just curious.
Speaker 3: Absolutely, they're terrified. It just remains really unclear. I mean,
Speaker 3: just look at the changing laws, like you know, we are,
Speaker 3: you know, two years out from this Dobbs ruling almost
Speaker 3: and things are not settled like we you know, we
Speaker 3: have Arizona, we have Florida. We have these big new
Speaker 3: laws taking effect and changing and the landscape is not settled,
Speaker 3: and doctors feel that for sure. I mean, it was
Speaker 3: a couple of months ago I did a story about
Speaker 3: a woman in Texas who was turned away with an
Speaker 3: ectopic pregnancy, which really, I mean, even as much as
Speaker 3: I write about this and talk to people, that really
Speaker 3: shocked me. Because a topic pregnancy.
Speaker 1: Is not going to ever be a baby. You cannot
Speaker 1: physically carry a baby in the fallopian tubes of your womb,
Speaker 1: Like it cannot happen. So there's only one thing that happens,
Speaker 1: which is you not.
Speaker 3: Like that particular word. I feel like it's such a
Speaker 3: has become such a buzzword after the decision, like people,
Speaker 3: you know, that really was sort of the big thing
Speaker 3: that people talked about, like people with ectopic pregnancies, and
Speaker 3: and you saw the conservatives and the anti abortion folks
Speaker 3: say like, oh no, at topics, that's totally fine, that's
Speaker 3: totally fine. And I really thought that, you know, a
Speaker 3: year and a half since the decision, we were in
Speaker 3: a place where like topics would be treated kind of
Speaker 3: no question, Like people just sort of understood that. And
Speaker 3: a lot of doctors have said that to me, like
Speaker 3: oh yeah, like the topics you know, of course, like,
Speaker 3: we know, we know we can treat them, but then
Speaker 3: you do hear these stories still of women getting turned away.
Speaker 3: So it's just not settled yet. And I'm sure that
Speaker 3: it also depends on what the feelings of the doctor
Speaker 3: are on this issue. Right.
Speaker 1: It is so insane to me, like, there is no
Speaker 1: baby in an atopic pregnancy, right, And I mean, what
Speaker 1: happened to that woman in that case?
Speaker 3: What the doctor said is that there is a chance
Speaker 3: that this is not an atopic pregnancy, because it's not
Speaker 3: always so easy so cut and dry to tell when
Speaker 3: it is and when it isn't. But I mean hers
Speaker 3: was I think fairly obvious. So she was turned away
Speaker 3: from the hospital. Later that day, her best friend was
Speaker 3: at an obiqui en appointment. She called her best friend
Speaker 3: and her best friend was like, Hey, do you want
Speaker 3: me to like show the doctor here the picture of
Speaker 3: your pregnancy, and she did. The best friend did, and
Speaker 3: the doctor was like, oh my god, can your friendly
Speaker 3: come in right now? So she did, and that doctor
Speaker 3: was like, I'm going to take you in for emergency
Speaker 3: surgery right.
Speaker 1: Now, yeah, because you can die from this.
Speaker 3: Right, And I just think that shows, like, I mean,
Speaker 3: how scary is it though that it's just kind of
Speaker 3: luck of the draw of who you get, who you see.
Speaker 1: You know, I heard this story anecdotally, so I don't
Speaker 1: want to pass it on because who knows. But you know,
Speaker 1: friend of mine was telling me about a girl in
Speaker 1: a red state where she was having a miscarriage, like
Speaker 1: her numbers were going down, the pregnancy was not holding,
Speaker 1: and the doctor didn't want to tell her because she
Speaker 1: didn't want to perform a DNC, which is so insane, right,
Speaker 1: Like the these aren't even babies. These are people where
Speaker 1: they're not going to have a baby, and they can't
Speaker 1: get the care they need. These unforeseen consequences of the
Speaker 1: inability to legislate on the part of Republicans is shocking
Speaker 1: to me. But it shouldn't be right, It shouldn't be
Speaker 1: calin what are you watching right now?
Speaker 3: I'm watching that Florida and Arizona. I mean Florida. I
Speaker 3: think in particular, I don't know that people have fully
Speaker 3: registered how many women live in Florida and how many
Speaker 3: abortions appeased in Florida. Yeah, last year there were eighty
Speaker 3: four thousand abortions in Florida. And if you look at
Speaker 3: sort of the bands that are currently in effect. The
Speaker 3: sort of largest state bans Texas, And before that took
Speaker 3: a fact, fifty thousand happened in Texas.
Speaker 1: Wait, what's the number in Florida.
Speaker 3: In Florida, it's eighty four thousand.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, and it's and historically it's always been a
Speaker 1: safe haven for abortion in the South right.
Speaker 3: It has because of the constitutional protections that they had
Speaker 3: for so long. And I also think like that just
Speaker 3: the geography geography of Florida makes it extremely difficult. Like
Speaker 3: somebody that's coming from Key West to go to the
Speaker 3: nearest clinic at there after six weeks, once this law
Speaker 3: takes it back, they're going to have to drive fourteen hours.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Carolyn, thanks for having me on. Stephen Richer
Speaker 1: is the Maracoba County, Arizona Recorder. Welcome Steven, too fast politics,
Speaker 1: Tell us what you do.
Speaker 4: I am the elected Maykope County Recorder. I ran in
Speaker 4: twenty twenty in the Republican primary one that won the
Speaker 4: general election in November.
Speaker 5: I am statutorially responsible for early voting, voter registration and
Speaker 5: document recording in Mericle County, which is the fourth largest
Speaker 5: county in the United States, and second largest voting jurisdiction
Speaker 5: in the United States and makes up about sixty two
Speaker 5: percent of Arizona's voting population.
Speaker 1: It's an elected job, but you are a Republican.
Speaker 4: Yes, elected job, and I'm a Republican. That's correct.
Speaker 1: And one of the things that you've been doing, which
Speaker 1: I think is probably one of the more important things,
Speaker 1: is trying to correct the record when it comes to
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty election and its integrity. Talk to us
Speaker 1: about sort of if you could set the stage of
Speaker 1: how you became this celebrity. Sorry, I apologize for the
Speaker 1: use of the word celebrity.
Speaker 4: No no, no, I guess it's just my quasi looking
Speaker 4: at local in there. No, no, no, you'll come on
Speaker 4: board on for it. On well, one, the election administration
Speaker 4: is sort of new to the business of communicating regarding
Speaker 4: the process. There weren't too many people prior to say,
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen that were terribly interested in the nuts and
Speaker 4: bolts of election administration. And so this is still an
Speaker 4: ecosystem that is being built out, and so is new landscape.
Speaker 4: And then obviously since twenty twenty, there have been a
Speaker 4: countless number of false allegations about both the twenty twenty election,
Speaker 4: the twenty twenty two election, and there haven't been too
Speaker 4: many people who have been consistently and with technical specificity
Speaker 4: pushing back against the falsehoods. And there have been even
Speaker 4: fewer who are elected Republicans. And so I think that
Speaker 4: has made me a bit of an anomaly and maybe
Speaker 4: the celebrity I've earned has just been the product of
Speaker 4: my being a bit of a anomalist freak.
Speaker 1: Yes, anomalist freak. Well, welcome, because that's something we love.
Speaker 1: One of the problems with elections is that every state
Speaker 1: is different, certain counties are different. There's very little uniformity
Speaker 1: in it, which actually protects our election. Zah, Will you
Speaker 1: explain a little bit about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it is a feature in a flaw, as you
Speaker 4: have correctly identified. We have over eight thousand voting jurisdictions
Speaker 4: in the United States. We have fifteen in Arizona. The
Speaker 4: fifteen different counties. Elections are administered at the county level
Speaker 4: in Arizona. That is a feature in that no two
Speaker 4: systems are exactly alike. It's not the same people, it's
Speaker 4: not the same software. Necessarily, it's not the same machinery.
Speaker 4: And so the notion that you could flip a switch
Speaker 4: or install a program into some mothership computer that would
Speaker 4: then disseminate out to all election jurisdictions throughout the United States.
Speaker 4: Is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections work in
Speaker 4: the United States. That's why some of the more outlandish
Speaker 4: theories of the twenty twenty election, as far as dominion
Speaker 4: being able to control everything, or one software patch or
Speaker 4: something like that, where for anyone who knew about elections
Speaker 4: pretty silly. It's a bug in that a lot of
Speaker 4: our politics has become nationalized, and people on election night,
Speaker 4: especially in November of even years, look to the MSNBC,
Speaker 4: CNN's Fox News is of the world and they will
Speaker 4: see something being said and being done in one state
Speaker 4: that won't necessarily be done or said in another state,
Speaker 4: and that can create confusion, that can create concern. Why
Speaker 4: does Pennsylvania have so few of its ballots reported immediately
Speaker 4: but Washington was just able to immediately provide fifty percent
Speaker 4: of its expected returns. Well, Washington could pre process Pennsylvania couldn't.
Speaker 4: In Florida, more people have show up in person and
Speaker 4: they drop off their early ballots earlier. So that is
Speaker 4: something that we have had to remind viewers members of
Speaker 4: the media that this is federalizomat it's core in how
Speaker 4: our election administration is designed.
Speaker 1: Someone like you isn't necessarily a public facing individual in
Speaker 1: most states, so you can't just call up. I mean,
Speaker 1: on this podcast, we have interviewed so many state level politicians,
Speaker 1: like during the Virginia we interviewed, you know, during that
Speaker 1: Virginia election, we interviewed like a lot of delegates, right,
Speaker 1: a lot of state senators. So I know that not
Speaker 1: and I mean this with all the love in the world,
Speaker 1: not all state officials are ready to handle the media spotlight.
Speaker 4: I think that's a very fair statement, and it is
Speaker 4: not unduly disrespectful.
Speaker 1: Okay, good, and nor should they, right, I mean, that's
Speaker 1: not you. You know, your job is very technical too.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want you to talk about your lawsuit
Speaker 1: because it seems to be the only way to stop
Speaker 1: this disinformation. Carry Lake decided that she was governor and
Speaker 1: that this would somehow even though you're a Republican, even
Speaker 1: though you do this very technical job, but somehow you
Speaker 1: were involved in us.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: So Carry Lake was somebody who is new to Republican
Speaker 4: Party politics. In about twenty twenty went on the scene,
Speaker 4: really built her character around the idea that the twenty
Speaker 4: twenty election was stolen. Made her fame in politics in
Speaker 4: that vein Ran became the gubernatorial nominee for the Republican
Speaker 4: Party in the twenty twenty two election, narrowly lost to
Speaker 4: the Democratic candidate, alleged a whole bunch of crazy things
Speaker 4: that were a continuation of all the things that she
Speaker 4: was saying about twenty twenty. Filed numerous election complaints in
Speaker 4: which she would air these very specific allegations regarding actions
Speaker 4: that I purportedly took two in particular, that I had
Speaker 4: injected three hundred thousand early ballots that were fraudulent into
Speaker 4: the voting system, and that I had manipulated machinery so
Speaker 4: as to swing the election in favor of her opponent.
Speaker 4: She files those lawsuits, court says there's no evidence for this,
Speaker 4: no foundation for this. It pretty much kicks the snot
Speaker 4: out of her on all of her claims, including others.
Speaker 4: She appeals to the Court of Appeals, loses the Court
Speaker 4: of Appeals, she loses at the Arizona Supreme Court. There's
Speaker 4: another trial, she loses on that, and so she has
Speaker 4: a very intense awareness that all these things have been
Speaker 4: measured and they have been found wanting on evidence and
Speaker 4: facts and law. Nonetheless, she persists in making these very
Speaker 4: serious accusations that I stole the twenty twenty two election
Speaker 4: from her. She would go to events, she would write
Speaker 4: on Twitter, she would write in her fundraising emails. She
Speaker 4: would name me. She would show pictures of me at
Speaker 4: events where she would try to stir up the crowd.
Speaker 4: This man, this Stephen Richer. He injected three hundred thousand
Speaker 4: fraudulent bouts, and she would say it time after time.
Speaker 1: Did you find it scary or now?
Speaker 4: Some people would report back to me, including a writer
Speaker 4: for the Washington Post, and he said, make sure you're
Speaker 4: taking precautions because people are being whipped up into a frenzy. Here.
Speaker 4: I'm imagining sort of the scene and Beauty and the Beast,
Speaker 4: where Gastan says, you know, grab your pitch fork, grab
Speaker 4: your hoe, and we're going to go kill the beast. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he continues, and we're thinking, Ah, she'll get over it.
Speaker 4: Most people do. Maybe not in this new age. She'll
Speaker 4: get a new job. But this became the cornerstone of
Speaker 4: her continued political relevance. Her political fundraising. She even wrote
Speaker 4: a book in which I appear in a really creepy,
Speaker 4: weird dream sequence that she supposedly has, And we were
Speaker 4: at our wits end and so filed this defamation lawsuit.
Speaker 4: My legal team and I we thought we had a
Speaker 4: very strong case because obviously it's very false. She'd been
Speaker 4: told it was false, she knew from court rulings it
Speaker 4: was false. It did real damage to my family and me,
Speaker 4: and we've been successful so far. She filed motions to
Speaker 4: dismiss she lost on those multiple times, and then when
Speaker 4: it came time to really get going on discovery and
Speaker 4: fact investigation, she defaulted, meaning that a judgment is going
Speaker 4: to be entered into the court of law saying that yes,
Speaker 4: Carrie Lake defamed Stephen Richer. She could not prove the
Speaker 4: truth of her allegations. She is not defending their falsity,
Speaker 4: she is not defending malice. And now the only thing
Speaker 4: that we have left to work on is how many
Speaker 4: zeros are in the damages award and how much did
Speaker 4: she destroy my character among certain people?
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about the dream sequence?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1: Wait, she wrote a book, Yeah, she.
Speaker 4: Wrote a book published in the summer of twenty three.
Speaker 4: In her dream sequence, I and one of my colleagues
Speaker 4: from the county. We kidnap her. We tie her up
Speaker 4: in duct tape. We throw her into the back of
Speaker 4: a pickup truck. We drive her out into the desert.
Speaker 4: But then, because she drops a footnote that she was
Speaker 4: a high school gymnast, she was able to contort herself
Speaker 4: out of her duct tape bindings. And then because she
Speaker 4: ran track in high school, she was able to sprint
Speaker 4: off while we as bumbling fools. Though we fired shots
Speaker 4: after her, we weren't able to get her. And I'll
Speaker 4: say that in a foot race, I'm guessing I destroy
Speaker 4: this lady.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, the whole thing is so just deeply,
Speaker 1: deeply disturbing and also quite strange.
Speaker 4: If you read this in a different context, you would
Speaker 4: say this person is a lunatic.
Speaker 1: Right, let's keep going with this for a minute. She
Speaker 1: continued to defame you when you won this case, because
Speaker 1: this is like the Rudy Giuliani problem, right, Like you
Speaker 1: had the two election workers who sued Judy Giuliani, and
Speaker 1: you had Egene Carroll Sewing Trump Boyd. When you sue
Speaker 1: these people for defamation. They tend not to stop defaming.
Speaker 1: Did she actually stop defaming?
Speaker 4: This is all pretty new, so we'll see. But certainly
Speaker 4: in the immediate aftermath of her defaulting, it was bizarre
Speaker 4: because at the same time she's resting her defense in
Speaker 4: a court of law, she's going on to Twitter and
Speaker 4: saying I stand by everything I said, and so you
Speaker 4: better believe that we're watching those statements, and if she continues,
Speaker 4: then we will take appropriate legal action because now we
Speaker 4: have a judgment that these are defamatory remarks that she
Speaker 4: cannot defend. She cannot prove our troop.
Speaker 1: The central tenant of our democracy is that we have
Speaker 1: free and fair elections. Why do we think that these
Speaker 1: trumpy I don't even want to say Republicans, because there
Speaker 1: are good Republicans who they really that's sort of Trump in,
Speaker 1: you know, these lies about the election, these Trump he
Speaker 1: lies about the election.
Speaker 4: The incentive structure right now, the most powerful endorsement in
Speaker 4: politics right now is a Republican primary endorsement from President Trump.
Speaker 4: And this is a necessary and sometimes sufficient qualification for
Speaker 4: getting his endorsement is telling him very fervently that he
Speaker 4: won the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1: If he wins. Obviously we all have figger problems. But
Speaker 1: in a world where the Republican Party loses an all
Speaker 1: and finally becomes sane again, some part of this base
Speaker 1: has descended in trump Ism, But it seems as if
Speaker 1: there are people who can come back and be quote
Speaker 1: unquote more normal.
Speaker 4: I think so, and it's why I'm still part of
Speaker 4: the Republican Party because I believe in the twenty sixteen
Speaker 4: party platform. I believe in the twenty twelve party platform,
Speaker 4: and the philosophy of a limited government and small, lower taxes,
Speaker 4: lower regulation. We can quibble about those things of whether
Speaker 4: the party, you know, consistently implements those but that's not
Speaker 4: really the purpose of today's conversation, I don't think. But
Speaker 4: a party will always have a percentage of its voting
Speaker 4: members that you know, maybe aren't you are a little
Speaker 4: bit your weird uncle. Just the difference is that the
Speaker 4: weird uncle has taken over the steering wheel for in
Speaker 4: some instances eight years. But the Democratic Party, I would say,
Speaker 4: flirted with this a little bit. And I'm not going
Speaker 4: to draw one to one comparisons, but elevating Bernie Sanders
Speaker 4: into the leadership role would have been giving over control
Speaker 4: to not where the median member of the party used
Speaker 4: to be. And so just it's an interesting phenomenon that
Speaker 4: I think has its roots in intense partisanship, intense polarization,
Speaker 4: intense distrust in society, intense media ecosystems that are silos,
Speaker 4: and trace it back to I don't know whether it's
Speaker 4: the two thousand and eight financial crisis or the Tea
Speaker 4: Party movement, but just trust in anything institutionally has suffered
Speaker 4: immensely over the last twenty years, and elections is simply
Speaker 4: one manifestation of it. But I think that you're going
Speaker 4: to find that, if, for instance, one of these courts
Speaker 4: rules against President Trump in the criminal context, that you're
Speaker 4: going to have a lot of people who do not
Speaker 4: believe in the criminal justice system anymore so insane.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's a way like using more clarity
Speaker 1: will help Republicans see that these elections were fair, you know,
Speaker 1: because clearly you think about this a lot. Give me
Speaker 1: your hot take for the solve here.
Speaker 4: I think we have to accept that there's a percentage
Speaker 4: of the party that will never be convinced even moving forward.
Speaker 4: I think we have to accept that there's even a
Speaker 4: larger percentage that is never going to change their opinion
Speaker 4: about twenty twenty election. Why we try to provide more
Speaker 4: and more information and combat false information online is because
Speaker 4: we believe that there are people, especially forward looking people,
Speaker 4: who can be convinced with more information, that this is
Speaker 4: a system that they can have confidence in even if
Speaker 4: they don't like the outcome. And so we're not look
Speaker 4: at we're not shooting for one hundred percent here, And truthfully,
Speaker 4: that's never happened in American politics. There's always been a
Speaker 4: distrust from the losing party. It's just we've seen it
Speaker 4: on steroids these last few years. But I hope that
Speaker 4: we can bring back people. A central core belief of
Speaker 4: mine is that man is still a rational reacher and
Speaker 4: if you hit him with facts and logics, then that's
Speaker 4: going to have an impact to at least a good
Speaker 4: number of people.
Speaker 1: Well, let's hope. Thank you so much. This is really interesting,
Speaker 1: So thanks.
Speaker 4: Great.
Speaker 1: Moment. Oh fuck on, Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast.
Speaker 4: The juice is loose in the afterlife.
Speaker 1: Sometimes mainstream media. Look, it's very hard. Writing straight down
Speaker 1: the middle is very hard. But OJ Simpson's obituary has
Speaker 1: proven to be a sticky wicket that many a mainstream
Speaker 1: news outlet has failed. O J. Simpson, athlete whose trial
Speaker 1: riveted the nation, dies at seventy six. He ran to
Speaker 1: football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies,
Speaker 1: but his world was ruined after he was charged with
Speaker 1: killing his former wife and her friend. Hmmm, the passive voice,
Speaker 1: this is a choice. And then we had breaking news
Speaker 1: football great orenthal James Simpson, known as Ojay has died. Perhaps,
Speaker 1: but I think the height of fuckery will be the
Speaker 1: La Times accidentally using the name Trump in place of
Speaker 1: Simpson near the end of their oh bit. And I'm
Speaker 1: just going to read you the sentence because it's amazing.
Speaker 1: Long before the city woke up on a fall morning
Speaker 1: in twenty seventeen, Trump walked out of the Lovelock County
Speaker 1: Correction Center outside of Reno a freeman for the first
Speaker 1: time in nine years. And that, my friends, is our
Speaker 1: moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
Speaker 1: best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
Speaker 1: If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
Speaker 1: a friend and keep the conversation going, and again thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.
Speaker 3: Two