Dana Milbank, Rep Jim Himes & John Ganz

Dana Milbank, a columnist for The Washington Post, examines how Trump smears his opponents using the same method each time. Representative Jim Himes surveys Speaker of the House Mike Johnson’s chaotic rule over the House. Author John Ganz details his new book, "When the Clock Broke: Con Men, Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the Early 1990s."

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Episode Transcript

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 the Biden administration is canceling student
loans for another one hundred and sixty thousand borrowers. Representative
Jim Himes stops by to talk about the Speaker of
the House, Mike Johnson's chaotic rule. Then we'll talk to

(00:23):
John Gantz about his new book When the Clock Broke,
Convent Conspiracists, and how America cracked.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Up in the early nineteen nineties.

Speaker 1 (00:33):
But first we have Washington Post columnist Dana Melbank. Welcome
back to Best Politics, my friend, my buddy, one of
my favorite writers, the one.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
The only Washington Post Dana Milbank.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
Oh, Molly, thank you for that build up, but it'll
only be disappointing from here on.

Speaker 2 (00:52):
Out' that's the hope. No, not the hope.

Speaker 1 (00:56):
I'm very excited to hear you because I am a
fan of yours, but I so like I'm not as
old as you are, obviously.

Speaker 3 (01:03):
Yeah, thanks for that. Okay, that's you've taken back some
of the good stuff from the introduction now.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
But you remember when politics was I don't want to
say sane, because that was never sane, but was a
little less insane. And I want you to talk about
sort of what this feels.

Speaker 2 (01:22):
Like to you.

Speaker 1 (01:23):
You are in the Beltway, the Acela Corridor, as opposed
to me, who was at the end of.

Speaker 3 (01:28):
The great You're in the heartland, right in the heartland,
exactly discuss Well, look, I came to Washington in nineteen
ninety five when you were in preschool.

Speaker 2 (01:40):
That's right, bab and or rehab.

Speaker 3 (01:42):
And I thought that something had gone terribly wrong that
you know, it was in the Oklahoma City bombing and
Gingrich is a Republican revolution just taken over. And I
was like, wow, things are really going to hell here now.
Of course, looking back, those are the good old days,
you know, salad days was still function you know, I mean, yeah, yes,
it was the beginning of bad stuff, but you know,

(02:04):
come on, Clinton, then Gangritch could negotiate and strike some
good deals and we still had a functioning government. They
were sort of you know, kind of shadows, you know,
suggesting what could come, but it still worked. And we've
just it's just been one election cycle after note of
deterioration with you know, with a couple of moments of

(02:24):
reprieves in there. But you know, this was my whole
last book, The Destructions, was about this. You know this.
It was basically been a twenty five year crack up.
And yeah, we're polarized and all that stuff, but really
it has been, you know, half of our political system
has gone bonkers, and unfortunately that at the moments at
these seems to be the ascended part of our political system.

Speaker 2 (02:46):
So according to Paul's.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
Yeah, I'm trying to watch it as a spectator to
report back to the reality based community on what I'm seeing.
But man, it's it's a grind these days.

Speaker 1 (02:58):
So Republicans have been all in on this idea that
there's something wrong with Joe Biden, and they have done
this since Joe Biden came back on the scene run
for president against their man. Those of us who have
a memory that is longer than that of a goldfish,
remember that in twenty fifteen, we were told that Hillary's health.

(03:18):
We were told by David Pecker, the National Enquirer, who
recently featured prominently in Donald Trump's criminal case, that Hillary's
health was the biggest issue on the agenda that she had.
You'll remember that she had terrible things wrong with her
and that she was quite sick. So this is like
something that Trump world likes to do. Can you make

(03:39):
it make sense?

Speaker 3 (03:40):
Well? Can I make anything make sense? I mean, you know,
it's trying so many different things at the same time.
I mean, right now, not only are we believing that
Biden is demented, but he is simultaneously hatching some secret
plan to assassinate the president by sending the FBI after
him with orders to kill. Never mind that they searched

(04:01):
his own house with the same orders to kill.

Speaker 2 (04:03):
Right, and also there was no one home when they came, right.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
I think it's always about keeping somebody off balance. But
you know, he can't make up his mind whether it's
in a sleepy Biden or crooked Biden. So here's where
the problem comes in, and that is I think they've
done quite a good job of convincing people that Biden
isn't all there. Even a lot of Biden voters think.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
That, and a lot of polls show that, right.

Speaker 3 (04:28):
It shows that that's what people think. So they've been
very successful at that, and I could kind of see it.
I mean, look, the guy's got a stutter. He's definitely
moving more slowly than he did a few years ago.
But of course I was covering this guy back in
the nineties and he sounded the same way back then.
That's just who he is, so it's easy to do
it to him. It sort of lends itself to that.
But here's where they've got a problem. They've done such

(04:49):
a good job of convincing people that he's not able
to string two sentences together, as Trump said that while
he gives the State of the Union does and they say, wow,
this guy is actually sentience. And then what happens. They'll
have a debate next month, and it turns out if
he cans just sentence together, you know, I don't know
if he'll be brilliant. But the bar has been set
so low that now we Jesse, I mean, he doesn't

(05:12):
even have to step over it to get to clear
that bar. So now they've got to come up with
something else.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yes, So it's interesting when we talk about this because
I have this theory which Jesse and I actually fight about,
which is that Joe Biden in the nineties, that this
Joe Biden is actually better because he knows that he
sometimes says too much, and so he's a little more careful,
whereas Joe Biden the nineties would just say crazy staff

(05:37):
discuss right.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
I think people will say this is like the super managed,
scripted Joe Biden. But to me, this is the discipline
Joe Biden.

Speaker 2 (05:45):
Yes.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
I remember watching confirmation hearings for the Supreme Court and
he'd go on for like fifteen minutes and then he'd say,
and now I want to get to the regular part
of my remarks, you know, right, which ed is blathering.
The guy just wouldn't he wouldn't shut up, and you
know he was he was always putting his foot in
his mouth and stepping in it. And you know he

(06:08):
always said ridiculous things that came out that came out poorly.
But yeah, so this is I don't know whether he's
allowing himself to be managed so much as he's recognizing
that less is more. But you know, anything will fit
the narrative to say, Okay, that means he must have
dementia if he's not giving a long rambling speeches. So

(06:28):
what you know? So what do you do now that
he was his sentences together and apparently the idea is
going to be to say that he's on drugs Trump,
you know, said after the saying he's jacked up. You know,
he's high as a kite.

Speaker 2 (06:41):
By the way, Trump said that about Hillary too.

Speaker 3 (06:43):
Because he did the same thing to Hillary. There's assessing
she was demented. Then what do you do when they're
not demented. He's suggesting some kind of a stimulant or something.
But I was just delighted that we heard over the
weekend from Byron Donald's I'm going.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
To read the first line because I love you. Rep.

Speaker 1 (06:58):
Byron Donald's medical education can consist of a bachelor's degree
in finance and marketing from Florida State University.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
Discuss, Right, but he played a doctor on television.

Speaker 2 (07:07):
It's not even news, it's Fox Business.

Speaker 3 (07:09):
Right, Yeah, although Maria Bartiromo, I think her Sunday Futures
maybe is on regular Fox News. I mean, it's all
the same to me. Right, So he's on with Maria Bartiromo. So, okay,
dude's a grain of salt to start with there. But
so he takes it another step further and he says
Biden is getting some sort of an injection. He thinks,
you know, like people are saying that makes him coherent.

(07:30):
So it makes it totally.

Speaker 2 (07:31):
Can I get that inco right?

Speaker 3 (07:33):
An incoherent person takes this injection and is suddenly coherent,
How can I get me some Yeah, it sounds amazing exactly,
So you know that's what I said. Republicans have discovered
this secret elixir that can take somebody who's totally demented
and make them just totally at the top of their game.
And yeah, I mean, can you imagine what a blockbuster
this one?

Speaker 2 (07:52):
I want it. It's a zepic for brains.

Speaker 1 (07:55):
One of the things that they talk about here Byron
Donald's this is part of the veep steaks, right Byron
Donalds thinks he's going to be Donald Trump's number two, right.

Speaker 3 (08:05):
Right, And Tim Scott has gone along with the same thing,
backing up Trump saying yeah, yeah, yeah, of course it
sounds like Biden's on drugs. So that's sort of the
standard litmus test. You have to get up and lie
about Biden being on drugs, and you have.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
To lie about the twenty twenty election.

Speaker 1 (08:18):
You've seen veepstakes before, never this sleazy and Mike Pens
might have some thoughts on whether or not this is
a good job, but predict the future for me, how
do you think this is going to play out?

Speaker 2 (08:32):
No pressure, and if you're wrong, we're going.

Speaker 3 (08:34):
To clip this right. No, no, you're going to clip
this and hold me to it. I don't think I've
ever seen a public I mean, it's public auditioning, you know,
with some Republican lawmaker up in Congress that this is
Apprentice twenty twenty four. You know, they're all out there,
you know, and of course they're looking ridiculous and it's demeaning,
but big surprise. I mean, that is the moment that

(08:54):
we live in. What will the outcome be? If that's
the question, is asking to divine what's in Donald Trump's
So I'm not much well or he doesn't know from
it any given moment to moment what it's going to be.
So you know, are there are there picks that could
reassure people? Well, I suppose, so I don't think any
of those sorts of folks are being seriously considered, though,

(09:15):
you know, does he try to pick off more Latino
voters with Marco Rubio or Black voters with doctor Byron
Donalds for example, Yeah, you know, maybe that works to
some extent, But you know, I don't think this election
is going to be decided by whoever it is he picks,
or Kamala Harris or that matter. I suppose the bar
needs to be somebody who's marginally competent. But you're saying

(09:38):
competent enough to succeed Donald Trump. So you know, if
you're voting for Donald Trump in the first place, you're
not so worried that the guy who might replace him
is competent. So it's competence is not your highest standard.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
And you know Trump has said as much. Trump said,
nobody cares about the vice president. You don't have to
be a historian here, but talk to me about pretty
recent elections and sort of how so different what Donald
Trump is doing right now when it comes to vice
presidential shopping.

Speaker 3 (10:06):
This is well, you know again, it's the visibility of it.
I mean, traditionally it was you know, big mystery, ideally
to be revealed at or around the convention. But the
conventions don't really matter anymore.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:21):
The idea was, you know, it was gonna you know,
show some sort of a unification in time for the
full general election season. But it's not a full general
election season. We've been in a general election season right
for a year or more now. So you know, it's
sort of a pet peeve of mine. And you know,
people say, well, based on what happened with Kennedy in

(10:41):
nineteen sixty or even what happened with Barack Obama in
twenty twelve, it's irrelevant. We're not in that world anymore.
So nothing is going according to those anymore. So I
would say that Trump is correct that people are not
going to be excited one way or the other about
the vice presidential pien. And I mean Democrats are not
overwhelmingly excited by either the top or the or the

(11:04):
bottet the of the ticket that they're faced with. But
that's where we are.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Some of what we're seeing right now is this kind
of malaise, I think, and some of it is. There's
also I think I'm certainly people are coming over to
me an abject panic.

Speaker 2 (11:22):
About these polls.

Speaker 1 (11:24):
You are a veteran, I mean this in a nice way,
a very young veteran. But tell us what you sort
of what you think of as like the May before
an election, Like what should people be doing in the
may before an election?

Speaker 3 (11:39):
I think the sort of the hand ringing or the
panicking is sort of a useless emotion so I tell
people who are worried about that, We'll go out and
do something. Volunteer, give your money, be ready to knock
on doors, and do whatever else it takes. You know,
what the Biden campaign is doing while everybody else is
freting about the latest poll is building a pretty massive

(12:02):
campaign infrastructure. So I mean you can fault them for
you know, being you know, not doing enough about this
message or that message. I don't think that's particularly fair.
I don't think they control what the message is going
to be. I think they have very limited control over that.
But what they do have control over is the infrastructure
in investing the time and the money in that. And

(12:23):
that's what the Republicans aren't doing. As Trump sits in
his trial in New York, and you know, he's decimated
the RNC to try to, you know, turn it into
a vanity organization. So you know, look, I don't think
anything has changed. It's going to you know, it's going
to be a very close election. It looks like I'm
married to a Democratic pollster, and she does spends a
lot of time talking people off the ledge, you know,

(12:45):
saying that whatever happens in the election, you know, a
lot of the polling doesn't make sense. Biden's not going
to lose women, He's not going to lose young voters,
not going to lose suspenics. You know, the changes are
happening at the margin.

Speaker 1 (12:57):
If these polls are right, it'll be the greatest racial
realignment in the voting rights actually right.

Speaker 3 (13:04):
And it's probably not that. There probably are ongoing shifts
that have been occurring for years, and that will probably
continue to happen. So, you know, I think people oughtn't panic,
but people ought to do something about it. I'm really
discouraged by the lack of engagement and enthusiasm. Might you know.
I've got a column coming out on people just seem
to be numb even to all this you know what

(13:25):
is blatantly fascist rhetoric. It's almost like, okay, yeah, yeah,
we know that, but you.

Speaker 2 (13:31):
Know, the fascism is baked.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
In, right, the fascism is baked in Oh but Biden's old, right,
So yeah, it's very discouraging. I expect there will be
more attention paid to that, because, look, Trump can't help himself.
He or his campaign needed to get a unified Reich
into into that video, Belie. They need to suggest that
Biden is, you know, coming after them to kill them.

(13:55):
He needs to go after the judge's ethnicity and suggesting
that because he was born in he can't be fair,
he can't help himself. He's going to keep doing that,
and I think attention will focus on that. I'm doing
my best to focus attention on that. That's what people
are going to have in mind when they.

Speaker 1 (14:10):
Decide, Congress you live in the swamp, no offense or anything.
Congress is about to go on vacation, because why wouldn't they,
But first they have a few more weeks of whatever
the farm bell trying to get the leader of Israel here,
pandering to whatever they can do to help Donald Trump.

(14:31):
The Senate is going to try to pass this very
restrictive immigration bill. I'm actually heartened to see Schumer trying
to play the right on their game. But just talk
to me about what's happening in both those hallowed halls.

Speaker 3 (14:49):
By and large, the must do stuff is done, not
easily done the time, but you know, they sort of
got there. It looks, you know, for the moment, thanks
to large part of the Democrats, Johnson will have his
job for now. So you know, we're sort of in
we'd be sort of in the early and the silly
season of you know, messaging bills, and the House Republicans

(15:10):
are just keep coming up with ways to split the
Democrats on Israel generally, or just to make them take
hard votes. And I think Schumer's now trying to do
the same sort of thing, you know, force Republicans to
take hard votes in the Senate, and maybe that'll help
at the margin, you know, people to cut ads. But
I don't think anybody's going to be focusing on this,
although the truth is, I could say that about absolutely anything. Now.

(15:33):
You know, there's been NonStop coverage of Trump's trial for
a month and virtually nobody's paying any attention to it.

Speaker 1 (15:39):
Oh yeah, no, I agreed, Well, some people are paying attention.
And again, we never know what we'll cut through the noise.
We never know if the stormy Daniel's testimony gets through
the noise.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
We never know what will break through to the voters.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
We never know, except there's just no evidence, Like nobody's
talking about it. You're just not hearing this. You're certainly
not not seeing in the polls that Americans aren't paying attention.
You're not hearing about it in focus groups or anything else.
It certainly registers with some people, but those tend to
be people we're paying to start with it and already
had their minds made up, you know. I mean that

(16:16):
was particularly with the Stormy Daniels trial. That was the
Biden campaigns thinking they have not been engaging and making
a huge deal as this throwaway lines like I hear
your free on Wednesdays. By and large sort of the
assumption is that it's not something that's people going to
be focusing on.

Speaker 2 (16:32):
Dana Milbank, thank you.

Speaker 3 (16:35):
It's a pleasure as always. Thanks for calling this veteran
in the swamp.

Speaker 1 (16:43):
Spring is here and I bet you are trying to
look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
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Speaker 2 (16:56):
Get t shirts, hoodies.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
Hats, and topa to grab some head to fastpolitics dot com.
Representative Jim Hins represents Connecticut's fourth district. Welcome back, too
Fast Politics, one of my favorite congress people.

Speaker 4 (17:13):
Jim Hines, Hi, Mollie, thanks for having me back.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
I want to talk to you about beekeeping note just kidding.
I want to talk to you about first of all,
it strikes me that Speaker my Johnson only has his
job today because of the kindness of Democrats.

Speaker 5 (17:31):
Well, first of all, as a factual matter, that's absolutely right.
I mean, if Marjorie Taylor Green had had her way,
we would be into week two or three, whatever it
is right now, of ballad after ballad after ballad of
the Republican Conference unable to select a speaker. And we
know that because we saw that movie once before when
they booted Kevin McCarthy.

Speaker 4 (17:50):
And it wasn't out of the kindness.

Speaker 5 (17:52):
Now, look, I have some respect Sneaker Johnson, which was
sadly eroded by his performance in front of the New
York Court the other day. But it wasn't so much
out of the kindness of our hearts as that we
really wanted to show the American people that it given
an opportunity to sort of dance and make political hay
and partisan you know, statements about dysfunction on the Republican side,

(18:14):
we chose instead to keep the ship upright and to
try to make some progress around you know, things like
infrastructure and the Federal Aviation Administration, all the boring stuff
of governing. And I think, you know, people need to
see that, because there's not a chance in the world,
Molly that had the shoe been on the other foot,
that the Republicans would have stepped into in the in
the service of stopping chaos.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
So let's go further with that.

Speaker 1 (18:37):
Now that Mike Johnson has kept his job for now,
he has sort of a lot of stuff he's pushing
to vote on that would really serve Donald Trump. I mean,
it strikes me that he really does serve at the
pleasure of Donald Trump. And no time was this more
apparent than last week when he went to Donald Trump's

(18:58):
criminal trial.

Speaker 5 (18:58):
Yeah, and the hard thing about that, you know, if
you have my job, you long ago have acknowledged the
very sad fact that the Republican Party is now a
cult of personality, almost without exception to Donald J.

Speaker 3 (19:12):
Trump.

Speaker 4 (19:13):
You know, I had accumulated a little bit of.

Speaker 5 (19:15):
Respect for the Speaker because I saw him sort of
ac civily and because he said, we're going to do
a budget without a shutdown, We're going to pass the
Ukraine eate and that's exactly what happened. And you know,
he took some risks to get that done. And then
I watch him standing in front of the trial of
a convicted you know, sexual assaulter. The guy that we
all know Donald Trump is. And here's this, you know,
self professed man who is governed by the principles of

(19:37):
the Bible, not just standing up for Donald Trump but
telling lies about Donald Trump. And so you know, again,
it's been quite a roller coaster with respect to my
own views of Speaker Johnson.

Speaker 2 (19:48):
Yeah, I mean it must be.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
And I know he's sort of liked in a way
because he has not had a history of lying to
Democrats quite the same way that Kevin McCarthy did. But
you guys have some real stuff you need to do
right now. The farm bell, and that's a big bill.
And then also there's other stuff he wants to bring

(20:10):
net Yahoo. Talk to us about the farm bell, and
then also talk to us about this net Yahoo visit.

Speaker 4 (20:16):
Yeah, yeah, look, I mean exactly right on the farm bill.
And remember the farm bill.

Speaker 5 (20:19):
People here farm bill and they think it's you know,
acres of corn out in Nebraska. The farm bill is
also the funding source for all of our food programs
for lower income Americans who otherwise would be malnourished. So
it's not just farms right, and traditionally that was an
easy bill to pass because Krats got all that they
wanted in terms of, you know, nutritional security, and the

(20:40):
Republicans who represented more rural areas got all the crop
insurance and all that stuff. You know, it's yet another
casualty of a group of people who are more interested
in social media and performative acts than actually governing the country.
And so that's why we're gonna have a problem with
the farm bill. But yeah, we've got real business to do.
And that's again why we save Speaker Johnson, not the
kindness of our hearts, but because we've got stuff to

(21:02):
do now. Sadly, Speaker Johnson is going to take advantage
of his speakership that we preserved to do a lot
of messaging nonsense, some of which will be relatively benign
or neutral.

Speaker 4 (21:14):
You know Natanyahu, right, you asked about him. Here's a
guy who is enormously controversial in his own country. The
last time game here, he meddled in our politics by
telling the Congress that we shouldn't pass the Iran nuclear
bill that the President was pushing. And so at this
moment in time, when Nittanyahu needs to be one hundred
and fifty percent focused on getting the hostages out of Gaza.

(21:38):
He's going to come to a bunch of partisan stuff
in DC. I mean, it almost turns my stomach to
think about it.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
It's so interesting to me because Nanyahu has some real
domestic problems. I mean, you have Israeli's protesting, you have
parents of the hostages begging him to take this seriously.
You have really humanitarian disaster growing in Gaza. He wants
to come to America to help Donald Trump.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
I mean he's so bartisan.

Speaker 5 (22:07):
Yeah, I wish it were so apparent that Netanyahu is
first and foremost about preserving himself in power. He is
only Prime Minister in virtue of two really awful people.
I'm referring to Smotrech and Ben Gevie, right, you know,
one of whom was kicked out of the IDEF. Are
not permitted to be in the IDEF because they were

(22:28):
so extreme. These guys are, you know, one hundred percent
in support of the settlers violating every international law in
the West Bank. I mean, these guys are trim and
by the way, you know, it's uncomfortable for me to
say that, but that's what most Israelis believe as well.

Speaker 1 (22:42):
Yeah, and I had Bernie Sanders on this podcast. You know,
I'm Jewish, he's Jewish, and he's Jewish of that age
where they, you know, were born during the Holocaust, so
they have real firsthand knowledge about what it's like to
be murdered for being a Jew, even though he lived
in the States his whole life. And so even he
and I, who both know the importance of Israel as

(23:05):
a state and as a place for us to be
safe as Jews, also know that Netan Yahoo is not Israel.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
That's exactly right. And you know, it's funny.

Speaker 5 (23:14):
It's a quirk of politics that, you know, having the
opinion that the majority of Israelis have.

Speaker 4 (23:20):
Which is Prime Minister. And look, I'm careful about this.
I know Chuck Schumer decided to do something different.

Speaker 5 (23:26):
I'm not in the business of telling other democracies how
they should select their leaders. But my point was that,
you know, having an opinion which is, let's just say,
a little clouded about Prime Minister Netdan Yahu, which is,
by the way, the opinion that most Israeli shares. You know,
here you get raised eyebrows. And I mean, I'll tell
you this. As you know, I work a lot in
the national security space, and as I look at it,

(23:47):
you know, it's hard for me to think of somebody
who has more damaged Israel's long term national security than
Netan Yahoo. And let's forget about the massive failure that
was October seventh. I mean, you know, a failure far
exceeding what we failed on on nine to eleven, two
thousand and one. Go back to the JCPOA which he
worked and continued to work. This is the Iran nuclear deal.

(24:08):
Eliminate and guess what, he got his way because of
Donald Trump. And now you know what, it wouldn't shock me,
Molly if we woke up at some point in the
next year to discover that the Iranians were on the
verge of testing a nuclear device. And I would tell
you that would not have happened were the Iran Nuclear
Deal in place. You know, one other point, it has
nothing to do with oct well, it has something to
do with October sevens.

Speaker 4 (24:29):
But here's a guy who has quietly and now explicitly
dedicated himself to the destruction of the two state solution.
You know, and I'm pretty humble about the way the
decisions that other democracies make. But I've always asked a question,
if not a two state solution, then what And there
is no answer to that question.

Speaker 5 (24:45):
And so what you do when you take the two
state solution off the table, as the Prime Minister has done,
you crush the hopes and aspirations of millions of Palestinians.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
And you know what, millions of people with crushed hopes
and aspirations is a pretty volatile thing.

Speaker 1 (25:00):
Yeah, I mean, I also think like the you know,
the whole idea that you can be a democracy that
deprives others is of their like liberty to live and
survive is dicey.

Speaker 2 (25:15):
Let's talk about national security.

Speaker 1 (25:17):
This is the thing that I'm obsessed with and irritated
with but also a little hopeful for. So this TikTok
ban is a big deal, and it really shows that
Congress can regulate technology if it wants to. So make
it make sense how TikTok gets regulated and Facebook is

(25:37):
able to spread lies and create fake news and force
to sale TikTok makes sense?

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Get it? But why can't this happen in other technology companies?

Speaker 3 (25:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (25:49):
Yeah, okay, full disclosure, I voted against the forced TikTok.
Why I did it for the same and remember, I'm
a national security guy. Right in the ads is I
was not going to be complicit in the United States
of America for the first time telling its citizenry people
who we trust to make the decisions.

Speaker 4 (26:08):
Of who to lack.

Speaker 5 (26:10):
I was not going to be party to the government
of the United States saying I'm sorry, you can't watch
this media. That is completely inconsistent in my view, with
the First Amendment, which, by the way, is what the
Montana courts ruled when Montana tried to block TikTok. I
don't like going that route without some limiting principle.

Speaker 4 (26:26):
What's next?

Speaker 5 (26:27):
Are we going to get mad at the French because
they didn't let us overfly whatever in the Iraq War, whatever?
And we're not going to let Americans read Lamond That
is not who we are. By the way, I have
as specific an understanding as anybody about what Chinese capability are.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
To get information. And this leads to your second question,
which is, guess what the information that we worry that
the Chinese might get from byte Dance they can buy
on the open market today, right, You can buy anything,
including your current location. Why because and here's here's what
I feel really strongly about. Number one, supporting the First Amendments.

Speaker 5 (26:59):
So no, molly, the federal government is not going to
be in the business of identifying misinformation, disinformation and information.
We just can't get into that. But number two, for
God's sakes, we've got to pass a federal privacy law.

Speaker 4 (27:12):
Right.

Speaker 5 (27:12):
Europe has done it with something called GDPR, California has
done it with CCPA. The federal government has yet to
work out the basic question of who owns what data
Until we do that, and we should have done it
five years ago. We're putting you know, it's not even
the cart before the horse, right, we're just being clown
like and all this other stuff.

Speaker 1 (27:32):
Again, the First Amendment. I'm not totally understanding how tech
company is in the First Amendment. Right, you can say
whatever you want, But should tech companies, I mean, shouldn't
they be responsible for the things that happen on their platforms?

Speaker 5 (27:44):
Well, it's interesting to say that, and you're right. Look,
it's not directly a First Amendment issue as that pertains
to social media. Look, Facebook can choose to censor. What
can happen in this country is that the government can't censor,
and people get all confused and use this for their
political advantage. The government is prohibited by the First Amendment
from censoring anything, right, exceptions. On the end, Facebook and

(28:06):
Twitter consents or whatever the hell they want, in the
same way that at your table or at Columbia University,
decisions can be made about what you can't and can't
say in private contexts. Right, So it's not so much
a First Amendment issue. And look, I think that Facebook
and god knows, Twitter or x or whatever or el
Zamusk is calling it now, should do a much better job,

(28:27):
you know, keeping truly awful stuff off.

Speaker 4 (28:29):
And that's their prerogative.

Speaker 1 (28:31):
But it's their prerogative because Congress doesn't regulate. I mean,
if Congress said tomorrow, you're responsible for everything that goes
on your platform, just like NBC is responsible for everything
that goes on its platform. I mean, imagine a world
where NBC says, you know, we're not going to regulate
First Amendment. I mean, I'm just saying, like tech companies
have found themselves in this situation because Congress has not

(28:51):
ever regulated them. So they until somebody sues them into
the ground, or until they have consequences. They have much
lower standards and than newspapers and cable networks, and I
mean they have their ow they can basically do whatever
they want, right.

Speaker 5 (29:06):
I think the interesting little crack in the door here
is on the issue of liability. So in other words,
Facebook puts up some white nationalists, or allows to be
put up I should say, some white nationalists. Sort of
incitement videos not impossible, probably more likely to happen on Twitter,
by the way, and somebody gets radicalized and goes out

(29:27):
and kills a bunch of people in the name of
white nationalism. I like the idea that Twitter can be
held liable for that. Now, by the way, that's that's
a little bit inconsistent with current law undersection blah blah blah.

Speaker 3 (29:40):
But I think.

Speaker 4 (29:41):
There is really some there's an opening to the door
with respect to liability for bad outcomes. Where are you
start a little nervous?

Speaker 5 (29:50):
So what about you know, on Facebook, you don't want
the government coming in and saying, you know what, you
can't put up Paul Gosar's stuff. So our member of Congress,
ex right winger, you know, I'm sure has attended some
rallies that I would not even consider attending where is
the line drawn? And if the government is doing it,
the government must observe the tenets of the First Amendment.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
So again, I think you come back to this liability thing.

Speaker 5 (30:16):
If you put up some garbage that motivates somebody to
go out and hurt some folks, then you ought to
be held liable.

Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, I mean, it just is strange to me that
there's a completely different set of I mean, they're clearly publishers, right,
I mean, these websites are publishing things, but there's literally
no accountability. And I think so much about like the
oil companies, right, won't someone think of Exxon Oil companies

(30:42):
and there are a lot of other companies like this
have gotten huge tax incentives.

Speaker 2 (30:47):
They've you know, they've been able to.

Speaker 1 (30:49):
Harlay the federal government into dollars, whereas local news places
where they really are doing a public good, they don't
reap those same rewards. And curious as to sort of
why that happens. I'm sorry to be a socialist here.

Speaker 4 (31:06):
Yeah, no, it's not socialist. Look, the difference between oil
and information is that oil is not mentioned in the
First Amendment, and we as a country do take the
concept of free expression, really seriously, and it's codified in
our First Amendment in a way that oil is not.

Speaker 1 (31:21):
Right, but oil gets more support from the federal government
than the First Amendment.

Speaker 4 (31:26):
Right, Well, I'm not going to justify that.

Speaker 5 (31:27):
I don't think oil should get a dime of support
from it.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Yeah, no, I don't either, nor should call.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
But I mean, I'm just so struck by, like the
incredible ability that lobbyists have to still push around the
federal government in ways that because there's so little local news.
I know, stuff just from watching c SPAN that never
makes it to newspapers.

Speaker 5 (31:49):
Yeah, that's right, and you know you highlighted local news
absolutely critical. I mean, everybody who studies this stuff and
the slow erosion or this rapid erosion of our democracy
identifies local news is one of the real bulwarks against
the insanity. And by the way, Molly, this this opens
up another door that people don't always want to hear.
You know, if you lean left, you sort of think,

(32:09):
what's the government going to do about this? I don't
ever in a town hall meeting miss the opportunity to
tell whatever one hundred and fifty people showed up that look,
we're going to work through these issues. Eventually we'll have
a federal privacy law, you know, Eventually we'll be smarter
about regulating garbage on the social media platforms.

Speaker 4 (32:26):
It will be hard to the First Amendment. But son
of a gun, you're a citizen of the United States
of America. You are the most fortunate political actor through
human history. You live at the wealthiest, most powerful country
in the world, and you make the decisions, and with
that comes a great deal of responsibility. So, my friend,
if you're watching Fox News six hours a day and

(32:48):
at the end of those six hours, your hair is
on fire, and you make democrats for traders, you know,
or if you're quite frankly watching something way out there
on the left and at the end of that you
are out of your mind literally with anger and rage.
You are being manipulated.

Speaker 3 (33:02):
You know.

Speaker 5 (33:02):
The truth of the matter is molly that most of
the things that we argue about here in DC, other
than by the way, you know, whether Donald Trump is
going to take us into an autocracy, our tax rates,
our subsidies. You know, these arguments happen between the sixty
and the forty yard lines. You know, nobody should hate
anybody over agricultural policy. Or tax policy, or what percentage

(33:22):
of our you know, GDP we spend on foreign policy.
So my point is that American citizens need to step
up and start being critical thinkers and start seeing themselves
as stewards.

Speaker 4 (33:32):
Of our democracy. Because if all you're doing is thinking
about politics as a mode of self entertainment, dare I say,
we'll lose our democracy.

Speaker 2 (33:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:43):
Unfortunately they're not even doing that anymore because there's like
a Great News blackout. If Mike Johnson starts to really
dog walk Democrats, which he might try to, will you
guys do a.

Speaker 2 (33:55):
Motion to vacate?

Speaker 1 (33:56):
Probably not, because you guys have the power to remove
him from his job anytime.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
Yeah, you know, I suppose the way that would play.

Speaker 5 (34:04):
I remember we're in the minority, so we probably couldn't
you know, if we tried to do a motion of
VAK Weirdly, every single Republican would vote against it. But
you know, no, I guess in theory, you know, we
could find Marjorie Taylor Green on the floor and say, hey,
we saved this guy last time, but we're not going
to do it again.

Speaker 4 (34:19):
I suppose. So, you know, again, I'm one of these.

Speaker 5 (34:22):
People that really cares about about you know, functionality and progress, right,
So I need to contemplate that.

Speaker 4 (34:29):
But yeah, again, I'm still smarting. As I told you earlier.

Speaker 5 (34:32):
I don't mind Speaker Johnson pushing right wing stuff, That's
what happens in this building. But I just despise the
fact that a guy that I thought had some integrity
would stand up in front of a New York courthouse
and cast out on the twenty election and propagate falsehoods
that he knows are falsehoods people making right leaning policy proposals.
Here is what Washington is about. Lying in the service

(34:54):
of becoming a more senior acolyte in the Donald Trump
universe is another way in which we lose our demandocracy.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
Congressman Hans, thank you so much for joining me.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Thank you, Molly, A pleasure always.

Speaker 1 (35:07):
John Gans is the author of When the Clock Broke,
Conman Conspiracists, and How America Cracked Up in the early
nineteen nineties. Welcome to Fast Politics. Welcome back, John Gants.

Speaker 3 (35:22):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 2 (35:23):
Talk to us about the book When the Clock Broke.

Speaker 4 (35:26):
Well, this is my book. It's coming out June eighteenth.
That's called When the Clock Broke, Conman Conspiracists and How
America cracked up in the early nineteen nineties, and basically,
like I think a lot of political books in the
past few years, this is an effort to understand the
election of Donald Trump and the country at large, but
instead of being about him, it goes back quite a

(35:47):
bit in time. The inspiration for the book was a
few things. Back in twenty seventeen, Rick Pearlstein, the author
of Nixon Land and Reaganland. He wrote an article for
The New York Times magazine trying to buy his picture
of what the conservative movement had been and say that,
you know, the cranks and the and the crackpots that
he thought had been had been marginalized, were actually much

(36:09):
more important than he had thought. So we called for
kind of revision of the history of American conservatism.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
So that was one inspiration for the book.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
And then around the same time, I had found this
essay called right Wing Populism by a libertarian economist named
Murray Rothbart, which was basically kind of a sketch.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
It was from nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 4 (36:26):
It's kind of a sketch of trumpsm Before Trump became
a politician, obviously, he was part of the media world
and part of you know, culture back then. So I
was very excited by that, and I thought I had
kind of found the Rosetta stone to all this sort
of stuff. I tried very hard to bring this to
people's attention. I didn't know Jamel Bowie, who's you know,
now my good friend and podcast partner. I didn't know

(36:50):
Rick Pearlstein, who's now a friend and kind of my
mentor at the time. And I was writing emails to
people trying to get them think it's interesting because Iconic
kind of found the secret. Well, no one paid attention.
Turned out to be a good thing because I had
to start writing by myself. I started writing a couple
of articles about this for a magazine called The Baffler,
and then over the years that turned into the book.

(37:12):
And this book's about the early nineteen nineties. Is mostly
about the election of nineteen ninety two and a little
bit at the end of the nineteen ninety one and
what happened in that time period was David Duke, former
Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and Neo Nazi,
ran for governor of Louisiana and did quite well with
white voters.

Speaker 3 (37:30):
He won the majority of white voters.

Speaker 4 (37:31):
And Pat Buchannan tried to primary George H. W.

Speaker 3 (37:36):
Bush.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
He did not do that successfully, but he wounded Bush's
candidacy and kind of demonstrated the existence of this right
wing populist protest vote within the GOP coalition. So that's
the beginning of the book. Starts with them and the
kind of writers and intellectuals that surrounded them. So this
book is, you know, there's a lot of different metaphors

(37:57):
you could use. It's a prehistory of trump as a
where it's the Rosetta stone of trump Ism is one
way of looking at it. And this was a time
when a lot of the issues that are you know,
facing the country in terms of problems with the economics,
problems and culture first started to assert themselves after the
Cold War had ended. That's the quickest way I can
describe the book.

Speaker 1 (38:17):
So what are the lessons of this early history?

Speaker 2 (38:21):
Because there's another book.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
I read about the sort of the rights obsession with authoritarianism.

Speaker 2 (38:27):
I mean, what can we learn from this history?

Speaker 4 (38:31):
That is very much depending on the reader. I hesitate
to say in advance.

Speaker 2 (38:36):
What you learned?

Speaker 4 (38:37):
What I learned? Well, I would say that the authoritarianism
of the GOP has much longer history than we might
have known before. It is something that they never properly
coped with. The myth of the GOP as having, you know,
and the Conservative movement is having kind of pushed out.

Speaker 3 (38:54):
Its cranks is false.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
I learned that, you know, this current in American politics
which sort of reappeared and then was ignored, has deeper
roots than was imagined. I learned that there's an enormous
amount of discontent in American life beneath the surface or
not sow beneath the surface, and the right is very
good at interpreting it and giving it political shape.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
Can we do another minute on that, because I think
that's really important, the Right being able to sort of
take their supporters or the people who are vulnerable to
them and.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Exploiting their unhappiness.

Speaker 1 (39:34):
And so that's like Democrats seem not completely unable, in fact,
to their detriment to do.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
How do you think Republicans are able to do this?

Speaker 4 (39:45):
Well, it's a complicated question. I think Republicans are more
at this time, at least the writers and the more
intellectual figures that I talk about this book. We're fourth right.
You know, the country was heading in an uncertain and
even bad you know, there was a recession at this time.
There was a lot of concern about are we talking

(40:07):
about We're talking about nineteen ninety through nineteen ninety two
pretty much. So there was a lot of uncertainty about
what the country meant after the Cold War without an
external enemy. You know, there was a lot of concern
about the changing demographics in America. So what it meant
to be American was something that wasn't very clear to people.
And the Republicans, well not the Republicans, but this faction

(40:28):
within the Republican Party in the conservative movement, you know,
had an answer to it, which was, we know you're scared,
we know you're angry. Your right to be scared and angry,
and here's who you should be scared and angry at liberals, minorities.

Speaker 2 (40:40):
So they gave them an enemy.

Speaker 3 (40:42):
That essentially, they gave them an enemy.

Speaker 4 (40:45):
They said, the reason why you feel dispossessed, the reason
why you feel like you're losing your country, is because
these people are taking it from you. That these people
could have. You know, a lot of different balances could
be this group of that group, or just a vague
notion of an enemy. But yes, they shaped the politics.
You know, the Cold War ended. We always had an
external enemy from World War Two to through the Cold War,

(41:06):
and they began to shape the politics around domestic enmity, right,
so the Cold War became domestic. It was about defeating
the left, the liberals, the commists, so to speak, at home,
who were esconced in the media, in academia and government.

(41:26):
But there was another dimension to it, which is that
they latched onto a real sense that the economy and
the wake of Reagan was really not no longer geared
in the interest of middle class people, and it was
very difficult to make a living on a single income.
Lots of jobs at disappeared, manufacturing jobs that disappeared, but
then you know, a lot of white collar jobs were

(41:48):
beginning to leave the country or does not exist anymore.
So they observed this uncertain world that came up with
a very clear picture of it and a clear enemy,
and this message began to resonate. The response of the
political establishment was not particularly visionary or energetic. It kind
of papered over this moment that revealed a deep discontent

(42:11):
in American life with temporary fixes and compromises, but not
a broad vision of where the country should go a
new deal, a new new deal or something like that.
So they kind of offered a more clear image, even
though it was a very negative one. It was a
world that people could begin to see themselves and too.

(42:33):
And you also have to remember this is the dawning
of the age of cable TV and the dawning of
the age of the radio talk show. Well not the
dawning of it, but the moment where it became really dominant.
Rush Limbo becomes enormously popular, and he's speaking, he says it,
you know, for a lot of people who you know,
economically they might be doing okay, but they feel very
alienated by the culture and they feel very angry. And

(42:55):
he's the voice of that. And on cable you know,
you start to see a lot of people people Cable
news is driven by, you know, incentives of entertainment and commerce.
You start to see a lot of people put on
TV for their entertainment value because they're outrageous and they
are good TV, but maybe not it's not responsible journalism

(43:18):
to put them front and center all the time.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
One of the things I was told was that one
of the.

Speaker 1 (43:22):
Biggest get out the vote makers on the Republican side
was in fact, Rush Limbaugh.

Speaker 4 (43:29):
Oh, Rush Limbaugh was one of the most important figures
in the Republican Party from you this year until his death,
to the point at which probably maybe one of the
most powerful people on the right where you know, you
could not criticize Rush Limbo. You criticize Rush Limbo at
your own peril. If you look back over the last

(43:49):
thirty years of people on the right who dared to
criticize Rush Limbo for his vulgarity or his aggression, you
will find that very controlly. Thereafter they usually apologize to him.
And that's because of the enormous power that he had
and the enormous connection with the grassroots constituency that lots

(44:12):
of writers, editorial writers you know, or members of the
party didn't necessarily have. So he was sort of the
voice of Republicanism, which is something pat By Cannon said
during this primary campaign. He said, if I'm elected, I'll
make Russi Lombo my communications director.

Speaker 1 (44:25):
When you sort of are looking at this story of
how we got to Trump, what do you think the
kind of tent poles were. This is this intentionally very
big question, but like think about like one of the
things I would say is that there's a direct line
from Newt Gingrich to Donald Trump. What other things are

(44:49):
there that are like that? Where you when you're working
in this book, you were like, oh.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
Shit, oh absolutely well. I think Ross Perrot is another
figure in the book which is a kind of billionaire
OUTSI populist. Ross Perrot was not as conservative ideologically. He
was a kind of mix of unclear positions, but basically
kind of had a vague message about cleaning up the government,
didn't really give that much of a shit about the

(45:15):
constitutional system or if he broke it or didn't or
bald or didn't. Have a kind of vague notion of
showing patriotism or nationalism that was tied into a lot
of myth making about America, Norman Rockwell type imagery. And
you know, he ran a campaign that was enormously popular
in this time with this message and you know, having
this rich guy come out of nowhere saying I can

(45:37):
fix the country with you know, pretty much a right
wing or reactionary balance the whole thing. I don't think
anybody could look at that and not see, you know,
foreshadowing of Donald Trump. You know, Another thing that happened
in this ero, and this is one of my favorite
parts of the book, is John Gotti becomes kind of
a folk hero in New York. And John Gotti becomes
a folk hero in New York because a lot of

(45:59):
people aren't nostalgic for what John Gotti represents, right.

Speaker 1 (46:02):
Uses what murdering people or the criminality.

Speaker 4 (46:07):
Of course, he's a murder and a criminal, but for
some reason, he represented the good old days to a
lot of people, and an old way of being a
proper man, of providing for one's family. And the mob,
you know, seemed compared to the chaos that prevailed in
the city and in the country, there was something familiar

(46:29):
and desiral about it, even if they were, you know,
just criminals when it came down to it. So John
Gotti becomes a folk hero. Rudy Giuliani obviously we all
think of him, as you know, in this time period,
as mister Klean going after the mob. But Rudy Giuliani.
In nineteen ninety two, leeds Or is part of a
kind of proto January sixth where the New York Police

(46:51):
Department besieges City Hall in a riot almost you know,
storms it. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
No, Now, I grew up in the city, so I
know how much he sucks.

Speaker 4 (47:01):
Yeah, I know, you remember this thing. So that's another
another tenpole as you as you would say, which is,
you know, Juliani was also playing into these white backlash
politics in his own way, and he was late occupying
the same world as John Gotti on the tabloids every day,

(47:22):
and you know, John Gotti's in the New York Post
and they asked their Post readers, who do you believe
the witnesses against John Gotti or John Gotty? And most,
you know, more than half of New York Post readers
say we believe John Gotti, you know. And the people
hang up yellow ribbons for John Gotti like they did
for the troops and the Gulf. And you know, Trump
comes out of New York in this era where the

(47:43):
eighties and this era, and it's really hard not to
think about him coming out of that context as well.
And then the other thing that happens around this time.
Two signal events for the far right in this country
are Ruby Ridge and Waco, where you have the extreme
right more in Ruby Ridge and Waco. It's slightly more

(48:06):
of a complicated question, but having these events of martyrdom
where their story about an oppressive federal government coming after
white Christian Americans begins to look plausible to a lot
more people. So you have the success, in a way,
or the breakthrough into mainstream culture of this kind of

(48:29):
extreme right view of what the federal government is up to.

Speaker 3 (48:34):
Now.

Speaker 4 (48:34):
I always say, when you kind of put all of
these images on top of each other, you got the mobster,
you got Rudy whipping up the cops. You got Ross Perrot,
you got the far right, you know, Ruby Ridge, Waco stuff,
and you got Buchanan and David Duke, who, by the way,
was very enthusiastic about Donald Trump when he came along
in twenty fifteen sixteen. You kind of get that perfect

(48:56):
image of Trump, right. You got everything there. You've got
the billionaire part of it, the far right, neo nazi
part of it, You've got the tabloid entertainment part of it.
Trump is a little bit of a mobster. So this
is like Trump as a political I mean, obviously we
know he's been around for a while, but as a
political figure, he's sort of a crystallization of all these

(49:17):
elements that were still scattered and he kind of embodies
all of them. So that's what fascinating about it. I
could just see little reflections and glimpses of the Trump
movement and these various things that were going on back then,
and it took almost thirty years for it all to
coalesce in a single figure. But it's interesting to see

(49:38):
it scattered and kind of gathering itself in this time.

Speaker 1 (49:42):
I mean, it's such an interesting way to look at
the party. So, I mean it seems when you look
at this very recent history, you have extremism beedback by normal,
extremism be back by normal, always sort of bubbling under
the surface.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
I mean, does that seem like a fairis Yeah.

Speaker 4 (50:01):
I think that we have to rethink a little bit
what we understand by extreme and normal, and we also
have to pay. I think what the lesson here is
is to be good citizens. We really actually do have
to pay. I mean, the fringe is now the mainstream,
so it's.

Speaker 2 (50:16):
Right in the GOP. But it is like interesting to me.

Speaker 1 (50:21):
I always whenever I interview anyone, I was pushed back
when they say, well, they're like extremes on both sides and.

Speaker 4 (50:27):
D because I'm like, well, the extremes really took over
on the on the right.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
And they really didn't on the left.

Speaker 1 (50:34):
And of anything, the center has been really good at
smashing down the left, you know, in a concerted effort,
whenever they've showed any kind of like real interest in
criminal justice reform. I mean, there's just been such a
crushing effect from the center, and for some reason, the
center is unable to do that with the far right.

Speaker 3 (50:57):
Yes, I wonder why that is.

Speaker 4 (50:59):
That's a complicate why you see that in this period too,
because obviously Clinton wins this election with a quite centrist message.
I think it's because ultimately that stuff on the right
is both not taking quite as seriously. You know, there's
the problem is is that we're not very good. Whenever

(51:19):
there's anything going on in politics, you have to kind
of weigh it as a possibility that might grow. So
when you see things that are very fringe, you know,
the natural reaction is to say, well, that's just Kooch's
out there, right. Those people are working very hard to
get the message out there, and you know, they might
be nothing right now, but you don't know ten twenty

(51:39):
thirty years. So I would say my message in this
book is pay very close attention to the margins. You know,
that is where you see the future. It's sort of
laid out, you know, when you want to find out
what's coming down the pike, you can see it and
what not, you know, without fail. But if you begin
to learn how to read politics, you can kind of see, oh, well,

(52:02):
this is something with a growing constituency, and this is
something that may be very small or disorganized at the moment,
but is speaking to more and more people who feel
dissatisfied with the current way of doing things. So I
think that there is too much focus. I've been criticized

(52:22):
for focusing too much on weirdos and exotic things, and
I just understand what people are saying because they're like, wow,
the people with a lot of power are the normal people,
and they do the harmful things. I get that's true.
But these people in the margins one day may become
the mainstream, and they're also always pushing the mainstream in
their own direction. So I would say, what I enjoy

(52:44):
doing and I think is interesting, and I hope the
book does is to try to help people look at
the whole political field and see even among the things
that don't appear important or pear silly or peer weird.
I mean, Trump is the app So listen to this.
This guy has been hanging around politics for twenty years,
seeming like a side show, launching these ridiculous campaigns that

(53:07):
go nowhere. He's a joke, and suddenly he's not a
joke anymore. So that's my message and my approach to
reading politics is take the margins seriously. They represent the future.
And you know, so when you're reading the paper or
you're understanding the news and you see some little thing

(53:29):
that seems marginal or minor at that time, have a
little imagination of what might might happen. Is basically I
hope people will take out of this book.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Thank you, John Ganz, Thank you so.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
Much, Molly.

Speaker 4 (53:42):
This has been great.

Speaker 2 (53:45):
No moment second, Jesse Cannon.

Speaker 3 (53:50):
Molly, John Fast.

Speaker 4 (53:51):
I see there's a lot of fuckery down in the
Louisiana State House around birth control.

Speaker 3 (53:55):
What are you seeing here?

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Basically, Louisiana decided that they were going to make the
abortion pill metha pristone, which is super safe and used
for miscarriage treatment and used for all sorts of other
uterine problems.

Speaker 2 (54:13):
They were going to make it a controlled substance.

Speaker 1 (54:15):
So now it was actually an anti ulcer drug when
it first started, so has multiple uses besides abortion. Now
you will be able to prescribe methapristone, this is so
stupid for non abortion reasons. That's still legal, but the
drug will become a controlled substance. Doctors will have to

(54:38):
have a special Drug Enforcement Administration license to prescribe these
drugs in the state, will be able to track when
they're prescribed, to whom and what pharmacy these prescriptions are filled.
You see where this is going, right, They are taking
away your right two abortion pills, and that, my friend,
is our moment of fuckr it for this episode of

(55:01):
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to
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