February 24, 2023 • 50 mins
The Plum Line’s Greg Sargent talks about the weaponization of 1/6 footage and how the Dems can respond to Speaker McCarthy handing the footage to Tucker Carlson. Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of Strongmen: How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall explains to us the reckless conversation around a national divorce. Plus, The Washington Post’s Aaron Blake outlines how the Georgia grand jury forewoman’s media tour could cause problems for prosecuting Trump.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And the legos have joined the eminem's
in being Woke. We have a show packed with thrilling,
thrilling stuff. Ruth ben Guiatt, author of Strong Men, How
They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall. We'll talk
(00:23):
to us about Ron De Santis's recent aggressions and the
stupidity of a national divorce. Then we'll talk to Washington
Post Aaron Blake about the Georgia grand Jury four women's
media tour causing problems. But first we have the Washington
Post Plumbline editor Greg Sargeant. Welcome too, Fast Politics, Greg Sargeant,
(00:46):
thanks for having me on. I always love stopping by.
We're delighted to have you in our post apocalyptic apocalypse.
So let's first talk about Tucker Carlson and his extremely
good friend and Kevin McCarthy. Sure this is not the
first time Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson have had a
(01:08):
symbiotic relationship. In January, Tucker Carlson told Kevin McCarthy if
he wanted to be speaker, that he was going to
need to open a church commission and put Thomas Massey
as the head of it. Incredible move, remember that. Yeah,
the Committee to Weaponize Government un ironically named. Now Kevin
(01:30):
McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson a little prize. Yes, Kevin
McCarthy has apparently given exclusive access to all of the
January sixth Capital surveillance footage to Tucker Carlson. I think
we don't know exactly what the arrangement is, but it
may be and I stressed that this is a make
because I'm speculating it may be that the producers have
(01:53):
access to some sort of database where they're watching it
all a little bit similar to how the January sixth
Committee access that. Explain that more to me because I'm stupid. Well, okay,
so the January sixth Committee got access to the footage
because congressional committees and congressional leadership can get that kind
of thing from the Capitol Police if they ask for it,
(02:15):
and the committee did, and according to reports, and according
to my own reporting as well, the arrangement that was
worked out was that the committee investigators were allowed to
watch the footage from the surveillance cameras on some kind
of password protected database under fairly strict security constraints, and
(02:37):
they also took care to not air any footage at
the hearings unless it was cleared with the Capitol Police
first to avoid compromising security information. My strong suspicion is
that Tucker's Carlson his producers have a similar arrangement. Maybe
I don't know what happens if they want to air
(02:57):
parts of the footage yet, that kind of remains to
be seen. But my guess is that Tucker's producers are
watching the footage right now on a similar password protected
database at the Capital. I guess something like that. Oh wow,
I mean, I guess that's a little bit better that
they're not just taking the video and watching it in
(03:20):
their office. Right. It's not like, as far as I
can tell, it wasn't like just turned over to them
on a thumb. Jo Tucker isn't just like sort of like,
you know, watching it in wherever the hell he lives. Yeah,
it's such an interesting and strange kind of reality we're
living in. So explain to me what your thesis was
(03:41):
about this turnover. So the piece that I did today
argued that if McCarthy is going to give this exclusive
access to the footage to Tucker Carlson, who's a known
liar and propagandist who has deceived people serially about January
sixth for a very long time, then Democrats should give
(04:02):
access to the footage to major news organizations. I was
able to confirm that that's a real possibility. As you know,
as we talked about earlier, the January sixth Committee investigators
already accessed it. But right now Democratic leaders and I
think committee heads too, can request access to that footage
(04:23):
and essentially do what they want with it. I think
that's sort of being figured out right now by a
lot of people. It certainly seems highly plausible that if
Democratic leaders wanted to, they could access the footage, set
up some sort of arrangement with major news organizations allowing
them to view it in some way or other, maybe
subject to some kind of vetting for before they use
(04:46):
it or report on it. Maybe it gets vetted by
Capitol Police for security concerns, or maybe news organizations wouldn't
be willing to do that, but some kind of arrangement
could conceivably be worked out. Yeah, makes sense. I want
to ask you this. I asked you this before, but
it really important. What do you think this sort of
(05:06):
reason is that Democrats haven't done this before. Now. Their
reaction to the McCarthy decision to turn it over to
Tucker was that it would be highly compromising in security terms.
And as we talked about earlier, the January six Committee
members were exceptionally careful to not air footage without getting
it vetted by Capitol Police first to be sure they
(05:28):
weren't compromising things. And so my guess is that they've
been hesitant to make it available on similar grounds. And
I guess we should also recall that the January sixth
Committee report really only just came out a few months ago, right,
whatever the reason, though, I mean, I think that they
could do it now. By the way, I think we
should note that it's actually legitimate to be worried about
(05:50):
the security concerns here. The right wing is sort of
playing this slimy little game right now where they're pretending
that there's like not actually any issues whatsoever associated with
making the footage available to people, and there are. I
still think that it could be worked around, and I
think that Demoscrats should try to do that, But the
(06:11):
way the rights approached This is just to sort of
erase the actual complications involved, because that's what they do, right,
They just you know, they deceive and mislead pretty much
all the time, and that's what they're doing here too, right, Right,
I want to ask you about the Avanka Jared subpoena situation.
(06:32):
What is happening? Well, I don't really know. I mean,
I think obviously they're the investigators. They're being pretty damn
aggressive at this point. I think we can see that, right,
And it's kind of hard to imagine that there won't
be indictments at some point on one of these fronts,
isn't it? I do badly when I need to predict
(06:52):
the future. It certainly seems like he's being aggressive in
a way that Muller wasn't. Though Mueller did, didn't he
have those two testify? I can't recall that, honestly. Yeah,
it's like ten million years ago. Yes, that probably happened.
Let's talk about Tucko Crawlson's interest in the Ohio train disaster,
(07:14):
because you wrote about that yesterday. Can you give us
a little bit of a sort of four one one
on how that went down? There's been an effort on
the right to kind of racialize the East Palestine train derailments.
And I should be fair here, like that's not the
only thing that people like Tucker Carlson and JD. Vans
are saying. There's actually a fair amount of things that
(07:36):
we're hearing from people like Jade Vans and Mark Urrubio
that I think we could agree with. About the need
to hold Norfolk Southern the railway company accountable, about the
need to figure out why the accident happened in a
good faith way, About the need to make sure that
government agencies are properly and effectively communicating a sense to
(07:59):
people that they should feel reassured about chemical dangers. At
this point, these are all legit things I think that
some of these populess right wingers have talked about. But
in addition to that, there's been a kind of strain
that's developed, whether essentially trying to turn the disaster area
into a symbol of a place that woke Democrats have
a band and woke elite Democrats of a band, and
(08:21):
because it's got a very high percentage of white people,
and they're sort of saying this in all kinds of
sleazy little ways with various little insinuations the way they
always do, and then they kind of piously pretend that's
not what they're doing, but it is. And so one
of the things they've done is they've pulled a quote
(08:42):
from Transportation Secretary Pete Buddha Judge in which he was
talking about the problem of white construction workers being imported
into high jobless minority neighborhoods to work on projects in them,
and he was talking about whether that's something that should
be addressed through efforts to hire from the communities and
(09:05):
essentially talking about how to increase opportunities for minorities in
construction work. And they've taken that quote and linked it
to the East Palestine disaster by saying the following, Oh,
Pete Buddha Judge is neglecting this heavily white community that's
suffering in a disaster because he thinks a bigger problem
in American life is that there are too many white
(09:27):
construction workers. Right. So this is like when Pete talked
about this idea that the Robert Moses Highways, which were
built two black areas, were racist, and they were like,
it's the racist highways, right, So they're making light of
a very known fact what I have argued about this
is Look, if you want to disagree with Pete Buddha
(09:49):
Judge about that, about that question, about that policy question
of whether something should be done to make more construction
work in minority communities of available to its residents, fine,
go ahead and disagree. But the sleazy thing is to
connect it to the East Palestine disaster. Right, they create
the impression that the federal government and the woke Democrats
(10:12):
who run it are deliberately neglecting a heavily white area
suffering through an environmental chemical disaster, heavily neglecting that community
because their score settling with whites in some other way.
The implication of it all put together is right, that
there's an intentionality there. This is a Republican idea that
(10:33):
they're like not taking care of you because they're making
the government take care of someone else, right them, right,
taking care of them. Everything is always about that. It's always, oh,
they're taking care of them, not you, right, exactly right.
And like I say, I mean, I don't care if
somebody wants to criticize Pete Buddha Judge for saying that
about white construction workers, Go ahead, who cares, Like let's
(10:54):
have that argument or whatever, but like, don't connect it
to the East Palestine disaster, right right, right, Well, it's
not relevant and it's really fundamentally very dishonest, which of
course is the it's sort of the brand. Yeah, it's
interesting to me because for so long we would hear
Trump rail and rail on regulation, right, like, you know,
(11:15):
I mean, one of his favorites, you know, things he
would say. It's say, for every regulation we have, there's another,
you know, regulation we're taking away. And it was like
I always thought, like, well, this is kind of nuts,
but this is what happens when you take away regulation.
So for example, even though this break regulation that came
(11:39):
from the Obama time wouldn't have necessarily affected this train,
there was an effort to have more regulation. And this
company had spent quite a lot of money on lobbyists
and had actually been working hard to push back this regulation.
And they had they had one lobbyist who had worked
in Joe Manchel office. All right, and it's an important
(12:02):
part of the story. And like I should stress to
be fair that some of these right wingers seem to
be saying the right things about the degree to which
the story implicates whether we need more heavily regulated railways
right on freight railways. And you know, there are a
bunch of things that are being debated right now that
(12:22):
seem it's a little hard to tell whether any particular
one of them would have prevented this particular disaster. But
it's all good that we're having a conversation, I guess,
about what we can do to minimize derailments and make
communities feel a little more confident that lethal chemicals aren't
being dangerously handled in their backyard. It's like, that's all good.
(12:44):
What frustrates me is that for some of these on
some of these people on the right, like that's not enough.
It's not enough for it to be about the story
to be about corporate greed or deregulation, things that we
could actually debate. They always have to bring in a
white victimization component to it because otherwise it's just not
I don't know, it's not interesting, right, you know, it's
(13:06):
not if it's just about corporate greed and deregulated railroads.
The thing I'm struck by, and I just wrote this
piece about how I wonder if there's like a lane
for a quote unquote normal Republican candidate. It's a good question, right,
there isn't, but I mean maybe there is, but probably
there isn't. But the question is, like, one of the
things I'm struck by is what Jared and Bill Steppian
(13:29):
decided not to do a twenty twenty policy platform for
the Republican Party, and then in twenty twenty two, Mitch
McConnell decided not to release policy ideals before or policy
initiatives before twenty twenty two. And what I'm struck by is, like, really,
(13:50):
why they get so deep into these culture wars and
the racism. I mean, besides the fact that whatever they
clearly the base likes it, but some of it is
because they don't have very popular legislation. I think another
reason for it is that it's become the sort of
self petrooting feedback loop where this sort of supercharged, these
(14:11):
rage inducing tropes kind of create an expectation in the audience,
in the far right audience, for more of it, and
that's the only thing that actually gets people really going.
So they just it's sort of like they're sort of
sucked into a vortex of this kind of culture war
and this reactionary culture warring. There's some Huberts there too, right,
because they did win the Virginia governor's race for the
(14:34):
first time in a while. Glenn Youngcan did campaign on
a bunch of school related culture war issues, although I
do think that was complicated by the fact that what
was really weighing on parents were the pandemic closures. Right. Yeah,
What I thought was so interesting was these Republicans had
a very good opportunity. The school closings were unpopular, right,
(14:59):
even though they were necessary, and they started because of
anxiety because we didn't know how the virus was spread.
But then they went on probably a lot longer than
any of us wanted. And some of that was because
of the teachers union, which we love and support deeply
in this podcast. But there was problems getting teachers back
into the classroom for obvious reasons, because they didn't want
(15:22):
to get sick and die. But I do think that
Republicans had an opening there. But you know, that was
like two years ago, and so now for them to
be like it's parents' rights, it's all about parents rights,
Like nobody's closing a school for COVID. I mean, that
hasn't happened in a long time, and so this story
doesn't make sense without the kind of they saw an
(15:44):
opening and then they're now on it two years too late. Yeah.
And also I think Ronda sense is undeniable. Reelection success,
which was a tremendous victory for him and them, also
kind of feeds the sense that these issues are big
winners for them, and I think that's maybe true in
decentis this case, although it might be kind of complicated,
(16:06):
But at the same time, outside of Florida and outside
of the Virginia governor's race, a bunch of these candidates
ran on some pretty virulent right wing culture warring, especially
around schools and LGBTQ rights and stuff, and they lost.
And that this was in a cycle where they were
heavily favored. And what's odd to me is that the
(16:28):
kind of hubrists that these issues, that reactionary culture waring
is a big winner for them, seems undiminished by all
the contrary evidence that it works. I mean, it's a
mixed picture, right, Like, correct me if I'm wrong, But
I think you know you probably agree with me that
the picture is not uniformly a positive one for cultural liberals. Right,
it's right, it's bad. That De Santis is doing so well.
(16:51):
It's it's troubling that Juncan was able to win on
those issues. But at the same time we say that
there's a whole bunch of contrary evidence showing that in
place like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Arizona, real swing territory.
Maybe Michigan lest so, but in real swing territory, democrats
were able to defeat the culture warriors. And that just
doesn't enter the picture for the right, like the Chris
(17:14):
Rufo types, they're just They're humors is undiminished and it's
just weird. Well, it's good for liberals, right, I mean
like they have now lost. They lost mid terms, they
lost twenty eighteen. I mean, ask Senator herschel Walker how
it's going, right, It's not so. I do think the
good news is they seem to not have any sense
(17:34):
of how unpopular this is in the rest of the world.
This was amazing. I appreciate you so much. I hope
you will come back, Yes, of course I will. Thanks
for having me on. Ruth Benjiyat is the author of
strong Men, How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall.
(17:56):
Welcome to Fast Politics. Ruth, thank you. I'm glad to
be back. So I wanted to ask you about this
national divorce, right, Marjorie Tyler Green, who is like at
this point, you know, kind of the intellectual powerhouse of
the GOP in the house, has been tweeting about a
(18:19):
national divorce. Can you explain to us the significance of
what people really mean when they talk about that. Yeah,
my take on it is it's very easy to ridicule her,
and it's tempting, but she's extremely dangerous because of the
power she holds now. She definitely is close with Kevin McCarthy,
(18:39):
sits on homeland security, and she has consistently made herself
the voice along with Tucker Carlson and others of points
of view of global autocracy, allied with the Kremlin, allied
with Russia that want to take down the US as
a superpower. And so the national divorce thing. Putin's biggest
(19:03):
trauma was the collapse of the Soviet Union when it
fell apart at the end of the Cold War and
it imploded from within. And he's in my book and
he's never gotten over that. He wishes heartily that other democracies,
or that democracies would all meet the fate of the
Soviet Union, which means he's been funding secessionist movements, separatist
(19:28):
movements all over the world. Brexit was incredible operation of success,
and so the big prizes of course for him, it's
been for many years bringing down US democracy. You know,
he's given support to California's secessionis Texas, and then we
have our own, obviously, the whole legacy of the Civil War.
(19:48):
So these come together, these giant narratives of US history
and global autocracy come together in Marjorie Taylor Green's statement,
and it's highly dangerous but very revealing to take her seriously,
right right, I want to ask you about sort of
the authoritarian leaning we're seeing here, because when we get
(20:09):
going with Trumps, um, okay, we see that's authoritarian. But
it seems to me alike there's now a large part
of the Goop, like when it comes to De Santis,
that is also authoritarian. I was wondering if you could
talk to us a little bit about that the GOP,
which of course the Santis is arguably part of the
future of the goop as Trump for many, if not
(20:33):
for his base, seems to be the past. So the
GOP has become an autocratic party. It is aligned its platforms,
it's rhetoric, the things it cares about, its homophobia, its
obsession with wokeness, all these things are aligned with the
autocratic parties of Hungary, of Turkey, of all of the
(20:56):
ones all over the world, and of course the hub
in Moscow. And it's been very difficult for Americans to
see that. It's very scary to think because we are
uniquely vulnerable, because we're a bipartisan system. We only have
these two giant parties. I mean, I know there's the
third party, the Forward Party formed Now we don't talk
about the Forward Party on this podcast. Yeah, okay, So
(21:18):
it's we have the two parties and what happens rhetorical
but not rhetorical question when one of the two parties
exits democracy and becomes a force inside the nation for
taking democracy down. This is the reality. And there's been
studies that have come out this year last year that
really look at comparative politics, studies that look at all
(21:40):
the rhetoric and the platforms, and some of them may
say they're conservatives, but they are not. They are aligned
with all of the autocratic parties in the world, and
then Tucker Carlson, you know, yes, he gets a lot
of attention, but a systematic analysis of him. He is
championing Wilsonaro when he was there, surrection, and of course
(22:02):
the relationship of him and the GOP with Hungary it's
very very close or bonds like their mentor in all
things autocratic. We have to just recognize that this is
the reality. And DeSantis, you know, I started writing about
him in twenty twenty one saying that he is making
Florida into a model autocracy. He's rehearsing on the state level,
(22:24):
using his government governor powers to see what that would
look like in America. So we have to follow that
very very closely. And all the talking points, you know,
the homophobic legislation, the racist legislation, it's going to look differently,
it articulates differently in the American context, but again it
(22:44):
aligns with autocratic governments and parties all over the world. Right,
It's so interesting that we find ourselves in this shift.
I'm always curious, like, how did we get here? How
do you think the Republican Party got to this? I
think that they were already moving in this direction in
(23:05):
terms of embracing white nationalism, a radical populism, radical right
wing populism. This was the Tea Party. Bannon has been
very important. But this is what happens in history when
somebody like Trump, a charismatic demagogue, comes on the scene,
they consciously address themselves to all extremists. They create a
(23:26):
big tent for all kinds of extremists, you know, just racists,
neo Nazis. They give permission to people to be intolerant,
to be authoritarian. He also used his rallies from twenty
fifteen on. This was the basis of the report I
wrote for the January sixth Committee. He used his rallies
(23:48):
to emotionally retrain people and to santisism is continuing this
to think that violence is okay, that violence might even
be necessary, that violence is the way that you solve
political problems, and you deal with your enemies, and you
do have to have them as enemies. So these were
processes that went on over the last five years that
(24:11):
have gotten us to where we are now. Do we
think that this can scale what we've seen historically, and
by historically I mean since twenty fifteen. Is this sort
of sense in which Trumpism has not historically scaled so
(24:31):
you know, like Carrie Lake was not able to take
the mantle. Even Don Junior has not been able to
take the mantle. So my question for you is, how
does De Santis, who's like Trump but without the personality,
take the mantle. Yeah, so I had just written myself
a note to talk about this. It's depressing but interesting
(24:55):
in a systemic, big picture thing. When somebody like Trump
comes on the scene, who's incredible, loose canon, he does
the job that we just talked about before. He radicalizes everyone.
He submits the party to an authoritarian political culture. Loyalty
is all that matters, violence all that, but those people
are so out there that they often can't be sustained,
(25:18):
and it creates a need among many Conservatives and others
for somebody who is more normalized, somebody who's more disciplined extremists.
So that's De Santis, who integrates and absorbs literally even
the hand gestures all kinds of stuff from Trump, but
he's too smart to ever say, well, I could stand
(25:41):
on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone. He's not going to
talk about personally shooting anyone, but he's fine if other
people do, right. So that's a systemic change and it
happens in other countries. Happened in the Philippines, where you
had Duterte who was like, I love throwing people out
of helicopters. I'd do it again tomorrow. He was like
(26:03):
so violent, so out there, and then people got tired
of that and he stepped aside, and they have Marcos now,
who's the representative of the past military regime but looks
quote more normal. Right. The one thing that might save
American democracy I'm laughing because otherwise I'll start crying, is
(26:26):
that there's a possibility, right that Trump will not go quietly.
This is not the air Trump picked, No, no, and
we should never expect him to go quietly in any way.
And he's still leading in many polls. So the genius
of the Big Lie, which truly was one of the
top propaganda campaigns it will go down as such of
(26:47):
the twenty first century, is that when you have a
personality cult which is formidable like Trump's, the Big Lie
allowed his followers to keep seeing him as the winner,
and Bosonaro did the same thing. That's how you get
people who stage an insurrection for you. They never give
up on you. So we can expect him to not
(27:08):
step aside quietly indeed become far more pugnacious. That's why
he's you know, they're with Nick Fuentes, you know, And
that's where Marjorie Taylor Green, So you think the Nick
Fuentes meeting is a is actually a real thing and
not just an accident. Where does he have to go
if he goes more to the center, that's Ronta Santis.
(27:30):
So he goes the opposite direction. And he really truly
has an autocratic personality. He matches all the people in
my book. When they're threatened, they never become more centrist.
They become way more extremist, and they will truly burn
the whole place down as revenge. If they think they're
going down, they blame their people. We know he doesn't
(27:51):
care about anybody, right, He doesn't care if you live
or die from COVID or from anything. So we can
expect him to try and make as much chaos and
disarray as possible. But there is a world where he
just destroys the Republican Party, Yes, there is. That's the
bright spot. Yes. And in August twenty sixteen, I wrote
(28:13):
a piece for The Atlantic, an American authoritarian on Trump,
and I ended up saying it was like comparing him
with Mussolini when MUSSLINI was a Prime Minister of democracy.
And it ended by saying that Trump was going to
take the Republican Party and transform it out of all
recognition and would probably destroy it. Right, that's the best
(28:33):
case scenario, yes, but in the process of destroying it,
because we are the other unique thing about America is
the guns and the violence. It could be rough times.
Oh yeah. The positive thing is it's as we see
from the people like Kerry Lake and Mark Fincham who
were not able to prevail, there's a limit to Americans
(28:55):
appetites for this kind of thing. Unfortunately, the medium term
solution could be de Santis, who will be like our
victor orbon who will be smooth talking and transform American
to some kind of autocracy. Hopefully none of this happens
because there is a continuation of the midterms in a
democratic ground swell. We don't have to go through this
(29:17):
at all. That's, of course, my fervent hope for my country. Yeah. Yeah,
so horrible. I mean, it's just such a grim reality.
I want to ask you just give us a little bit,
because I agree that to Santa is an authoritarian. But
just explain to our listeners, to my dad, hi, dad,
(29:39):
what the things are that make you know he's an authoritarian.
His style of leadership is one that's based on bullying people,
right on firing people who won't do his bidding, so
that the attorney general. That's one big thing. There's a
quote that was said anonymously by a form of Florida
(29:59):
legislation said there's no second chances with him. If you
cross him, you're dead. And this could also refer to
Trump and many other of these leaders So his personal
and also his remoteness from people, all of these personal
qualities they do matter in this style of leadership because
they set the tone for how you deal with political opponents.
(30:20):
And we've seen, you know what he does. Then there's
all of his policies, which again match the GOP. But
he's really making Florida. He's practicing what's called autocratic capture.
That is where you put radicals who share your view
extremeness in charge of your institutions. So we have the
Department of Health. He has a conspiracy theorist as his
(30:43):
chief of health, and we saw what happened with his
COVID policies. Now it's the Department of Education where there's
you know, the enormous anti woe G anti CRT capture,
and so you intimidate, you bully, you let you use law,
so you have the legislation. And he's making new College
an example to be scaled up. So you have to
(31:04):
make an example and then you intimidate, you use law,
and you use intimidation and then you scale it up.
So he's very consciously doing these test cases. That's another
authoritarian thing. Interesting. Yeah, the education stuff is so interesting.
I have another, like slightly annoying because it's a weirdly
optimistic question, but is there a world where this gets
(31:29):
where they're like, and again, there are no heroes in
this Republican party if we've seen anything, that's true. But
is there a world where somebody like Mitt Romney. I mean,
this has not happened since twenty fifteen, so I'm not
that optimistic, But is there a world where more normal
Republicans go come in and say like, this is not
(31:49):
who we are or now it could happen because an
authoritarian party ends up doing this thing. Well, in our
country it's called rhino where you eat your own as
you become more radicalized. And the preface here I didn't
say it before, is that January sixth was a hugely
radicalizing thing for the party because they saw that and
(32:10):
people like Marjorie Taylor Green who openly boast about like,
if I'd planned the coup, it would have succeeded and
there would have been more guns. So it gives people
permission to see the possibilities of autocratic takeovers. So that
was very radicalizing. But these processes of as the party
becomes more extreme, they turned back on each other because
(32:31):
just as Trump needed people to be more and more loyal, right,
because the longer they stay, the more paranoid they get.
These parties will become more and more extremist, and so
at some point they're going to turn on each other.
And that already happened many times during Trump, where people
who voted for his impeachment had to buy body armor
the Republicans. That could very well spark some kind of
(32:54):
counter movement, and we're already seeing it's a little bit
like the older GOP and the newer gpon you crane,
where Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are like, no, we
have to support Ukraine exactly. It's not really age based
because Paul Gossar is not so much younger of course, right.
It's radicalization based. Yes. So the reason this can happen
(33:18):
is that there are no other parties for these people
to go to. The bipartisan thing is when we do
any kind of a comparative analysis, we have to keep
coming back to like these people don't have anywhere to go, Like,
they can't just go to another party, and then that
third party becomes the conservative challenge. There could be a
movement to reform from within because there is no other choice.
(33:40):
Oh okay, that's really interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ruth.
I hope you'll come back anytime. It's always a pleasure.
I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and
you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of
pieces of punditentry each week. This is why every week
I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles
(34:02):
on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love
having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up
at Fast politics pod dot com and click the tab
to join our mailing list. That's fast politicspod dot com.
Aaron Blake is a senior political reporter at the Washington Post.
(34:24):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Aaron Blake, Thank you for having me.
Very delighted. Okay, so first we have to talk about
this George grand jury foreman's media tour, because I am
not a lawyer, but that didn't strike me. So I mean,
I want to just sort of set the scene here.
(34:44):
She is the foreman. It is a special grand jury,
so I hope you'll explain to our listeners just how
that differs from a normal grand jury, and then also
a little bit about her Roldwind media tour. The process
in George differs from some other states. Basically, there are
likely to be two grand juries involved. One is a
(35:06):
special grand jury which hears evidence and makes recommendations. And
then at this point that special grand jury is done
with its duties, and at that point the district Attorney,
which is Fanny Willis, can try to seek an indictment
or indictments from what would be a separate regular grand jury,
which will not include this fore woman or the other
people who have taken part in the process so far.
(35:27):
So it's important to note that at the outset that
there's a degree of separation here which is not a
woman the fore woman who's speaking out, who is going
to be making decisions on indictments. Right, the case has
already left her hands, right, she's done. So she definitely
wouldn't be talking if this was still going on, if
she was still involved in the process. But even the
(35:48):
fact that she is speaking even when the process is
over is unusual and in some people's minds, problematic, some
of the experts I spoke to, because this is a
situation in which people haven't been in I did, And
there is an oath that these grand jurors take to
not discuss deliberations unless they're called upon to do so,
and so to have somebody like this to be talking
(36:10):
about things, even in extremely vague ways, which she generally has,
is unusual. And there is some thought among the experts
that I talked to that it could be raised at
a future trial if somebody is charged to argue that
there is something untoward about this process because this special
Grandeur has decided to speak out in these ways. The
experts are not the only people who avoid in on this.
(36:32):
Donald Trump, right, I think he got at this after
some other people started talking about it. You don't think
it was that was anything to cast it as a
witch hunt, right, But I think the process really got
started after CNN did its own interview with this woman,
Emily Cores, and one of their legal analysts, Elijnig, who
I tend to have a good regard for, called it
(36:54):
a horrible idea for her to be speaking out like
this and saying that this was something that would draw
Trump or whoever's lawyers to move to dismiss the charges
if it ever comes to that. The people I spoke
to don't think it would be that serious like this
would lead to a dismissal. But there are other ways
in which it can matter, including in getting transcripts of
(37:15):
the special grand jury for defense lawyers things like that.
And so the experts say, is generally just not a
good idea to be weighing in at any length or
on anything in particular that could create problems down the line. Right.
It certainly seems like just unnecessary risk. Yeah, I think
that's right. The thing that most people are focused on is,
(37:36):
of course, she's being asked, did you guys recommend that
Donald Trump be charged or his allies be charged? And
she's kind of talk around, talked around that while offering
some interesting answers that are being passed because we all
want to know where this process is headed. But I
think when it comes to the parts of the things
that she said that could come up in future cases,
(37:56):
it's more when she has provided some kind of offhand
comments about who was taking the fifth or who was
funny and who was forthcoming, and things like that which
could be construed, if argued in a certain ways, as
shedding some light on the deliberations of this grand jury,
which is which is where the prohibition lies. So I
(38:16):
think that's that's what we're likely to hear more of
down the line, rather than you know, her commentary about
whether Trump is going to be charged or not. Yeah,
I mean I also thought like the whole thing where
she's like I wanted to look him in the eye
and then she was like giggling. I mean, as someone
who myself is a partisan, that struck me as like
not great for either. So for the rule of law,
(38:40):
you know, it's that, and it's talking about an ice
cream party that District Attorney Fanny Willis's office through for
the special grand jurors, it's her talking in various ways
about what these witnesses said how forthcoming they were. I mean,
these are these are the kinds of things that at
least approach talking about what the deliberations were like, even
if she's not going into significant detail. I think if
(39:02):
you watched the CNN interview in particular, when she started
doing cable news interviews NBC News as well, she seemed
to relish the attention that she was getting. Yeah, not great. Yeah, yeah,
but you know, maybe that's not the best thing for
our judicial process here. Yeah, it's a good point. When
(39:23):
I saw that, I was like, oh my god, what,
why is this happening? Like just this is a nightmare
for all parties involved, and especially because it's been a
bad a little bit of a spread for judicial you
know what's happening there. So I want to ask you
about You've written a bunch of pieces, but there are
two things I want to talk to you about really
that felisteners of this podcast are pretty interested in. One
(39:45):
is this twenty twenty four Senate map, because it's never
too early to worry about twenty twenty four. It's a
bad map, right for Democrats. Yeah, there's no question. I
mean the Senate map, of course, is different every two year.
Years it depends on which states are up. And you know,
if one side had a good election in six years ago,
that could mean there's a lot of opportunities for the
(40:07):
other side to win those seats back. And what you
see when you look at the twenty twenty four Senate
map is basically the best eight or so opportunities for
one side or the other to pick off a seat
from the other party. All of those are Democratic health
seats that Republicans can go for. I mean, these are
the closest states in the past presidential elections. Three red
(40:31):
states in Ohio, West Virginia, in Montana, which which will
be big opportunities in a presidential election year. And the
best opportunities Democrats have are Florida and Texas. Florida of
courch which has gone significantly for Republicans in this last
election by sixteen plus points in every statewide race, and
then Texas, where yes it's gotten more competitive in recent years,
(40:51):
but we're still talking about a state where Democrats haven't
won statewide since nineteen ninety four in any race. So
when that's the map, it really and when your majority
is only two seats at this point, you know Democrats
can lose one or two seats that pulled the majority,
it becomes very difficult, regardless of where the environment is,
for Democrats to hold the Senate beyond the next two years. Yeah, exactly.
(41:15):
I mean the map looks really bad though. Tester is
now running, which I guess is good. But you know,
West Virginia, I mean, there are a lot of states
that are not democratic states. The other thing I wanted
to talk to you a little bit about was these
encouraging signs for Democrats in these first twenty three elections.
And you're talking about a election that we have talked
(41:38):
about a lot in this podcast, which is the Wisconsin
Supreme Court. Can you explain because it's a primary that's
an open primary, it's not open Can you explain this
to our listeners. It's a technically nonpartisan race, So these
candidates are not on the ballot with ours and d's
next to their names. And it's also an open primary,
so you know, you could have, you know, a bunch
(41:59):
of candidates that are right leaning and a munch that
are left leaning, or one of one and a bunch
of the other. All that matters is the two candidates
that get the most votes. So it's kind of like
a top two primary, which you might have seen in
a state like Washington and California. We pretty much knew
that one of these candidates was going to be more
left leaning and the other candidate was going to be
between two more conservative people who have been aligned with Republicans.
(42:24):
What we wound up seeing was that the left leaning candidates,
the two of them, got about fifty four percent of
the vote, whereas the two right leaning candidates got about
forty six percent. And that's better for Democrats than you know,
of course recent presidential elections in Wisconsin, right, usually they're tight, right. Yeah.
And also there was a two twenty Supreme Court race
(42:44):
where the first vote, the open primary, when you split
it up like this in the you know who leaned
which way, it was very evenly split between the two sides,
and that really set the stage for a very intense
race between the final two candidates. Yeah. So now I
just have one more question about this idea of what
this means exactly, because could two liberals have won? Yeah,
(43:06):
no question. I mean we see that from time to
time in California, where we'll see two Democrats emerge in
the top two primary or two Republicans. It could have
been in this case, but the situation was such that
one of the left leaning candidates that a judge from
Milwaukee was with the clear front runner for her sides,
you know, effective nomination, and the other one was going
(43:27):
to go to one of these two conservative candidates, and
the gap between the first and second place left leaning
candidate wound up being such that there wasn't really a
contest there. The Republican candidate, though, who won, was a
trumpy candidate and who had been on the Supreme Court
before and lost reelection. People might know the background better
than I do, but I know both of these candidates
(43:49):
were involved in Republican party politics to some degree. So,
you know, some states have these judicial races where you know,
judges are appointed, you don't have to actually campaign for
the and when you do have a campaign, you wind
up having judges who are, you know, doing campaign things
and taking very partisan positions in advance of cases they
(44:09):
might hear. So the judiciary is much more politicized than
it used to be, or at least more overtly politicized.
But this takes it to another level when you're going
to have millions and maybe tens of millions of dollars
flooding into this race because of worship rights around the line,
things like that, and that creates a situation in which
a judge is going to say I like Donald Trump
(44:30):
because that's going to get them a seat at the
table in the general election. Right, right, No, it's so interesting.
Besides the Wisconsin, Virginia's fourth congressional district, there was an
election there. Talk to me about that. Yeah, So the
Wisconsin race was the most watched, but it wasn't the
only race on Tuesday where the left leaning Democratic candidate
(44:53):
overperformed the fundamentals of where they were running. There was
a special election for a congressional seat in Virginia where
there was a lawmaker who died after the twenty twenty
two election, and the Democrat there won by about forty
nine points at last check. And this is a district
that Biden won by thirty six. The former incumbent was
winning by a round thirty and was actually pretty close
(45:14):
in the gubernatorial election that Glen young Can won. So
this and a couple other special elections in New Hampshire
and Kentucky for state legislative office kind of continue the trend.
We saw late in the twenty twenty two cycle where
Democrats were suddenly after Rove Wade Fell, doing a lot
better in special elections, in these kind of off not
(45:36):
on non election day races, and that proved to be
a pretty good signal of where things were. And I think,
at least for now, it suggests that at least electorally speaking,
Democrats are getting their base out more than Republicans are
right now. Yeah, talk to me about the Kentucky race,
the state Senate, Yeah, state Senate race. You know, this
is another, just like the Virginia race, a very Democratic
leaning district in Louisville. The comparison we're making here is
(45:59):
not odemocrat one. It's Democrats won by more than they
generally win in this district. And so this was a
district that Biden won by, you know, a little bit
more than thirty points, but the Democrat in this race
won by fifty four. New Hampshire was a state house race.
They have these little, tiny state house districts where about
two thousand people are voting, and this was a race
(46:21):
that was actually a literal tie on election Day twenty
twenty two. And in the rerun of this race, the
Democrat won by eleven points, so a significant shift even
from what was a pretty good election for Democrats in
twenty twenty two. Yeah, I'll say, very interesting. Do you
have any sense of like what these the sort of
(46:43):
Senate races that are going to really be rough for
Democrats are going to be. Yeah, So, you know, I
think that you mentioned John Tester announced this week that
he will seek another term. That's huge for Democrats because
Montana is a state that's probably gone if he retires.
I think that's the case to some degree with Shared
Brown in Ohio, who's also going to be running. These
(47:05):
are two candidates who have done better than you would
expect Democrats to do in those states, but they also
have run in good election cycles. Twenty twelve was when
Obama was being reelected. Twenty eighteen was when Democrats were
retaking the House. There's no guarantee it's going to be
as favorable in an environment this year, So I think
that it's obvious Republicans are going to go hard after that.
(47:25):
And the next big thing I think to watch for
here is what Joe Mansion does. Does he seek reelection
because you know I talked about Montana being gone if
Tester retired. West Virginia has definitely gone almost one hundred
percent if Joe Mansion doesn't run for that seat again,
and so you can bet that Democrats are really leading
hard on him to run again. So those three red
states are the big ones. And beyond that, you're talking
(47:47):
about states like Pennsylvania, Michigan where there's an open seat
being a big one, Wisconsin potentially kind of these rust
belt states that have been so important in these recent
elections might well determine who can rolls the Senate, as
has become pretty much practice when it comes to designing
elections of late. Yeah, I mean really so interesting. Aaron Blake.
(48:08):
I hope he'll come back. Thank you, Well, he appreciate it.
Molly Jong Fast Yeah whatever, sorry, go on, Hi. Yes,
what this Rod Descant is the only thing worse than
him is the people he surrounds himself with in the
(48:29):
way his press people behave Listen man, as someone who
has seen that firsthand, Really, you and Christina Pashaw have
had some issues. I didn't notice. I mean, I think
that when you have a group of people who they
hope that if they attack people write about Rhonda Santis,
it will keep people from writing about Rhonda Santis and
(48:49):
that's what they're doing. Most recently, they decided that they
weren't going to do any interviews with MSNBC or NBC.
I would like to add he Era that this is
like me saying I won't write any pieces for Fox News, right,
a truly meaningful stand right. Like the last time that
(49:10):
Ron De Santiss went on NBC or MSNBC was probably
during a hurricane when they were one of the many
places covering it. But anyway, he said he wouldn't go
on it because he felt that Andrew Mitchell had maligned him.
I mean, it's brilliant because it's Andrew Mitchell. So the
chances of I mean her maligning him are quite are
(49:33):
quite small. You know. The idea here is that again
De santisis decided that a really good foil for him,
just like as it was a foil for Trump, is
the media, and so he's gonna go for it and
solidarity with Roun. I'm not going on MSNBC tonight, either.
Good for you. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
(49:54):
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the
best minds in politics. Makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going. And again thanks
for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And the legos have joined the eminem's
in being Woke. We have a show packed with thrilling,
thrilling stuff. Ruth ben Guiatt, author of Strong Men, How
They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall. We'll talk
(00:23):
to us about Ron De Santis's recent aggressions and the
stupidity of a national divorce. Then we'll talk to Washington
Post Aaron Blake about the Georgia grand Jury four women's
media tour causing problems. But first we have the Washington
Post Plumbline editor Greg Sargeant. Welcome too, Fast Politics, Greg Sargeant,
(00:46):
thanks for having me on. I always love stopping by.
We're delighted to have you in our post apocalyptic apocalypse.
So let's first talk about Tucker Carlson and his extremely
good friend and Kevin McCarthy. Sure this is not the
first time Kevin McCarthy and Tucker Carlson have had a
(01:08):
symbiotic relationship. In January, Tucker Carlson told Kevin McCarthy if
he wanted to be speaker, that he was going to
need to open a church commission and put Thomas Massey
as the head of it. Incredible move, remember that. Yeah,
the Committee to Weaponize Government un ironically named. Now Kevin
(01:30):
McCarthy has given Tucker Carlson a little prize. Yes, Kevin
McCarthy has apparently given exclusive access to all of the
January sixth Capital surveillance footage to Tucker Carlson. I think
we don't know exactly what the arrangement is, but it
may be and I stressed that this is a make
because I'm speculating it may be that the producers have
(01:53):
access to some sort of database where they're watching it
all a little bit similar to how the January sixth
Committee access that. Explain that more to me because I'm stupid. Well, okay,
so the January sixth Committee got access to the footage
because congressional committees and congressional leadership can get that kind
of thing from the Capitol Police if they ask for it,
(02:15):
and the committee did, and according to reports, and according
to my own reporting as well, the arrangement that was
worked out was that the committee investigators were allowed to
watch the footage from the surveillance cameras on some kind
of password protected database under fairly strict security constraints, and
(02:37):
they also took care to not air any footage at
the hearings unless it was cleared with the Capitol Police
first to avoid compromising security information. My strong suspicion is
that Tucker's Carlson his producers have a similar arrangement. Maybe
I don't know what happens if they want to air
(02:57):
parts of the footage yet, that kind of remains to
be seen. But my guess is that Tucker's producers are
watching the footage right now on a similar password protected
database at the Capital. I guess something like that. Oh wow,
I mean, I guess that's a little bit better that
they're not just taking the video and watching it in
(03:20):
their office. Right. It's not like, as far as I
can tell, it wasn't like just turned over to them
on a thumb. Jo Tucker isn't just like sort of like,
you know, watching it in wherever the hell he lives. Yeah,
it's such an interesting and strange kind of reality we're
living in. So explain to me what your thesis was
(03:41):
about this turnover. So the piece that I did today
argued that if McCarthy is going to give this exclusive
access to the footage to Tucker Carlson, who's a known
liar and propagandist who has deceived people serially about January
sixth for a very long time, then Democrats should give
(04:02):
access to the footage to major news organizations. I was
able to confirm that that's a real possibility. As you know,
as we talked about earlier, the January sixth Committee investigators
already accessed it. But right now Democratic leaders and I
think committee heads too, can request access to that footage
(04:23):
and essentially do what they want with it. I think
that's sort of being figured out right now by a
lot of people. It certainly seems highly plausible that if
Democratic leaders wanted to, they could access the footage, set
up some sort of arrangement with major news organizations allowing
them to view it in some way or other, maybe
subject to some kind of vetting for before they use
(04:46):
it or report on it. Maybe it gets vetted by
Capitol Police for security concerns, or maybe news organizations wouldn't
be willing to do that, but some kind of arrangement
could conceivably be worked out. Yeah, makes sense. I want
to ask you this. I asked you this before, but
it really important. What do you think this sort of
(05:06):
reason is that Democrats haven't done this before. Now. Their
reaction to the McCarthy decision to turn it over to
Tucker was that it would be highly compromising in security terms.
And as we talked about earlier, the January six Committee
members were exceptionally careful to not air footage without getting
it vetted by Capitol Police first to be sure they
(05:28):
weren't compromising things. And so my guess is that they've
been hesitant to make it available on similar grounds. And
I guess we should also recall that the January sixth
Committee report really only just came out a few months ago, right,
whatever the reason, though, I mean, I think that they
could do it now. By the way, I think we
should note that it's actually legitimate to be worried about
(05:50):
the security concerns here. The right wing is sort of
playing this slimy little game right now where they're pretending
that there's like not actually any issues whatsoever associated with
making the footage available to people, and there are. I
still think that it could be worked around, and I
think that Demoscrats should try to do that, But the
(06:11):
way the rights approached This is just to sort of
erase the actual complications involved, because that's what they do, right,
They just you know, they deceive and mislead pretty much
all the time, and that's what they're doing here too, right, Right,
I want to ask you about the Avanka Jared subpoena situation.
(06:32):
What is happening? Well, I don't really know. I mean,
I think obviously they're the investigators. They're being pretty damn
aggressive at this point. I think we can see that, right,
And it's kind of hard to imagine that there won't
be indictments at some point on one of these fronts,
isn't it? I do badly when I need to predict
(06:52):
the future. It certainly seems like he's being aggressive in
a way that Muller wasn't. Though Mueller did, didn't he
have those two testify? I can't recall that, honestly. Yeah,
it's like ten million years ago. Yes, that probably happened.
Let's talk about Tucko Crawlson's interest in the Ohio train disaster,
(07:14):
because you wrote about that yesterday. Can you give us
a little bit of a sort of four one one
on how that went down? There's been an effort on
the right to kind of racialize the East Palestine train derailments.
And I should be fair here, like that's not the
only thing that people like Tucker Carlson and JD. Vans
are saying. There's actually a fair amount of things that
(07:36):
we're hearing from people like Jade Vans and Mark Urrubio
that I think we could agree with. About the need
to hold Norfolk Southern the railway company accountable, about the
need to figure out why the accident happened in a
good faith way, About the need to make sure that
government agencies are properly and effectively communicating a sense to
(07:59):
people that they should feel reassured about chemical dangers. At
this point, these are all legit things I think that
some of these populess right wingers have talked about. But
in addition to that, there's been a kind of strain
that's developed, whether essentially trying to turn the disaster area
into a symbol of a place that woke Democrats have
a band and woke elite Democrats of a band, and
(08:21):
because it's got a very high percentage of white people,
and they're sort of saying this in all kinds of
sleazy little ways with various little insinuations the way they
always do, and then they kind of piously pretend that's
not what they're doing, but it is. And so one
of the things they've done is they've pulled a quote
(08:42):
from Transportation Secretary Pete Buddha Judge in which he was
talking about the problem of white construction workers being imported
into high jobless minority neighborhoods to work on projects in them,
and he was talking about whether that's something that should
be addressed through efforts to hire from the communities and
(09:05):
essentially talking about how to increase opportunities for minorities in
construction work. And they've taken that quote and linked it
to the East Palestine disaster by saying the following, Oh,
Pete Buddha Judge is neglecting this heavily white community that's
suffering in a disaster because he thinks a bigger problem
in American life is that there are too many white
(09:27):
construction workers. Right. So this is like when Pete talked
about this idea that the Robert Moses Highways, which were
built two black areas, were racist, and they were like,
it's the racist highways, right, So they're making light of
a very known fact what I have argued about this
is Look, if you want to disagree with Pete Buddha
(09:49):
Judge about that, about that question, about that policy question
of whether something should be done to make more construction
work in minority communities of available to its residents, fine,
go ahead and disagree. But the sleazy thing is to
connect it to the East Palestine disaster. Right, they create
the impression that the federal government and the woke Democrats
(10:12):
who run it are deliberately neglecting a heavily white area
suffering through an environmental chemical disaster, heavily neglecting that community
because their score settling with whites in some other way.
The implication of it all put together is right, that
there's an intentionality there. This is a Republican idea that
(10:33):
they're like not taking care of you because they're making
the government take care of someone else, right them, right,
taking care of them. Everything is always about that. It's always, oh,
they're taking care of them, not you, right, exactly right.
And like I say, I mean, I don't care if
somebody wants to criticize Pete Buddha Judge for saying that
about white construction workers, Go ahead, who cares, Like let's
(10:54):
have that argument or whatever, but like, don't connect it
to the East Palestine disaster, right right, right, Well, it's
not relevant and it's really fundamentally very dishonest, which of
course is the it's sort of the brand. Yeah, it's
interesting to me because for so long we would hear
Trump rail and rail on regulation, right, like, you know,
(11:15):
I mean, one of his favorites, you know, things he
would say. It's say, for every regulation we have, there's another,
you know, regulation we're taking away. And it was like
I always thought, like, well, this is kind of nuts,
but this is what happens when you take away regulation.
So for example, even though this break regulation that came
(11:39):
from the Obama time wouldn't have necessarily affected this train,
there was an effort to have more regulation. And this
company had spent quite a lot of money on lobbyists
and had actually been working hard to push back this regulation.
And they had they had one lobbyist who had worked
in Joe Manchel office. All right, and it's an important
(12:02):
part of the story. And like I should stress to
be fair that some of these right wingers seem to
be saying the right things about the degree to which
the story implicates whether we need more heavily regulated railways
right on freight railways. And you know, there are a
bunch of things that are being debated right now that
(12:22):
seem it's a little hard to tell whether any particular
one of them would have prevented this particular disaster. But
it's all good that we're having a conversation, I guess,
about what we can do to minimize derailments and make
communities feel a little more confident that lethal chemicals aren't
being dangerously handled in their backyard. It's like, that's all good.
(12:44):
What frustrates me is that for some of these on
some of these people on the right, like that's not enough.
It's not enough for it to be about the story
to be about corporate greed or deregulation, things that we
could actually debate. They always have to bring in a
white victimization component to it because otherwise it's just not
I don't know, it's not interesting, right, you know, it's
(13:06):
not if it's just about corporate greed and deregulated railroads.
The thing I'm struck by, and I just wrote this
piece about how I wonder if there's like a lane
for a quote unquote normal Republican candidate. It's a good question, right,
there isn't, but I mean maybe there is, but probably
there isn't. But the question is, like, one of the
things I'm struck by is what Jared and Bill Steppian
(13:29):
decided not to do a twenty twenty policy platform for
the Republican Party, and then in twenty twenty two, Mitch
McConnell decided not to release policy ideals before or policy
initiatives before twenty twenty two. And what I'm struck by is, like, really,
(13:50):
why they get so deep into these culture wars and
the racism. I mean, besides the fact that whatever they
clearly the base likes it, but some of it is
because they don't have very popular legislation. I think another
reason for it is that it's become the sort of
self petrooting feedback loop where this sort of supercharged, these
(14:11):
rage inducing tropes kind of create an expectation in the audience,
in the far right audience, for more of it, and
that's the only thing that actually gets people really going.
So they just it's sort of like they're sort of
sucked into a vortex of this kind of culture war
and this reactionary culture warring. There's some Huberts there too, right,
because they did win the Virginia governor's race for the
(14:34):
first time in a while. Glenn Youngcan did campaign on
a bunch of school related culture war issues, although I
do think that was complicated by the fact that what
was really weighing on parents were the pandemic closures. Right. Yeah,
What I thought was so interesting was these Republicans had
a very good opportunity. The school closings were unpopular, right,
(14:59):
even though they were necessary, and they started because of
anxiety because we didn't know how the virus was spread.
But then they went on probably a lot longer than
any of us wanted. And some of that was because
of the teachers union, which we love and support deeply
in this podcast. But there was problems getting teachers back
into the classroom for obvious reasons, because they didn't want
(15:22):
to get sick and die. But I do think that
Republicans had an opening there. But you know, that was
like two years ago, and so now for them to
be like it's parents' rights, it's all about parents rights,
Like nobody's closing a school for COVID. I mean, that
hasn't happened in a long time, and so this story
doesn't make sense without the kind of they saw an
(15:44):
opening and then they're now on it two years too late. Yeah.
And also I think Ronda sense is undeniable. Reelection success,
which was a tremendous victory for him and them, also
kind of feeds the sense that these issues are big
winners for them, and I think that's maybe true in
decentis this case, although it might be kind of complicated,
(16:06):
But at the same time, outside of Florida and outside
of the Virginia governor's race, a bunch of these candidates
ran on some pretty virulent right wing culture warring, especially
around schools and LGBTQ rights and stuff, and they lost.
And that this was in a cycle where they were
heavily favored. And what's odd to me is that the
(16:28):
kind of hubrists that these issues, that reactionary culture waring
is a big winner for them, seems undiminished by all
the contrary evidence that it works. I mean, it's a
mixed picture, right, Like, correct me if I'm wrong, But
I think you know you probably agree with me that
the picture is not uniformly a positive one for cultural liberals. Right,
it's right, it's bad. That De Santis is doing so well.
(16:51):
It's it's troubling that Juncan was able to win on
those issues. But at the same time we say that
there's a whole bunch of contrary evidence showing that in
place like Michigan and Pennsylvania and Arizona, real swing territory.
Maybe Michigan lest so, but in real swing territory, democrats
were able to defeat the culture warriors. And that just
doesn't enter the picture for the right, like the Chris
(17:14):
Rufo types, they're just They're humors is undiminished and it's
just weird. Well, it's good for liberals, right, I mean
like they have now lost. They lost mid terms, they
lost twenty eighteen. I mean, ask Senator herschel Walker how
it's going, right, It's not so. I do think the
good news is they seem to not have any sense
(17:34):
of how unpopular this is in the rest of the world.
This was amazing. I appreciate you so much. I hope
you will come back, Yes, of course I will. Thanks
for having me on. Ruth Benjiyat is the author of
strong Men, How They Rise, Why They Succeed, How They Fall.
(17:56):
Welcome to Fast Politics. Ruth, thank you. I'm glad to
be back. So I wanted to ask you about this
national divorce, right, Marjorie Tyler Green, who is like at
this point, you know, kind of the intellectual powerhouse of
the GOP in the house, has been tweeting about a
(18:19):
national divorce. Can you explain to us the significance of
what people really mean when they talk about that. Yeah,
my take on it is it's very easy to ridicule her,
and it's tempting, but she's extremely dangerous because of the
power she holds now. She definitely is close with Kevin McCarthy,
(18:39):
sits on homeland security, and she has consistently made herself
the voice along with Tucker Carlson and others of points
of view of global autocracy, allied with the Kremlin, allied
with Russia that want to take down the US as
a superpower. And so the national divorce thing. Putin's biggest
(19:03):
trauma was the collapse of the Soviet Union when it
fell apart at the end of the Cold War and
it imploded from within. And he's in my book and
he's never gotten over that. He wishes heartily that other democracies,
or that democracies would all meet the fate of the
Soviet Union, which means he's been funding secessionist movements, separatist
(19:28):
movements all over the world. Brexit was incredible operation of success,
and so the big prizes of course for him, it's
been for many years bringing down US democracy. You know,
he's given support to California's secessionis Texas, and then we
have our own, obviously, the whole legacy of the Civil War.
(19:48):
So these come together, these giant narratives of US history
and global autocracy come together in Marjorie Taylor Green's statement,
and it's highly dangerous but very revealing to take her seriously,
right right, I want to ask you about sort of
the authoritarian leaning we're seeing here, because when we get
(20:09):
going with Trumps, um, okay, we see that's authoritarian. But
it seems to me alike there's now a large part
of the Goop, like when it comes to De Santis,
that is also authoritarian. I was wondering if you could
talk to us a little bit about that the GOP,
which of course the Santis is arguably part of the
future of the goop as Trump for many, if not
(20:33):
for his base, seems to be the past. So the
GOP has become an autocratic party. It is aligned its platforms,
it's rhetoric, the things it cares about, its homophobia, its
obsession with wokeness, all these things are aligned with the
autocratic parties of Hungary, of Turkey, of all of the
(20:56):
ones all over the world, and of course the hub
in Moscow. And it's been very difficult for Americans to
see that. It's very scary to think because we are
uniquely vulnerable, because we're a bipartisan system. We only have
these two giant parties. I mean, I know there's the
third party, the Forward Party formed Now we don't talk
about the Forward Party on this podcast. Yeah, okay, So
(21:18):
it's we have the two parties and what happens rhetorical
but not rhetorical question when one of the two parties
exits democracy and becomes a force inside the nation for
taking democracy down. This is the reality. And there's been
studies that have come out this year last year that
really look at comparative politics, studies that look at all
(21:40):
the rhetoric and the platforms, and some of them may
say they're conservatives, but they are not. They are aligned
with all of the autocratic parties in the world, and
then Tucker Carlson, you know, yes, he gets a lot
of attention, but a systematic analysis of him. He is
championing Wilsonaro when he was there, surrection, and of course
(22:02):
the relationship of him and the GOP with Hungary it's
very very close or bonds like their mentor in all
things autocratic. We have to just recognize that this is
the reality. And DeSantis, you know, I started writing about
him in twenty twenty one saying that he is making
Florida into a model autocracy. He's rehearsing on the state level,
(22:24):
using his government governor powers to see what that would
look like in America. So we have to follow that
very very closely. And all the talking points, you know,
the homophobic legislation, the racist legislation, it's going to look differently,
it articulates differently in the American context, but again it
(22:44):
aligns with autocratic governments and parties all over the world. Right,
It's so interesting that we find ourselves in this shift.
I'm always curious, like, how did we get here? How
do you think the Republican Party got to this? I
think that they were already moving in this direction in
(23:05):
terms of embracing white nationalism, a radical populism, radical right
wing populism. This was the Tea Party. Bannon has been
very important. But this is what happens in history when
somebody like Trump, a charismatic demagogue, comes on the scene,
they consciously address themselves to all extremists. They create a
(23:26):
big tent for all kinds of extremists, you know, just racists,
neo Nazis. They give permission to people to be intolerant,
to be authoritarian. He also used his rallies from twenty
fifteen on. This was the basis of the report I
wrote for the January sixth Committee. He used his rallies
(23:48):
to emotionally retrain people and to santisism is continuing this
to think that violence is okay, that violence might even
be necessary, that violence is the way that you solve
political problems, and you deal with your enemies, and you
do have to have them as enemies. So these were
processes that went on over the last five years that
(24:11):
have gotten us to where we are now. Do we
think that this can scale what we've seen historically, and
by historically I mean since twenty fifteen. Is this sort
of sense in which Trumpism has not historically scaled so
(24:31):
you know, like Carrie Lake was not able to take
the mantle. Even Don Junior has not been able to
take the mantle. So my question for you is, how
does De Santis, who's like Trump but without the personality,
take the mantle. Yeah, so I had just written myself
a note to talk about this. It's depressing but interesting
(24:55):
in a systemic, big picture thing. When somebody like Trump
comes on the scene, who's incredible, loose canon, he does
the job that we just talked about before. He radicalizes everyone.
He submits the party to an authoritarian political culture. Loyalty
is all that matters, violence all that, but those people
are so out there that they often can't be sustained,
(25:18):
and it creates a need among many Conservatives and others
for somebody who is more normalized, somebody who's more disciplined extremists.
So that's De Santis, who integrates and absorbs literally even
the hand gestures all kinds of stuff from Trump, but
he's too smart to ever say, well, I could stand
(25:41):
on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone. He's not going to
talk about personally shooting anyone, but he's fine if other
people do, right. So that's a systemic change and it
happens in other countries. Happened in the Philippines, where you
had Duterte who was like, I love throwing people out
of helicopters. I'd do it again tomorrow. He was like
(26:03):
so violent, so out there, and then people got tired
of that and he stepped aside, and they have Marcos now,
who's the representative of the past military regime but looks
quote more normal. Right. The one thing that might save
American democracy I'm laughing because otherwise I'll start crying, is
(26:26):
that there's a possibility, right that Trump will not go quietly.
This is not the air Trump picked, No, no, and
we should never expect him to go quietly in any way.
And he's still leading in many polls. So the genius
of the Big Lie, which truly was one of the
top propaganda campaigns it will go down as such of
(26:47):
the twenty first century, is that when you have a
personality cult which is formidable like Trump's, the Big Lie
allowed his followers to keep seeing him as the winner,
and Bosonaro did the same thing. That's how you get
people who stage an insurrection for you. They never give
up on you. So we can expect him to not
(27:08):
step aside quietly indeed become far more pugnacious. That's why
he's you know, they're with Nick Fuentes, you know, And
that's where Marjorie Taylor Green, So you think the Nick
Fuentes meeting is a is actually a real thing and
not just an accident. Where does he have to go
if he goes more to the center, that's Ronta Santis.
(27:30):
So he goes the opposite direction. And he really truly
has an autocratic personality. He matches all the people in
my book. When they're threatened, they never become more centrist.
They become way more extremist, and they will truly burn
the whole place down as revenge. If they think they're
going down, they blame their people. We know he doesn't
(27:51):
care about anybody, right, He doesn't care if you live
or die from COVID or from anything. So we can
expect him to try and make as much chaos and
disarray as possible. But there is a world where he
just destroys the Republican Party, Yes, there is. That's the
bright spot. Yes. And in August twenty sixteen, I wrote
(28:13):
a piece for The Atlantic, an American authoritarian on Trump,
and I ended up saying it was like comparing him
with Mussolini when MUSSLINI was a Prime Minister of democracy.
And it ended by saying that Trump was going to
take the Republican Party and transform it out of all
recognition and would probably destroy it. Right, that's the best
(28:33):
case scenario, yes, but in the process of destroying it,
because we are the other unique thing about America is
the guns and the violence. It could be rough times.
Oh yeah. The positive thing is it's as we see
from the people like Kerry Lake and Mark Fincham who
were not able to prevail, there's a limit to Americans
(28:55):
appetites for this kind of thing. Unfortunately, the medium term
solution could be de Santis, who will be like our
victor orbon who will be smooth talking and transform American
to some kind of autocracy. Hopefully none of this happens
because there is a continuation of the midterms in a
democratic ground swell. We don't have to go through this
(29:17):
at all. That's, of course, my fervent hope for my country. Yeah. Yeah,
so horrible. I mean, it's just such a grim reality.
I want to ask you just give us a little bit,
because I agree that to Santa is an authoritarian. But
just explain to our listeners, to my dad, hi, dad,
(29:39):
what the things are that make you know he's an authoritarian.
His style of leadership is one that's based on bullying people,
right on firing people who won't do his bidding, so
that the attorney general. That's one big thing. There's a
quote that was said anonymously by a form of Florida
(29:59):
legislation said there's no second chances with him. If you
cross him, you're dead. And this could also refer to
Trump and many other of these leaders So his personal
and also his remoteness from people, all of these personal
qualities they do matter in this style of leadership because
they set the tone for how you deal with political opponents.
(30:20):
And we've seen, you know what he does. Then there's
all of his policies, which again match the GOP. But
he's really making Florida. He's practicing what's called autocratic capture.
That is where you put radicals who share your view
extremeness in charge of your institutions. So we have the
Department of Health. He has a conspiracy theorist as his
(30:43):
chief of health, and we saw what happened with his
COVID policies. Now it's the Department of Education where there's
you know, the enormous anti woe G anti CRT capture,
and so you intimidate, you bully, you let you use law,
so you have the legislation. And he's making new College
an example to be scaled up. So you have to
(31:04):
make an example and then you intimidate, you use law,
and you use intimidation and then you scale it up.
So he's very consciously doing these test cases. That's another
authoritarian thing. Interesting. Yeah, the education stuff is so interesting.
I have another, like slightly annoying because it's a weirdly
optimistic question, but is there a world where this gets
(31:29):
where they're like, and again, there are no heroes in
this Republican party if we've seen anything, that's true. But
is there a world where somebody like Mitt Romney. I mean,
this has not happened since twenty fifteen, so I'm not
that optimistic, But is there a world where more normal
Republicans go come in and say like, this is not
(31:49):
who we are or now it could happen because an
authoritarian party ends up doing this thing. Well, in our
country it's called rhino where you eat your own as
you become more radicalized. And the preface here I didn't
say it before, is that January sixth was a hugely
radicalizing thing for the party because they saw that and
(32:10):
people like Marjorie Taylor Green who openly boast about like,
if I'd planned the coup, it would have succeeded and
there would have been more guns. So it gives people
permission to see the possibilities of autocratic takeovers. So that
was very radicalizing. But these processes of as the party
becomes more extreme, they turned back on each other because
(32:31):
just as Trump needed people to be more and more loyal, right,
because the longer they stay, the more paranoid they get.
These parties will become more and more extremist, and so
at some point they're going to turn on each other.
And that already happened many times during Trump, where people
who voted for his impeachment had to buy body armor
the Republicans. That could very well spark some kind of
(32:54):
counter movement, and we're already seeing it's a little bit
like the older GOP and the newer gpon you crane,
where Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham are like, no, we
have to support Ukraine exactly. It's not really age based
because Paul Gossar is not so much younger of course, right.
It's radicalization based. Yes. So the reason this can happen
(33:18):
is that there are no other parties for these people
to go to. The bipartisan thing is when we do
any kind of a comparative analysis, we have to keep
coming back to like these people don't have anywhere to go, Like,
they can't just go to another party, and then that
third party becomes the conservative challenge. There could be a
movement to reform from within because there is no other choice.
(33:40):
Oh okay, that's really interesting. Thank you, thank you, thank you, Ruth.
I hope you'll come back anytime. It's always a pleasure.
I know you, our dear listeners are very busy and
you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of
pieces of punditentry each week. This is why every week
I put together a newsletter of my five favorite articles
(34:02):
on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love
having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up
at Fast politics pod dot com and click the tab
to join our mailing list. That's fast politicspod dot com.
Aaron Blake is a senior political reporter at the Washington Post.
(34:24):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Aaron Blake, Thank you for having me.
Very delighted. Okay, so first we have to talk about
this George grand jury foreman's media tour, because I am
not a lawyer, but that didn't strike me. So I mean,
I want to just sort of set the scene here.
(34:44):
She is the foreman. It is a special grand jury,
so I hope you'll explain to our listeners just how
that differs from a normal grand jury, and then also
a little bit about her Roldwind media tour. The process
in George differs from some other states. Basically, there are
likely to be two grand juries involved. One is a
(35:06):
special grand jury which hears evidence and makes recommendations. And
then at this point that special grand jury is done
with its duties, and at that point the district Attorney,
which is Fanny Willis, can try to seek an indictment
or indictments from what would be a separate regular grand jury,
which will not include this fore woman or the other
people who have taken part in the process so far.
(35:27):
So it's important to note that at the outset that
there's a degree of separation here which is not a
woman the fore woman who's speaking out, who is going
to be making decisions on indictments. Right, the case has
already left her hands, right, she's done. So she definitely
wouldn't be talking if this was still going on, if
she was still involved in the process. But even the
(35:48):
fact that she is speaking even when the process is
over is unusual and in some people's minds, problematic, some
of the experts I spoke to, because this is a
situation in which people haven't been in I did, And
there is an oath that these grand jurors take to
not discuss deliberations unless they're called upon to do so,
and so to have somebody like this to be talking
(36:10):
about things, even in extremely vague ways, which she generally has,
is unusual. And there is some thought among the experts
that I talked to that it could be raised at
a future trial if somebody is charged to argue that
there is something untoward about this process because this special
Grandeur has decided to speak out in these ways. The
experts are not the only people who avoid in on this.
(36:32):
Donald Trump, right, I think he got at this after
some other people started talking about it. You don't think
it was that was anything to cast it as a
witch hunt, right, But I think the process really got
started after CNN did its own interview with this woman,
Emily Cores, and one of their legal analysts, Elijnig, who
I tend to have a good regard for, called it
(36:54):
a horrible idea for her to be speaking out like
this and saying that this was something that would draw
Trump or whoever's lawyers to move to dismiss the charges
if it ever comes to that. The people I spoke
to don't think it would be that serious like this
would lead to a dismissal. But there are other ways
in which it can matter, including in getting transcripts of
(37:15):
the special grand jury for defense lawyers things like that.
And so the experts say, is generally just not a
good idea to be weighing in at any length or
on anything in particular that could create problems down the line. Right.
It certainly seems like just unnecessary risk. Yeah, I think
that's right. The thing that most people are focused on is,
(37:36):
of course, she's being asked, did you guys recommend that
Donald Trump be charged or his allies be charged? And
she's kind of talk around, talked around that while offering
some interesting answers that are being passed because we all
want to know where this process is headed. But I
think when it comes to the parts of the things
that she said that could come up in future cases,
(37:56):
it's more when she has provided some kind of offhand
comments about who was taking the fifth or who was
funny and who was forthcoming, and things like that which
could be construed, if argued in a certain ways, as
shedding some light on the deliberations of this grand jury,
which is which is where the prohibition lies. So I
(38:16):
think that's that's what we're likely to hear more of
down the line, rather than you know, her commentary about
whether Trump is going to be charged or not. Yeah,
I mean I also thought like the whole thing where
she's like I wanted to look him in the eye
and then she was like giggling. I mean, as someone
who myself is a partisan, that struck me as like
not great for either. So for the rule of law,
(38:40):
you know, it's that, and it's talking about an ice
cream party that District Attorney Fanny Willis's office through for
the special grand jurors, it's her talking in various ways
about what these witnesses said how forthcoming they were. I mean,
these are these are the kinds of things that at
least approach talking about what the deliberations were like, even
if she's not going into significant detail. I think if
(39:02):
you watched the CNN interview in particular, when she started
doing cable news interviews NBC News as well, she seemed
to relish the attention that she was getting. Yeah, not great. Yeah, yeah,
but you know, maybe that's not the best thing for
our judicial process here. Yeah, it's a good point. When
(39:23):
I saw that, I was like, oh my god, what,
why is this happening? Like just this is a nightmare
for all parties involved, and especially because it's been a
bad a little bit of a spread for judicial you
know what's happening there. So I want to ask you
about You've written a bunch of pieces, but there are
two things I want to talk to you about really
that felisteners of this podcast are pretty interested in. One
(39:45):
is this twenty twenty four Senate map, because it's never
too early to worry about twenty twenty four. It's a
bad map, right for Democrats. Yeah, there's no question. I
mean the Senate map, of course, is different every two year.
Years it depends on which states are up. And you know,
if one side had a good election in six years ago,
that could mean there's a lot of opportunities for the
(40:07):
other side to win those seats back. And what you
see when you look at the twenty twenty four Senate
map is basically the best eight or so opportunities for
one side or the other to pick off a seat
from the other party. All of those are Democratic health
seats that Republicans can go for. I mean, these are
the closest states in the past presidential elections. Three red
(40:31):
states in Ohio, West Virginia, in Montana, which which will
be big opportunities in a presidential election year. And the
best opportunities Democrats have are Florida and Texas. Florida of
courch which has gone significantly for Republicans in this last
election by sixteen plus points in every statewide race, and
then Texas, where yes it's gotten more competitive in recent years,
(40:51):
but we're still talking about a state where Democrats haven't
won statewide since nineteen ninety four in any race. So
when that's the map, it really and when your majority
is only two seats at this point, you know Democrats
can lose one or two seats that pulled the majority,
it becomes very difficult, regardless of where the environment is,
for Democrats to hold the Senate beyond the next two years. Yeah, exactly.
(41:15):
I mean the map looks really bad though. Tester is
now running, which I guess is good. But you know,
West Virginia, I mean, there are a lot of states
that are not democratic states. The other thing I wanted
to talk to you a little bit about was these
encouraging signs for Democrats in these first twenty three elections.
And you're talking about a election that we have talked
(41:38):
about a lot in this podcast, which is the Wisconsin
Supreme Court. Can you explain because it's a primary that's
an open primary, it's not open Can you explain this
to our listeners. It's a technically nonpartisan race, So these
candidates are not on the ballot with ours and d's
next to their names. And it's also an open primary,
so you know, you could have, you know, a bunch
(41:59):
of candidates that are right leaning and a munch that
are left leaning, or one of one and a bunch
of the other. All that matters is the two candidates
that get the most votes. So it's kind of like
a top two primary, which you might have seen in
a state like Washington and California. We pretty much knew
that one of these candidates was going to be more
left leaning and the other candidate was going to be
between two more conservative people who have been aligned with Republicans.
(42:24):
What we wound up seeing was that the left leaning candidates,
the two of them, got about fifty four percent of
the vote, whereas the two right leaning candidates got about
forty six percent. And that's better for Democrats than you know,
of course recent presidential elections in Wisconsin, right, usually they're tight, right. Yeah.
And also there was a two twenty Supreme Court race
(42:44):
where the first vote, the open primary, when you split
it up like this in the you know who leaned
which way, it was very evenly split between the two sides,
and that really set the stage for a very intense
race between the final two candidates. Yeah. So now I
just have one more question about this idea of what
this means exactly, because could two liberals have won? Yeah,
(43:06):
no question. I mean we see that from time to
time in California, where we'll see two Democrats emerge in
the top two primary or two Republicans. It could have
been in this case, but the situation was such that
one of the left leaning candidates that a judge from
Milwaukee was with the clear front runner for her sides,
you know, effective nomination, and the other one was going
(43:27):
to go to one of these two conservative candidates, and
the gap between the first and second place left leaning
candidate wound up being such that there wasn't really a
contest there. The Republican candidate, though, who won, was a
trumpy candidate and who had been on the Supreme Court
before and lost reelection. People might know the background better
than I do, but I know both of these candidates
(43:49):
were involved in Republican party politics to some degree. So,
you know, some states have these judicial races where you know,
judges are appointed, you don't have to actually campaign for
the and when you do have a campaign, you wind
up having judges who are, you know, doing campaign things
and taking very partisan positions in advance of cases they
(44:09):
might hear. So the judiciary is much more politicized than
it used to be, or at least more overtly politicized.
But this takes it to another level when you're going
to have millions and maybe tens of millions of dollars
flooding into this race because of worship rights around the line,
things like that, and that creates a situation in which
a judge is going to say I like Donald Trump
(44:30):
because that's going to get them a seat at the
table in the general election. Right, right, No, it's so interesting.
Besides the Wisconsin, Virginia's fourth congressional district, there was an
election there. Talk to me about that. Yeah, So the
Wisconsin race was the most watched, but it wasn't the
only race on Tuesday where the left leaning Democratic candidate
(44:53):
overperformed the fundamentals of where they were running. There was
a special election for a congressional seat in Virginia where
there was a lawmaker who died after the twenty twenty
two election, and the Democrat there won by about forty
nine points at last check. And this is a district
that Biden won by thirty six. The former incumbent was
winning by a round thirty and was actually pretty close
(45:14):
in the gubernatorial election that Glen young Can won. So
this and a couple other special elections in New Hampshire
and Kentucky for state legislative office kind of continue the trend.
We saw late in the twenty twenty two cycle where
Democrats were suddenly after Rove Wade Fell, doing a lot
better in special elections, in these kind of off not
(45:36):
on non election day races, and that proved to be
a pretty good signal of where things were. And I think,
at least for now, it suggests that at least electorally speaking,
Democrats are getting their base out more than Republicans are
right now. Yeah, talk to me about the Kentucky race,
the state Senate, Yeah, state Senate race. You know, this
is another, just like the Virginia race, a very Democratic
leaning district in Louisville. The comparison we're making here is
(45:59):
not odemocrat one. It's Democrats won by more than they
generally win in this district. And so this was a
district that Biden won by, you know, a little bit
more than thirty points, but the Democrat in this race
won by fifty four. New Hampshire was a state house race.
They have these little, tiny state house districts where about
two thousand people are voting, and this was a race
(46:21):
that was actually a literal tie on election Day twenty
twenty two. And in the rerun of this race, the
Democrat won by eleven points, so a significant shift even
from what was a pretty good election for Democrats in
twenty twenty two. Yeah, I'll say, very interesting. Do you
have any sense of like what these the sort of
(46:43):
Senate races that are going to really be rough for
Democrats are going to be. Yeah, So, you know, I
think that you mentioned John Tester announced this week that
he will seek another term. That's huge for Democrats because
Montana is a state that's probably gone if he retires.
I think that's the case to some degree with Shared
Brown in Ohio, who's also going to be running. These
(47:05):
are two candidates who have done better than you would
expect Democrats to do in those states, but they also
have run in good election cycles. Twenty twelve was when
Obama was being reelected. Twenty eighteen was when Democrats were
retaking the House. There's no guarantee it's going to be
as favorable in an environment this year, So I think
that it's obvious Republicans are going to go hard after that.
(47:25):
And the next big thing I think to watch for
here is what Joe Mansion does. Does he seek reelection
because you know I talked about Montana being gone if
Tester retired. West Virginia has definitely gone almost one hundred
percent if Joe Mansion doesn't run for that seat again,
and so you can bet that Democrats are really leading
hard on him to run again. So those three red
states are the big ones. And beyond that, you're talking
(47:47):
about states like Pennsylvania, Michigan where there's an open seat
being a big one, Wisconsin potentially kind of these rust
belt states that have been so important in these recent
elections might well determine who can rolls the Senate, as
has become pretty much practice when it comes to designing
elections of late. Yeah, I mean really so interesting. Aaron Blake.
(48:08):
I hope he'll come back. Thank you, Well, he appreciate it.
Molly Jong Fast Yeah whatever, sorry, go on, Hi. Yes,
what this Rod Descant is the only thing worse than
him is the people he surrounds himself with in the
(48:29):
way his press people behave Listen man, as someone who
has seen that firsthand, Really, you and Christina Pashaw have
had some issues. I didn't notice. I mean, I think
that when you have a group of people who they
hope that if they attack people write about Rhonda Santis,
it will keep people from writing about Rhonda Santis and
(48:49):
that's what they're doing. Most recently, they decided that they
weren't going to do any interviews with MSNBC or NBC.
I would like to add he Era that this is
like me saying I won't write any pieces for Fox News, right,
a truly meaningful stand right. Like the last time that
(49:10):
Ron De Santiss went on NBC or MSNBC was probably
during a hurricane when they were one of the many
places covering it. But anyway, he said he wouldn't go
on it because he felt that Andrew Mitchell had maligned him.
I mean, it's brilliant because it's Andrew Mitchell. So the
chances of I mean her maligning him are quite are
(49:33):
quite small. You know. The idea here is that again
De santisis decided that a really good foil for him,
just like as it was a foil for Trump, is
the media, and so he's gonna go for it and
solidarity with Roun. I'm not going on MSNBC tonight, either.
Good for you. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
(49:54):
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the
best minds in politics. Makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going. And again thanks
for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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