April 12, 2024 • 51 mins
The New Republic's Greg Sargent details the GOP's increasing conflicts with spreading Russian propaganda. The Washington Post's Caroline Kitchener examines the disinformation around women’s reproductive health. Maricopa County Arizona Recorder Stephen Richer details his defamation suit with Kari Lake.
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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 Donald Trump has been booted off
Bloomberg's Billionaire's list. We have such a great show for
you today. The Washington Post Caroline Kitchener tells us about
the disinformation around women's reproductive health. Then we'll talk to
(00:24):
Maracoba County, Arizona reporter and Republican Stephen Richer about his
defamation suit with not Arizona Governor Carrie Lake. But first
we have the New Republics Greg Sergeant. Welcome back to
Fast Politics. New Republics, Greg Sergeant.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Great to be here, as always, Molly, such.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
A weird time in American life. Right now? Should we
start by talking about the Republicans in the House. Yeah,
I mean yesterday what they kept failing at rules vote.
What happened here is that Kevin McCarthy put Maga on
the rules and turns out that Maga is not so
(01:07):
good on the rules committee.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Huh, Yeah, they're really not. Here's what I keep wondering though,
And tell me if you agree with me. I don't
find a lot of takers for this right and I
get trolled whenever.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I say it even better.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, right, It seems to me that Mike Johnson wants
to hold a vote on the Ukraine eight.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, I think so you do.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, great, I'm not entirely alone on this then, Okay,
a number of things right. One, there are significant powerful
Republicans in the House who want it, like these committee
chairs Mike Turner, people like that, right, And these are
major players. They're not maga noisemakers. So we don't talk
about them ever. We only talk about Marjorie Taylor Green
and Matt Gates. And I don't know why that's the
(01:47):
only thing we'd ever talk about. But so, like these
committee chairs want this vote, Mike Johnson is talking to
world leaders seemingly pretty regularly, and they're telling him all
all of them are telling the same story, which is
that if we don't do this, we're in much more
trouble later. Right, Mike Johnson has a bit of a
Reagan night past as opposed to a mega kind of
(02:09):
the inclination. Seems to me he is a Christian nationalist
and he's willing to endorse great replacement theory. But like
on national security and foreign policy, he's much more in
the Reagan nite mold. And then right, he's got the
good intelligence too, so he's got the top intel people
telling him what the real deal is there, and you
(02:30):
got to think the stuff weighs on him. And it
looks to me like it is.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's reauthorizing a rule that allows the American government to
wiretap calls of non citizens without a warrant, basically, right,
I mean, that's what it is. And this was a
Republican idea, right as part of the Patriot Act, or
at least it came about during that period when America
(02:54):
wanted to have more of a you know, in arsenal
when it comes to prosecute and collecting information on our
foreign adversary. So it's a republican idea like the idea
that Mike Johnson is for. This would make more sense.
I mean, it's just recently that MAGA has decided that
(03:14):
they don't, you know whatever, they're not so interested in
foreign intervention maybe though who even knows what they really
believe in. But what I think is interesting is like
when Johnson, he was remembering, he was like a low
ranking Republican, but once he was sort of given the information,
and once he went into leadership, he sort of understood
why it was so important.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Right. I want to pick up on something you said there,
which is whether they're really opposed to foreign intervention, because
I feel like it's an important subject. You've probably noticed that,
like a lot of news accounts call mega isolations, they
called Trump isolationist, right, and I just I don't think
that's what they are.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
No. I just don't take them at their word for anything.
I just want to fact check for one second. It's
called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it's not part
of the Patriot Act. I was wrong. It was enacted
in the year of my birth, nineteen seventy eight, and
the legislation was a congressional response to exposure during multiple
committee hearings of previous abuses of US persons privacy rights. Okay,
(04:14):
so it actually is not part of the Patriot Act.
I was wrong, continues right.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
No, No, absolutely right. We shouldn't take them at their word.
I think what's going on. I actually did a podcast
with Julia Yaffi about this, and she was just so
eloquent about it. They support the idea of Putin style government, right,
They oppose Ukrainian democracy. They want Putin to win. I
(04:38):
wouldn't attribute that sentiment to all of them, right, I
think it's complicated, and it's a little shifty and it's
a little murky, but right, someone like Marjorie Taylor Green
I think has a genuine ideological affinity with Putin style governance,
White Christian nationalist strong man rule, all about crushing the woke,
(05:00):
the secular liberals, right, all about kind of crushing Western
liberal democracy wherever possible they want. They see a Putin
victory as a victory for their kind of access of autocracy.
That it really dovetails very directly with their sense of
what they'd like to do here domestically. Right, So Trump
admires Putin. We all know that. What's funny to me, though,
(05:21):
is like Trump isn't exactly where Marjorie Taylor Green is
on Putin or JD. Vans, who's also in the Marjorie
Taylor Green camp. I think for Trump, what he admires
is the strongman dictator part of Putin. He probably doesn't
care so much about the crushing of the LGBTQ and
woke and all that, Whereas Marjorie Taylor Green and Jade
Events probably wants something like theocratic rule here and see
(05:46):
strongman rule as the way to get it. Trump doesn't
really care about that. But they kind of are in
alliance on this, right, they're all kind of weirdly vaguely
pro putin. And that's not isolationism, it's side with an
access of autocrats out there.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Well, Juliaffi had this incredible scoop right where Michael McCall,
you know, high ranking chair in Congress Republican. He comes
out and says, Republicans are absolutely repeating Russian propaganda. I mean,
this is wild.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
It absolutely is. It's absolutely crazy. And what he means,
I think, is he means to rebut this idea that
there are kind of these isolationists who just simply don't
want to spend our blood and treasure abroad, right, which
makes it sound so tame and so admirable. Right, they're
just isolationists. They're anti war, they're not right, they're not Yeah,
(06:45):
you know what I mean, that's what he means. He's
essentially saying what Julia Yaffi said on the podcast and
what we're saying now, which is that in some very
basic sense, a sizable swath of the Republican Conference is
at best and indifferent to the fate of Ukraine and
just fine with Putin crushing the Ukraine out of existence,
(07:06):
and at worst tacitly or maybe even overtly wants Putin
to win.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah. But I think what's interesting to me is here
we are. Republicans have the House, they have a one
bowl majority. They have a speaker who was number five
in leadership. She came into this job and he's getting crushed.
I mean, it's a really hard job. I Mean one
of the things I think is, like when you think
about people didn't like Nancy Pelosi, they had complaints about
(07:33):
Nancy Pelosi, whatever, whatever, But like you really see, after
we had Nancy Pelosi and then Republicans won the House,
we had Kevin McCarthy and now we have Mike Johnson,
and both of them show it's actually a pretty hard job.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It really is. And Nancy Pelosi is really good at
the job too. I mean I always come back to this,
but she essentially presided over two impeachments of Trump, right,
which has never happened. Yeah, And I think if I'm right,
she lost a grand total of three votes among Democrats
on two impeachments. That's some pretty impressive party unity right there.
(08:09):
And right, like on social people always black Pelosi as
neoliberal or democratic establishment. She focuses too much on kitchen
table issues. But like, winning House seats in some of
these swing districts is hard, right, Yeah, And under her,
they took the House in two thousand and six and
(08:30):
again in twenty eighteen. Now they lost it, but by
a far smaller margin than we expected. I think Mike
Johnson maywell just kind of lose the House in his
first crack at this if he's even there at the
end of this year.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Right, I mean, he could lose the House before the
actual election, which is not you know, it's unlikely, but
not impossible.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
It's basically gone, right. I think one interesting way to
think about this is that they don't really have a
garning majority, right yeah, So what is the Martian now too?
Speaker 1 (09:02):
One?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's down to one, right, it's down to one now,
And so right there just simply is not a group
of Republicans who are united in any sense and who
also constitute a majority of the House.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Now and one of the things like I'm struck by
when we talk about Nancy Pelosi is you know, she
knew that the House is about getting re elected. So
if you were a Democrat in a swing state, in
a swingy district, she would really make sure that you
didn't have to vote against your interests, right, you didn't
have to do something that would mess you up. In
(09:37):
two years now we have these Republicans, these House Republicans
in New York, Mike Lawler, Nick Lloda, and in California
who are in Biden districts desperately trying to hold onto
their seats. As someone like Mike Lawler has had to
vote and Nick Kloda too, voted for two impeachments, one
(09:57):
the first impeachment of a member of the in one
hundred and sixty years, right.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And they didn't want to vote for that. They really
didn't know.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
This week we saw Mike Lawler on CNN talking to
Kayln Collins and she said, well did you vote? She said,
who'd you vote for in the primary? And he said,
I voted for Trump? Right, So you have a party
nominee who, by voting for him, you can no longer
make the case that you are a moderate.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean it's not allowed right in this party.
It really goes back to the basic theory of politics
that Mega and Trump follow, right, which is that you
can win only with mega, Right. When it really comes
down to that, that's what they actually believe. Right. And
so even though we have had a test of this
(10:46):
in two national elections, right in twenty twenty and twenty
twenty two, they actually did surprisingly well in the House
in twenty twenty, right, we all know that story. But
then in twenty twenty two, they dramatically underperform and a
bunch of the Mega candidates for statewide office squandered a
whole swath of winnable races. These were really winnable races, right,
(11:10):
Like we kind of forget that. But like Arizona Senate,
Arizona Governor Blake Masters. Yeah, I mean, like everyone made
fun of Blake Masters, but like he looked to me
like a pretty good candidate in a lot of ways, right,
But he really ran on this insane maga message about immigration.
I don't know if you saw any of his ads.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Oh my god, yes, talk about it, talk about it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, there's one one of his ads literally has machine
gun fire at the border. It looked like a video game, right,
call of duty or something. Yeah, Right, like there's this
sort of weird maga space where all this stuff is
real to them. Right, the border is a combat video game, right,
or you know, there was a I think his opening
(11:56):
introductory ad, like a two minute spot had him kind
of running through the desert in some way, like he
was kind of patrolling it. So they made immigration absolutely
central to his campaign in a border state in Arizona,
which is the state where some of the most ridiculously
hardline anti immigrant policy has been hatched.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Trump went to Arizona in twenty sixteen to deliver his
big introductory speech round immigration. It's got a whole history, right,
and they couldn't win. He lost by what five points? Yeah,
And so that it doesn't tell you that you can't
win with just maga. I don't know what does.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah. What I'm struck by is this maga like they
can't scale. You know, they win these primers, but then
they can't win the generals.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean, look, the funny thing about some of
these mega can that it says they actually they lack
what Trump has, right, And this is a dynamic. I
feel like I don't understand well enough. Maybe you can
help me on this, right, So there's nobody, presumably who's
more magan than Trump. He's Trump, right, He's very maga, right,
but he does really, really pretty well in Pennsylvania, whereas
(13:11):
Doug Mastriano does terribly and gets blown out right, And
so what's the difference there. I think it's that on
some level, Trump has this kind of charisma and he
has this capacity to communicate to voters that it's all
kind of a joke, right when he dabbles in Christian nationalism,
it's all sort of a little bit of a joke.
(13:32):
I mean, Trump, he's not a Christian, right look at him.
And whereas Doug Mastriano looks like a crazy extremist. So
in a weird way, these guys are more maga than
Trump without the positives, right, without the charisma, without the
kind of wink wink, nudge nudge sense that it's all
(13:53):
a big show. And that's just a weird dynamic to me.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
So what I think it is is two things. One
of the reasons why Trump won in twenty sixteen, which
we don't talk about, but is I think really important,
or is at least very relevant, right, is that Trump
won because he made a case that you didn't really
know what he believed in. He had no voting record,
(14:19):
he had been a Democrat. One of the reasons why
we see all of these sort of last gasp attempts
at trying desperately at Republicans trying desperately to pass all
this weird religious stuff is because they sort of know
right that their demographic is dead right, like that America
(14:40):
is not a white Christian nation anymore, and you know,
people aren't going to church the same way. There is
much more, you know, diversity, it's not you know, they're worried.
I mean, this is the last gasp against a multi
racial democracy. So what I think worked for Trump was
he was very famous. A lot of people knew who
he was, but nobody really knew what he was going
to do. It was sort of a normalcy bias. He
(15:02):
can't possibly be that crazy. He's saying all this crazy stuff,
but you know, he's a rich guy, so he's not
going to do anything crazy. And he obviously he knows
about the economy, and he's had all these wives, so
he's you know, and who even knows, you know, he
had this mistress, you know, so obviously he's not going
to do all this crazy stuff. So there were people
(15:23):
who held their nose and voted for him because they
were like, we want the tax cuts, and besides, it's
more business as usual. And I think after twenty sixteen,
you could never make that case again.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It's really interesting. We had Sarah Longwell on the podcast too,
and folks check out our podcast, man, it's called The
Daily Blast that's in the New Republic, and she said,
he still codes as moderate on abortion and on a
bunch of the stuff. And here's the supreme irony of
it that really kind of confirms what you're talking about.
He codes as moderate because he's a sleazy, nasty, philandering,
(15:58):
you know, amoral piece of you know what, right, right,
That's why he codes moderate. People think, oh, he probably
paid for ten abortions himself, so he can't possibly be
anti abortion.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Meanwhile, he's saying to evangelical voters, boasting of creating the
Supreme Court that overturned a fifty year right.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And I mean, I think he thinks that those evangelical
voters won't abandon him, and so now he's trying to
pivot to the center. You know, that abortion answer was
him trying to pivot to the center.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So good and really like for Arizona Republicans to kill
an effort to repeal the eighteen sixty four law. I mean,
by the way, right, there was so much predulous puntry
and journalism saying that Trump has managed to you know,
pick the law pieces again right when you're staying Rix,
when he put out that video saying I forget exactly
(16:51):
the phrase, but right the video essentially said he believed
it should be left to the states and all that
like a lot of I think everybody pounced on the
New York Times for taking that at face value. And
now immediately after that, right immediately after journalists and pundits
said Trump has shown that there's a moderate position, what
(17:12):
actually got confirmed is that Trump is going to have
to answer for every extremist lurch that happens in the States.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Now, now, Greg, thank you so much, really appreciate you
always fun.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Mollie Spring is here and I bet you are trying
to look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable
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(17:46):
and top bags to grab some head to Fastpolitics dot com.
Caroline Kitchener is a national reporter covering abortion at the
Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Power Politics, Caroline.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Thank you so much, Molly, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
You write about abortion for the Washington Post. I think
of you as like the go to, quietly doing the
reporting that the rest of us need to understand what
the landscape looks like and to base our little opinion
pieces on. Today, you have a new story which I
feel like it's like the marriage of the two biggest
(18:25):
crisises of right now right, which are disinformation and abortion.
So talk to us about that story.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, those are the story that I've wanted to do
for over a year. I just kept talking to women
in states with abortion bands. They were ordering pills online
or kind of getting them in other ways, figuring out
however they could ways to navigate around the bands, but
they were having really difficult experiences just you know, not
(18:54):
obviously we know that abortion pills are safe, but it
can be scary when you're alone, you're in a state
where it's illegal, you feel like you're breaking the law.
Even though I think it's important to say, you know,
under these bands, the women taking the pills themselves can't
be prosecuted. They don't know what to expect, and they
don't know who to call. That, I would say was
(19:17):
the thing that I heard from every single person that
I talked to, just I didn't know who to call.
I didn't know who to talk to, because you know,
they were afraid that if they tried to reach out
to a doctor or you know, even went to the
er just to make sure that everything was okay, that
they would be arrested.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Right. What I think is interesting about the story is
there is a real concerted effort on the right from
these anti choice groups to undermine the information that these
women are getting. So absolutely explained to us what that
looks like.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, I mean I spoke with a lot of people
that described frantically googling trying to figure out what was
safe and what was okay, because you know, they would
often run into, you know, anti abortion information that would
say that the pills were highly dangerous or even deadly,
(20:15):
and that you know, obviously understandably is extremely scary. You know,
we know that those are false claims, but they're very widespread,
and some of these women too, in these states with
bands now the only place you know, many of them said,
I just wanted to go and talk to somebody in person,
Like I just wanted to like, you know, before I
(20:37):
took these pills, I just wanted to talk to somebody.
And often the only place to go in these states
now is crisis pregnancy centers, which are you know, anti
abortion centers that really are designed to dissuade women from
having abortions. You know, in the first place, let's.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Do two seconds on what a crisis pregnancy center is.
Because they're often funded by relig groups, right, they tend.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
They very often are have some sort of religious affiliation.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
They advertise themselves though, as a place to get a
pregnancy test and talk about your options. So talk about
sort of how they advertise themselves versus what they are.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's sort of hard
to paint them all with a broad brush because oftentimes
there are sort of these much more institutionalized ones, but
then there's also sort of lots of kind of mom
and pops, smaller ministry kind of things.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Right, yet another thing the federal government does not regulate.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Right, many of these ones that are more i would say,
more sophisticated and more sort of professionalized, they have recognized
that the sort of message of free ultrasounds, free pregnancy
tests is very appealing to people, so they'll often put
that on a big sign. They definitely do a lot of.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Google Search algorithm. Exactly what Carolyn's talking about is this
idea that they do a Google SEO, so they come
up in these searches in the Google search.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Yeah, I can explain that a little bit. So oftentimes
these places like work with you know, somebody that can
manipulate search and make sure that for example, if somebody
in Texas types in, you know, need abortion Texas now
something like that, then you know, the first thing that
would come up would be the Crisis Pregnancy Center with
(22:23):
you know, information about you know, get your abortion consultation.
That's typically a word that they use, or you know,
your free ultrasound or something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
A lot of what I know about this is from
Robin Marty ran an abortion clinic in the state of Alabama,
and she talked about how, you know, now she does
STIs treatment and you know that kind of thing, but
that these centers really just are trying to get you
to not have an abortion. Yeah, so what happens to
(22:52):
these women they want to take the pill, the abortion pill.
They get it, and then they can't get good information
about it, or or they can't get it.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
The people that I talked to for the story, they
were able to get it. But the word that I
heard all the time was like, is this legit? Like
how do I know if this is legit?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Because if you're in a state with a band, you know,
you're you know that there's this law, and so you know,
even if you go online and you can find these
places that say that they're going to send it to you,
it feels a little sketchy, right, Like, even if we know,
we know that certain of these organizations they're very you know,
they are very legitimate, and they are doing this in
like really big numbers. But if you are that young
(23:31):
woman somewhere on your own googling around, you know, you
can see how it would feel scary.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
One of the things that I'm struck by as we
talk about this is this idea that these pills are
much safer than the right wants us to believe. And
they've been working really hard to work the rafts. Mattha
pristone has been available in this country since two thousand.
It was available in France since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right, this is not new, it's you know, over two
decades now that this has been approved by the FDA,
And you know, there is just no question from any
leading medical association or any you know, major study that
these pills are extremely safe. And I think it's important
to say too that they are safe even when taken
(24:19):
somewhat independently. And there have been a lot of really
good recent studies that show that even if you're not
having a face to face with a doctor to get them,
they're still extremely safe. The safety numbers don't really change there.
So what these women are doing, you know, when they
order the pills online, it is safe, but they don't
necessarily know that or feel that.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
One of the points in the article is that if
you are in a state where abortion is illegal, which
means which more than a third of all American women are,
if you take the pills, there's some anxiety about going
into a hospital. So talk to us about that.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
One thing that studies have shown is that, you know,
the serious adverse events numbers are just tiny, tiny, tiny
for abortion pills. It's like less than one percent a
larger abortion, not a huge number, but typically between the
studies range from one point three percent to eight percent
of people that take abortion pills.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Go to the er.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And you know, that is a number. Those are numbers
that have been really co opted by the anti abortion
groups to say, look, look, how many people are going
to the er. But the really important context for those
visits is that women are often going for a gut.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Check because it's scary.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Like you're bleeding a lot, right, You're cramping a lot,
and it's really painful, and you don't know what's normal,
and so you want to go somewhere and just make
sure that everything is okay. I think that's like a
very sort of natural human instinct. But when you're in
a state with a ban, even though these laws are
not written to allow prosecutors to go after the women
(25:55):
that are taking the pills, that's the sort of a
very weird thing to understand, and it's a very that's
like really an intricacy of the law. And you know,
I'm only of all the women that I talked to
for this story, only one of them understood that under
the band sheep personally could not be prosecuted. Everybody just
assumes that they can be, and so they are terrified
(26:15):
to go to the er.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And Trump has said that he believes there should be
some form of prosecution for women who have abortion. I mean,
then he walked it back, but you know, I was
on with Chris Matthews and we were talking about that,
so I mean he did say it, so you understand
why this does not exist in a vacuum, right.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
And I think it's also important to note that like
women who have taken pills and self managed their own abortions,
they have been charged under other laws in the past
other than abortion bands, like laws around disposed little feel
remains and things like that, especially when they're later in pregnancy.
So it's not like there's no legal risk at all.
Their right to worry obviously a very difficult situation to
(27:02):
be in well.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
And I also think when you talk about abortion, this
issue really just collide with the with the misinformation and
disinformation ecosystem that we're living in right now. And it
is also like a personal thing, you know, it's not
like something you want a crowdsource on Facebook exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
It's such a good point.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
And it's like just not that easy to bring it up.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
One of the women that I talked about, like she said, man,
I just wish I had a group chat, Like I
just wish I could talk to people about this in
a group chat with friend, but I can't if nobody
can know.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
One of the things in the article that you talk
about is that if you go to a hospital and
you've self managed an abortion, doctors cannot tell if you
are having a miscarriage or self managed abortion. Will you
talk about that?
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, that is something that all of the hotlines and
different abortion rights groups are telling women because that's not
I think something that isn't too to know. But you know,
if you present with the bleeding and cramping of a
medication abortion, unless you took the pills vaginally, which is
sort of a more rare way to take them, there
is no way for a doctor to know whether you
(28:13):
miscarried or whether you had a medication abortion. So folks
are telling women to say, you know, just say I
had a miscarriage, I just started bleeding, I don't really
know what's going on, and then not say anything else.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
So this is not in the article, but since you
are really in it, I'm wondering if you could talk
about this Rise Louisiana Report. I'm sure you read it. Too.
I Mean, what's so interesting is women's health. You know,
we don't get so much research like men's health. Right.
Imagine if men had to take a pill it caused
bleeding and is sometimes painful, like, they would never.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You know, there would be a better way.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Right exactly, they'd be like, no, no, just come into
this ATM and we'll you know. So I'm wondering. Like
one of the things a Rise Louisiana report talked about
and a thing I've heard on totally from obgyns is
the incredible anxiety about treating in the first trimester from doctors.
(29:10):
Are you hearing that on the ground that there's just
like the doctors have really changed the way they treat
pregnant women in these stays. If you're seeing that or
you're hearing that, or maybe you're not, but I'm just curious.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Absolutely, they're terrified. It just remains really unclear. I mean,
just look at the changing laws, like you know, we are,
you know, two years out from this Dobbs ruling almost
and things are not settled like we you know, we
have Arizona, we have Florida. We have these big new
laws taking effect and changing and the landscape is not settled,
(29:45):
and doctors feel that for sure. I mean, it was
a couple of months ago I did a story about
a woman in Texas who was turned away with an
ectopic pregnancy, which really, I mean, even as much as
I write about this and talk to people, that really
shocked me. Because a topic pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Is not going to ever be a baby. You cannot
physically carry a baby in the fallopian tubes of your womb,
Like it cannot happen. So there's only one thing that happens,
which is you not.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Like that particular word. I feel like it's such a
has become such a buzzword after the decision, like people,
you know, that really was sort of the big thing
that people talked about, like people with ectopic pregnancies, and
and you saw the conservatives and the anti abortion folks
say like, oh no, at topics, that's totally fine, that's
totally fine. And I really thought that, you know, a
(30:34):
year and a half since the decision, we were in
a place where like topics would be treated kind of
no question, Like people just sort of understood that. And
a lot of doctors have said that to me, like
oh yeah, like the topics you know, of course, like,
we know, we know we can treat them, but then
you do hear these stories still of women getting turned away.
So it's just not settled yet. And I'm sure that
(30:55):
it also depends on what the feelings of the doctor
are on this issue. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
It is so insane to me, like, there is no
baby in an atopic pregnancy, right, And I mean, what
happened to that woman in that case?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
What the doctor said is that there is a chance
that this is not an atopic pregnancy, because it's not
always so easy so cut and dry to tell when
it is and when it isn't. But I mean hers
was I think fairly obvious. So she was turned away
from the hospital. Later that day, her best friend was
at an obiqui en appointment. She called her best friend
(31:29):
and her best friend was like, Hey, do you want
me to like show the doctor here the picture of
your pregnancy, and she did. The best friend did, and
the doctor was like, oh my god, can your friendly
come in right now? So she did, and that doctor
was like, I'm going to take you in for emergency
surgery right.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Now, yeah, because you can die from this.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Right, And I just think that shows, like, I mean,
how scary is it though that it's just kind of
luck of the draw of who you get, who you see.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
You know, I heard this story anecdotally, so I don't
want to pass it on because who knows. But you know,
friend of mine was telling me about a girl in
a red state where she was having a miscarriage, like
her numbers were going down, the pregnancy was not holding,
and the doctor didn't want to tell her because she
didn't want to perform a DNC, which is so insane, right,
(32:17):
Like the these aren't even babies. These are people where
they're not going to have a baby, and they can't
get the care they need. These unforeseen consequences of the
inability to legislate on the part of Republicans is shocking
to me. But it shouldn't be right, It shouldn't be
calin what are you watching right now?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I'm watching that Florida and Arizona. I mean Florida. I
think in particular, I don't know that people have fully
registered how many women live in Florida and how many
abortions appeased in Florida. Yeah, last year there were eighty
four thousand abortions in Florida. And if you look at
sort of the bands that are currently in effect. The
(32:58):
sort of largest state bans Texas, And before that took
a fact, fifty thousand happened in Texas.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Wait, what's the number in Florida.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
In Florida, it's eighty four thousand.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Wow. Yeah, and it's and historically it's always been a
safe haven for abortion in the South right.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
It has because of the constitutional protections that they had
for so long. And I also think like that just
the geography geography of Florida makes it extremely difficult. Like
somebody that's coming from Key West to go to the
nearest clinic at there after six weeks, once this law
takes it back, they're going to have to drive fourteen hours.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Thank you, Carolyn, thanks for having me on. Stephen Richer
is the Maracoba County, Arizona Recorder. Welcome Steven, too fast politics,
Tell us what you do.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
I am the elected Maykope County Recorder. I ran in
twenty twenty in the Republican primary one that won the
general election in November.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
I am statutorially responsible for early voting, voter registration and
document recording in Mericle County, which is the fourth largest
county in the United States, and second largest voting jurisdiction
in the United States and makes up about sixty two
percent of Arizona's voting population.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It's an elected job, but you are a Republican.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Yes, elected job, and I'm a Republican. That's correct.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
And one of the things that you've been doing, which
I think is probably one of the more important things,
is trying to correct the record when it comes to
the twenty twenty election and its integrity. Talk to us
about sort of if you could set the stage of
how you became this celebrity. Sorry, I apologize for the
(34:50):
use of the word celebrity.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
No no, no, I guess it's just my quasi looking
at local in there. No, no, no, you'll come on
board on for it. On well, one, the election administration
is sort of new to the business of communicating regarding
the process. There weren't too many people prior to say,
twenty eighteen that were terribly interested in the nuts and
(35:12):
bolts of election administration. And so this is still an
ecosystem that is being built out, and so is new landscape.
And then obviously since twenty twenty, there have been a
countless number of false allegations about both the twenty twenty election,
the twenty twenty two election, and there haven't been too
(35:32):
many people who have been consistently and with technical specificity
pushing back against the falsehoods. And there have been even
fewer who are elected Republicans. And so I think that
has made me a bit of an anomaly and maybe
the celebrity I've earned has just been the product of
(35:53):
my being a bit of a anomalist freak.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yes, anomalist freak. Well, welcome, because that's something we love.
One of the problems with elections is that every state
is different, certain counties are different. There's very little uniformity
in it, which actually protects our election. Zah, Will you
explain a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
Yeah, it is a feature in a flaw, as you
have correctly identified. We have over eight thousand voting jurisdictions
in the United States. We have fifteen in Arizona. The
fifteen different counties. Elections are administered at the county level
in Arizona. That is a feature in that no two
systems are exactly alike. It's not the same people, it's
(36:34):
not the same software. Necessarily, it's not the same machinery.
And so the notion that you could flip a switch
or install a program into some mothership computer that would
then disseminate out to all election jurisdictions throughout the United States.
Is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections work in
(36:54):
the United States. That's why some of the more outlandish
theories of the twenty twenty election, as far as dominion
being able to control everything, or one software patch or
something like that, where for anyone who knew about elections
pretty silly. It's a bug in that a lot of
(37:15):
our politics has become nationalized, and people on election night,
especially in November of even years, look to the MSNBC,
CNN's Fox News is of the world and they will
see something being said and being done in one state
that won't necessarily be done or said in another state,
(37:36):
and that can create confusion, that can create concern. Why
does Pennsylvania have so few of its ballots reported immediately
but Washington was just able to immediately provide fifty percent
of its expected returns. Well, Washington could pre process Pennsylvania couldn't.
In Florida, more people have show up in person and
(37:57):
they drop off their early ballots earlier. So that is
something that we have had to remind viewers members of
the media that this is federalizomat it's core in how
our election administration is designed.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Someone like you isn't necessarily a public facing individual in
most states, so you can't just call up. I mean,
on this podcast, we have interviewed so many state level politicians,
like during the Virginia we interviewed, you know, during that
Virginia election, we interviewed like a lot of delegates, right,
(38:33):
a lot of state senators. So I know that not
and I mean this with all the love in the world,
not all state officials are ready to handle the media spotlight.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
I think that's a very fair statement, and it is
not unduly disrespectful.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Okay, good, and nor should they, right, I mean, that's
not you. You know, your job is very technical too.
I mean, I want you to talk about your lawsuit
because it seems to be the only way to stop
this disinformation. Carry Lake decided that she was governor and
that this would somehow even though you're a Republican, even
(39:13):
though you do this very technical job, but somehow you
were involved in us.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
So Carry Lake was somebody who is new to Republican
Party politics. In about twenty twenty went on the scene,
really built her character around the idea that the twenty
twenty election was stolen. Made her fame in politics in
that vein Ran became the gubernatorial nominee for the Republican
Party in the twenty twenty two election, narrowly lost to
(39:40):
the Democratic candidate, alleged a whole bunch of crazy things
that were a continuation of all the things that she
was saying about twenty twenty. Filed numerous election complaints in
which she would air these very specific allegations regarding actions
that I purportedly took two in particular, that I had
injected three hundred thousand early ballots that were fraudulent into
(40:01):
the voting system, and that I had manipulated machinery so
as to swing the election in favor of her opponent.
She files those lawsuits, court says there's no evidence for this,
no foundation for this. It pretty much kicks the snot
out of her on all of her claims, including others.
She appeals to the Court of Appeals, loses the Court
of Appeals, she loses at the Arizona Supreme Court. There's
(40:24):
another trial, she loses on that, and so she has
a very intense awareness that all these things have been
measured and they have been found wanting on evidence and
facts and law. Nonetheless, she persists in making these very
serious accusations that I stole the twenty twenty two election
(40:48):
from her. She would go to events, she would write
on Twitter, she would write in her fundraising emails. She
would name me. She would show pictures of me at
events where she would try to stir up the crowd.
This man, this Stephen Richer. He injected three hundred thousand
fraudulent bouts, and she would say it time after time.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Did you find it scary or now?
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Some people would report back to me, including a writer
for the Washington Post, and he said, make sure you're
taking precautions because people are being whipped up into a frenzy. Here.
I'm imagining sort of the scene and Beauty and the Beast,
where Gastan says, you know, grab your pitch fork, grab
your hoe, and we're going to go kill the beast. Yeah,
he continues, and we're thinking, Ah, she'll get over it.
(41:32):
Most people do. Maybe not in this new age. She'll
get a new job. But this became the cornerstone of
her continued political relevance. Her political fundraising. She even wrote
a book in which I appear in a really creepy,
weird dream sequence that she supposedly has, And we were
at our wits end and so filed this defamation lawsuit.
(41:54):
My legal team and I we thought we had a
very strong case because obviously it's very false. She'd been
told it was false, she knew from court rulings it
was false. It did real damage to my family and me,
and we've been successful so far. She filed motions to
dismiss she lost on those multiple times, and then when
(42:17):
it came time to really get going on discovery and
fact investigation, she defaulted, meaning that a judgment is going
to be entered into the court of law saying that yes,
Carrie Lake defamed Stephen Richer. She could not prove the
truth of her allegations. She is not defending their falsity,
(42:37):
she is not defending malice. And now the only thing
that we have left to work on is how many
zeros are in the damages award and how much did
she destroy my character among certain people?
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Can you tell us about the dream sequence?
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (42:56):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Wait, she wrote a book, Yeah, she.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Wrote a book published in the summer of twenty three.
In her dream sequence, I and one of my colleagues
from the county. We kidnap her. We tie her up
in duct tape. We throw her into the back of
a pickup truck. We drive her out into the desert.
(43:19):
But then, because she drops a footnote that she was
a high school gymnast, she was able to contort herself
out of her duct tape bindings. And then because she
ran track in high school, she was able to sprint
off while we as bumbling fools. Though we fired shots
after her, we weren't able to get her. And I'll
(43:42):
say that in a foot race, I'm guessing I destroy
this lady.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Well, I mean, the whole thing is so just deeply,
deeply disturbing and also quite strange.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
If you read this in a different context, you would
say this person is a lunatic.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Right, let's keep going with this for a minute. She
continued to defame you when you won this case, because
this is like the Rudy Giuliani problem, right, Like you
had the two election workers who sued Judy Giuliani, and
you had Egene Carroll Sewing Trump Boyd. When you sue
these people for defamation. They tend not to stop defaming.
Did she actually stop defaming?
Speaker 4 (44:20):
This is all pretty new, so we'll see. But certainly
in the immediate aftermath of her defaulting, it was bizarre
because at the same time she's resting her defense in
a court of law, she's going on to Twitter and
saying I stand by everything I said, and so you
better believe that we're watching those statements, and if she continues,
(44:44):
then we will take appropriate legal action because now we
have a judgment that these are defamatory remarks that she
cannot defend. She cannot prove our troop.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
The central tenant of our democracy is that we have
free and fair elections. Why do we think that these
trumpy I don't even want to say Republicans, because there
are good Republicans who they really that's sort of Trump in,
you know, these lies about the election, these Trump he
lies about the election.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
The incentive structure right now, the most powerful endorsement in
politics right now is a Republican primary endorsement from President Trump.
And this is a necessary and sometimes sufficient qualification for
getting his endorsement is telling him very fervently that he
(45:34):
won the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
If he wins. Obviously we all have figger problems. But
in a world where the Republican Party loses an all
and finally becomes sane again, some part of this base
has descended in trump Ism, But it seems as if
there are people who can come back and be quote
(45:56):
unquote more normal.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
I think so, and it's why I'm still part of
the Republican Party because I believe in the twenty sixteen
party platform. I believe in the twenty twelve party platform,
and the philosophy of a limited government and small, lower taxes,
lower regulation. We can quibble about those things of whether
the party, you know, consistently implements those but that's not
(46:20):
really the purpose of today's conversation, I don't think. But
a party will always have a percentage of its voting
members that you know, maybe aren't you are a little
bit your weird uncle. Just the difference is that the
weird uncle has taken over the steering wheel for in
some instances eight years. But the Democratic Party, I would say,
(46:42):
flirted with this a little bit. And I'm not going
to draw one to one comparisons, but elevating Bernie Sanders
into the leadership role would have been giving over control
to not where the median member of the party used
to be. And so just it's an interesting phenomenon that
I think has its roots in intense partisanship, intense polarization,
(47:04):
intense distrust in society, intense media ecosystems that are silos,
and trace it back to I don't know whether it's
the two thousand and eight financial crisis or the Tea
Party movement, but just trust in anything institutionally has suffered
(47:25):
immensely over the last twenty years, and elections is simply
one manifestation of it. But I think that you're going
to find that, if, for instance, one of these courts
rules against President Trump in the criminal context, that you're
going to have a lot of people who do not
believe in the criminal justice system anymore so insane.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Do you think there's a way like using more clarity
will help Republicans see that these elections were fair, you know,
because clearly you think about this a lot. Give me
your hot take for the solve here.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
I think we have to accept that there's a percentage
of the party that will never be convinced even moving forward.
I think we have to accept that there's even a
larger percentage that is never going to change their opinion
about twenty twenty election. Why we try to provide more
and more information and combat false information online is because
(48:24):
we believe that there are people, especially forward looking people,
who can be convinced with more information, that this is
a system that they can have confidence in even if
they don't like the outcome. And so we're not look
at we're not shooting for one hundred percent here, And truthfully,
that's never happened in American politics. There's always been a
(48:47):
distrust from the losing party. It's just we've seen it
on steroids these last few years. But I hope that
we can bring back people. A central core belief of
mine is that man is still a rational reacher and
if you hit him with facts and logics, then that's
going to have an impact to at least a good
number of people.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Well, let's hope. Thank you so much. This is really interesting,
So thanks.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Great.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Moment. Oh fuck on, Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast.
Speaker 4 (49:21):
The juice is loose in the afterlife.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Sometimes mainstream media. Look, it's very hard. Writing straight down
the middle is very hard. But OJ Simpson's obituary has
proven to be a sticky wicket that many a mainstream
news outlet has failed. O J. Simpson, athlete whose trial
(49:45):
riveted the nation, dies at seventy six. He ran to
football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies,
but his world was ruined after he was charged with
killing his former wife and her friend. Hmmm, the passive voice,
this is a choice. And then we had breaking news
football great orenthal James Simpson, known as Ojay has died. Perhaps,
(50:08):
but I think the height of fuckery will be the
La Times accidentally using the name Trump in place of
Simpson near the end of their oh bit. And I'm
just going to read you the sentence because it's amazing.
Long before the city woke up on a fall morning
in twenty seventeen, Trump walked out of the Lovelock County
(50:31):
Correction Center outside of Reno a freeman for the first
time in nine years. And that, my friends, is our
moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
(50:52):
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going, and again thanks
for listening.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Two
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 Donald Trump has been booted off
Bloomberg's Billionaire's list. We have such a great show for
you today. The Washington Post Caroline Kitchener tells us about
the disinformation around women's reproductive health. Then we'll talk to
(00:24):
Maracoba County, Arizona reporter and Republican Stephen Richer about his
defamation suit with not Arizona Governor Carrie Lake. But first
we have the New Republics Greg Sergeant. Welcome back to
Fast Politics. New Republics, Greg Sergeant.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Great to be here, as always, Molly, such.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
A weird time in American life. Right now? Should we
start by talking about the Republicans in the House. Yeah,
I mean yesterday what they kept failing at rules vote.
What happened here is that Kevin McCarthy put Maga on
the rules and turns out that Maga is not so
(01:07):
good on the rules committee.
Speaker 2 (01:09):
Huh, Yeah, they're really not. Here's what I keep wondering though,
And tell me if you agree with me. I don't
find a lot of takers for this right and I
get trolled whenever.
Speaker 1 (01:17):
I say it even better.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, right, It seems to me that Mike Johnson wants
to hold a vote on the Ukraine eight.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Yes, I think so you do.
Speaker 2 (01:25):
Okay, great, I'm not entirely alone on this then, Okay,
a number of things right. One, there are significant powerful
Republicans in the House who want it, like these committee
chairs Mike Turner, people like that, right, And these are
major players. They're not maga noisemakers. So we don't talk
about them ever. We only talk about Marjorie Taylor Green
and Matt Gates. And I don't know why that's the
(01:47):
only thing we'd ever talk about. But so, like these
committee chairs want this vote, Mike Johnson is talking to
world leaders seemingly pretty regularly, and they're telling him all
all of them are telling the same story, which is
that if we don't do this, we're in much more
trouble later. Right, Mike Johnson has a bit of a
Reagan night past as opposed to a mega kind of
(02:09):
the inclination. Seems to me he is a Christian nationalist
and he's willing to endorse great replacement theory. But like
on national security and foreign policy, he's much more in
the Reagan nite mold. And then right, he's got the
good intelligence too, so he's got the top intel people
telling him what the real deal is there, and you
(02:30):
got to think the stuff weighs on him. And it
looks to me like it is.
Speaker 1 (02:34):
It's reauthorizing a rule that allows the American government to
wiretap calls of non citizens without a warrant, basically, right,
I mean, that's what it is. And this was a
Republican idea, right as part of the Patriot Act, or
at least it came about during that period when America
(02:54):
wanted to have more of a you know, in arsenal
when it comes to prosecute and collecting information on our
foreign adversary. So it's a republican idea like the idea
that Mike Johnson is for. This would make more sense.
I mean, it's just recently that MAGA has decided that
(03:14):
they don't, you know whatever, they're not so interested in
foreign intervention maybe though who even knows what they really
believe in. But what I think is interesting is like
when Johnson, he was remembering, he was like a low
ranking Republican, but once he was sort of given the information,
and once he went into leadership, he sort of understood
why it was so important.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Right. I want to pick up on something you said there,
which is whether they're really opposed to foreign intervention, because
I feel like it's an important subject. You've probably noticed that,
like a lot of news accounts call mega isolations, they
called Trump isolationist, right, and I just I don't think
that's what they are.
Speaker 1 (03:51):
No. I just don't take them at their word for anything.
I just want to fact check for one second. It's
called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it's not part
of the Patriot Act. I was wrong. It was enacted
in the year of my birth, nineteen seventy eight, and
the legislation was a congressional response to exposure during multiple
committee hearings of previous abuses of US persons privacy rights. Okay,
(04:14):
so it actually is not part of the Patriot Act.
I was wrong, continues right.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
No, No, absolutely right. We shouldn't take them at their word.
I think what's going on. I actually did a podcast
with Julia Yaffi about this, and she was just so
eloquent about it. They support the idea of Putin style government, right,
They oppose Ukrainian democracy. They want Putin to win. I
(04:38):
wouldn't attribute that sentiment to all of them, right, I
think it's complicated, and it's a little shifty and it's
a little murky, but right, someone like Marjorie Taylor Green
I think has a genuine ideological affinity with Putin style governance,
White Christian nationalist strong man rule, all about crushing the woke,
(05:00):
the secular liberals, right, all about kind of crushing Western
liberal democracy wherever possible they want. They see a Putin
victory as a victory for their kind of access of autocracy.
That it really dovetails very directly with their sense of
what they'd like to do here domestically. Right, So Trump
admires Putin. We all know that. What's funny to me, though,
(05:21):
is like Trump isn't exactly where Marjorie Taylor Green is
on Putin or JD. Vans, who's also in the Marjorie
Taylor Green camp. I think for Trump, what he admires
is the strongman dictator part of Putin. He probably doesn't
care so much about the crushing of the LGBTQ and
woke and all that, Whereas Marjorie Taylor Green and Jade
Events probably wants something like theocratic rule here and see
(05:46):
strongman rule as the way to get it. Trump doesn't
really care about that. But they kind of are in
alliance on this, right, they're all kind of weirdly vaguely
pro putin. And that's not isolationism, it's side with an
access of autocrats out there.
Speaker 1 (06:02):
Well, Juliaffi had this incredible scoop right where Michael McCall,
you know, high ranking chair in Congress Republican. He comes
out and says, Republicans are absolutely repeating Russian propaganda. I mean,
this is wild.
Speaker 2 (06:21):
It absolutely is. It's absolutely crazy. And what he means,
I think, is he means to rebut this idea that
there are kind of these isolationists who just simply don't
want to spend our blood and treasure abroad, right, which
makes it sound so tame and so admirable. Right, they're
just isolationists. They're anti war, they're not right, they're not Yeah,
(06:45):
you know what I mean, that's what he means. He's
essentially saying what Julia Yaffi said on the podcast and
what we're saying now, which is that in some very
basic sense, a sizable swath of the Republican Conference is
at best and indifferent to the fate of Ukraine and
just fine with Putin crushing the Ukraine out of existence,
(07:06):
and at worst tacitly or maybe even overtly wants Putin
to win.
Speaker 1 (07:11):
Yeah. But I think what's interesting to me is here
we are. Republicans have the House, they have a one
bowl majority. They have a speaker who was number five
in leadership. She came into this job and he's getting crushed.
I mean, it's a really hard job. I Mean one
of the things I think is, like when you think
about people didn't like Nancy Pelosi, they had complaints about
(07:33):
Nancy Pelosi, whatever, whatever, But like you really see, after
we had Nancy Pelosi and then Republicans won the House,
we had Kevin McCarthy and now we have Mike Johnson,
and both of them show it's actually a pretty hard job.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
It really is. And Nancy Pelosi is really good at
the job too. I mean I always come back to this,
but she essentially presided over two impeachments of Trump, right,
which has never happened. Yeah, And I think if I'm right,
she lost a grand total of three votes among Democrats
on two impeachments. That's some pretty impressive party unity right there.
(08:09):
And right, like on social people always black Pelosi as
neoliberal or democratic establishment. She focuses too much on kitchen
table issues. But like, winning House seats in some of
these swing districts is hard, right, Yeah, And under her,
they took the House in two thousand and six and
(08:30):
again in twenty eighteen. Now they lost it, but by
a far smaller margin than we expected. I think Mike
Johnson maywell just kind of lose the House in his
first crack at this if he's even there at the
end of this year.
Speaker 1 (08:43):
Right, I mean, he could lose the House before the
actual election, which is not you know, it's unlikely, but
not impossible.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
It's basically gone, right. I think one interesting way to
think about this is that they don't really have a
garning majority, right yeah, So what is the Martian now too?
Speaker 1 (09:02):
One?
Speaker 2 (09:03):
It's down to one, right, it's down to one now,
And so right there just simply is not a group
of Republicans who are united in any sense and who
also constitute a majority of the House.
Speaker 1 (09:16):
Now and one of the things like I'm struck by
when we talk about Nancy Pelosi is you know, she
knew that the House is about getting re elected. So
if you were a Democrat in a swing state, in
a swingy district, she would really make sure that you
didn't have to vote against your interests, right, you didn't
have to do something that would mess you up. In
(09:37):
two years now we have these Republicans, these House Republicans
in New York, Mike Lawler, Nick Lloda, and in California
who are in Biden districts desperately trying to hold onto
their seats. As someone like Mike Lawler has had to
vote and Nick Kloda too, voted for two impeachments, one
(09:57):
the first impeachment of a member of the in one
hundred and sixty years, right.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
And they didn't want to vote for that. They really
didn't know.
Speaker 1 (10:06):
This week we saw Mike Lawler on CNN talking to
Kayln Collins and she said, well did you vote? She said,
who'd you vote for in the primary? And he said,
I voted for Trump? Right, So you have a party
nominee who, by voting for him, you can no longer
make the case that you are a moderate.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
Yeah, I mean it's not allowed right in this party.
It really goes back to the basic theory of politics
that Mega and Trump follow, right, which is that you
can win only with mega, Right. When it really comes
down to that, that's what they actually believe. Right. And
so even though we have had a test of this
(10:46):
in two national elections, right in twenty twenty and twenty
twenty two, they actually did surprisingly well in the House
in twenty twenty, right, we all know that story. But
then in twenty twenty two, they dramatically underperform and a
bunch of the Mega candidates for statewide office squandered a
whole swath of winnable races. These were really winnable races, right,
(11:10):
Like we kind of forget that. But like Arizona Senate,
Arizona Governor Blake Masters. Yeah, I mean, like everyone made
fun of Blake Masters, but like he looked to me
like a pretty good candidate in a lot of ways, right,
But he really ran on this insane maga message about immigration.
I don't know if you saw any of his ads.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
Oh my god, yes, talk about it, talk about it.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
Yeah, there's one one of his ads literally has machine
gun fire at the border. It looked like a video game, right,
call of duty or something. Yeah, Right, like there's this
sort of weird maga space where all this stuff is
real to them. Right, the border is a combat video game, right,
or you know, there was a I think his opening
(11:56):
introductory ad, like a two minute spot had him kind
of running through the desert in some way, like he
was kind of patrolling it. So they made immigration absolutely
central to his campaign in a border state in Arizona,
which is the state where some of the most ridiculously
hardline anti immigrant policy has been hatched.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Right.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Trump went to Arizona in twenty sixteen to deliver his
big introductory speech round immigration. It's got a whole history, right,
and they couldn't win. He lost by what five points? Yeah,
And so that it doesn't tell you that you can't
win with just maga. I don't know what does.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yeah. What I'm struck by is this maga like they
can't scale. You know, they win these primers, but then
they can't win the generals.
Speaker 2 (12:49):
Yeah, I mean, look, the funny thing about some of
these mega can that it says they actually they lack
what Trump has, right, And this is a dynamic. I
feel like I don't understand well enough. Maybe you can
help me on this, right, So there's nobody, presumably who's
more magan than Trump. He's Trump, right, He's very maga, right,
but he does really, really pretty well in Pennsylvania, whereas
(13:11):
Doug Mastriano does terribly and gets blown out right, And
so what's the difference there. I think it's that on
some level, Trump has this kind of charisma and he
has this capacity to communicate to voters that it's all
kind of a joke, right when he dabbles in Christian nationalism,
it's all sort of a little bit of a joke.
(13:32):
I mean, Trump, he's not a Christian, right look at him.
And whereas Doug Mastriano looks like a crazy extremist. So
in a weird way, these guys are more maga than
Trump without the positives, right, without the charisma, without the
kind of wink wink, nudge nudge sense that it's all
(13:53):
a big show. And that's just a weird dynamic to me.
Speaker 1 (13:57):
So what I think it is is two things. One
of the reasons why Trump won in twenty sixteen, which
we don't talk about, but is I think really important,
or is at least very relevant, right, is that Trump
won because he made a case that you didn't really
know what he believed in. He had no voting record,
(14:19):
he had been a Democrat. One of the reasons why
we see all of these sort of last gasp attempts
at trying desperately at Republicans trying desperately to pass all
this weird religious stuff is because they sort of know
right that their demographic is dead right, like that America
(14:40):
is not a white Christian nation anymore, and you know,
people aren't going to church the same way. There is
much more, you know, diversity, it's not you know, they're worried.
I mean, this is the last gasp against a multi
racial democracy. So what I think worked for Trump was
he was very famous. A lot of people knew who
he was, but nobody really knew what he was going
to do. It was sort of a normalcy bias. He
(15:02):
can't possibly be that crazy. He's saying all this crazy stuff,
but you know, he's a rich guy, so he's not
going to do anything crazy. And he obviously he knows
about the economy, and he's had all these wives, so
he's you know, and who even knows, you know, he
had this mistress, you know, so obviously he's not going
to do all this crazy stuff. So there were people
(15:23):
who held their nose and voted for him because they
were like, we want the tax cuts, and besides, it's
more business as usual. And I think after twenty sixteen,
you could never make that case again.
Speaker 2 (15:34):
It's really interesting. We had Sarah Longwell on the podcast too,
and folks check out our podcast, man, it's called The
Daily Blast that's in the New Republic, and she said,
he still codes as moderate on abortion and on a
bunch of the stuff. And here's the supreme irony of
it that really kind of confirms what you're talking about.
He codes as moderate because he's a sleazy, nasty, philandering,
(15:58):
you know, amoral piece of you know what, right, right,
That's why he codes moderate. People think, oh, he probably
paid for ten abortions himself, so he can't possibly be
anti abortion.
Speaker 3 (16:10):
Right.
Speaker 2 (16:10):
Meanwhile, he's saying to evangelical voters, boasting of creating the
Supreme Court that overturned a fifty year right.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
And I mean, I think he thinks that those evangelical
voters won't abandon him, and so now he's trying to
pivot to the center. You know, that abortion answer was
him trying to pivot to the center.
Speaker 2 (16:28):
So good and really like for Arizona Republicans to kill
an effort to repeal the eighteen sixty four law. I mean,
by the way, right, there was so much predulous puntry
and journalism saying that Trump has managed to you know,
pick the law pieces again right when you're staying Rix,
when he put out that video saying I forget exactly
(16:51):
the phrase, but right the video essentially said he believed
it should be left to the states and all that
like a lot of I think everybody pounced on the
New York Times for taking that at face value. And
now immediately after that, right immediately after journalists and pundits
said Trump has shown that there's a moderate position, what
(17:12):
actually got confirmed is that Trump is going to have
to answer for every extremist lurch that happens in the States.
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Now, now, Greg, thank you so much, really appreciate you
always fun.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
Mollie Spring is here and I bet you are trying
to look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable
all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news
store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
(17:46):
and top bags to grab some head to Fastpolitics dot com.
Caroline Kitchener is a national reporter covering abortion at the
Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Power Politics, Caroline.
Speaker 3 (18:01):
Thank you so much, Molly, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
You write about abortion for the Washington Post. I think
of you as like the go to, quietly doing the
reporting that the rest of us need to understand what
the landscape looks like and to base our little opinion
pieces on. Today, you have a new story which I
feel like it's like the marriage of the two biggest
(18:25):
crisises of right now right, which are disinformation and abortion.
So talk to us about that story.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, those are the story that I've wanted to do
for over a year. I just kept talking to women
in states with abortion bands. They were ordering pills online
or kind of getting them in other ways, figuring out
however they could ways to navigate around the bands, but
they were having really difficult experiences just you know, not
(18:54):
obviously we know that abortion pills are safe, but it
can be scary when you're alone, you're in a state
where it's illegal, you feel like you're breaking the law.
Even though I think it's important to say, you know,
under these bands, the women taking the pills themselves can't
be prosecuted. They don't know what to expect, and they
don't know who to call. That, I would say was
(19:17):
the thing that I heard from every single person that
I talked to, just I didn't know who to call.
I didn't know who to talk to, because you know,
they were afraid that if they tried to reach out
to a doctor or you know, even went to the
er just to make sure that everything was okay, that
they would be arrested.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Right. What I think is interesting about the story is
there is a real concerted effort on the right from
these anti choice groups to undermine the information that these
women are getting. So absolutely explained to us what that
looks like.
Speaker 3 (19:54):
Yeah, I mean I spoke with a lot of people
that described frantically googling trying to figure out what was
safe and what was okay, because you know, they would
often run into, you know, anti abortion information that would
say that the pills were highly dangerous or even deadly,
(20:15):
and that you know, obviously understandably is extremely scary. You know,
we know that those are false claims, but they're very widespread,
and some of these women too, in these states with
bands now the only place you know, many of them said,
I just wanted to go and talk to somebody in person,
Like I just wanted to like, you know, before I
(20:37):
took these pills, I just wanted to talk to somebody.
And often the only place to go in these states
now is crisis pregnancy centers, which are you know, anti
abortion centers that really are designed to dissuade women from
having abortions. You know, in the first place, let's.
Speaker 1 (20:53):
Do two seconds on what a crisis pregnancy center is.
Because they're often funded by relig groups, right, they tend.
Speaker 3 (21:02):
They very often are have some sort of religious affiliation.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
They advertise themselves though, as a place to get a
pregnancy test and talk about your options. So talk about
sort of how they advertise themselves versus what they are.
Speaker 3 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's sort of hard
to paint them all with a broad brush because oftentimes
there are sort of these much more institutionalized ones, but
then there's also sort of lots of kind of mom
and pops, smaller ministry kind of things.
Speaker 1 (21:28):
Right, yet another thing the federal government does not regulate.
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Right, many of these ones that are more i would say,
more sophisticated and more sort of professionalized, they have recognized
that the sort of message of free ultrasounds, free pregnancy
tests is very appealing to people, so they'll often put
that on a big sign. They definitely do a lot of.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
Google Search algorithm. Exactly what Carolyn's talking about is this
idea that they do a Google SEO, so they come
up in these searches in the Google search.
Speaker 3 (22:03):
Yeah, I can explain that a little bit. So oftentimes
these places like work with you know, somebody that can
manipulate search and make sure that for example, if somebody
in Texas types in, you know, need abortion Texas now
something like that, then you know, the first thing that
would come up would be the Crisis Pregnancy Center with
(22:23):
you know, information about you know, get your abortion consultation.
That's typically a word that they use, or you know,
your free ultrasound or something like that.
Speaker 1 (22:32):
A lot of what I know about this is from
Robin Marty ran an abortion clinic in the state of Alabama,
and she talked about how, you know, now she does
STIs treatment and you know that kind of thing, but
that these centers really just are trying to get you
to not have an abortion. Yeah, so what happens to
(22:52):
these women they want to take the pill, the abortion pill.
They get it, and then they can't get good information
about it, or or they can't get it.
Speaker 3 (23:01):
The people that I talked to for the story, they
were able to get it. But the word that I
heard all the time was like, is this legit? Like
how do I know if this is legit?
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Right?
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Because if you're in a state with a band, you know,
you're you know that there's this law, and so you know,
even if you go online and you can find these
places that say that they're going to send it to you,
it feels a little sketchy, right, Like, even if we know,
we know that certain of these organizations they're very you know,
they are very legitimate, and they are doing this in
like really big numbers. But if you are that young
(23:31):
woman somewhere on your own googling around, you know, you
can see how it would feel scary.
Speaker 1 (23:37):
One of the things that I'm struck by as we
talk about this is this idea that these pills are
much safer than the right wants us to believe. And
they've been working really hard to work the rafts. Mattha
pristone has been available in this country since two thousand.
It was available in France since nineteen eighty five.
Speaker 3 (23:59):
Right, this is not new, it's you know, over two
decades now that this has been approved by the FDA,
And you know, there is just no question from any
leading medical association or any you know, major study that
these pills are extremely safe. And I think it's important
to say too that they are safe even when taken
(24:19):
somewhat independently. And there have been a lot of really
good recent studies that show that even if you're not
having a face to face with a doctor to get them,
they're still extremely safe. The safety numbers don't really change there.
So what these women are doing, you know, when they
order the pills online, it is safe, but they don't
necessarily know that or feel that.
Speaker 1 (24:40):
One of the points in the article is that if
you are in a state where abortion is illegal, which
means which more than a third of all American women are,
if you take the pills, there's some anxiety about going
into a hospital. So talk to us about that.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
One thing that studies have shown is that, you know,
the serious adverse events numbers are just tiny, tiny, tiny
for abortion pills. It's like less than one percent a
larger abortion, not a huge number, but typically between the
studies range from one point three percent to eight percent
of people that take abortion pills.
Speaker 4 (25:17):
Go to the er.
Speaker 3 (25:18):
And you know, that is a number. Those are numbers
that have been really co opted by the anti abortion
groups to say, look, look, how many people are going
to the er. But the really important context for those
visits is that women are often going for a gut.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Check because it's scary.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
Like you're bleeding a lot, right, You're cramping a lot,
and it's really painful, and you don't know what's normal,
and so you want to go somewhere and just make
sure that everything is okay. I think that's like a
very sort of natural human instinct. But when you're in
a state with a ban, even though these laws are
not written to allow prosecutors to go after the women
(25:55):
that are taking the pills, that's the sort of a
very weird thing to understand, and it's a very that's
like really an intricacy of the law. And you know,
I'm only of all the women that I talked to
for this story, only one of them understood that under
the band sheep personally could not be prosecuted. Everybody just
assumes that they can be, and so they are terrified
(26:15):
to go to the er.
Speaker 1 (26:17):
And Trump has said that he believes there should be
some form of prosecution for women who have abortion. I mean,
then he walked it back, but you know, I was
on with Chris Matthews and we were talking about that,
so I mean he did say it, so you understand
why this does not exist in a vacuum, right.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
And I think it's also important to note that like
women who have taken pills and self managed their own abortions,
they have been charged under other laws in the past
other than abortion bands, like laws around disposed little feel
remains and things like that, especially when they're later in pregnancy.
So it's not like there's no legal risk at all.
Their right to worry obviously a very difficult situation to
(27:02):
be in well.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
And I also think when you talk about abortion, this
issue really just collide with the with the misinformation and
disinformation ecosystem that we're living in right now. And it
is also like a personal thing, you know, it's not
like something you want a crowdsource on Facebook exactly.
Speaker 2 (27:22):
It's such a good point.
Speaker 1 (27:23):
And it's like just not that easy to bring it up.
Speaker 3 (27:26):
One of the women that I talked about, like she said, man,
I just wish I had a group chat, Like I
just wish I could talk to people about this in
a group chat with friend, but I can't if nobody
can know.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
One of the things in the article that you talk
about is that if you go to a hospital and
you've self managed an abortion, doctors cannot tell if you
are having a miscarriage or self managed abortion. Will you
talk about that?
Speaker 3 (27:52):
Yeah, that is something that all of the hotlines and
different abortion rights groups are telling women because that's not
I think something that isn't too to know. But you know,
if you present with the bleeding and cramping of a
medication abortion, unless you took the pills vaginally, which is
sort of a more rare way to take them, there
is no way for a doctor to know whether you
(28:13):
miscarried or whether you had a medication abortion. So folks
are telling women to say, you know, just say I
had a miscarriage, I just started bleeding, I don't really
know what's going on, and then not say anything else.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
So this is not in the article, but since you
are really in it, I'm wondering if you could talk
about this Rise Louisiana Report. I'm sure you read it. Too.
I Mean, what's so interesting is women's health. You know,
we don't get so much research like men's health. Right.
Imagine if men had to take a pill it caused
bleeding and is sometimes painful, like, they would never.
Speaker 3 (28:46):
You know, there would be a better way.
Speaker 1 (28:49):
Right exactly, they'd be like, no, no, just come into
this ATM and we'll you know. So I'm wondering. Like
one of the things a Rise Louisiana report talked about
and a thing I've heard on totally from obgyns is
the incredible anxiety about treating in the first trimester from doctors.
(29:10):
Are you hearing that on the ground that there's just
like the doctors have really changed the way they treat
pregnant women in these stays. If you're seeing that or
you're hearing that, or maybe you're not, but I'm just curious.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
Absolutely, they're terrified. It just remains really unclear. I mean,
just look at the changing laws, like you know, we are,
you know, two years out from this Dobbs ruling almost
and things are not settled like we you know, we
have Arizona, we have Florida. We have these big new
laws taking effect and changing and the landscape is not settled,
(29:45):
and doctors feel that for sure. I mean, it was
a couple of months ago I did a story about
a woman in Texas who was turned away with an
ectopic pregnancy, which really, I mean, even as much as
I write about this and talk to people, that really
shocked me. Because a topic pregnancy.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Is not going to ever be a baby. You cannot
physically carry a baby in the fallopian tubes of your womb,
Like it cannot happen. So there's only one thing that happens,
which is you not.
Speaker 3 (30:14):
Like that particular word. I feel like it's such a
has become such a buzzword after the decision, like people,
you know, that really was sort of the big thing
that people talked about, like people with ectopic pregnancies, and
and you saw the conservatives and the anti abortion folks
say like, oh no, at topics, that's totally fine, that's
totally fine. And I really thought that, you know, a
(30:34):
year and a half since the decision, we were in
a place where like topics would be treated kind of
no question, Like people just sort of understood that. And
a lot of doctors have said that to me, like
oh yeah, like the topics you know, of course, like,
we know, we know we can treat them, but then
you do hear these stories still of women getting turned away.
So it's just not settled yet. And I'm sure that
(30:55):
it also depends on what the feelings of the doctor
are on this issue. Right.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
It is so insane to me, like, there is no
baby in an atopic pregnancy, right, And I mean, what
happened to that woman in that case?
Speaker 3 (31:08):
What the doctor said is that there is a chance
that this is not an atopic pregnancy, because it's not
always so easy so cut and dry to tell when
it is and when it isn't. But I mean hers
was I think fairly obvious. So she was turned away
from the hospital. Later that day, her best friend was
at an obiqui en appointment. She called her best friend
(31:29):
and her best friend was like, Hey, do you want
me to like show the doctor here the picture of
your pregnancy, and she did. The best friend did, and
the doctor was like, oh my god, can your friendly
come in right now? So she did, and that doctor
was like, I'm going to take you in for emergency
surgery right.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
Now, yeah, because you can die from this.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
Right, And I just think that shows, like, I mean,
how scary is it though that it's just kind of
luck of the draw of who you get, who you see.
Speaker 1 (31:54):
You know, I heard this story anecdotally, so I don't
want to pass it on because who knows. But you know,
friend of mine was telling me about a girl in
a red state where she was having a miscarriage, like
her numbers were going down, the pregnancy was not holding,
and the doctor didn't want to tell her because she
didn't want to perform a DNC, which is so insane, right,
(32:17):
Like the these aren't even babies. These are people where
they're not going to have a baby, and they can't
get the care they need. These unforeseen consequences of the
inability to legislate on the part of Republicans is shocking
to me. But it shouldn't be right, It shouldn't be
calin what are you watching right now?
Speaker 3 (32:37):
I'm watching that Florida and Arizona. I mean Florida. I
think in particular, I don't know that people have fully
registered how many women live in Florida and how many
abortions appeased in Florida. Yeah, last year there were eighty
four thousand abortions in Florida. And if you look at
sort of the bands that are currently in effect. The
(32:58):
sort of largest state bans Texas, And before that took
a fact, fifty thousand happened in Texas.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
Wait, what's the number in Florida.
Speaker 3 (33:06):
In Florida, it's eighty four thousand.
Speaker 1 (33:07):
Wow. Yeah, and it's and historically it's always been a
safe haven for abortion in the South right.
Speaker 3 (33:14):
It has because of the constitutional protections that they had
for so long. And I also think like that just
the geography geography of Florida makes it extremely difficult. Like
somebody that's coming from Key West to go to the
nearest clinic at there after six weeks, once this law
takes it back, they're going to have to drive fourteen hours.
Speaker 1 (33:33):
Thank you, Carolyn, thanks for having me on. Stephen Richer
is the Maracoba County, Arizona Recorder. Welcome Steven, too fast politics,
Tell us what you do.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
I am the elected Maykope County Recorder. I ran in
twenty twenty in the Republican primary one that won the
general election in November.
Speaker 5 (33:58):
I am statutorially responsible for early voting, voter registration and
document recording in Mericle County, which is the fourth largest
county in the United States, and second largest voting jurisdiction
in the United States and makes up about sixty two
percent of Arizona's voting population.
Speaker 1 (34:15):
It's an elected job, but you are a Republican.
Speaker 4 (34:20):
Yes, elected job, and I'm a Republican. That's correct.
Speaker 1 (34:23):
And one of the things that you've been doing, which
I think is probably one of the more important things,
is trying to correct the record when it comes to
the twenty twenty election and its integrity. Talk to us
about sort of if you could set the stage of
how you became this celebrity. Sorry, I apologize for the
(34:50):
use of the word celebrity.
Speaker 4 (34:51):
No no, no, I guess it's just my quasi looking
at local in there. No, no, no, you'll come on
board on for it. On well, one, the election administration
is sort of new to the business of communicating regarding
the process. There weren't too many people prior to say,
twenty eighteen that were terribly interested in the nuts and
(35:12):
bolts of election administration. And so this is still an
ecosystem that is being built out, and so is new landscape.
And then obviously since twenty twenty, there have been a
countless number of false allegations about both the twenty twenty election,
the twenty twenty two election, and there haven't been too
(35:32):
many people who have been consistently and with technical specificity
pushing back against the falsehoods. And there have been even
fewer who are elected Republicans. And so I think that
has made me a bit of an anomaly and maybe
the celebrity I've earned has just been the product of
(35:53):
my being a bit of a anomalist freak.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
Yes, anomalist freak. Well, welcome, because that's something we love.
One of the problems with elections is that every state
is different, certain counties are different. There's very little uniformity
in it, which actually protects our election. Zah, Will you
explain a little bit about that.
Speaker 4 (36:13):
Yeah, it is a feature in a flaw, as you
have correctly identified. We have over eight thousand voting jurisdictions
in the United States. We have fifteen in Arizona. The
fifteen different counties. Elections are administered at the county level
in Arizona. That is a feature in that no two
systems are exactly alike. It's not the same people, it's
(36:34):
not the same software. Necessarily, it's not the same machinery.
And so the notion that you could flip a switch
or install a program into some mothership computer that would
then disseminate out to all election jurisdictions throughout the United States.
Is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections work in
(36:54):
the United States. That's why some of the more outlandish
theories of the twenty twenty election, as far as dominion
being able to control everything, or one software patch or
something like that, where for anyone who knew about elections
pretty silly. It's a bug in that a lot of
(37:15):
our politics has become nationalized, and people on election night,
especially in November of even years, look to the MSNBC,
CNN's Fox News is of the world and they will
see something being said and being done in one state
that won't necessarily be done or said in another state,
(37:36):
and that can create confusion, that can create concern. Why
does Pennsylvania have so few of its ballots reported immediately
but Washington was just able to immediately provide fifty percent
of its expected returns. Well, Washington could pre process Pennsylvania couldn't.
In Florida, more people have show up in person and
(37:57):
they drop off their early ballots earlier. So that is
something that we have had to remind viewers members of
the media that this is federalizomat it's core in how
our election administration is designed.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
Someone like you isn't necessarily a public facing individual in
most states, so you can't just call up. I mean,
on this podcast, we have interviewed so many state level politicians,
like during the Virginia we interviewed, you know, during that
Virginia election, we interviewed like a lot of delegates, right,
(38:33):
a lot of state senators. So I know that not
and I mean this with all the love in the world,
not all state officials are ready to handle the media spotlight.
Speaker 4 (38:44):
I think that's a very fair statement, and it is
not unduly disrespectful.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Okay, good, and nor should they, right, I mean, that's
not you. You know, your job is very technical too.
I mean, I want you to talk about your lawsuit
because it seems to be the only way to stop
this disinformation. Carry Lake decided that she was governor and
that this would somehow even though you're a Republican, even
(39:13):
though you do this very technical job, but somehow you
were involved in us.
Speaker 2 (39:18):
Right.
Speaker 4 (39:18):
So Carry Lake was somebody who is new to Republican
Party politics. In about twenty twenty went on the scene,
really built her character around the idea that the twenty
twenty election was stolen. Made her fame in politics in
that vein Ran became the gubernatorial nominee for the Republican
Party in the twenty twenty two election, narrowly lost to
(39:40):
the Democratic candidate, alleged a whole bunch of crazy things
that were a continuation of all the things that she
was saying about twenty twenty. Filed numerous election complaints in
which she would air these very specific allegations regarding actions
that I purportedly took two in particular, that I had
injected three hundred thousand early ballots that were fraudulent into
(40:01):
the voting system, and that I had manipulated machinery so
as to swing the election in favor of her opponent.
She files those lawsuits, court says there's no evidence for this,
no foundation for this. It pretty much kicks the snot
out of her on all of her claims, including others.
She appeals to the Court of Appeals, loses the Court
of Appeals, she loses at the Arizona Supreme Court. There's
(40:24):
another trial, she loses on that, and so she has
a very intense awareness that all these things have been
measured and they have been found wanting on evidence and
facts and law. Nonetheless, she persists in making these very
serious accusations that I stole the twenty twenty two election
(40:48):
from her. She would go to events, she would write
on Twitter, she would write in her fundraising emails. She
would name me. She would show pictures of me at
events where she would try to stir up the crowd.
This man, this Stephen Richer. He injected three hundred thousand
fraudulent bouts, and she would say it time after time.
Speaker 1 (41:07):
Did you find it scary or now?
Speaker 4 (41:09):
Some people would report back to me, including a writer
for the Washington Post, and he said, make sure you're
taking precautions because people are being whipped up into a frenzy. Here.
I'm imagining sort of the scene and Beauty and the Beast,
where Gastan says, you know, grab your pitch fork, grab
your hoe, and we're going to go kill the beast. Yeah,
he continues, and we're thinking, Ah, she'll get over it.
(41:32):
Most people do. Maybe not in this new age. She'll
get a new job. But this became the cornerstone of
her continued political relevance. Her political fundraising. She even wrote
a book in which I appear in a really creepy,
weird dream sequence that she supposedly has, And we were
at our wits end and so filed this defamation lawsuit.
(41:54):
My legal team and I we thought we had a
very strong case because obviously it's very false. She'd been
told it was false, she knew from court rulings it
was false. It did real damage to my family and me,
and we've been successful so far. She filed motions to
dismiss she lost on those multiple times, and then when
(42:17):
it came time to really get going on discovery and
fact investigation, she defaulted, meaning that a judgment is going
to be entered into the court of law saying that yes,
Carrie Lake defamed Stephen Richer. She could not prove the
truth of her allegations. She is not defending their falsity,
(42:37):
she is not defending malice. And now the only thing
that we have left to work on is how many
zeros are in the damages award and how much did
she destroy my character among certain people?
Speaker 1 (42:51):
Can you tell us about the dream sequence?
Speaker 3 (42:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (42:56):
I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1 (42:57):
Wait, she wrote a book, Yeah, she.
Speaker 4 (42:59):
Wrote a book published in the summer of twenty three.
In her dream sequence, I and one of my colleagues
from the county. We kidnap her. We tie her up
in duct tape. We throw her into the back of
a pickup truck. We drive her out into the desert.
(43:19):
But then, because she drops a footnote that she was
a high school gymnast, she was able to contort herself
out of her duct tape bindings. And then because she
ran track in high school, she was able to sprint
off while we as bumbling fools. Though we fired shots
after her, we weren't able to get her. And I'll
(43:42):
say that in a foot race, I'm guessing I destroy
this lady.
Speaker 1 (43:46):
Well, I mean, the whole thing is so just deeply,
deeply disturbing and also quite strange.
Speaker 4 (43:53):
If you read this in a different context, you would
say this person is a lunatic.
Speaker 1 (43:59):
Right, let's keep going with this for a minute. She
continued to defame you when you won this case, because
this is like the Rudy Giuliani problem, right, Like you
had the two election workers who sued Judy Giuliani, and
you had Egene Carroll Sewing Trump Boyd. When you sue
these people for defamation. They tend not to stop defaming.
Did she actually stop defaming?
Speaker 4 (44:20):
This is all pretty new, so we'll see. But certainly
in the immediate aftermath of her defaulting, it was bizarre
because at the same time she's resting her defense in
a court of law, she's going on to Twitter and
saying I stand by everything I said, and so you
better believe that we're watching those statements, and if she continues,
(44:44):
then we will take appropriate legal action because now we
have a judgment that these are defamatory remarks that she
cannot defend. She cannot prove our troop.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
The central tenant of our democracy is that we have
free and fair elections. Why do we think that these
trumpy I don't even want to say Republicans, because there
are good Republicans who they really that's sort of Trump in,
you know, these lies about the election, these Trump he
lies about the election.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
The incentive structure right now, the most powerful endorsement in
politics right now is a Republican primary endorsement from President Trump.
And this is a necessary and sometimes sufficient qualification for
getting his endorsement is telling him very fervently that he
(45:34):
won the twenty twenty election.
Speaker 1 (45:36):
If he wins. Obviously we all have figger problems. But
in a world where the Republican Party loses an all
and finally becomes sane again, some part of this base
has descended in trump Ism, But it seems as if
there are people who can come back and be quote
(45:56):
unquote more normal.
Speaker 4 (45:58):
I think so, and it's why I'm still part of
the Republican Party because I believe in the twenty sixteen
party platform. I believe in the twenty twelve party platform,
and the philosophy of a limited government and small, lower taxes,
lower regulation. We can quibble about those things of whether
the party, you know, consistently implements those but that's not
(46:20):
really the purpose of today's conversation, I don't think. But
a party will always have a percentage of its voting
members that you know, maybe aren't you are a little
bit your weird uncle. Just the difference is that the
weird uncle has taken over the steering wheel for in
some instances eight years. But the Democratic Party, I would say,
(46:42):
flirted with this a little bit. And I'm not going
to draw one to one comparisons, but elevating Bernie Sanders
into the leadership role would have been giving over control
to not where the median member of the party used
to be. And so just it's an interesting phenomenon that
I think has its roots in intense partisanship, intense polarization,
(47:04):
intense distrust in society, intense media ecosystems that are silos,
and trace it back to I don't know whether it's
the two thousand and eight financial crisis or the Tea
Party movement, but just trust in anything institutionally has suffered
(47:25):
immensely over the last twenty years, and elections is simply
one manifestation of it. But I think that you're going
to find that, if, for instance, one of these courts
rules against President Trump in the criminal context, that you're
going to have a lot of people who do not
believe in the criminal justice system anymore so insane.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Do you think there's a way like using more clarity
will help Republicans see that these elections were fair, you know,
because clearly you think about this a lot. Give me
your hot take for the solve here.
Speaker 4 (47:59):
I think we have to accept that there's a percentage
of the party that will never be convinced even moving forward.
I think we have to accept that there's even a
larger percentage that is never going to change their opinion
about twenty twenty election. Why we try to provide more
and more information and combat false information online is because
(48:24):
we believe that there are people, especially forward looking people,
who can be convinced with more information, that this is
a system that they can have confidence in even if
they don't like the outcome. And so we're not look
at we're not shooting for one hundred percent here, And truthfully,
that's never happened in American politics. There's always been a
(48:47):
distrust from the losing party. It's just we've seen it
on steroids these last few years. But I hope that
we can bring back people. A central core belief of
mine is that man is still a rational reacher and
if you hit him with facts and logics, then that's
going to have an impact to at least a good
number of people.
Speaker 1 (49:07):
Well, let's hope. Thank you so much. This is really interesting,
So thanks.
Speaker 4 (49:12):
Great.
Speaker 1 (49:16):
Moment. Oh fuck on, Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast.
Speaker 4 (49:21):
The juice is loose in the afterlife.
Speaker 1 (49:24):
Sometimes mainstream media. Look, it's very hard. Writing straight down
the middle is very hard. But OJ Simpson's obituary has
proven to be a sticky wicket that many a mainstream
news outlet has failed. O J. Simpson, athlete whose trial
(49:45):
riveted the nation, dies at seventy six. He ran to
football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies,
but his world was ruined after he was charged with
killing his former wife and her friend. Hmmm, the passive voice,
this is a choice. And then we had breaking news
football great orenthal James Simpson, known as Ojay has died. Perhaps,
(50:08):
but I think the height of fuckery will be the
La Times accidentally using the name Trump in place of
Simpson near the end of their oh bit. And I'm
just going to read you the sentence because it's amazing.
Long before the city woke up on a fall morning
in twenty seventeen, Trump walked out of the Lovelock County
(50:31):
Correction Center outside of Reno a freeman for the first
time in nine years. And that, my friends, is our
moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the
best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
(50:52):
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going, and again thanks
for listening.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
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