January 22, 2025 • 46 mins
MSNBC contributor Charlie Sykes analyzes the shock and awe of Trump’s first day back in office. Planned Parenthood President Alexis McGill Johnson outlines strategies to protect reproductive rights in this new era.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and January sixth, rider Pamela Hemphill says
she will refuse Trump's pardon. We have such a great
show for you today, MSNBC contributor to Charlie Sikes pars
is the shock and awe as we talk about Trump's
(00:25):
first day back in office. Then we will talk to
Planned Parenthood President Alexis macgil Johnson about how they are
going to go forward and try to protect women's reproductive rights.
But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So Mollie, it's the first day of the Trump administration
is now just about twenty four hours old. As we
go to tape this, I think the biggest concern of
the shock at aw is as attack of the fourteenth Amendment.
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Here we are It's been a day of Trumps. He's
basically decided he wants to a sharply to the Constitution
and he wants to start with the fourteenth Amendment. I
think it's important to realize the fourteenth Amendment. These are
the amendments that came after the Civil War. Right, these
are the amendments that were the kind of rebuilding America
(01:16):
post slavery. These are the amendments that promised because remember,
when children of African slaves were born in this country,
they were not necessarily citizens. This was the way to
undo that. And I don't think that you can look
at trump Ism and as a vacuum. You have to
(01:36):
look at this sort of historical president and remember, this
is a larger movement to sort of undo the advances
of FDR in the twentieth century, and that is what
this is. So Trump's attack on birthright citizenship is not
just about having less citizens. It's about a certain kind
of homage to the past, a certain kind of undoing
(01:59):
of so much progress. And I think it's worth realizing
that one of the other things about this executive order,
which by the way, is totally not constitutional, it's a
complete shot in the dark. It's like, you know, it's
like the presidential immunity, you know, the idea that the
president should be a monarch and not be responsible, broadly
(02:23):
immune from prosecution for anything forever and ever, which was,
by the way, a theory that a legal theory that
Trump's lawyers brought to the Supreme Court, and one with
which is why I bring this up. Look, Trump has
capture of the Supreme Court. We know that, right, He's
installed three justices. He has two who are absolute Trumpers
(02:44):
to the core. You know, two who are basically Tucker
Carls and fanboys. That's Thomas and Alidos. So for sure,
this is in a normal presidency. In a normal America,
this would not even get a minute because it's so
uncom constitutional. But remember we are now living in Project
twenty twenty five. We are now living in the rous
(03:05):
Vought extra constitutional world. We are post textualsts, and so
you could see a world where these people are able
to overturn the fourteenth Amendment. I want to point out
one last thing about this executive order. It actually says
that if you come to this country illegally, your child
born here would not be a citizen. But it also
(03:25):
says if you come to this country on an H
one B visa you come to work, your child will
not be a legal citizen either. These are like this
is the beginning of making America a country more like France,
or making America a country that is no longer a
country of immigrants. Now, as someone whose great grandparents came
to this country in the eighteen hundreds. It is, in
(03:48):
my mind, just mind blowing that we've gotten to this
moment and it is such a paradigm shift. It is
so profoundly wrong on every level. And the truth is,
the skin various part of it is that he may
actually be able to take a sharp bat of the Constitution.
We don't know, so that will be the big open
(04:08):
question of the next couple months.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I am not looking forward to seeing what the
Supreme Court says when they finally get that in their laps.
But hopefully they Democrats are smart enough to do enough
fuckery of the courts to delay that for as long
as possible.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I'm not sure the Supreme Court wants. They may rule
what he wants, but they may not want to take this.
They may want to slow their role as slowly as
possible because this will be a very unpopular decision. And
they have already done a bunch of really unpopular decisions.
And you'll remember that some of the people, even the
most zalidous and I'm thinking of like Justice Roberts who
(04:45):
wrote these Citizens United Agreement, who you know, the Citizens
United decision, which is what actually got us here right,
which was you know how there are billionaire oligarchs funding
our elections. Now that guy knows that this be an
epic should show for him, So I think stay tuned
on this. There's something else I want to talk about,
(05:06):
which is something that we did a lot of time
with when we were talking about Project tween twenty five,
and it's something that we were prepared for. But every
time I'm optimistic, that's when I get into trouble. The
Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight. If you listen
to this podcast, you know what it is because we
talk about it all the time. It's a wartime authority.
(05:27):
It's been used three times. We're of eighteen twelve against
the British, World War One, against the Germans, World War two,
against all of the countries that you know, the Germans,
the Japanese, et cetera. For internment camps. As we heard
Michael Walden from the Brennan Center tell us this week,
it is very faulty kind of reasoning that may not
(05:49):
work for Trump, but this is the legal framework Trump
is trying to use, and that is why he declared
an emergency at the southern border to be at war
with the cartels. So the question is, can he create
a legal scenario where it seems as if we are
at war despite the fact that we are not at war,
(06:10):
and can he do that in order to then be
able to designate different groups alien enemies. And by the way,
when you go down the road of alien enemies, you
end up with alien enemies like people from Mexico, like
journalists who don't write stuff you like. I mean, there's
(06:31):
a lot of really sketchy ways to skin this cat
and stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah. So the other thing I think we should get
into is that Trump did all these pardons for the
January sixth rioters. Everyone from the QAnon shaman who clearly
did some bad things there to Enrique A. Tario who
is serving twenty two years for seditious conspiracy are all
either commuted or part of now.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Ronald Trump, besides doing a boatload of executive orders, he
pardoned all of the January six riders. He did this
because he said he would. It was a campaign promise,
but all the Republican senators said he wouldn't. Even like
people like JD. Vance said, well, you know, and even
(07:22):
like last week, Pam Bondi said she would go through
each pardon one by one and decide, well, that's not
what happened yesterday. Yesterday Trump just pardoned all of them,
including people who had done violence on police, including the
guy who was like whars Nancy, including the guy in
the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, including the QAnon shaman who is
(07:46):
so sane and centered. The first thing he tweeted was
all caps gonna buy some mother fucking guns. I love
this country. God bless America. Lots of explanation points, as
you can imagine. So here he is, my man, the
law and order president, engaging in pardon palooza for some reason.
(08:11):
And also I might add, like, if you're Zuckerberg and
you have worked so hard on your public persona, and
you have so many publicists and comms people and this
and that, you are now on the same side as
the QAnon shaman, Like, how do you do that, Mark Zuckerberg?
How do you pretend you're a good guy when you
(08:33):
are on the same team as the QAnon shaman. I'm
not sure you can do that.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I'm going with you. Kemp.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Charlie Sykes is the author of the Newsletter to the
Contrary and the book How the right lawsuits mind. Welcome
back to Fast Politics. My friend Charlie.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Sikes Day one, Day one, Molly John, how do you do?
How'd you get through day one?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
You know, it's funny because it's like there are so
many parts of it that are like you're like, oh,
I remember doing this and five years ago, four years ago.
But then there are moments where you're like, I can't
just the sheer. I don't know. I feel like part
of me is like I can't do this again or anymore,
And then part of me is like, oh, I know
how to do this. This is not so hard.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Well, you know, I think part of it is that
it's all going to be very very clear, it's going
to be laid out. We aren't the people, you know,
screaming this guy is going to do X, because he's
going to actually do it. So okay, this is kind
of weird. It's kind of my contrarian side of me that,
you know, I actually feel vindicated and liberated in a
(09:47):
certain way. I mean, it is depressing to see all
of this happening. There's a sense of unreality about it.
But for a lot of us who've been saying, you
know this, this man is going to He's going to
free the people who attacked and beat the cops, and
people would roll their eyes. Oh that's Trump de arrangement syndrome.
Now it's Trump last twenty four hours now. And also
I think the contrast between the people. I mean, it
(10:08):
is interesting to me to watch and I understand that
people who were burned out about this and watching the
media coverage, you got a sense of just how lame
their approaching it in how so much of the political
class can't figure out how to deal with the new
legitimate Donald Trump. And I'm like, fuck this, He's still
the same guy. He's a convicted felon twice in peace,
(10:28):
you know, adjudicated sexual abuser. And you may be memory
holding this, but you know what, I kind of remember,
and I can feel it's kind of a superpower that
we remember this witch and we've been warning you, and
you just kind of sit back and get the popcorn.
In a dark sort of way.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You know, it's funny because it's like I'm listening to you,
and for sure there is this surrealness, right like this
happened again. Jesse and I did this whole documentary on
Project twenty twenty five, during the summer, and then here
he is just doing all this stuff, like ending the
ability for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which is one
(11:06):
of these things where it's like, why would you ever
do that? There are certain things where you could make
a conservative case for it, or you would say, but
you know, the idea that you can't do that because
drug companies need to get richer is just very hard.
So it's vindicating in the fact that it's watching it
happen is not surprising. Again, like with all this stuff,
(11:27):
we're not going to be the people, or at least
at first, we're not going to be the people who
you know, like I'm sure you saw the video of
the woman who was waiting for her appointment to apply
for asylum be canceled because they took down the software.
So like, we won't be the first people to feel
the wrath of this. But I don't know. I want
to keep my humanity, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I do know what you mean, And I think that's
part of the challenges that keep your equilibrium, to keep
your sanity, and I think part of it is to
really work hard at separating the signal from the noise
to separate, you know, what's kind of the performative distraction
and what and what should we really be honing in on.
And you know, I was thinking this morning as I
was pretting together my newsletter, actually before I was pretting
(12:12):
together my newsletter, which is to the contrary, on the
subject that I had to break down in the various
categories bullshit, you should ignore stuff that's fun, that you
should ignore stuff that is troubling. But let's put on
the back burner for now, and what we really ought
to be talking about today. And I think that that
kind of triage is going to be necessary every single day.
(12:32):
I mean, you know, we could obsess endlessly about why
is he renaming mountains and the Gulf because he's up
and he's got these weird you know fetishes, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And also manifest destiny is the sort of homage to
the kind of Jim right, I mean, it's an homage
to that world that no longer exists.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Well, there may be a time, you know, when we
decide to invade other countries that it's going to move
up to the front burner. But you know, I mean,
yesterday was the day that I mean, you want to
talk about dystopian moments when he freed fifteen hundred people
who he had incited to overturn the last election and
(13:17):
violently attack the Capitol. Now, this is one of those
moments where you go, Okay, folks, are you really shrugging
about this? Are you really shrugging about the kinds of
people that he just turned out? Are you shrugging about
the seditionist insurrectionists, the people who tased cops, who beat cops.
I mean, look at those pictures. I mean, I think
that's one of those clarifying moments because you know, millions
(13:37):
of people of ordered for Donald Trump, but there's no
indication that, you know, that's really what the American people
wanted him to do on day one. And so yesterday
I started the day saying we all ought to be
thinking about Charlie Chaplin, you know, remembering to laugh at
these guys. But it was a dark day for the
rule of law and how aggressive Trump is going to be.
I mean, you remember there was a debate, my only
(13:58):
remember there was a debate eight years should we take
him seriously or literally?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right right?
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And I think that now it's pretty obvious that on
you know, when he says something that the default position
ought to be that we ought to take him as
seriously as a fucking heart attack, because he's going to
do everything he said, or he's going to try to
do now. He's not going to get away with it.
He's not going to be able to unilaterally amend the
Constitution when it comes to birthright citizenship. But I think
that every Project twenty twenty five outlandish thing that people
(14:27):
speculated about expected it. It's rolling down the mountain.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. And
we're thinking about is how we handle this Trump two
point zero. Certain things will be publicity stunts or trolls.
Certain things will be actually real. I mean with the
one hundred executive orders, almost one hundred executive orders. The
(14:52):
idea here was again to as Steve Ann and Chock
and Awe right Days of Thunder, try to make it
so hard to keep up. The keeping up becomes, you know,
the job more than covering it. And so that is
when we're going to have to be selective. I think.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, and this may sound contradictory. I mean, remember to
laugh at them when they're clown like, but also to
be outraged when they offend the basic rules of civilization.
So I had a question that I want to ask
you please, because I'll tell you, it's bothering me more
and more. And it is this question of what are
the rules of civility in Trump two point zero. You
know we may have talked about it. I know I
(15:29):
wrote about it. After no Mother Pence refused to shake
Donald Trump's hand at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Everybody else is like, yeah, yeah, sure,
you know, congratulations mister president, and let's yuck it up now.
Like five minutes ago, we were calling you a fascist,
existential threat to democracy, you know, and a djudicated rapist
they convicted Fellain. Hey, what the hell you won the election?
(15:50):
So I guess as I watched and look, I just
don't know if my reaction to write about this. So
as I watched Trump show up at the White House
and Joe Biden comes tottering out and says, welcome home,
I'm going, really, is that necessary?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
You know?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Does everybody need to sort of pretend that this is
in fact normal when you have been telling us for
the last year. And I was trying to think about
how to frame this that if you knew that somebody
had raped a woman down the street from you, and
they came up to you and they said, hey, Molly,
how are you. Would you like to go get a
cut cup of coffee? You'd say, fuck, no, no. If
(16:24):
one of the people who tased Michael Fanone at the
Capitol walked in the room, would you stand up and
go shake hands with that person? And if the answer
is no, then why would you get up and go
across the room and shake hands with the man who
incited the attack? Why would you decide that winning an
election somehow means that everything you had said about this
(16:48):
man now suddenly needs to be backburned. Do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I want to go a step further with us, because
for the last three months, we've seen a ton of
like closing up to Trump, and I believe it was
based on this supposition that Donald Trump might not be
as bad this time, and that we didn't want to
look stupid. This is my theory of the case. What
(17:12):
I think was so important about yesterday was it dispelled
every second right of like maybe this time see I
think Democrats actually what happened was I think they truly
believed that Trump was the threat he was, that he
still is, and then all of a sudden when he won,
what kicked in was a certain kind of anxiety that,
(17:34):
oh my god, maybe we were all wrong. And I
think I saw this in the media for sure, that
there was an anxiety that perhaps Trump would be better
this time. You know, I have a friend who is
a very good one reports on Trump, and I kept
asking this person, is he better? Does he seem less crazy?
Does he seem like he's And the person kept saying, no,
(17:56):
same person, same person, same person. And I think that's
what we say yesterday, he's the same person.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Well, but also I think that there's a sense that somehow, okay,
he was uncivil, he was crude and gross, and we're
going to show that we are better. We're going to
observe the norms.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
That he broke.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
So in effect, what you're allowing him to do is
to use those norms to destroy those norms, to use
the constitutional niceties to destroy the constitutional nicety.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yes, but you're talking about Merek Garland here right.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Well, no, No, I'm talking about everybody that went to
lunch with him, everybody that's just hanging around Democrats. And
I think part of it is for the average person
who's watching this. If you're told, you know, hair on fire,
this man is maybe you know, a fascist adjacent. This
man is a danger, is a real and present danger
(18:50):
to every American value. And then you welcome him in
the White House and you sit down and you had tea.
There's a sense that, Okay, you didn't really mean that
was just politics, right, that's what you guys just say.
It's like this game. We say shit about each other,
but when the kabuki dance is over, it's like, wink,
wink wink, we're still all buddies. We're kind of all
in on it.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
That's kind of the feel I have.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
So we've talked endlessly about don't normalize this guy, don't
normalize this guy. Then the election comes in comes along,
and it's like, okay, them to normalize everything, even though
even though as you say he is, it's almost like
he's standing there in the middle of Fifth Avenue saying
I am not normal. I am a fucking lunatic rhinoceros
(19:31):
running down the street, and everybody's going, oh, it suck y. Well,
you know, turning the page, a new president, a new direction. Oh,
the president is unusually exuberant today. Well, he's remming in
with his fucking horn.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
We shouldn't laugh, and again we laugh to keep from crying.
We should laugh, we should Okay, perhaps we should laugh,
But yeah, I know, I mean, this is a continual
problem of having what little of the free press is
laught during the whatever. This is the sort of and
the kind of you know, hopefully not the end of
(20:07):
liberal democracy. I mean, is there anything that makes you
feel better?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Well, by the way, we should laugh. We shouldn't go
to lunch with him. I think that's the formulation.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes, and Bernie Sanders, there was that moment when I'm
sure you saw the photo of Bernie Sanders just sitting
there not clapping as Klobashar was giving this sort of
welcome speech to Trump, and I thought that was sort
of just the right posture.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
The only thing that makes me feel better is the
sense that something that can't last forever won't last forever,
that this too shall pass. But that's sort of the
moment of stoic modesty that is very much out of
fashion these days. But by the way, can we just
talk briefly about Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Oh briefly, just briefly, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
So here you have Trump, and I think this is
one thing that was so unsubtle, the gathering of the
tech ola, Garks, Elon and Zuckerberg and Bezos, and they're
all in the front row. The cabinet is in the
back row. On the one hand, it's the conspicuous groveling
by the billionaires, but also Trump really triumphing in the
way that he's brought them to heal. And apparently members
(21:16):
of Congress in the cabinet were told you can't bring
your spouses, but they made the exception for Bezos, whose
girlfriends shows up well in an interesting way. And of
course the highlight then of the of the tech bro
broligarchy sitting there is Mark Zuckerberg oggling her cleavance.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Okay, I'm sorry, we're elevating the discourse here.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
My twelve year old self needs to be in the
room for this discussion.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
This feels like a Rick Wilson conversation and not a
Charlie Sykes conversation. But yes, I will allow it, Yes,
sorry Rick.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
So but also what was interesting, and I think it
was George Conway highlighted this on.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
So George Conway conversation.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
No, no, because I was thinking about this is that
remember when when Bezos nixed the Washington Post endorsement of Kamalairis,
he said, well, endorsements snow give the sense of bias
and blah blah blah blah, and and somebody tweeted it out.
So I wonder how all the staffers of the Washington
Post are feeling now about, you know, Jeff Bezos yucking
it up with Donald Trump. So that's kind of the
(22:18):
normalization that I'm talking about. So you asked what makes
me feel better? And I think I've said this to
you before. All incoming administrations overplay their hand, they misread
their mandates. And a populist, you know, man of the people,
working class movement that is clearly dominated by arrogant, juvenile billionaires,
(22:39):
I don't know that strikes me as having a structural flaw.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I think so too. And in fact, one of the
things that I wonder a lot about is how here
we are at this moment, right and we have these
tech oligarchs whose companies and whose families in some cases
have spent billions of dollars on right pr and comms
like you know, Amazon, think about like even oil company
(23:06):
is like we love climate. You know, these people all
they care about is what other people think of them.
They are standing in the front row of a guy
who then pardons a number of violent fenders, right political
you know, offenders. And then later on that day, a
different tech bro makes a gesture that we are that
(23:30):
the ADL promises us is not a Nazi salute. But
then the discourse is now completely about whether or not
it was a Nazi salute. And by the way, if
you're in a discourse about that, you are losing.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Part of me thinks that that's kind of a distraction.
The way, the way that I phrased it in my
newsletter this morning was is that, you know, Elon Musk
reminded us that he's really all out of fucks to
give about whether think that he whether people think that
he is a Nazi.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
He doesn't care, right, he doesn't care.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And by the way, I'd be much more willing to
cut him some slack if you know, five minutes before this,
he hadn't endorsed the Neil Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So I mean, I don't know why you or.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
That he hadn't have a track record of posting any
Semitic comments on his shitty site. So yeah, that is
one of those weird sorts of those weird sorts of things.
In the end, that feels it feels like a distraction
for everybody. But I think we're going to have it.
By the way, he was obviously in a really good mood,
having you know, shit Ramaswami and got him out of dog.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
How about that?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
How about that VI didn't even make it to the inauguration.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's true, so efficient that they got rid of their
co head right away. I mean, that's the thing is like,
here's a party where party is the wrong word. An
oligar ruler, a sovereign according to the Supreme Court, who
basically has a tend that includes the guy in the
Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, the Zionists.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Right, So you're way smarter about this stuff, and I am,
so can I ask you another question?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I haven't gotten my head around what may actually be
the biggest story of the last forty eight hours, this
massive meme coin that Donald Trump has put out. There's
a Donald Trump coin, there's a millenniaup coin. And if
I'm reading this right, these things are worth tens of
billions of dollars and so if you want to just
now anybody just put Boodle cash Health into the pocket
(25:26):
of the president, all you have to do is buy
one of these fogus coins.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah, meme him.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
It is part of it is just the nakedness of
it is like, hey, you thought I'd be constrained about
just pure forget the grift, We're going straight to the graft.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yes, meme coin. So basically the idea here is that
you can make a coin. You can make a lot
of money. By the way, what I think is interesting
about this coin is not anything except this. It has
made the crypto people really mad because it's so blatantly
corrupt that they feel it's undermining the sort of low
(26:06):
the you know. For example, my husband is a VC
and I said to him, I was interviewing someone who
deals with crypto, and I said, so, basically the net
of this whole interview was he said, it's a complete scam.
And my husband looks at me and he says, well,
is the dollar a scam? Right? Currency is the value
that you know occasionally he's like a finance bro And
(26:26):
I was like, is the dollar scam? What? And what
the bitcoin people don't like is that they have now
laid down with trump Ism. It undermines the whole sort
of currency itself, and that is where we are. Well.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
This makes me think, though, that there's really a potential
to highlight these among the many hypocrisies and cruelties of
this administration, the hypocrisy about populism, the problem of rich
and poor. I don't know that Democrats can break away
from their normal identity politics to say, let's just go
back to the just the massive wealth gap here and
(27:04):
and and the massive rigging of the system by these billionaires.
And you know, maybe we need new language. You know,
obviously oligarchy is not something you're going to be hearing
on the street, you know. But the fact that Donald
Trump is sort of ripping off the mask of being
a fat cat and aligning himself with the robber barons,
I don't know. I don't there's a certain aspirational aspect
(27:27):
of you know, some of the the Trumpet supporters when
they look at rich people and they they are filled
with admiration for their talents, and they think that they
can they can be wealthy. But I also think that
there's there's a debate that we have to have over
the massive and obscene concentration of power that we're seeing
with the richest man in the world and most powerful
man in the world collude to take care of themselves
(27:50):
and leave the rest of us out.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
And that is where we are. Thank you, Charlie.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
And we're just getting started. We only have four more
years of this.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Molly, He's it's so bad.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Alexis McGill Johnson is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Alexis.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Thank you so much. Mollie. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
You've been on this podcast before. You're the president of
Planned Parenthood. We've been through the highs, We've been through
the lows. This feels like the lowest.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
It feels like a dark time. I mean, without question,
right from our vantage point, we are still very much
responding to a public health crisis that was caused by
the very people who are now leading this country and
folks who are literally in the position to make it worse.
And I think that that makes it very alarming, you know,
(28:46):
in a moment where we need to be really fighting back.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So I want to talk to you about what this
sort of landscape looks like. Roby Wade no longer the
law of the land. We were told by Donald Trump,
who knows. I mean, what I think is so interesting
about this moment is you've had this twenty twenty four
election cycle where people voted in red states to codify
row right, right, Like, clearly this was an important issue
(29:13):
to them, But then they also voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Right, you want me to make it make sense.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I would certainly love to make it make sense, yes, please.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
You know, look, I think that where people had the
opportunity to codify their personal individual freedoms community freedoms, they
chose to do so, and where they had an opportunity to,
you know, vote for I think where proximity to patriarchy,
proximity to ensuring that they no longer have to feel
(29:46):
bad about sharing a sense of belonging with other Americans,
they also voted to do that, right, I mean, closing
arguments were you know, really patriarchy and white nationally, And
I think there are a lot of people, even people
women and people of color, who chose that proximity over
(30:07):
the freedom of all that is actually I think what
feels so demoralizing in the moment to see that come
through in the way the executive orders are being put
through you know, deep concern about communities while still fighting
to protect yourself and your own and your own community.
It's a bit of a disconnect. But I also think
what that means for reproductive freedom is that you know,
(30:29):
Donald Trump does not have a mandate to gut reproductive
rights even further because the majority of Americans continue to
and demonstrated it with all of these ballad initiatives, how
much they believe that that politicians shouldn't be making these decisions,
that politicians are not more qualified than doctors to be
able to support them in their reproductive journeys. So it
(30:53):
is definitely a mixed bag. But I do think that
we're clear that Donald Trump doesn't have a mandate, and
with that, we're going to have to leverage the folks,
the broadswath of Americans who who do support freedom in
that regard.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
It's interesting because while this was happening after Trump had won,
Texas has this law and the books that overturned grow
a year before the Supreme Court did it, And this
law has bounties, and I'm wondering if you could talk
about the bounties and then talk about what the right
wing organizations are doing to try and encourage husband's boyfriends,
(31:28):
exes to sue women, and how that creates a sort
of world that I don't think any of us really
are ready for.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Mollie, can you believe that the incentivizing that is happening
to encourage men, boyfriends, husbands to essentially report out on
their wives girlfriend's behavior. I mean, like that is the
kind of thing that I think is a level of
(32:00):
meant that we have not seen that kind of permission
structure to fully Can I say, surveil the experiences of
women across this country and empower those that have kind
of the closest information to participate in lawsuits in states
with abortion bands, Like, the level of surveillance and privacy
(32:25):
sharing is alarming.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah. This idea here, this was baked into this SBA
to the Texas law, was that you could suit someone
or the people who help them get an abortion. We
have never seen something like this happen in real time.
We're going to see it now, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
I think we should look at all of these things,
whether it's the bounty laws, whether it's the kind of
specific recruitment of boyfriends and husbands to report out on
their partners, whether it is the laws or the lawsuits
attacking providers in states that have access to abortion for
(33:04):
their mailing of abortion medication over state lines, whether it's
crossing state lines, whether it's miners crossing state lines. I
think they are going to, you know, continue to build
a patchwork of abortion restrictions and ensuing litigation that will
gain like roll up through the court systems because we
(33:26):
will have to fight each of these restrictions. They'll roll
up through the court restrictions so that they can add
further restrictions onto access to abortion right.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
And also they will create a world where women of
reproductive health are basically I mean this is an homage
to the fugitive slave, a aact.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
It's intended to create fear, chaos, confusion, to really discourage
people from having body autonomy even when it is lawful.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Explain to us sort of what is the focus right now?
You have blue states who have red states. Red states
are completely controlled by the right, and what does the
landscape look like right now?
Speaker 4 (34:04):
They're nineteen states that have restrictions on access to abortion.
This is two and a half years after the Jobs decision.
You know, we've seen through the storytelling that abortion bands
had made pregnancy more dangerous. We've seen the loss of
life you know of those we know amount of women
like Amber Thurman, you know, who are afraid to get
access or went to get access to care at their
(34:27):
local hospitals and they were denied care until they were
too sick in order to treat them. We have seen
doctors leaving states and residents declining to come into states
to practice OBGYN band states because fearful of the concern.
We just are seeing these bands hurt communities across the South,
(34:50):
in the Midwest, you know, economies, businesses, universities are all
experiencing the kind of fallout, right because that's just the
practical implication of how hard it is to recruit or
maintain residents and communities when you don't have enough of
an OBGUI in supply to help people build their families.
And then you know, obviously all of these dangerous restrictions
(35:11):
continue to you know, we will see these efforts to
create new standing, you know, whether the law we were
just talking about the lawsuits really giving standing to boyfriends
and husbands who you know, they would claim our victims
of abortion, or giving standing to embryos and fetuses through
some of the personhood amendments that we will continue to
(35:32):
see through things like the so called you know, the
various legislation and so, you know, I think we need
to continue to expect that literally, the same kind of
test cases and patchwork restrictions that ultimately ended up being
part of the downfall of the road decision are going
to be the ones that are intent to try to
(35:52):
strengthen the hand of the jobs decision.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Right. This is the thing that keeps me up at night.
We saw these women come forward during the campaign, in
the twenty twenty four campaign, and they told these absolutely
blood curdling stories about the kind of things that no
one in a modern country, in a wealthy, modern country,
should have to go through. And voters rejected those stories,
(36:15):
or they just ignored them, or they didn't hear them,
or they chose not to hear them. I mean, are
we in this moment where it's just going to have
to get worse and worse and worse. I know we
shouldn't think this way, but like, you can't give people
stuff they don't want. Do all these white women who
voted for Trump, do they not understand that this affects
very much affects them.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
I think they very much do understand the impact. I
think they were moved by the stories, and they also
believed Trump when he said he wouldn't do anything about abortion.
I think that's really the paradox here is that the
majority of Americans, including you know, women of all demographics, men,
(36:59):
religious cammunities, rural communities, you know, folks who genuinely believe
in advancing freedom, support it reproductive freedom. And yet I
think their proximity to you know, fighting for the protections
of themselves really no pun intended Trump, their other concerns
that these rights would be taken away. And I think
(37:20):
that's that's the question we need to answer, is like
why did they believe that he would not do anything,
especially when we watch his entire anti abortion cabinet come
into play. Right, you've got Pamponde as age, You've got
Russell Lott from Project twenty twenty five, and O and B,
you've got Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Right, the
roles of these cabinet picks have literally empowered this administration
(37:44):
to take steps that would impede access to abortion care,
sexual reproductive health care really as a whole, here and globally.
And so I think the question that we have to
now pose back to those very people who said, you know,
either they didn't believe him or it wasn't disqualifying because
they did think it would happen. How are they going
to hold President Trump to his word every day for
(38:04):
the next four years? Right, Planned Parenthood, you know, our
organizations are suppurs. We know, we're just going to every
day remind this administration of his pledge not only that
he wouldn't sign a national abortion ban, but that any
other effort like defunding Planned Parenthood or trying to issue
guidance around comstock that is not consistent with what the
(38:25):
law intended, would be efforts to essentially enact a national
abortion ban. So we're going to be reminding him. The
question is, how are all of these folks who said
that this would not be disqualifying going to hold him
to accountable because that is actually where we will need
to grow and build our strength and power, right.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
And I think that's a really important point now, as
someone who did all of this research on Project twenty
two five and interviewed all these academics, one of the
things about Project twenty twenty five this embryoic personhood, right,
they call it fetal person but it's really they're really embryos.
It opens the door to a real war on birth
(39:03):
control too, which is where I think this is all headed,
and where if you're an evangelical, you want to shut
down abortion, but you really want to shut down birth control.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So I'm hoping you could sort of explain where you're
seeing that, if you're seeing that maybe or not, and
how Planned Parenthood hopes to protect that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Well, look after the Dabbs decision, what we have seen
in our just in the health centers at Planned Parenthood,
you know, vasectomy appointments have increased by twelve hundred percent,
i UD appointments have increased by seven hundred and sixty percent,
birth control implant by three hundred and forty percent. Like
the people are speaking with their you know, with their
feet and near appointments, you know, around the kind of
(39:46):
healthcare that they need, right, you don't see that kind
of surge in demand without the you know, the the
concern and the fear that they will not be able
to get access to, you know, what is just considered
basic normal life as healthcare, right, affordable healthcare. We saw
the attacks as they came through the IBF case in Alabama.
(40:09):
We are going to continue to see the conversations they
were having in Tennessee. If you remember the lawmakers that
were caught on audio talking about like now is the
time to take on contraception. You know, these ideas are
out there. It is about as we have seen with
SB eight, with jobs, with you know, so many other
(40:30):
efforts to undo restrictions around abortion, that they always start
off kind of in a laboratory, you know, a law
where they're see how far they can push the boundary,
and then they use that to export to other states
who'd be willing to kind of test the law and
push that forward. And so even though you know, we
know ninety nine percent of women have used birth control
(40:50):
in their lifetime, we are going to see the restrictions
start to come into play as a way to see
how much they can get away with in the name
of power and control.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Do you think that there's a moment where the American
people are like, oh my god, or do you think
that never happens. Like one of the things that I
was struck by in the last cycle was that you
would talk to voters and you would say, well, Trump's
going to do this, this and this, and they wouldn't
believe you. Do you think there's something that can happen
that voters will be like, oh my god? Or do
(41:23):
you think now? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (41:25):
I asked this question a lot of myself because I
do think that.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
This is literally what I think of all that. Like
I'm like, is there a moment where they go like,
oh my god, I can't get the pill anymore, I
can't buy condoms like you know, or do they just
think like why did Joe Biden do this to me?
Speaker 4 (41:40):
Why did Joe Biden do this to me?
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Right? No, I know, but I'm just saying like that
they're so jacked up on misinformation and disinformation that they're
somehow like there were voters you remember during the Biden
administration who thought that Biden was the reason that Roe v.
Waite was overturned, right right right?
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Because we're in like.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
A disinformation you know, healthcape.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Yeah, the thing I worry about. No, I mean, like
I think it's it's a really important question. And I
you know, and I say, it's like the thing I
ask myself it really is, how do you stop the
normalization of the harm, right, how do you stop the
kind of normalization of our freedoms being taken away? And
(42:22):
we cannot accept the fact that the future state of
reproductive healthcare is flying across the country get access to abortion,
getting on a bus, you know, and traveling eighteen hours
both ways in order to get back in time to
start your next shift. Like the reality that we are
allowing for a normalization treatment of people to not be
(42:47):
able to get the cure that they need where they live,
I think, is the first, like, you know, huge alarm bell.
And then you layer onto that people are actually dying, right,
people not even intended abortion care, but who have required
it through their pregnancy, you know, outcomes are not now
no longer being able to get the access they need
(43:07):
in an emergent way. That like you continue to layer
on the harms and the normalization, and you say, like
how did we wake up? And look like why aren't
we there right now?
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Like that is question?
Speaker 4 (43:18):
But then I look at Corollari's in other movements, right,
I think about I think about all of the young
people that have died over the years in gun violence
in schools. You know, if we have normalized that through
shooter drillings and teaching kids how to be silent and
hide in closets to not draw attention. What have we
(43:38):
done to quell the outrage that needs to exist every
time a child dies? And so I wonder about the
exhaustion and the wariness of the outrage, and also like,
at what point, you know, are we able to you know,
bring people back to a real, formidable understanding that their
(43:58):
freedoms have been approached in this way?
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, Alexis.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Thank you, Mollie, No moment.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Perfectly Jesse Cannon, Milly.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So there was a hand gesture heard around the world
by one Elon Musk yesterday at Trump's inauguration, and it
seems it's got the ADL a little twisted like a
pretzel about what to do here? What are you seeing?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
So here we go. This is not surprising at all,
but the ADL, which is a friend of Trump and
Elon so Trump. So yesterday Elon made a hand gesture
that certainly looked like a Nazi salute to everyone who
saw it, but not the brain trust at the ADL,
(44:51):
who tweeted, go for it.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
This is a delicate moment. It's a new day. And
yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed.
Social media only ats the anxiety. It seems that Elon
Musk made an awkward gesture at a moment of enthusiasm,
not a Nazi salute. But again, we appreciate that people
are on edge in this moment. All sides should give
one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit
(45:15):
of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a
new beginning. Let's hope for healing and work towards unity
in the months and years ahead.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, heali like in unity from the river to the sea.
It's considered to be anti Semitism, but an actual Nazi
salute not so much watermelons. Here's Olab Schaltz. Perhaps you've
heard of him, German chancellor who Musk is mad at
because Musk wants the far right Nazi party to win
in Germany, and he said at the World Economic Forum
(45:44):
on Tuesday, what we do not accept is if this
is support for extreme right positions. After a reporter asked
him what he thought of Musk's gesture, So, Adl, maybe
you should be as brave as the leader of Germany.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
I think we have to zoom back history to September fourth,
twenty twenty three, where Elon Musk said the ADL, because
they are so aggressive in their demands and banned social
mediacounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators
of anti Semitism on this platform, and then threaten to
sue them for four billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Four billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yes, it's really good that we let someone get this rich.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Good work everyone. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and January sixth, rider Pamela Hemphill says
she will refuse Trump's pardon. We have such a great
show for you today, MSNBC contributor to Charlie Sikes pars
is the shock and awe as we talk about Trump's
(00:25):
first day back in office. Then we will talk to
Planned Parenthood President Alexis macgil Johnson about how they are
going to go forward and try to protect women's reproductive rights.
But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
So Mollie, it's the first day of the Trump administration
is now just about twenty four hours old. As we
go to tape this, I think the biggest concern of
the shock at aw is as attack of the fourteenth Amendment.
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (00:54):
Here we are It's been a day of Trumps. He's
basically decided he wants to a sharply to the Constitution
and he wants to start with the fourteenth Amendment. I
think it's important to realize the fourteenth Amendment. These are
the amendments that came after the Civil War. Right, these
are the amendments that were the kind of rebuilding America
(01:16):
post slavery. These are the amendments that promised because remember,
when children of African slaves were born in this country,
they were not necessarily citizens. This was the way to
undo that. And I don't think that you can look
at trump Ism and as a vacuum. You have to
(01:36):
look at this sort of historical president and remember, this
is a larger movement to sort of undo the advances
of FDR in the twentieth century, and that is what
this is. So Trump's attack on birthright citizenship is not
just about having less citizens. It's about a certain kind
of homage to the past, a certain kind of undoing
(01:59):
of so much progress. And I think it's worth realizing
that one of the other things about this executive order,
which by the way, is totally not constitutional, it's a
complete shot in the dark. It's like, you know, it's
like the presidential immunity, you know, the idea that the
president should be a monarch and not be responsible, broadly
(02:23):
immune from prosecution for anything forever and ever, which was,
by the way, a theory that a legal theory that
Trump's lawyers brought to the Supreme Court, and one with
which is why I bring this up. Look, Trump has
capture of the Supreme Court. We know that, right, He's
installed three justices. He has two who are absolute Trumpers
(02:44):
to the core. You know, two who are basically Tucker
Carls and fanboys. That's Thomas and Alidos. So for sure,
this is in a normal presidency. In a normal America,
this would not even get a minute because it's so
uncom constitutional. But remember we are now living in Project
twenty twenty five. We are now living in the rous
(03:05):
Vought extra constitutional world. We are post textualsts, and so
you could see a world where these people are able
to overturn the fourteenth Amendment. I want to point out
one last thing about this executive order. It actually says
that if you come to this country illegally, your child
born here would not be a citizen. But it also
(03:25):
says if you come to this country on an H
one B visa you come to work, your child will
not be a legal citizen either. These are like this
is the beginning of making America a country more like France,
or making America a country that is no longer a
country of immigrants. Now, as someone whose great grandparents came
to this country in the eighteen hundreds. It is, in
(03:48):
my mind, just mind blowing that we've gotten to this
moment and it is such a paradigm shift. It is
so profoundly wrong on every level. And the truth is,
the skin various part of it is that he may
actually be able to take a sharp bat of the Constitution.
We don't know, so that will be the big open
(04:08):
question of the next couple months.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, I am not looking forward to seeing what the
Supreme Court says when they finally get that in their laps.
But hopefully they Democrats are smart enough to do enough
fuckery of the courts to delay that for as long
as possible.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
I'm not sure the Supreme Court wants. They may rule
what he wants, but they may not want to take this.
They may want to slow their role as slowly as
possible because this will be a very unpopular decision. And
they have already done a bunch of really unpopular decisions.
And you'll remember that some of the people, even the
most zalidous and I'm thinking of like Justice Roberts who
(04:45):
wrote these Citizens United Agreement, who you know, the Citizens
United decision, which is what actually got us here right,
which was you know how there are billionaire oligarchs funding
our elections. Now that guy knows that this be an
epic should show for him, So I think stay tuned
on this. There's something else I want to talk about,
(05:06):
which is something that we did a lot of time
with when we were talking about Project tween twenty five,
and it's something that we were prepared for. But every
time I'm optimistic, that's when I get into trouble. The
Alien Enemies Act of seventeen ninety eight. If you listen
to this podcast, you know what it is because we
talk about it all the time. It's a wartime authority.
(05:27):
It's been used three times. We're of eighteen twelve against
the British, World War One, against the Germans, World War two,
against all of the countries that you know, the Germans,
the Japanese, et cetera. For internment camps. As we heard
Michael Walden from the Brennan Center tell us this week,
it is very faulty kind of reasoning that may not
(05:49):
work for Trump, but this is the legal framework Trump
is trying to use, and that is why he declared
an emergency at the southern border to be at war
with the cartels. So the question is, can he create
a legal scenario where it seems as if we are
at war despite the fact that we are not at war,
(06:10):
and can he do that in order to then be
able to designate different groups alien enemies. And by the way,
when you go down the road of alien enemies, you
end up with alien enemies like people from Mexico, like
journalists who don't write stuff you like. I mean, there's
(06:31):
a lot of really sketchy ways to skin this cat
and stay tuned.
Speaker 2 (06:39):
Yeah. So the other thing I think we should get
into is that Trump did all these pardons for the
January sixth rioters. Everyone from the QAnon shaman who clearly
did some bad things there to Enrique A. Tario who
is serving twenty two years for seditious conspiracy are all
either commuted or part of now.
Speaker 1 (07:00):
Ronald Trump, besides doing a boatload of executive orders, he
pardoned all of the January six riders. He did this
because he said he would. It was a campaign promise,
but all the Republican senators said he wouldn't. Even like
people like JD. Vance said, well, you know, and even
(07:22):
like last week, Pam Bondi said she would go through
each pardon one by one and decide, well, that's not
what happened yesterday. Yesterday Trump just pardoned all of them,
including people who had done violence on police, including the
guy who was like whars Nancy, including the guy in
the Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, including the QAnon shaman who is
(07:46):
so sane and centered. The first thing he tweeted was
all caps gonna buy some mother fucking guns. I love
this country. God bless America. Lots of explanation points, as
you can imagine. So here he is, my man, the
law and order president, engaging in pardon palooza for some reason.
(08:11):
And also I might add, like, if you're Zuckerberg and
you have worked so hard on your public persona, and
you have so many publicists and comms people and this
and that, you are now on the same side as
the QAnon shaman, Like, how do you do that, Mark Zuckerberg?
How do you pretend you're a good guy when you
(08:33):
are on the same team as the QAnon shaman. I'm
not sure you can do that.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
I'm going with you. Kemp.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Charlie Sykes is the author of the Newsletter to the
Contrary and the book How the right lawsuits mind. Welcome
back to Fast Politics. My friend Charlie.
Speaker 3 (08:58):
Sikes Day one, Day one, Molly John, how do you do?
How'd you get through day one?
Speaker 1 (09:04):
You know, it's funny because it's like there are so
many parts of it that are like you're like, oh,
I remember doing this and five years ago, four years ago.
But then there are moments where you're like, I can't
just the sheer. I don't know. I feel like part
of me is like I can't do this again or anymore,
And then part of me is like, oh, I know
how to do this. This is not so hard.
Speaker 3 (09:26):
Well, you know, I think part of it is that
it's all going to be very very clear, it's going
to be laid out. We aren't the people, you know,
screaming this guy is going to do X, because he's
going to actually do it. So okay, this is kind
of weird. It's kind of my contrarian side of me that,
you know, I actually feel vindicated and liberated in a
(09:47):
certain way. I mean, it is depressing to see all
of this happening. There's a sense of unreality about it.
But for a lot of us who've been saying, you
know this, this man is going to He's going to
free the people who attacked and beat the cops, and
people would roll their eyes. Oh that's Trump de arrangement syndrome.
Now it's Trump last twenty four hours now. And also
I think the contrast between the people. I mean, it
(10:08):
is interesting to me to watch and I understand that
people who were burned out about this and watching the
media coverage, you got a sense of just how lame
their approaching it in how so much of the political
class can't figure out how to deal with the new
legitimate Donald Trump. And I'm like, fuck this, He's still
the same guy. He's a convicted felon twice in peace,
(10:28):
you know, adjudicated sexual abuser. And you may be memory
holding this, but you know what, I kind of remember,
and I can feel it's kind of a superpower that
we remember this witch and we've been warning you, and
you just kind of sit back and get the popcorn.
In a dark sort of way.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
You know, it's funny because it's like I'm listening to you,
and for sure there is this surrealness, right like this
happened again. Jesse and I did this whole documentary on
Project twenty twenty five, during the summer, and then here
he is just doing all this stuff, like ending the
ability for Medicare to negotiate drug prices, which is one
(11:06):
of these things where it's like, why would you ever
do that? There are certain things where you could make
a conservative case for it, or you would say, but
you know, the idea that you can't do that because
drug companies need to get richer is just very hard.
So it's vindicating in the fact that it's watching it
happen is not surprising. Again, like with all this stuff,
(11:27):
we're not going to be the people, or at least
at first, we're not going to be the people who
you know, like I'm sure you saw the video of
the woman who was waiting for her appointment to apply
for asylum be canceled because they took down the software.
So like, we won't be the first people to feel
the wrath of this. But I don't know. I want
to keep my humanity, you know what I mean.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
I do know what you mean, And I think that's
part of the challenges that keep your equilibrium, to keep
your sanity, and I think part of it is to
really work hard at separating the signal from the noise
to separate, you know, what's kind of the performative distraction
and what and what should we really be honing in on.
And you know, I was thinking this morning as I
was pretting together my newsletter, actually before I was pretting
(12:12):
together my newsletter, which is to the contrary, on the
subject that I had to break down in the various
categories bullshit, you should ignore stuff that's fun, that you
should ignore stuff that is troubling. But let's put on
the back burner for now, and what we really ought
to be talking about today. And I think that that
kind of triage is going to be necessary every single day.
(12:32):
I mean, you know, we could obsess endlessly about why
is he renaming mountains and the Gulf because he's up
and he's got these weird you know fetishes, you know.
Speaker 1 (12:44):
And also manifest destiny is the sort of homage to
the kind of Jim right, I mean, it's an homage
to that world that no longer exists.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Well, there may be a time, you know, when we
decide to invade other countries that it's going to move
up to the front burner. But you know, I mean,
yesterday was the day that I mean, you want to
talk about dystopian moments when he freed fifteen hundred people
who he had incited to overturn the last election and
(13:17):
violently attack the Capitol. Now, this is one of those
moments where you go, Okay, folks, are you really shrugging
about this? Are you really shrugging about the kinds of
people that he just turned out? Are you shrugging about
the seditionist insurrectionists, the people who tased cops, who beat cops.
I mean, look at those pictures. I mean, I think
that's one of those clarifying moments because you know, millions
(13:37):
of people of ordered for Donald Trump, but there's no
indication that, you know, that's really what the American people
wanted him to do on day one. And so yesterday
I started the day saying we all ought to be
thinking about Charlie Chaplin, you know, remembering to laugh at
these guys. But it was a dark day for the
rule of law and how aggressive Trump is going to be.
I mean, you remember there was a debate, my only
(13:58):
remember there was a debate eight years should we take
him seriously or literally?
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Right right?
Speaker 3 (14:04):
And I think that now it's pretty obvious that on
you know, when he says something that the default position
ought to be that we ought to take him as
seriously as a fucking heart attack, because he's going to
do everything he said, or he's going to try to
do now. He's not going to get away with it.
He's not going to be able to unilaterally amend the
Constitution when it comes to birthright citizenship. But I think
that every Project twenty twenty five outlandish thing that people
(14:27):
speculated about expected it. It's rolling down the mountain.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
Yeah. No, I think that's a really good point. And
we're thinking about is how we handle this Trump two
point zero. Certain things will be publicity stunts or trolls.
Certain things will be actually real. I mean with the
one hundred executive orders, almost one hundred executive orders. The
(14:52):
idea here was again to as Steve Ann and Chock
and Awe right Days of Thunder, try to make it
so hard to keep up. The keeping up becomes, you know,
the job more than covering it. And so that is
when we're going to have to be selective. I think.
Speaker 3 (15:09):
Yeah, and this may sound contradictory. I mean, remember to
laugh at them when they're clown like, but also to
be outraged when they offend the basic rules of civilization.
So I had a question that I want to ask
you please, because I'll tell you, it's bothering me more
and more. And it is this question of what are
the rules of civility in Trump two point zero. You
know we may have talked about it. I know I
(15:29):
wrote about it. After no Mother Pence refused to shake
Donald Trump's hand at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Everybody else is like, yeah, yeah, sure,
you know, congratulations mister president, and let's yuck it up now.
Like five minutes ago, we were calling you a fascist,
existential threat to democracy, you know, and a djudicated rapist
they convicted Fellain. Hey, what the hell you won the election?
(15:50):
So I guess as I watched and look, I just
don't know if my reaction to write about this. So
as I watched Trump show up at the White House
and Joe Biden comes tottering out and says, welcome home,
I'm going, really, is that necessary?
Speaker 4 (16:03):
You know?
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Does everybody need to sort of pretend that this is
in fact normal when you have been telling us for
the last year. And I was trying to think about
how to frame this that if you knew that somebody
had raped a woman down the street from you, and
they came up to you and they said, hey, Molly,
how are you. Would you like to go get a
cut cup of coffee? You'd say, fuck, no, no. If
(16:24):
one of the people who tased Michael Fanone at the
Capitol walked in the room, would you stand up and
go shake hands with that person? And if the answer
is no, then why would you get up and go
across the room and shake hands with the man who
incited the attack? Why would you decide that winning an
election somehow means that everything you had said about this
(16:48):
man now suddenly needs to be backburned. Do you know
what I mean?
Speaker 1 (16:52):
I want to go a step further with us, because
for the last three months, we've seen a ton of
like closing up to Trump, and I believe it was
based on this supposition that Donald Trump might not be
as bad this time, and that we didn't want to
look stupid. This is my theory of the case. What
(17:12):
I think was so important about yesterday was it dispelled
every second right of like maybe this time see I
think Democrats actually what happened was I think they truly
believed that Trump was the threat he was, that he
still is, and then all of a sudden when he won,
what kicked in was a certain kind of anxiety that,
(17:34):
oh my god, maybe we were all wrong. And I
think I saw this in the media for sure, that
there was an anxiety that perhaps Trump would be better
this time. You know, I have a friend who is
a very good one reports on Trump, and I kept
asking this person, is he better? Does he seem less crazy?
Does he seem like he's And the person kept saying, no,
(17:56):
same person, same person, same person. And I think that's
what we say yesterday, he's the same person.
Speaker 3 (18:02):
Well, but also I think that there's a sense that somehow, okay,
he was uncivil, he was crude and gross, and we're
going to show that we are better. We're going to
observe the norms.
Speaker 4 (18:13):
That he broke.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
So in effect, what you're allowing him to do is
to use those norms to destroy those norms, to use
the constitutional niceties to destroy the constitutional nicety.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Yes, but you're talking about Merek Garland here right.
Speaker 3 (18:27):
Well, no, No, I'm talking about everybody that went to
lunch with him, everybody that's just hanging around Democrats. And
I think part of it is for the average person
who's watching this. If you're told, you know, hair on fire,
this man is maybe you know, a fascist adjacent. This
man is a danger, is a real and present danger
(18:50):
to every American value. And then you welcome him in
the White House and you sit down and you had tea.
There's a sense that, Okay, you didn't really mean that
was just politics, right, that's what you guys just say.
It's like this game. We say shit about each other,
but when the kabuki dance is over, it's like, wink,
wink wink, we're still all buddies. We're kind of all
in on it.
Speaker 1 (19:08):
That's kind of the feel I have.
Speaker 3 (19:10):
So we've talked endlessly about don't normalize this guy, don't
normalize this guy. Then the election comes in comes along,
and it's like, okay, them to normalize everything, even though
even though as you say he is, it's almost like
he's standing there in the middle of Fifth Avenue saying
I am not normal. I am a fucking lunatic rhinoceros
(19:31):
running down the street, and everybody's going, oh, it suck y. Well,
you know, turning the page, a new president, a new direction. Oh,
the president is unusually exuberant today. Well, he's remming in
with his fucking horn.
Speaker 1 (19:46):
We shouldn't laugh, and again we laugh to keep from crying.
We should laugh, we should Okay, perhaps we should laugh,
But yeah, I know, I mean, this is a continual
problem of having what little of the free press is
laught during the whatever. This is the sort of and
the kind of you know, hopefully not the end of
(20:07):
liberal democracy. I mean, is there anything that makes you
feel better?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Well, by the way, we should laugh. We shouldn't go
to lunch with him. I think that's the formulation.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
Yes, and Bernie Sanders, there was that moment when I'm
sure you saw the photo of Bernie Sanders just sitting
there not clapping as Klobashar was giving this sort of
welcome speech to Trump, and I thought that was sort
of just the right posture.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
The only thing that makes me feel better is the
sense that something that can't last forever won't last forever,
that this too shall pass. But that's sort of the
moment of stoic modesty that is very much out of
fashion these days. But by the way, can we just
talk briefly about Jeff Bezos.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Oh briefly, just briefly, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
So here you have Trump, and I think this is
one thing that was so unsubtle, the gathering of the
tech ola, Garks, Elon and Zuckerberg and Bezos, and they're
all in the front row. The cabinet is in the
back row. On the one hand, it's the conspicuous groveling
by the billionaires, but also Trump really triumphing in the
way that he's brought them to heal. And apparently members
(21:16):
of Congress in the cabinet were told you can't bring
your spouses, but they made the exception for Bezos, whose
girlfriends shows up well in an interesting way. And of
course the highlight then of the of the tech bro
broligarchy sitting there is Mark Zuckerberg oggling her cleavance.
Speaker 1 (21:33):
Okay, I'm sorry, we're elevating the discourse here.
Speaker 3 (21:38):
My twelve year old self needs to be in the
room for this discussion.
Speaker 1 (21:41):
This feels like a Rick Wilson conversation and not a
Charlie Sykes conversation. But yes, I will allow it, Yes,
sorry Rick.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
So but also what was interesting, and I think it
was George Conway highlighted this on.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
So George Conway conversation.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
No, no, because I was thinking about this is that
remember when when Bezos nixed the Washington Post endorsement of Kamalairis,
he said, well, endorsements snow give the sense of bias
and blah blah blah blah, and and somebody tweeted it out.
So I wonder how all the staffers of the Washington
Post are feeling now about, you know, Jeff Bezos yucking
it up with Donald Trump. So that's kind of the
(22:18):
normalization that I'm talking about. So you asked what makes
me feel better? And I think I've said this to
you before. All incoming administrations overplay their hand, they misread
their mandates. And a populist, you know, man of the people,
working class movement that is clearly dominated by arrogant, juvenile billionaires,
(22:39):
I don't know that strikes me as having a structural flaw.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
I think so too. And in fact, one of the
things that I wonder a lot about is how here
we are at this moment, right and we have these
tech oligarchs whose companies and whose families in some cases
have spent billions of dollars on right pr and comms
like you know, Amazon, think about like even oil company
(23:06):
is like we love climate. You know, these people all
they care about is what other people think of them.
They are standing in the front row of a guy
who then pardons a number of violent fenders, right political
you know, offenders. And then later on that day, a
different tech bro makes a gesture that we are that
(23:30):
the ADL promises us is not a Nazi salute. But
then the discourse is now completely about whether or not
it was a Nazi salute. And by the way, if
you're in a discourse about that, you are losing.
Speaker 3 (23:43):
Part of me thinks that that's kind of a distraction.
The way, the way that I phrased it in my
newsletter this morning was is that, you know, Elon Musk
reminded us that he's really all out of fucks to
give about whether think that he whether people think that
he is a Nazi.
Speaker 1 (23:55):
He doesn't care, right, he doesn't care.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
And by the way, I'd be much more willing to
cut him some slack if you know, five minutes before this,
he hadn't endorsed the Neil Nazi Germany.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
So I mean, I don't know why you or.
Speaker 3 (24:08):
That he hadn't have a track record of posting any
Semitic comments on his shitty site. So yeah, that is
one of those weird sorts of those weird sorts of things.
In the end, that feels it feels like a distraction
for everybody. But I think we're going to have it.
By the way, he was obviously in a really good mood,
having you know, shit Ramaswami and got him out of dog.
Speaker 1 (24:31):
How about that?
Speaker 3 (24:31):
How about that VI didn't even make it to the inauguration.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
It's true, so efficient that they got rid of their
co head right away. I mean, that's the thing is like,
here's a party where party is the wrong word. An
oligar ruler, a sovereign according to the Supreme Court, who
basically has a tend that includes the guy in the
Camp Auschwitz sweatshirt, the Zionists.
Speaker 3 (24:57):
Right, So you're way smarter about this stuff, and I am,
so can I ask you another question?
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Why not? Yeah?
Speaker 3 (25:03):
I haven't gotten my head around what may actually be
the biggest story of the last forty eight hours, this
massive meme coin that Donald Trump has put out. There's
a Donald Trump coin, there's a millenniaup coin. And if
I'm reading this right, these things are worth tens of
billions of dollars and so if you want to just
now anybody just put Boodle cash Health into the pocket
(25:26):
of the president, all you have to do is buy
one of these fogus coins.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
Yeah, meme him.
Speaker 3 (25:32):
It is part of it is just the nakedness of
it is like, hey, you thought I'd be constrained about
just pure forget the grift, We're going straight to the graft.
Speaker 1 (25:42):
Yes, meme coin. So basically the idea here is that
you can make a coin. You can make a lot
of money. By the way, what I think is interesting
about this coin is not anything except this. It has
made the crypto people really mad because it's so blatantly
corrupt that they feel it's undermining the sort of low
(26:06):
the you know. For example, my husband is a VC
and I said to him, I was interviewing someone who
deals with crypto, and I said, so, basically the net
of this whole interview was he said, it's a complete scam.
And my husband looks at me and he says, well,
is the dollar a scam? Right? Currency is the value
that you know occasionally he's like a finance bro And
(26:26):
I was like, is the dollar scam? What? And what
the bitcoin people don't like is that they have now
laid down with trump Ism. It undermines the whole sort
of currency itself, and that is where we are. Well.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
This makes me think, though, that there's really a potential
to highlight these among the many hypocrisies and cruelties of
this administration, the hypocrisy about populism, the problem of rich
and poor. I don't know that Democrats can break away
from their normal identity politics to say, let's just go
back to the just the massive wealth gap here and
(27:04):
and and the massive rigging of the system by these billionaires.
And you know, maybe we need new language. You know,
obviously oligarchy is not something you're going to be hearing
on the street, you know. But the fact that Donald
Trump is sort of ripping off the mask of being
a fat cat and aligning himself with the robber barons,
I don't know. I don't there's a certain aspirational aspect
(27:27):
of you know, some of the the Trumpet supporters when
they look at rich people and they they are filled
with admiration for their talents, and they think that they
can they can be wealthy. But I also think that
there's there's a debate that we have to have over
the massive and obscene concentration of power that we're seeing
with the richest man in the world and most powerful
man in the world collude to take care of themselves
(27:50):
and leave the rest of us out.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
And that is where we are. Thank you, Charlie.
Speaker 3 (27:55):
And we're just getting started. We only have four more
years of this.
Speaker 4 (27:59):
Molly, He's it's so bad.
Speaker 1 (28:04):
Alexis McGill Johnson is the president and CEO of Planned Parenthood.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Alexis.
Speaker 4 (28:12):
Thank you so much. Mollie. It's good to be here.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
You've been on this podcast before. You're the president of
Planned Parenthood. We've been through the highs, We've been through
the lows. This feels like the lowest.
Speaker 4 (28:24):
It feels like a dark time. I mean, without question,
right from our vantage point, we are still very much
responding to a public health crisis that was caused by
the very people who are now leading this country and
folks who are literally in the position to make it worse.
And I think that that makes it very alarming, you know,
(28:46):
in a moment where we need to be really fighting back.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So I want to talk to you about what this
sort of landscape looks like. Roby Wade no longer the
law of the land. We were told by Donald Trump,
who knows. I mean, what I think is so interesting
about this moment is you've had this twenty twenty four
election cycle where people voted in red states to codify
row right, right, Like, clearly this was an important issue
(29:13):
to them, But then they also voted for Donald Trump.
Speaker 4 (29:16):
Right, you want me to make it make sense.
Speaker 1 (29:19):
I would certainly love to make it make sense, yes, please.
Speaker 4 (29:22):
You know, look, I think that where people had the
opportunity to codify their personal individual freedoms community freedoms, they
chose to do so, and where they had an opportunity to,
you know, vote for I think where proximity to patriarchy,
proximity to ensuring that they no longer have to feel
(29:46):
bad about sharing a sense of belonging with other Americans,
they also voted to do that, right, I mean, closing
arguments were you know, really patriarchy and white nationally, And
I think there are a lot of people, even people
women and people of color, who chose that proximity over
(30:07):
the freedom of all that is actually I think what
feels so demoralizing in the moment to see that come
through in the way the executive orders are being put
through you know, deep concern about communities while still fighting
to protect yourself and your own and your own community.
It's a bit of a disconnect. But I also think
what that means for reproductive freedom is that you know,
(30:29):
Donald Trump does not have a mandate to gut reproductive
rights even further because the majority of Americans continue to
and demonstrated it with all of these ballad initiatives, how
much they believe that that politicians shouldn't be making these decisions,
that politicians are not more qualified than doctors to be
able to support them in their reproductive journeys. So it
(30:53):
is definitely a mixed bag. But I do think that
we're clear that Donald Trump doesn't have a mandate, and
with that, we're going to have to leverage the folks,
the broadswath of Americans who who do support freedom in
that regard.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
It's interesting because while this was happening after Trump had won,
Texas has this law and the books that overturned grow
a year before the Supreme Court did it, And this
law has bounties, and I'm wondering if you could talk
about the bounties and then talk about what the right
wing organizations are doing to try and encourage husband's boyfriends,
(31:28):
exes to sue women, and how that creates a sort
of world that I don't think any of us really
are ready for.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Mollie, can you believe that the incentivizing that is happening
to encourage men, boyfriends, husbands to essentially report out on
their wives girlfriend's behavior. I mean, like that is the
kind of thing that I think is a level of
(32:00):
meant that we have not seen that kind of permission
structure to fully Can I say, surveil the experiences of
women across this country and empower those that have kind
of the closest information to participate in lawsuits in states
with abortion bands, Like, the level of surveillance and privacy
(32:25):
sharing is alarming.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Yeah. This idea here, this was baked into this SBA
to the Texas law, was that you could suit someone
or the people who help them get an abortion. We
have never seen something like this happen in real time.
We're going to see it now, right, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
I think we should look at all of these things,
whether it's the bounty laws, whether it's the kind of
specific recruitment of boyfriends and husbands to report out on
their partners, whether it is the laws or the lawsuits
attacking providers in states that have access to abortion for
(33:04):
their mailing of abortion medication over state lines, whether it's
crossing state lines, whether it's miners crossing state lines. I
think they are going to, you know, continue to build
a patchwork of abortion restrictions and ensuing litigation that will
gain like roll up through the court systems because we
(33:26):
will have to fight each of these restrictions. They'll roll
up through the court restrictions so that they can add
further restrictions onto access to abortion right.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
And also they will create a world where women of
reproductive health are basically I mean this is an homage
to the fugitive slave, a aact.
Speaker 4 (33:45):
It's intended to create fear, chaos, confusion, to really discourage
people from having body autonomy even when it is lawful.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
Explain to us sort of what is the focus right now?
You have blue states who have red states. Red states
are completely controlled by the right, and what does the
landscape look like right now?
Speaker 4 (34:04):
They're nineteen states that have restrictions on access to abortion.
This is two and a half years after the Jobs decision.
You know, we've seen through the storytelling that abortion bands
had made pregnancy more dangerous. We've seen the loss of
life you know of those we know amount of women
like Amber Thurman, you know, who are afraid to get
access or went to get access to care at their
(34:27):
local hospitals and they were denied care until they were
too sick in order to treat them. We have seen
doctors leaving states and residents declining to come into states
to practice OBGYN band states because fearful of the concern.
We just are seeing these bands hurt communities across the South,
(34:50):
in the Midwest, you know, economies, businesses, universities are all
experiencing the kind of fallout, right because that's just the
practical implication of how hard it is to recruit or
maintain residents and communities when you don't have enough of
an OBGUI in supply to help people build their families.
And then you know, obviously all of these dangerous restrictions
(35:11):
continue to you know, we will see these efforts to
create new standing, you know, whether the law we were
just talking about the lawsuits really giving standing to boyfriends
and husbands who you know, they would claim our victims
of abortion, or giving standing to embryos and fetuses through
some of the personhood amendments that we will continue to
(35:32):
see through things like the so called you know, the
various legislation and so, you know, I think we need
to continue to expect that literally, the same kind of
test cases and patchwork restrictions that ultimately ended up being
part of the downfall of the road decision are going
to be the ones that are intent to try to
(35:52):
strengthen the hand of the jobs decision.
Speaker 1 (35:54):
Right. This is the thing that keeps me up at night.
We saw these women come forward during the campaign, in
the twenty twenty four campaign, and they told these absolutely
blood curdling stories about the kind of things that no
one in a modern country, in a wealthy, modern country,
should have to go through. And voters rejected those stories,
(36:15):
or they just ignored them, or they didn't hear them,
or they chose not to hear them. I mean, are
we in this moment where it's just going to have
to get worse and worse and worse. I know we
shouldn't think this way, but like, you can't give people
stuff they don't want. Do all these white women who
voted for Trump, do they not understand that this affects
very much affects them.
Speaker 4 (36:35):
I think they very much do understand the impact. I
think they were moved by the stories, and they also
believed Trump when he said he wouldn't do anything about abortion.
I think that's really the paradox here is that the
majority of Americans, including you know, women of all demographics, men,
(36:59):
religious cammunities, rural communities, you know, folks who genuinely believe
in advancing freedom, support it reproductive freedom. And yet I
think their proximity to you know, fighting for the protections
of themselves really no pun intended Trump, their other concerns
that these rights would be taken away. And I think
(37:20):
that's that's the question we need to answer, is like
why did they believe that he would not do anything,
especially when we watch his entire anti abortion cabinet come
into play. Right, you've got Pamponde as age, You've got
Russell Lott from Project twenty twenty five, and O and B,
you've got Marco Rubio as Secretary of State. Right, the
roles of these cabinet picks have literally empowered this administration
(37:44):
to take steps that would impede access to abortion care,
sexual reproductive health care really as a whole, here and globally.
And so I think the question that we have to
now pose back to those very people who said, you know,
either they didn't believe him or it wasn't disqualifying because
they did think it would happen. How are they going
to hold President Trump to his word every day for
(38:04):
the next four years? Right, Planned Parenthood, you know, our
organizations are suppurs. We know, we're just going to every
day remind this administration of his pledge not only that
he wouldn't sign a national abortion ban, but that any
other effort like defunding Planned Parenthood or trying to issue
guidance around comstock that is not consistent with what the
(38:25):
law intended, would be efforts to essentially enact a national
abortion ban. So we're going to be reminding him. The
question is, how are all of these folks who said
that this would not be disqualifying going to hold him
to accountable because that is actually where we will need
to grow and build our strength and power, right.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
And I think that's a really important point now, as
someone who did all of this research on Project twenty
two five and interviewed all these academics, one of the
things about Project twenty twenty five this embryoic personhood, right,
they call it fetal person but it's really they're really embryos.
It opens the door to a real war on birth
(39:03):
control too, which is where I think this is all headed,
and where if you're an evangelical, you want to shut
down abortion, but you really want to shut down birth control.
Speaker 4 (39:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (39:13):
So I'm hoping you could sort of explain where you're
seeing that, if you're seeing that maybe or not, and
how Planned Parenthood hopes to protect that kind of thing.
Speaker 4 (39:24):
Well, look after the Dabbs decision, what we have seen
in our just in the health centers at Planned Parenthood,
you know, vasectomy appointments have increased by twelve hundred percent,
i UD appointments have increased by seven hundred and sixty percent,
birth control implant by three hundred and forty percent. Like
the people are speaking with their you know, with their
feet and near appointments, you know, around the kind of
(39:46):
healthcare that they need, right, you don't see that kind
of surge in demand without the you know, the the
concern and the fear that they will not be able
to get access to, you know, what is just considered
basic normal life as healthcare, right, affordable healthcare. We saw
the attacks as they came through the IBF case in Alabama.
(40:09):
We are going to continue to see the conversations they
were having in Tennessee. If you remember the lawmakers that
were caught on audio talking about like now is the
time to take on contraception. You know, these ideas are
out there. It is about as we have seen with
SB eight, with jobs, with you know, so many other
(40:30):
efforts to undo restrictions around abortion, that they always start
off kind of in a laboratory, you know, a law
where they're see how far they can push the boundary,
and then they use that to export to other states
who'd be willing to kind of test the law and
push that forward. And so even though you know, we
know ninety nine percent of women have used birth control
(40:50):
in their lifetime, we are going to see the restrictions
start to come into play as a way to see
how much they can get away with in the name
of power and control.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Do you think that there's a moment where the American
people are like, oh my god, or do you think
that never happens. Like one of the things that I
was struck by in the last cycle was that you
would talk to voters and you would say, well, Trump's
going to do this, this and this, and they wouldn't
believe you. Do you think there's something that can happen
that voters will be like, oh my god? Or do
(41:23):
you think now? Yeah?
Speaker 4 (41:25):
I asked this question a lot of myself because I
do think that.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
This is literally what I think of all that. Like
I'm like, is there a moment where they go like,
oh my god, I can't get the pill anymore, I
can't buy condoms like you know, or do they just
think like why did Joe Biden do this to me?
Speaker 4 (41:40):
Why did Joe Biden do this to me?
Speaker 1 (41:42):
Right? No, I know, but I'm just saying like that
they're so jacked up on misinformation and disinformation that they're
somehow like there were voters you remember during the Biden
administration who thought that Biden was the reason that Roe v.
Waite was overturned, right right right?
Speaker 4 (41:56):
Because we're in like.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
A disinformation you know, healthcape.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Yeah, the thing I worry about. No, I mean, like
I think it's it's a really important question. And I
you know, and I say, it's like the thing I
ask myself it really is, how do you stop the
normalization of the harm, right, how do you stop the
kind of normalization of our freedoms being taken away? And
(42:22):
we cannot accept the fact that the future state of
reproductive healthcare is flying across the country get access to abortion,
getting on a bus, you know, and traveling eighteen hours
both ways in order to get back in time to
start your next shift. Like the reality that we are
allowing for a normalization treatment of people to not be
(42:47):
able to get the cure that they need where they live,
I think, is the first, like, you know, huge alarm bell.
And then you layer onto that people are actually dying, right,
people not even intended abortion care, but who have required
it through their pregnancy, you know, outcomes are not now
no longer being able to get the access they need
(43:07):
in an emergent way. That like you continue to layer
on the harms and the normalization, and you say, like
how did we wake up? And look like why aren't
we there right now?
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Like that is question?
Speaker 4 (43:18):
But then I look at Corollari's in other movements, right,
I think about I think about all of the young
people that have died over the years in gun violence
in schools. You know, if we have normalized that through
shooter drillings and teaching kids how to be silent and
hide in closets to not draw attention. What have we
(43:38):
done to quell the outrage that needs to exist every
time a child dies? And so I wonder about the
exhaustion and the wariness of the outrage, and also like,
at what point, you know, are we able to you know,
bring people back to a real, formidable understanding that their
(43:58):
freedoms have been approached in this way?
Speaker 1 (44:01):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you, Alexis.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Thank you, Mollie, No moment.
Speaker 1 (44:09):
Perfectly Jesse Cannon, Milly.
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So there was a hand gesture heard around the world
by one Elon Musk yesterday at Trump's inauguration, and it
seems it's got the ADL a little twisted like a
pretzel about what to do here? What are you seeing?
Speaker 1 (44:29):
So here we go. This is not surprising at all,
but the ADL, which is a friend of Trump and
Elon so Trump. So yesterday Elon made a hand gesture
that certainly looked like a Nazi salute to everyone who
saw it, but not the brain trust at the ADL,
(44:51):
who tweeted, go for it.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
This is a delicate moment. It's a new day. And
yet so many are on edge. Our politics are inflamed.
Social media only ats the anxiety. It seems that Elon
Musk made an awkward gesture at a moment of enthusiasm,
not a Nazi salute. But again, we appreciate that people
are on edge in this moment. All sides should give
one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit
(45:15):
of the doubt, and take a breath. This is a
new beginning. Let's hope for healing and work towards unity
in the months and years ahead.
Speaker 1 (45:22):
Yeah, heali like in unity from the river to the sea.
It's considered to be anti Semitism, but an actual Nazi
salute not so much watermelons. Here's Olab Schaltz. Perhaps you've
heard of him, German chancellor who Musk is mad at
because Musk wants the far right Nazi party to win
in Germany, and he said at the World Economic Forum
(45:44):
on Tuesday, what we do not accept is if this
is support for extreme right positions. After a reporter asked
him what he thought of Musk's gesture, So, Adl, maybe
you should be as brave as the leader of Germany.
Speaker 2 (45:58):
I think we have to zoom back history to September fourth,
twenty twenty three, where Elon Musk said the ADL, because
they are so aggressive in their demands and banned social
mediacounts for even minor infractions, are ironically the biggest generators
of anti Semitism on this platform, and then threaten to
sue them for four billion dollars.
Speaker 1 (46:18):
Four billion dollars.
Speaker 2 (46:20):
Yes, it's really good that we let someone get this rich.
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Good work everyone. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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