June 18, 2025 • 48 mins
Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall examines how Trump is overplaying his hand with an unpopular agenda. Vice Chair of the Democratic National Committee Malcolm Kenyatta details the drama inside the DNC and his vision for the organization.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and companies. Are now urging the Supreme
Court to quickly hear Trump's tearuff challenge. H I wonder
why we have such a great show for you today.
Talking Points Memo's own Josh Marshall stops by to talk
(00:24):
Trump overplaying his hand with an unpopular agenda. Ben, we'll
talk to the Vice chair of the Democratic National Committee,
Malcolm Kenyatta about the drama inside the DNC and his
vision for the organization. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
All right, Maya, let's start off today with like an
edition of that I like to call the Tyrant News.
Senator Alex Padilla called Trump a tyrant on the Senate
for today, and well, when you think of how a
tyrant rules, you would think of this picture that I
saw today of Comptroll Bradlander, who's the second in charge
of New York City for those not familiar, being choked
(01:04):
by an ICE official in a mask and another one
standing by in a really ominous mask.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And it really is just not giving freedom.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about this. ICE has now arrested. Okay,
our com troller Bradlander. Senator Alex Paedilla, Okay, we were
told Christy Noms said she did not know he was
a United States senator. This is not like members of
Congress couldn't fucking figure out who. By the way, I mean,
(01:39):
Alex Padilla has been on this podcast. We all know
who Alex Padia is, and we are not even elected
members of government.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
One might say, Corey Lewandowski also knew who Alex Padilla was.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yes, So I mean, what the point here is that
there's video of Ice just completely roughing up Lander. There's
a photo of Lander looking like he's being choked. Again. Look,
nobody is ever going to want to come here. Number one, Like,
we are a service economy, we live on tourism, We
try to engage Taurus. They are not going to want
(02:11):
to come here. The few who do not have phones,
you know, who haven't seen what the fuck is going
on here, are not going to want to come here.
Second of all, this is a country where we don't
arrest the people we don't like. Like, that's not how
this works, or at least it's not how it's supposed
to work. So we have all of these visuals of
Ice just arresting democratic politicians, even if the democratic politician
(02:33):
is doing something stupid. It makes Ice look terrible. And
one of the things about trump Ism is that there
are always these unintended consequences, right, things that they didn't
necessarily mean to happen. And this is such a great
example of an unintended consequence. So now we're going to
have a whole news cycle about Ice arresting Bradlander as
(02:54):
opposed to anything else.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, it don't think they are saying that.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Of course, mister Lander allegedly assaulted the officers. We've seen
this lie before, since my wife was a part of
the previous time they lied about this in New York.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
City, where they went and arrested someone in Jaring Nadler's
office because they said Nadler was going against Ice. It
turned out none of that was true.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yes, so we can't really take these people out there word.
The other thing I should say is you could hear
the video. What of the officers literally say you sure
we want to arrest the second in charge of New
York City.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, let me tell you who the big loser in
this is, besides Ice and the Trump administration. You know
who the big loser is, Tell me Andrew Cuomo, because
nobody who knows who the fuck Brad Lander is and
being arrested by Ice may be the best thing that
happens to Lander and the worst thing that happens to
one Andrew.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, I won't be crying eighty tears anyway. We now
have a bipartisan bill in Congress from Rocanna and Thomas
Messi to say Trump can't go to.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
War with a run Yeah. I mean, by the way,
I am no Thomas Massey fan, but the Thomas Massey's
and also the ran Paul's. Okay, these are not people
that anyone particularly wants to agree with. But these guys
at least have acted in a bipartisan way, and so
at least they have principles. Like Massy and ran Paul
(04:22):
have said no, you know, they won't vote for trump Ism,
and I actually think, I mean this is because they
don't want to do regime change in Iran, which, by
the way, I just want to pause from it and
think about the many times in which America has tried
to do regime change and how well it's worked out.
There are some translators from Afghanistan who are being deported
(04:43):
right now. And so I want to tell you we
are not a country that can do regime change. We
can barely do our own regime okay change right, so
should we be doing regime change? Abs fucking insane. You know,
Massey goes with the Democrat that's in an effort to
require congressional approval before Trump attacks Iran. This is one
(05:06):
hundred percent. First of all, presidents should not be allowed
to do this unilaterally. This is like a vestige of
Bush too. You know that they should go. And I'm
sure there are somebody who listens to this podcast is
going to tell me the stories of ways in which
presidents have grabbed power from Congress. But this is another one.
He should not be able to do this now. Of
course it's Trump. So Republicans are even more cowardly than usual. Again,
(05:29):
I don't know what Trump is doing, because no one
knows what Trump is doing because Trump is so erratic
and crazy. But Trump's people have been sending out the
word via the mainstream media that Trump wants to bring
a Ran back to the table. Who even knows if
that's what he wants, but that's what his people are
pretending he wants yeah fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So, speaking of a little bit of Trump pushback in
the legislative branch, the Senate GOP is rethinking the tax
cuts and medicare overhaul in Trump's megabill.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah. CBO releases a dynamic score of the House Past
One Beautiful Bill Act, finding it would add two point
seven seven trillion to the debt. This is worse than
the two point four trillion, and that's because the economic
growth revenue is outlighed by higher debt interest payments.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Somali, here's a thing I was not looking forward to discussing,
because we discussed it on Sunday and frankly, it's so repulsive.
But Senator Mike Lee has decided to leet the social
media posts where he lied about the motives of a
murder of a bunch of different legislators in Minnesota after
he was confronted by both a letter from a colleague,
(06:41):
Senator Tita Smith in person and reporters where he was
such a coward he wouldn't even answer the reporters and
he would not stand by this stupid based Mike Lee
account where he constantly trolls and makes a mockery of
our entire system.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
So Mike Lee has this account called based Mike Lee
where he channels Don Junior, and in it he made
all of these posts about how the murderer, the guy
who murdered this woman and her husband the Democratic Minnesota
State House she had been the house state House leader
and murdered them in their beds while they were asleep
(07:19):
in the dead of night because he was a Trump
supporter and anti choys, Mike Lee posted all these things
about how he was a Marxist and all sorts of
really vile, disgustingness, and like so many keyboard warriors, when
Tina Smith, who is a member of the Senate for
the state of Minnesota, confronted him, he looked ashen and apologeic.
(07:44):
I do not think he saw this coming. Then he
actually deleted the tweets, which is okay, it's good that
he deleted the tweets, But no apology. No, I'm sorry,
none of that. No, let me correct the record. Just
some tweets deleted and now running from reporters. Look, is
it good to do the right thing? Yes? Is it
(08:04):
good to delete the tweets? Yes? I mean it's just ridiculous.
This person is a ridiculous person and this has been disgusting.
These people were murdered. There are two other members of
the Minnesota House who are in the hospital, still in surgery.
I mean the heartiest, the heartiest, Fuck that guy to
(08:27):
Mike lay who it's actually not moment of fuck Ray,
but I say it is.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, And we should say there's a industrial complex of
the right wing. Try to give your grandfather a reason
that they could argue at the dinner table and say
there's not right wing violence and the same reason elods
now correct it. Grock factually saying that the right is
more violent incidents than the left.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Is that they try to pretend this isn't the case
so they can keep getting away with it. But it's
not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome
back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Josh, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
It was the best of times. It was the worst
of times. Last night when Donald Trump left the G seven,
I was like struck by this moment of like, oh, right,
we have real world stuff and a DoD that's run
by a weekend host from Fox News.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, you know. That was one of the features of
Trump's first presidency that until COVID, until the world like exploding,
there wasn't a lot of high stake stuff going on.
That's good for him, since he's not a manager of
things in any real way. This second presidency is very different,
partly because of all the chaos that he has unleashed,
(09:50):
but also because it's we now live in a more
chaotic world. And some of that's because of his first presidency.
Some of that's because we're still kind of in the
post COVID era. But yeah, I mean it's we see that.
I actually thought that that was something that was in
the backdrop to what you just mentioned, his deciding to
leave the G seven meeting. That in both Washington and
(10:14):
Jerusalem right now and what's going on in Tehran is
its own possibly similar, similar world. You have leaders who
you really don't know what their game is, and that
creates a lot of a lot of uncertainty, even beyond
the way that war is inherently uncertain.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I wrote this piece yesterday for Verny Fair from my
column about how the grown ups in the room I
truly believe, for example, during Trump's one point now they
all went on to write books who were like we
were the grown ups in the room. We were the
people who prevented Trump from going for Trump, and their
(10:57):
argument was that being the grown ups in the room
saved us all from what could have been something terrible. Now,
my theory of the case is that the grown ups
in the room actually just saved Trump, like made him
electable in a way that may reelectable. So like, in
(11:17):
some ways it's possible that we would have been honestly
better off had there not been any grown ups in
the room.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, that's possible.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I mean, I think it's insane, But.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, I mean I think it's both. When you said
before about they more saved Trump, I think it's both.
And that fits in with what you're saying by preventing
him from doing totally out of control things. They both
prevented damage to the country, certainly in a near term
you can argue long term, you know, even more damage,
but prevented damage to the country. But they also insulated him.
(11:49):
And this is what I have thought a lot, and
I thought this before the election. I thought it even
more after the election. That one thing that you know,
anti Trump people, Democrat, liberals, whatever, however, you know, wherever
you want to draw the diagram missed about the Trump
presidency is that because there were those I don't know,
(12:10):
adults in the room, guardrails, whatever you want to call it,
that if you just sort of looked away from politics,
you could say, what was the problem. You know, yeah,
he was weird and all this, he did all this
silly stuff, but the economy, again until COVID, remained pretty buoyant.
If you're not focused on politics and you're just living
your life, you could say, you know, that was just
(12:31):
the sort of the Washington Show and it seemed fine.
And if you're not tuned into politics, so you can
say he kept the economy going well. Well, you know,
I'm not sure he did it, but it did keep
going well.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
And that's what I So.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I think this was a big blind spot for people
to some degree like myself, who figured, all right, people
are not going to lect that guy again, because you know,
it's it was really a fight over voters who were
not plugged in. And if you're not plugged in, you
weren't paying that close attention. It just wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, we've seen more. I just saw a video of
a woman who voted for Trump and her father got deported, Like,
how do you make that? I mean, I guess you
watch him on Joe Rogan you think, yeah, well, you know,
why would Joe Rogan steer me wrong? Right?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
I mean there's a lot of people we kind of
wonder about whether they're having second thoughts. It is a
little odd that you could have an immediate family member
who is undocumented and you could think bringing Trump in
was going to be a great idea that doesn't require
a lot of creativity. But you know, having said that,
they did certainly when it was opportune. They definitely said
(13:42):
this thing, Oh, we're just going to go after the
criminals and the bad guys and the rapists and everything, and.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
Clearly some people bought that.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
And you know, a lot of what it comes down
to is people don't think that hard about things, right
you say, well, didn't you figure it might happen to you?
People don't get that far down the decision tree. That's
how people exist in the world to a great extent.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
So Trump comes back Israel and aarn in some kind
of war. Will America get involved? We don't know. But
a really interesting story about the right has emerged. So
we have Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green again, you
(14:23):
know this crew does not want war or who knows
they have staked their ground as non interventionists sortid.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Yeah, So talk us through that well with Tucker Carlson,
there may be something to that. He's kind of moved
in a very far direction. But a lot of the
Trump people, you know, you hear Trump bomb someone or
or killed some super bad guy, they're all for it.
So in the whole Trump world, I think non interventionism
(14:55):
is very shallow. It's until Trump says otherwise, But they're
clearly is something with Israel here. That's a real cleavage,
and not just because a lot of Trumpers are big
time anti Semites, right.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Right, right right, that's right, an important data point. I
think that's a really important introduction.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
Yeah, but not only that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I think, right that's just a part of the tapestry.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Just a part of it.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
I do think that in the Trump world what they
want is the sort of the one night stand version
of kicking ass. They want Trump to lash out and
bomb people, but they want it to be over the
next day, and they don't want to have to call
a few days later and check in and see if
you want to go on another date.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Right, right, I mean exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
They want to be super militarily strong and they want
to dominate, and dominating requires like outbursts of violence, but
they don't want it to be ongoing. I think that's
their non interventionism.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And there's
really a lot of anti Semitism, which I think is
an unspoken or I think spoken but not spoken nearly enough.
Because Trumpism wraps itself in being pro Israel, It's ultimately
not really.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Pro Israel beyond the fact that there's a domestic politics
angle for them. I think Trump and a lot of
trump Ism sees Israel as like a junior mascot of
trump dominationism, right, you know, young buddy sidekick. So there
is that aspect of it that is kind of you know,
(16:31):
killing Arabs basically, or in this case, killing Iranians. And
I think we're you know, where you have some of
that cleavage is that most American Jews, to the extent
that they are attached to Israel, are attached to a
very different version of Israel, and a version of Israel
that to a significant extent has been eclipsed over the
(16:51):
last twenty or thirty years. And the part of Israel
that the Trump folks are very attached to is the
part that they are uncomfortable with. That's a whole you know,
that's a whole thing. But one of the pioneers of
political anti Semitism, sort of not a hall of fame
you want to be in, is this guy who is
the mayor of Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth
(17:12):
twentieth century. His name is I think Luger, I can't
remember what his first name was. In any case, was
sort of the pioneer of populist anti Semitism. There's a
funny thing because in his own life he had Jewish
friends dine with Jews, and so there's this famous story
where he gets asked one time, you're the big Jew hater.
Why do we see you having, you know, dining with
(17:33):
Jews and your friends are Jews, And he has his
famous line he says, I decide who's a Jew? And
Trump is I think like that, right, He'll decide who
the Jews are. And you see that even where Asaurus
is bad because he's you know, he's a bad Jew,
and then they're good Jews.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And that's sort of the Trump world.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, cannot be stated enough. This is not actually about Judaism.
This is just about a kind of quoke of a
white nationalism or a fall right nationalism. You know, it's funny.
I can ask you about this because you are so intellectual.
I just realized, no, but seriously, because you know, you
(18:14):
come from academia, so I can ask you about this.
So I'm reading this book right now because I've been
on my book tour, How to Lose Your Mother. It's
available now.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
You should be so proud of your success. It's just
it's it seems to be flying off the shelves.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
It's actually sold out everywhere, which is making me completely crazy.
But it's amazing, and it is on the New York
Times bestseller list, hopefully to stay. I'm very superstitious, but
I'm reading this book on my book tour. The Anatomy
of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. I don't know if
you know this book, And in it he's talking about
how fascism is very much a cult of personality and
(18:50):
that you can't do it with a non charismatic leader. Right.
You have to have a Mussolini. You gotta have a Hitler.
You gotta have even a pinochet, you can't. It doesn't
work with an al Gore.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Absolutely, And yes, that is absolutely part of it. And
the hero worship and oddly the kind of even the
eccentricities are kind of part of it, and the kind
of the operatic kind of personality are part of it too.
It's a weird aesthetic.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah. So do you think that what happens is that
people are caught of guard by the humor? For example,
in trump Ism, there's a certain kind of humor right
like he's a ridiculous character, and that then they go
along with things they might not otherwise had it been
(19:40):
so like a JD. Vance is not going to get
away with stuff that a Donald Trump is, just like
Mike Pets was unable to get away with stuff that
a Donald Trump did. Do you think the humor tricks
constituents into going along with stuff or do you think
that it just is irrelevant and that they're in a
cultive personality.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Well, I don't think it's irrelevant. I think how these
cults of personality work are very complex, and it's important
for people who revile Trump, who just who despise him,
to see that in his own way. He is very charismatic.
He's funny in his own way. Now it's often a
sadistic kind of humor, but he does have this public
(20:20):
style that is very effective. And one of the things
about Trump is that he has these moments of self
awareness and even kind of self criticism in a way,
not self criticism exactly, but awareness of some of his craziness.
And I, like many other people, have given a lot
of thought to this. It's almost something that is not
(20:41):
susceptible to discoursive thought in the way that you might
write down in an academic book. It's a little more
like jazz in a way. You get a feel for it.
But I think all of those are part of it.
And when we talk about a cult of personality, the humor,
all of those things are part of it. Probably many
of your listeners have seen this too, that Mike Lee,
senator from Utah, the sort of the very degenerate senator
(21:04):
from Mutah, is maybe in a little trouble now because
one of the senators, Senator Smith from Minnesota, kind of
called him out about these terrible tweets. And one of
the many things that that episode shows is that people
play these online personas and it becomes a separate world.
And so we all have some experience of that, of
the performative nature of these things. In some ways we
(21:25):
live in that world. And Donald Trump is like a
master of that world, of creating this kind of distracting
alternative reality that is always on the move, always taking
things in another direction, is entertaining, distracting, mesmerizing, and that thing,
(21:50):
very hard to capture, is really central to his power.
Even though it seems sort of silly and distracting and
stupid and is all those things, it's central to it.
And yeah, that is at the core of his power.
And it's a weird thing to understand.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, you know, it's funny because I watch him speak
a lot, unfortunately for me. I'll watch c SPAN and
you'll hear him do things like he'll say, well, we
like you. Wasn't much of a Trumper, but now they're Trumpers.
He's good to us the most mega he was so mega.
We didn't like this, but we do like what he
(22:30):
really thought about someone, which, if you think about it,
think about all of the very well meaning democratic politicians
who you and I really like are partisan favorites who
will absolutely not fucking tell you anything. Right, it's a superpower.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
In a way, it is a superpower.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And that's kind of a version of what I was
talking about about the self criticism. It's not only self criticism,
but he'll kind of go into it his own internal
monologue sometimes, right, yep. And I do think that is
a big reason that he has a hold on some
people people's sense so like he's real and in a sense,
I think what is resonating with them is that he's
(23:16):
up there riffing and it's not planned, and he's kind
of it is kind of stream of consciousness. Now, most
of his stream of consciousness is nonsense and just making
things up. It plays as a kind of authenticity for people.
I want the next Democratic leaders to be on social
media a lot. Oh yeah, that was you know, one
(23:39):
of the things about not even his first presidency, but
his first campaign was everybody else is like, okay, should
we put out a press release for this? And he's
just going on Twitter.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
Right. You know.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
It's funny because it's like we have had the minority
leader on this podcast, and you know, they put out
press release after press release after press release, but nobody
cares because it's a press release, and if he just
would tweet out what he really thought. I mean, it
is an information desert, and if you tweet out what
you really think, people will respond to it. And if
(24:12):
you have something that's completely you know, run over by
legal six times, nobody gives a fuck.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's not news. It's not news. Like look, I'm in
the news business. I never look at press releases. You
don't put out a press release to make news. You
put out a press release to be able to say
you said something. And so there's a part of this.
You know, it is not an accident that Donald Trump
was a creation of the tabloid newsworld of the New
(24:41):
York of the nineteen eighties. It's not an accident because
that is where that is sort of where our current
media culture was born, the beginnings of electronic media, the
tabloid culture, all of that stuff. And so it makes
sense that, you know, all the ability to just kind
of like, I'm going to keep in the news and
(25:01):
going to keep doing stuff that people have to react to.
And it's just critical for people who care about politics
to understand why he is powerful in that way.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
You have to like it.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
He does have this one superpower it's what I guess
people have recently started calling the attention economy. If you
want to move in the news world, it's like, you know,
improvisational jazz in a quintet. You've got to be able
to hold the stage for a little while, right. It's
very strange stuff, but these very kind of symbolist things
translate into hard power that get people's families torn apart
(25:35):
and sent to a gulag in El Salvador. So things
that seem very silly and fluffy translate into real power
and real violence.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Thank you, thank you, sayank you, thank you, Josh.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Marshall, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Malcolm Kenyatta is a vice chair of the Democratic National
Committee and a Pennsylvania state representative for the one hundred
and eighty first district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Malcolm.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
Allie, I'm so happy to be here, and more than
anything else, I'm going to start by plugging your book.
I can't wait to read it.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Oh, thank you, Yes, this is it, How to Lose
Your Mother Me plugging the podcast podcast. So now let's
talk about you. Are DNC vice chair again, yes again?
So what happened? Explain to us to your DNC vice chair.
I have known you for a long time. You're a
(26:33):
state representative in Pennsylvania. You're excellent. You ran against Fetterman
in the primary when Fetterman was not what he is
right now, which is totally not what I remember him
to be. You did not win that primary. You went
back to state legislature. You became a vice chair of
(26:55):
the DNC along with David Hogg. Now catch us up
on what happened next.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Yeah, what happened next was a series, you know, sometimes
an intentional and sometimes unintentional miscommunications about what happened next
is often spend a lot of time trying to tell
the facts here, long story short after the election, anybody
who's ever been in a long, annoying, fucking meeting knows
about Robert's rules of order, And effectively, one of the
(27:24):
people who was unsuccessful said back on February the twenty
eighth that Robert's rules of order weren't followed in her view,
and back in February she filed that challenge to the
election results. And because unlike this authoritarian administration, the Democratic
Party actually believes in due process, there was a process
where she got to file a complaint we had a
(27:45):
number of days to respond to her complaint. The committee
had a number of days to hear that complaint. Already
people's eyes are glazing over. But ultimately what happened are
I know, I'm in it. My eyes are glazed over.
But what ultimately happened was the Committee decided to hould
the election again, you know, which I did not think
was you know appropriate. I called it at the time,
(28:06):
you know, a slap in my face. But in this moment,
with everything going on, with a president that is so lawless,
so out of control, and so willing to throw away
all of the modern safety net so that they can
stuff the pockets of the wealthiest people the world has
ever seen, we need a strong democratic party. And a
(28:26):
part of what we need in this moment is not
for everybody who's ever been frustrated with Democrats to walk away.
I've been frustrated with Democrats. I'm chief among them. But
the question is what do we do with that frustration.
I decided to go into the building and try to
fucking change it.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, this is why I love you. So tell me
what happens next?
Speaker 5 (28:44):
So what happens you know next? Does we have our
you know, Big Officers Retreat back in March on March
to twenty fifth, where Ken Martin our new chair. For
folks who don't know Ken, Ken was the guy after
the twenty sixteen election who led a lot of the
reforms in the DNC around minimizing the power of superdelegates,
trying to get the party out of the you know,
(29:06):
the gilded ages where people in smoke filled rooms picked
our nominees, and he laid out a series of like
twenty I think it is reforms to the party, including
officer neutrality. A month later, David Hogg announced that he
was going to do this primary thing with leaders we deserve.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
You know what, let's stop for a second. Officer neutrality
explain to us what that means.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
So back in twenty sixteen, and for some of the
people who were like jump in my comments and say, Malcolm,
what about twenty sixteen. Back in twenty sixteen, I was
not an electric official. There was a well known presidential
primary which we've never gotten over between ever ever, ever,
like I'm going to tell my grandkids about this. Yeah,
that's right, And out of that primary there was a perception,
(29:48):
and some could even say a reality. I'm not going
to Quipple over that. But at the minimum, there was
a perception that the party was not even handed in
that primary. And what we must all endeavor to do
is to make sure or that never happens again.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Right, And that was because of super delegates too.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Right now, because of super delegates and like just many
aspects of the process that people can point to. But
I want to be crystal clear, I don't want any people,
ten people sitting in a smoke filled room or no
smoke field room, in a room in DC, looking across
the country trying to pick our freaking nominees. I think
we trust voters to pick our nominees. But let me
(30:26):
make this point, because this has been sort of people's assumption.
The DMC, the Democratic National Committee, is not an incumbent
protection racket. My job is not to re elect incumbents.
My job is to elect Democratic nominees that are chosen
by Democratic voters in their districts. That's our job, full stop.
And unfortunately, the election challenge that was filed back in February,
(30:50):
and Ken calling profice in neutrality back in March, you
have so many people still to this day are saying
that this is somehow payback for David and now saying
that he would not Abuie by officer neutrality back in April,
that timeline just doesn't work. And I've said this constantly,
but you know, a li will get around the block
while the truth is putting its shoes on, and so
(31:10):
I decided to put my shoes on tell the truth
about what's happening.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Ken Martin says he wants officer neutrality. This is part
of a larger decision. Explain a little more about this.
Speaker 5 (31:22):
It's to make sure that particularly in this presidential primary,
and Molly, I'm sure you'll interview all of them, well,
hopefully not all of them, because they're gonna, like ninety people
who run for president.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Ook are going to be just an absolute epic shit show.
Speaker 5 (31:34):
Yes, it's gonna be so many people, and I think
in that process, as you might imagine, there are gonna
be a lot of hard feelings, a lot of people
who have thoughts about the process. And when it's over,
and when any primary is over, you need somebody who
people know cared about the outcome of the game as
a good referee should, but wasn't trying to be a
player in the game. And the DNC. Our job and
(31:57):
what we're doing is building the infrastry structure so that
when our candidates come out of those primaries they have
all the tools they need to be successful. And that
means that we have to invest and rebuild our state parties.
I was just in Mississippi and all of you know,
our last Democratic nominee, Mike Best be there.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
We had him on like six times.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
Yeah, he was the strongest statewide Democrat we've seen in
Mississippi in modern history. And he said this multiple times.
And the new chair who came in, you know, on
the tail end of that campaign, by the way, was
very clear that they needed to build out the infrastructure.
We shouldn't be asking Democratic nominees to build out the
voter contact infrastructure, even things around you know, voter community,
(32:37):
you know around excuse me, media and communications. There are
a bunch of different things that we need to do
that the Democratic Party is investing in. And so our
job is to build infrastructure so our nominees win, not
to try to pick our nominees. And that does not
mean that we don't want robust primaries. If you are
listening to this podcast and you're thinking about running for office,
(32:58):
run for office. I'm not trying to stop you. If
a running office, run for office on whatever platform you have,
run for office, talk to voters in your district and
go out and win. And when you are the nominee,
sign me up to do whatever event I need to
do to make sure you beat whatever authoritarian supporting Republican
is on the other side.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
All right, So then you guys have another election and
David does not run again.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
Explain, Yeah, so you know why David chose not to
run again. You know, obviously, you know he put out
a statement to that effect. But you know, in the
first election, we won pretty handily. You needed I think
it was two hundred and one votes. We got two
hundred and ninety eight votes. I think David got two fourteen.
We won pretty handily. And throughout my work in the
one hundred and thirty days or so before the election,
(33:42):
you know, I traveled twenty one thousand miles to a
nine states, did three dozen events, fundraisers, the list goes
on and on to try to build this party, and
I was confident that I would have the votes to
win again. David made a decision to focus his work
on leaders we deserve. I said it at the time.
You know, I really wish him the best. There is
nothing wrong with robust primaries. We have folks in organized
(34:05):
labor who endorse different people. We have you know, Emily's List,
Run for Something, which is an incredible organization that supports
young people running for office, Collective Pack Victory Fund, so
many different organizations. We're going to play in primaries, and
they should, and I'm going to be waiting for those
primaries to be over to support them. However, however we
can at the DNC.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
So then explain to me what happened with Randy Wineingarden.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
Yeah, so let me let me. Let me say this,
and I said this on the MSNBC. I think I
was on like right after this news broke. Randy and
Lee Saunders, our dear, dear friends of mine. Let me
say that there is no Malcolm Kenyata in politics without
asks me and AFT. The support of their members and
their support personally has meant so much to me, and
their friendship means so much to me, and I respect
(34:52):
their decision to step back. But I think the only
question that I think we really need to answer is
what are we going to do for working people and
working families to make their lives better. And you heard
me say this over and over again. Even Fox News
said they're sick of me saying yeah. But I think
the Democratic Party has a singular mission and ultimately a
singular message. We have to make life better and a
(35:14):
part of that equation obviously is making sure that people
get a fair wage, that they get the benefits and
dignity they deserve on the job. And no, you know,
there are very few people who have fought as hard
for those changes and for those rights and earned benefits
then Lease Honders and Randy Weingarten, So you know they're
taking a step back. I absolutely respect them, but I
(35:36):
know where I'm going to see them on a picket
line on some fight for justice, and they're going to
be fighting arm in arm with the Democratic Party to
elect Democratic candidates who care about those values. But I
think as a party right now, we are going to
be focused not on the past, but on what our
party must be. And I think you know, if you
want to get on TV right now, Molly, you know it.
You just say Democrats suck, write an op ed, it
(35:58):
gets published. You can be an a blog of any
show you want to be on and you know that's
all well and good. I think enough op eds have
been written about what the Democrats did wrong. I'm sick
of that shit. I think it's our responsibility to talk
about what we're going to do next, to tell people
who we are going to be and what we've been.
And so that's why I go all across this country
talking about how we're going to make life better for
(36:18):
working people and working families. And I have no doubt
that those two leaders are going to continue to do
that work, no matter what their role or title is.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So they didn't step down because they were feeling that
the DNC wasn't doing what it should be doing.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
I can't get into their their heads here. We know
what they wrote in their letters and what's been reported.
But let me just say, you know they they did
this for you know a number of years. They have
done their their service and their time at the DMC.
They have huge organizations that they run, and those organizations
and the values of AFT, the values of AFTE are
(36:52):
the Democratic Party values. And when Democrats take the House
back in twenty twenty six, we better get about the
business of passing the pro forcing the Senate and the
President to be against making it easier for people to
organize on the job. You know. In a now viral
video where I work in Harrisburg, after a speech that
I gave about the minimum wage, the Republican leader gets
up on the floor and says, every job shouldn't have
(37:15):
a living shouldn't be a living wage because he's such
a you know, a jerk, you know, in an asshole.
He does not think people should be paid a dignified wage.
That's what we're up against right now. And Randy and
Lee are going to definitely be in the trenches helping
us do that work, you know, and we respect their leadership.
But now we have to move forward and do the
work that we must do, making sure that everybody hears
about how the Democratic Party wants to make life better
(37:38):
for working people and working families.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Jerry Connelly he died in office the day before the
Big Beautiful Bill was passed by a one full margin.
In my mind, that strikes me as why we are
in so much trouble in this moment. Can you speak
to it?
Speaker 5 (37:57):
Yeah, So, first of all, I just want to say
just to Rep. Connolly's family and to his you know,
incredible wife, Kathy I know how hard this is, but
let me also say, I think that voters are having
these these conversations, all these conversations that you're talking about.
I want to see people who have a vision for
this country, people who have a good way of talking
(38:19):
about the future, to step up. And honestly, the people
need to step up the most are the folks who
have the most on the line. I mean, listen, I'm
not even thirty five yet I'm asking every single day,
am I gonna be able to breathe the damn air
and drink the water? Or me and my husband may
the start a family to live in a community that's safe.
And if we had kids, are they going to grow
up in some authoritarian, right wing maga QAnon regime? And
(38:44):
so I think invariably you are gonna have people who
understand the impact of this moment, including a bunch of
young people, step up and run for office. And they should.
People should step up and run for office. But we
shouldn't also so not continue to give Republicans a pass here.
And I think what often happens is, well, we assume
(39:07):
Republicans are bad, So why even talk about the fact
that they're bad? The big bullshit bill, which is what
I call it, passed because Republicans want it to pass,
because they do not give a damn about kicking fourteen
million people off of health care, because they don't care
about ripping food out of the mouths of kids, because
they don't care about shutting down critical research that helps
us deal with issues like cancer and HIV, because they
(39:31):
don't care about people being kicked out of their homes.
And the reality is that time and time and time again,
we are ignoring the advice that comes from a very
unexpected place. If you ever saw the show Silo, I
don't watch Silo. My husband watched Silo, and if I
want to sit in the fucking living room, I apparently
aren't have to watch Silo too, and so and so
(39:53):
and so. One of the characters on Silo said something
that I felt was so impactful. She said, we have
to figure out how to be angry with each other
and not at each other, because in this moment, the
things that we're even defending, I don't think even enough
Democrats know that this is something we did. Medicare, Medicaid,
social Security, these are programs that are deeply popular. The
(40:15):
Affordable Care Act programs that are deeply popular that Democrats passed,
and we have to get back to the business of
talking about how we're going to do that again, how
we're going to make life better and if you hear
me again, Hey, Malcolm, should young people run for office? Yes? Yes, yes,
they should run for office. Al Roker did a whole
documentary about my run for office called Do Not Wait
(40:35):
Your Turn. You can go watch it if you're bored. Okay,
So I'm all about this, but I just want to
be crystal clear that voters are going to decide who
those nominees are and I'm going to support them.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, I get that, and I agree with everything you're saying.
I probably would have said it. I probably have said
it myself in a very similar way over the last
twenty four hours.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Well you've said it better, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
No, I think about the same. But I want to
ask you for example, and I say this. You know
I'm a partisan, So what is responsibilityy with something like
the Jerry Connolly situation? Like? Because I mean, listen, I
like a lot of those people. I like a lot
of the people in the House, a lot of Democratic
Congress people I call a friend. I talk to people
(41:18):
before the vote. I know that a lot of people
liked him, but I just am curious, like basically what
I heard from people because I asked them why they
would elevate him instead of AOC because he was battling
throw cancer, was seventy six and also just was not
as good a communicator as AOC. And you know, you
can like him or love him, but he was not
(41:39):
a politician who broke through. Particularly so when I asked
people about why they were voting for him, they would say, well,
it's his turn. And I wonder, whose responsibility is it
to tell somebody in their seventies who's got throw cancer
that they can't be ranking member, Like obviously there's a
failure of leadership here, or doesn't it seem like if
(42:00):
I had a company and I were running a company
and you know, we just had And I don't mean
to push you on this because I really like you
and we're friends, and I have enough elected who are
mad at me.
Speaker 5 (42:10):
Oh please put me out.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, but I just am wondering, like, whose responsibility isn't
like Republicans are craven, like we saw Republicans tell Steve
Scalice he couldn't be in leadership because he had blood cancer.
We heard Marjorie Taylor Green say that she was like,
you can't because you had blood cancer. So whose responsibility
is it to say to someone in their seventies who
has cancer? And I say this as someone who has
(42:32):
a husband who had cancer, like, whose responsibility is it
to say.
Speaker 5 (42:37):
That we listen? I think the antidote to all of
the problems we have in this moment are those three
words that open our constitution, We the people. It's not
like these conversations aren't being had. These conversations are being had.
We see voters every single day talking about the types
of candidates that speak to them, Candidates who can talk
(42:57):
about the future, candidates who have a vision, candidates who have,
you know, fire in the belly. To meet this moment
and treat this moment like it's the five alarm fire
that it is. Treat this moment like we have an
authoritarian in the White House who's sending the military against
its citizens. We have to treat it with that, with
(43:17):
that seriousness. But I want to be very clear with folks.
I want people to think about this for a second,
which is why I'm being careful you know, I chose
to run for a specific gig within the Democratic National Committee,
and there are a lot of people who look at
me and say, Malcolm, you always talk about, you know,
don't wait your turn, your young guy running running running
for office. The reality, though, is this, we do not
(43:42):
want officers of the DNC trying to make all of
these decisions. We don't want that. We don't want that.
And people think they want that right now because because
there's somebody who you think agrees with you, who's there.
But Malcolm's not going to be by sheriff of the
DNC forever. And what if the next vice chair of
the d NC says, know what, the progressives are the
problem with everything in the in the party, and we're
(44:03):
gonna do everything we can to get them out of
the party. You know that's wrong. I want to see
a party that is run by the people, and the
people are making their their voices heard. People are stepping
up every single day to run for office. I mean,
I saw a run for something talk about the amount
of people who've signed up with them to run for office.
And I think the best thing that I can do
(44:25):
is to say, in no uncertain terms and repeat to
folks that if you want to run for office, you
should step up and run. I think these conversations are,
you know, conversations that we that we should have. If
we're going to make life better for people, we certainly
have to be willing to have tough conversations as Democrats.
But I should not be trying to dictate those those conversations,
(44:48):
you know. And it's very rare that you have political
leaders that don't think they should be in charge of everything.
I don't think I should be in charge of everything.
I think that I should be listening to what voters
tell me to do, and what voters want me to
do right now is to make sure that we can win.
And a part of why the Democratic Party is not one,
in my view, is that we've treated ourselves for too
(45:09):
long like we exist to throw a big party every
four years and just elect a president. And we've changed that.
We're investing a million dollars a month in state parties,
the single largest investment out of DC into state so
we can do year round organizing. We started this program
like the Blueprint, so every day at ten am, we're
prebudding all of the lies that are going to come
(45:29):
from the john S Brady press room where this lady
gets up with her cross and then says everything that
Jesus would despise, and the list goes on and on.
So I have a job to do, and my job
is to build the infrastructure so Democrats can and can win.
I want to make sure they win. I want to
see younger leaders step up to run for office, and
(45:50):
I want to see leaders who have fire in the
belly to step up for run for office. And I
want all of them to be talking about my three
words on how they're going to make life better for
working people and working families. I think that's what voters
want to hear it too.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Frankly, thank you, thank you, thank you, Malcolm.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
No moment.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Jesse Cannon Molly friend of the podcast, Mary Ziegler has
a great article on Slate about how the GOP keeps
losing public abortion votes.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
So now it's trying a new angle.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, choice is popular, you know it's popular. The GOP
put abortion on the ballot a bunch of times, and
every time abortion wins. Missouri is an interesting state because
this is one of these states where they've been using
it as a test case for anti choice legislation. They
had a ballot initiative which enshrined creating constitutional reproductive rights.
(46:48):
But because it's Missouri, the legislators are all Republicans. It's
a Republican supermajority. So even though voters want to enshrine
reproductive rights, legislators don't because they're all Republicans. So instead
of doing what the voters wanted with the ballot initiatives,
and we saw this in Florida too. Right in Florida,
(47:09):
they wanted to restore voting to felons and the government
was like, no, fuck you, we're not going to do it,
even though you voted for it. So that's what's happening here.
Missouri is going to try now to pass a ballot
initiative which will overturn the most recent ballot initiative. This
is like yet another Republican's hate democracy moment. Right, they lose,
(47:34):
they don't care, They just cheat. When you realize that
trump Ism is an extension of this, when you realize
trumpsm doesn't happen in a vacuum, that the party that
jerry manders, that the party that does not accept losing
a ballot initiative that that party. Trump Ism is the
natural progression of that party.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and companies. Are now urging the Supreme
Court to quickly hear Trump's tearuff challenge. H I wonder
why we have such a great show for you today.
Talking Points Memo's own Josh Marshall stops by to talk
(00:24):
Trump overplaying his hand with an unpopular agenda. Ben, we'll
talk to the Vice chair of the Democratic National Committee,
Malcolm Kenyatta about the drama inside the DNC and his
vision for the organization. But first the news.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
All right, Maya, let's start off today with like an
edition of that I like to call the Tyrant News.
Senator Alex Padilla called Trump a tyrant on the Senate
for today, and well, when you think of how a
tyrant rules, you would think of this picture that I
saw today of Comptroll Bradlander, who's the second in charge
of New York City for those not familiar, being choked
(01:04):
by an ICE official in a mask and another one
standing by in a really ominous mask.
Speaker 3 (01:11):
And it really is just not giving freedom.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
Yeah, yeah, let's talk about this. ICE has now arrested. Okay,
our com troller Bradlander. Senator Alex Paedilla, Okay, we were
told Christy Noms said she did not know he was
a United States senator. This is not like members of
Congress couldn't fucking figure out who. By the way, I mean,
(01:39):
Alex Padilla has been on this podcast. We all know
who Alex Padia is, and we are not even elected
members of government.
Speaker 2 (01:45):
One might say, Corey Lewandowski also knew who Alex Padilla was.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yes, So I mean, what the point here is that
there's video of Ice just completely roughing up Lander. There's
a photo of Lander looking like he's being choked. Again. Look,
nobody is ever going to want to come here. Number one, Like,
we are a service economy, we live on tourism, We
try to engage Taurus. They are not going to want
(02:11):
to come here. The few who do not have phones,
you know, who haven't seen what the fuck is going
on here, are not going to want to come here.
Second of all, this is a country where we don't
arrest the people we don't like. Like, that's not how
this works, or at least it's not how it's supposed
to work. So we have all of these visuals of
Ice just arresting democratic politicians, even if the democratic politician
(02:33):
is doing something stupid. It makes Ice look terrible. And
one of the things about trump Ism is that there
are always these unintended consequences, right, things that they didn't
necessarily mean to happen. And this is such a great
example of an unintended consequence. So now we're going to
have a whole news cycle about Ice arresting Bradlander as
(02:54):
opposed to anything else.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
Yeah, it don't think they are saying that.
Speaker 2 (02:59):
Of course, mister Lander allegedly assaulted the officers. We've seen
this lie before, since my wife was a part of
the previous time they lied about this in New York.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
City, where they went and arrested someone in Jaring Nadler's
office because they said Nadler was going against Ice. It
turned out none of that was true.
Speaker 2 (03:17):
Yes, so we can't really take these people out there word.
The other thing I should say is you could hear
the video. What of the officers literally say you sure
we want to arrest the second in charge of New
York City.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
Yeah, let me tell you who the big loser in
this is, besides Ice and the Trump administration. You know
who the big loser is, Tell me Andrew Cuomo, because
nobody who knows who the fuck Brad Lander is and
being arrested by Ice may be the best thing that
happens to Lander and the worst thing that happens to
one Andrew.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
Well, I won't be crying eighty tears anyway. We now
have a bipartisan bill in Congress from Rocanna and Thomas
Messi to say Trump can't go to.
Speaker 1 (03:59):
War with a run Yeah. I mean, by the way,
I am no Thomas Massey fan, but the Thomas Massey's
and also the ran Paul's. Okay, these are not people
that anyone particularly wants to agree with. But these guys
at least have acted in a bipartisan way, and so
at least they have principles. Like Massy and ran Paul
(04:22):
have said no, you know, they won't vote for trump Ism,
and I actually think, I mean this is because they
don't want to do regime change in Iran, which, by
the way, I just want to pause from it and
think about the many times in which America has tried
to do regime change and how well it's worked out.
There are some translators from Afghanistan who are being deported
(04:43):
right now. And so I want to tell you we
are not a country that can do regime change. We
can barely do our own regime okay change right, so
should we be doing regime change? Abs fucking insane. You know,
Massey goes with the Democrat that's in an effort to
require congressional approval before Trump attacks Iran. This is one
(05:06):
hundred percent. First of all, presidents should not be allowed
to do this unilaterally. This is like a vestige of
Bush too. You know that they should go. And I'm
sure there are somebody who listens to this podcast is
going to tell me the stories of ways in which
presidents have grabbed power from Congress. But this is another one.
He should not be able to do this now. Of
course it's Trump. So Republicans are even more cowardly than usual. Again,
(05:29):
I don't know what Trump is doing, because no one
knows what Trump is doing because Trump is so erratic
and crazy. But Trump's people have been sending out the
word via the mainstream media that Trump wants to bring
a Ran back to the table. Who even knows if
that's what he wants, but that's what his people are
pretending he wants yeah fun stuff.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
So, speaking of a little bit of Trump pushback in
the legislative branch, the Senate GOP is rethinking the tax
cuts and medicare overhaul in Trump's megabill.
Speaker 1 (06:00):
Yeah. CBO releases a dynamic score of the House Past
One Beautiful Bill Act, finding it would add two point
seven seven trillion to the debt. This is worse than
the two point four trillion, and that's because the economic
growth revenue is outlighed by higher debt interest payments.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Somali, here's a thing I was not looking forward to discussing,
because we discussed it on Sunday and frankly, it's so repulsive.
But Senator Mike Lee has decided to leet the social
media posts where he lied about the motives of a
murder of a bunch of different legislators in Minnesota after
he was confronted by both a letter from a colleague,
(06:41):
Senator Tita Smith in person and reporters where he was
such a coward he wouldn't even answer the reporters and
he would not stand by this stupid based Mike Lee
account where he constantly trolls and makes a mockery of
our entire system.
Speaker 1 (06:57):
So Mike Lee has this account called based Mike Lee
where he channels Don Junior, and in it he made
all of these posts about how the murderer, the guy
who murdered this woman and her husband the Democratic Minnesota
State House she had been the house state House leader
and murdered them in their beds while they were asleep
(07:19):
in the dead of night because he was a Trump
supporter and anti choys, Mike Lee posted all these things
about how he was a Marxist and all sorts of
really vile, disgustingness, and like so many keyboard warriors, when
Tina Smith, who is a member of the Senate for
the state of Minnesota, confronted him, he looked ashen and apologeic.
(07:44):
I do not think he saw this coming. Then he
actually deleted the tweets, which is okay, it's good that
he deleted the tweets, But no apology. No, I'm sorry,
none of that. No, let me correct the record. Just
some tweets deleted and now running from reporters. Look, is
it good to do the right thing? Yes? Is it
(08:04):
good to delete the tweets? Yes? I mean it's just ridiculous.
This person is a ridiculous person and this has been disgusting.
These people were murdered. There are two other members of
the Minnesota House who are in the hospital, still in surgery.
I mean the heartiest, the heartiest, Fuck that guy to
(08:27):
Mike lay who it's actually not moment of fuck Ray,
but I say it is.
Speaker 2 (08:33):
Yeah, And we should say there's a industrial complex of
the right wing. Try to give your grandfather a reason
that they could argue at the dinner table and say
there's not right wing violence and the same reason elods
now correct it. Grock factually saying that the right is
more violent incidents than the left.
Speaker 3 (08:51):
Is that they try to pretend this isn't the case
so they can keep getting away with it. But it's
not going to happen.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Josh Marshall is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome
back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (09:07):
Josh, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
It was the best of times. It was the worst
of times. Last night when Donald Trump left the G seven,
I was like struck by this moment of like, oh, right,
we have real world stuff and a DoD that's run
by a weekend host from Fox News.
Speaker 4 (09:28):
Yeah, you know. That was one of the features of
Trump's first presidency that until COVID, until the world like exploding,
there wasn't a lot of high stake stuff going on.
That's good for him, since he's not a manager of
things in any real way. This second presidency is very different,
partly because of all the chaos that he has unleashed,
(09:50):
but also because it's we now live in a more
chaotic world. And some of that's because of his first presidency.
Some of that's because we're still kind of in the
post COVID era. But yeah, I mean it's we see that.
I actually thought that that was something that was in
the backdrop to what you just mentioned, his deciding to
leave the G seven meeting. That in both Washington and
(10:14):
Jerusalem right now and what's going on in Tehran is
its own possibly similar, similar world. You have leaders who
you really don't know what their game is, and that
creates a lot of a lot of uncertainty, even beyond
the way that war is inherently uncertain.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
I wrote this piece yesterday for Verny Fair from my
column about how the grown ups in the room I
truly believe, for example, during Trump's one point now they
all went on to write books who were like we
were the grown ups in the room. We were the
people who prevented Trump from going for Trump, and their
(10:57):
argument was that being the grown ups in the room
saved us all from what could have been something terrible. Now,
my theory of the case is that the grown ups
in the room actually just saved Trump, like made him
electable in a way that may reelectable. So like, in
(11:17):
some ways it's possible that we would have been honestly
better off had there not been any grown ups in
the room.
Speaker 3 (11:25):
Yeah, that's possible.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
I mean, I think it's insane, But.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
Yeah, I mean I think it's both. When you said
before about they more saved Trump, I think it's both.
And that fits in with what you're saying by preventing
him from doing totally out of control things. They both
prevented damage to the country, certainly in a near term
you can argue long term, you know, even more damage,
but prevented damage to the country. But they also insulated him.
(11:49):
And this is what I have thought a lot, and
I thought this before the election. I thought it even
more after the election. That one thing that you know,
anti Trump people, Democrat, liberals, whatever, however, you know, wherever
you want to draw the diagram missed about the Trump
presidency is that because there were those I don't know,
(12:10):
adults in the room, guardrails, whatever you want to call it,
that if you just sort of looked away from politics,
you could say, what was the problem. You know, yeah,
he was weird and all this, he did all this
silly stuff, but the economy, again until COVID, remained pretty buoyant.
If you're not focused on politics and you're just living
your life, you could say, you know, that was just
(12:31):
the sort of the Washington Show and it seemed fine.
And if you're not tuned into politics, so you can
say he kept the economy going well. Well, you know,
I'm not sure he did it, but it did keep
going well.
Speaker 5 (12:43):
And that's what I So.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
I think this was a big blind spot for people
to some degree like myself, who figured, all right, people
are not going to lect that guy again, because you know,
it's it was really a fight over voters who were
not plugged in. And if you're not plugged in, you
weren't paying that close attention. It just wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (13:01):
Yeah, we've seen more. I just saw a video of
a woman who voted for Trump and her father got deported, Like,
how do you make that? I mean, I guess you
watch him on Joe Rogan you think, yeah, well, you know,
why would Joe Rogan steer me wrong? Right?
Speaker 5 (13:19):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (13:20):
I mean there's a lot of people we kind of
wonder about whether they're having second thoughts. It is a
little odd that you could have an immediate family member
who is undocumented and you could think bringing Trump in
was going to be a great idea that doesn't require
a lot of creativity. But you know, having said that,
they did certainly when it was opportune. They definitely said
(13:42):
this thing, Oh, we're just going to go after the
criminals and the bad guys and the rapists and everything, and.
Speaker 5 (13:47):
Clearly some people bought that.
Speaker 4 (13:49):
And you know, a lot of what it comes down
to is people don't think that hard about things, right
you say, well, didn't you figure it might happen to you?
People don't get that far down the decision tree. That's
how people exist in the world to a great extent.
Speaker 1 (14:02):
So Trump comes back Israel and aarn in some kind
of war. Will America get involved? We don't know. But
a really interesting story about the right has emerged. So
we have Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Green again, you
(14:23):
know this crew does not want war or who knows
they have staked their ground as non interventionists sortid.
Speaker 4 (14:31):
Yeah, So talk us through that well with Tucker Carlson,
there may be something to that. He's kind of moved
in a very far direction. But a lot of the
Trump people, you know, you hear Trump bomb someone or
or killed some super bad guy, they're all for it.
So in the whole Trump world, I think non interventionism
(14:55):
is very shallow. It's until Trump says otherwise, But they're
clearly is something with Israel here. That's a real cleavage,
and not just because a lot of Trumpers are big
time anti Semites, right.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Right, right right, that's right, an important data point. I
think that's a really important introduction.
Speaker 5 (15:14):
Yeah, but not only that.
Speaker 1 (15:16):
I think, right that's just a part of the tapestry.
Speaker 3 (15:19):
Just a part of it.
Speaker 4 (15:20):
I do think that in the Trump world what they
want is the sort of the one night stand version
of kicking ass. They want Trump to lash out and
bomb people, but they want it to be over the
next day, and they don't want to have to call
a few days later and check in and see if
you want to go on another date.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Right, right, I mean exactly.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
They want to be super militarily strong and they want
to dominate, and dominating requires like outbursts of violence, but
they don't want it to be ongoing. I think that's
their non interventionism.
Speaker 1 (15:52):
Yeah, I think that's a very good point. And there's
really a lot of anti Semitism, which I think is
an unspoken or I think spoken but not spoken nearly enough.
Because Trumpism wraps itself in being pro Israel, It's ultimately
not really.
Speaker 4 (16:09):
Pro Israel beyond the fact that there's a domestic politics
angle for them. I think Trump and a lot of
trump Ism sees Israel as like a junior mascot of
trump dominationism, right, you know, young buddy sidekick. So there
is that aspect of it that is kind of you know,
(16:31):
killing Arabs basically, or in this case, killing Iranians. And
I think we're you know, where you have some of
that cleavage is that most American Jews, to the extent
that they are attached to Israel, are attached to a
very different version of Israel, and a version of Israel
that to a significant extent has been eclipsed over the
(16:51):
last twenty or thirty years. And the part of Israel
that the Trump folks are very attached to is the
part that they are uncomfortable with. That's a whole you know,
that's a whole thing. But one of the pioneers of
political anti Semitism, sort of not a hall of fame
you want to be in, is this guy who is
the mayor of Vienna at the turn of the nineteenth
(17:12):
twentieth century. His name is I think Luger, I can't
remember what his first name was. In any case, was
sort of the pioneer of populist anti Semitism. There's a
funny thing because in his own life he had Jewish
friends dine with Jews, and so there's this famous story
where he gets asked one time, you're the big Jew hater.
Why do we see you having, you know, dining with
(17:33):
Jews and your friends are Jews, And he has his
famous line he says, I decide who's a Jew? And
Trump is I think like that, right, He'll decide who
the Jews are. And you see that even where Asaurus
is bad because he's you know, he's a bad Jew,
and then they're good Jews.
Speaker 3 (17:49):
And that's sort of the Trump world.
Speaker 1 (17:50):
Yeah, cannot be stated enough. This is not actually about Judaism.
This is just about a kind of quoke of a
white nationalism or a fall right nationalism. You know, it's funny.
I can ask you about this because you are so intellectual.
I just realized, no, but seriously, because you know, you
(18:14):
come from academia, so I can ask you about this.
So I'm reading this book right now because I've been
on my book tour, How to Lose Your Mother. It's
available now.
Speaker 4 (18:22):
You should be so proud of your success. It's just
it's it seems to be flying off the shelves.
Speaker 1 (18:27):
It's actually sold out everywhere, which is making me completely crazy.
But it's amazing, and it is on the New York
Times bestseller list, hopefully to stay. I'm very superstitious, but
I'm reading this book on my book tour. The Anatomy
of Fascism by Robert O. Paxton. I don't know if
you know this book, And in it he's talking about
how fascism is very much a cult of personality and
(18:50):
that you can't do it with a non charismatic leader. Right.
You have to have a Mussolini. You gotta have a Hitler.
You gotta have even a pinochet, you can't. It doesn't
work with an al Gore.
Speaker 4 (19:02):
Absolutely, And yes, that is absolutely part of it. And
the hero worship and oddly the kind of even the
eccentricities are kind of part of it, and the kind
of the operatic kind of personality are part of it too.
It's a weird aesthetic.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah. So do you think that what happens is that
people are caught of guard by the humor? For example,
in trump Ism, there's a certain kind of humor right
like he's a ridiculous character, and that then they go
along with things they might not otherwise had it been
(19:40):
so like a JD. Vance is not going to get
away with stuff that a Donald Trump is, just like
Mike Pets was unable to get away with stuff that
a Donald Trump did. Do you think the humor tricks
constituents into going along with stuff or do you think
that it just is irrelevant and that they're in a
cultive personality.
Speaker 4 (19:57):
Well, I don't think it's irrelevant. I think how these
cults of personality work are very complex, and it's important
for people who revile Trump, who just who despise him,
to see that in his own way. He is very charismatic.
He's funny in his own way. Now it's often a
sadistic kind of humor, but he does have this public
(20:20):
style that is very effective. And one of the things
about Trump is that he has these moments of self
awareness and even kind of self criticism in a way,
not self criticism exactly, but awareness of some of his craziness.
And I, like many other people, have given a lot
of thought to this. It's almost something that is not
(20:41):
susceptible to discoursive thought in the way that you might
write down in an academic book. It's a little more
like jazz in a way. You get a feel for it.
But I think all of those are part of it.
And when we talk about a cult of personality, the humor,
all of those things are part of it. Probably many
of your listeners have seen this too, that Mike Lee,
senator from Utah, the sort of the very degenerate senator
(21:04):
from Mutah, is maybe in a little trouble now because
one of the senators, Senator Smith from Minnesota, kind of
called him out about these terrible tweets. And one of
the many things that that episode shows is that people
play these online personas and it becomes a separate world.
And so we all have some experience of that, of
the performative nature of these things. In some ways we
(21:25):
live in that world. And Donald Trump is like a
master of that world, of creating this kind of distracting
alternative reality that is always on the move, always taking
things in another direction, is entertaining, distracting, mesmerizing, and that thing,
(21:50):
very hard to capture, is really central to his power.
Even though it seems sort of silly and distracting and
stupid and is all those things, it's central to it.
And yeah, that is at the core of his power.
And it's a weird thing to understand.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, you know, it's funny because I watch him speak
a lot, unfortunately for me. I'll watch c SPAN and
you'll hear him do things like he'll say, well, we
like you. Wasn't much of a Trumper, but now they're Trumpers.
He's good to us the most mega he was so mega.
We didn't like this, but we do like what he
(22:30):
really thought about someone, which, if you think about it,
think about all of the very well meaning democratic politicians
who you and I really like are partisan favorites who
will absolutely not fucking tell you anything. Right, it's a superpower.
Speaker 5 (22:51):
In a way, it is a superpower.
Speaker 4 (22:53):
And that's kind of a version of what I was
talking about about the self criticism. It's not only self criticism,
but he'll kind of go into it his own internal
monologue sometimes, right, yep. And I do think that is
a big reason that he has a hold on some
people people's sense so like he's real and in a sense,
I think what is resonating with them is that he's
(23:16):
up there riffing and it's not planned, and he's kind
of it is kind of stream of consciousness. Now, most
of his stream of consciousness is nonsense and just making
things up. It plays as a kind of authenticity for people.
I want the next Democratic leaders to be on social
media a lot. Oh yeah, that was you know, one
(23:39):
of the things about not even his first presidency, but
his first campaign was everybody else is like, okay, should
we put out a press release for this? And he's
just going on Twitter.
Speaker 5 (23:49):
Right. You know.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
It's funny because it's like we have had the minority
leader on this podcast, and you know, they put out
press release after press release after press release, but nobody
cares because it's a press release, and if he just
would tweet out what he really thought. I mean, it
is an information desert, and if you tweet out what
you really think, people will respond to it. And if
(24:12):
you have something that's completely you know, run over by
legal six times, nobody gives a fuck.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's not news. It's not news. Like look, I'm in
the news business. I never look at press releases. You
don't put out a press release to make news. You
put out a press release to be able to say
you said something. And so there's a part of this.
You know, it is not an accident that Donald Trump
was a creation of the tabloid newsworld of the New
(24:41):
York of the nineteen eighties. It's not an accident because
that is where that is sort of where our current
media culture was born, the beginnings of electronic media, the
tabloid culture, all of that stuff. And so it makes
sense that, you know, all the ability to just kind
of like, I'm going to keep in the news and
(25:01):
going to keep doing stuff that people have to react to.
And it's just critical for people who care about politics
to understand why he is powerful in that way.
Speaker 5 (25:11):
You have to like it.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
He does have this one superpower it's what I guess
people have recently started calling the attention economy. If you
want to move in the news world, it's like, you know,
improvisational jazz in a quintet. You've got to be able
to hold the stage for a little while, right. It's
very strange stuff, but these very kind of symbolist things
translate into hard power that get people's families torn apart
(25:35):
and sent to a gulag in El Salvador. So things
that seem very silly and fluffy translate into real power
and real violence.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
Thank you, thank you, sayank you, thank you, Josh.
Speaker 5 (25:48):
Marshall, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Malcolm Kenyatta is a vice chair of the Democratic National
Committee and a Pennsylvania state representative for the one hundred
and eighty first district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Malcolm.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
Allie, I'm so happy to be here, and more than
anything else, I'm going to start by plugging your book.
I can't wait to read it.
Speaker 1 (26:13):
Oh, thank you, Yes, this is it, How to Lose
Your Mother Me plugging the podcast podcast. So now let's
talk about you. Are DNC vice chair again, yes again?
So what happened? Explain to us to your DNC vice chair.
I have known you for a long time. You're a
(26:33):
state representative in Pennsylvania. You're excellent. You ran against Fetterman
in the primary when Fetterman was not what he is
right now, which is totally not what I remember him
to be. You did not win that primary. You went
back to state legislature. You became a vice chair of
(26:55):
the DNC along with David Hogg. Now catch us up
on what happened next.
Speaker 5 (27:01):
Yeah, what happened next was a series, you know, sometimes
an intentional and sometimes unintentional miscommunications about what happened next
is often spend a lot of time trying to tell
the facts here, long story short after the election, anybody
who's ever been in a long, annoying, fucking meeting knows
about Robert's rules of order, And effectively, one of the
(27:24):
people who was unsuccessful said back on February the twenty
eighth that Robert's rules of order weren't followed in her view,
and back in February she filed that challenge to the
election results. And because unlike this authoritarian administration, the Democratic
Party actually believes in due process, there was a process
where she got to file a complaint we had a
(27:45):
number of days to respond to her complaint. The committee
had a number of days to hear that complaint. Already
people's eyes are glazing over. But ultimately what happened are
I know, I'm in it. My eyes are glazed over.
But what ultimately happened was the Committee decided to hould
the election again, you know, which I did not think
was you know appropriate. I called it at the time,
(28:06):
you know, a slap in my face. But in this moment,
with everything going on, with a president that is so lawless,
so out of control, and so willing to throw away
all of the modern safety net so that they can
stuff the pockets of the wealthiest people the world has
ever seen, we need a strong democratic party. And a
(28:26):
part of what we need in this moment is not
for everybody who's ever been frustrated with Democrats to walk away.
I've been frustrated with Democrats. I'm chief among them. But
the question is what do we do with that frustration.
I decided to go into the building and try to
fucking change it.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, this is why I love you. So tell me
what happens next?
Speaker 5 (28:44):
So what happens you know next? Does we have our
you know, Big Officers Retreat back in March on March
to twenty fifth, where Ken Martin our new chair. For
folks who don't know Ken, Ken was the guy after
the twenty sixteen election who led a lot of the
reforms in the DNC around minimizing the power of superdelegates,
trying to get the party out of the you know,
(29:06):
the gilded ages where people in smoke filled rooms picked
our nominees, and he laid out a series of like
twenty I think it is reforms to the party, including
officer neutrality. A month later, David Hogg announced that he
was going to do this primary thing with leaders we deserve.
Speaker 1 (29:22):
You know what, let's stop for a second. Officer neutrality
explain to us what that means.
Speaker 5 (29:27):
So back in twenty sixteen, and for some of the
people who were like jump in my comments and say, Malcolm,
what about twenty sixteen. Back in twenty sixteen, I was
not an electric official. There was a well known presidential
primary which we've never gotten over between ever ever, ever,
like I'm going to tell my grandkids about this. Yeah,
that's right, And out of that primary there was a perception,
(29:48):
and some could even say a reality. I'm not going
to Quipple over that. But at the minimum, there was
a perception that the party was not even handed in
that primary. And what we must all endeavor to do
is to make sure or that never happens again.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Right, And that was because of super delegates too.
Speaker 5 (30:04):
Right now, because of super delegates and like just many
aspects of the process that people can point to. But
I want to be crystal clear, I don't want any people,
ten people sitting in a smoke filled room or no
smoke field room, in a room in DC, looking across
the country trying to pick our freaking nominees. I think
we trust voters to pick our nominees. But let me
(30:26):
make this point, because this has been sort of people's assumption.
The DMC, the Democratic National Committee, is not an incumbent
protection racket. My job is not to re elect incumbents.
My job is to elect Democratic nominees that are chosen
by Democratic voters in their districts. That's our job, full stop.
And unfortunately, the election challenge that was filed back in February,
(30:50):
and Ken calling profice in neutrality back in March, you
have so many people still to this day are saying
that this is somehow payback for David and now saying
that he would not Abuie by officer neutrality back in April,
that timeline just doesn't work. And I've said this constantly,
but you know, a li will get around the block
while the truth is putting its shoes on, and so
(31:10):
I decided to put my shoes on tell the truth
about what's happening.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Ken Martin says he wants officer neutrality. This is part
of a larger decision. Explain a little more about this.
Speaker 5 (31:22):
It's to make sure that particularly in this presidential primary,
and Molly, I'm sure you'll interview all of them, well,
hopefully not all of them, because they're gonna, like ninety people
who run for president.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
Ook are going to be just an absolute epic shit show.
Speaker 5 (31:34):
Yes, it's gonna be so many people, and I think
in that process, as you might imagine, there are gonna
be a lot of hard feelings, a lot of people
who have thoughts about the process. And when it's over,
and when any primary is over, you need somebody who
people know cared about the outcome of the game as
a good referee should, but wasn't trying to be a
player in the game. And the DNC. Our job and
(31:57):
what we're doing is building the infrastry structure so that
when our candidates come out of those primaries they have
all the tools they need to be successful. And that
means that we have to invest and rebuild our state parties.
I was just in Mississippi and all of you know,
our last Democratic nominee, Mike Best be there.
Speaker 1 (32:14):
We had him on like six times.
Speaker 5 (32:16):
Yeah, he was the strongest statewide Democrat we've seen in
Mississippi in modern history. And he said this multiple times.
And the new chair who came in, you know, on
the tail end of that campaign, by the way, was
very clear that they needed to build out the infrastructure.
We shouldn't be asking Democratic nominees to build out the
voter contact infrastructure, even things around you know, voter community,
(32:37):
you know around excuse me, media and communications. There are
a bunch of different things that we need to do
that the Democratic Party is investing in. And so our
job is to build infrastructure so our nominees win, not
to try to pick our nominees. And that does not
mean that we don't want robust primaries. If you are
listening to this podcast and you're thinking about running for office,
(32:58):
run for office. I'm not trying to stop you. If
a running office, run for office on whatever platform you have,
run for office, talk to voters in your district and
go out and win. And when you are the nominee,
sign me up to do whatever event I need to
do to make sure you beat whatever authoritarian supporting Republican
is on the other side.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
All right, So then you guys have another election and
David does not run again.
Speaker 5 (33:21):
Explain, Yeah, so you know why David chose not to
run again. You know, obviously, you know he put out
a statement to that effect. But you know, in the
first election, we won pretty handily. You needed I think
it was two hundred and one votes. We got two
hundred and ninety eight votes. I think David got two fourteen.
We won pretty handily. And throughout my work in the
one hundred and thirty days or so before the election,
(33:42):
you know, I traveled twenty one thousand miles to a
nine states, did three dozen events, fundraisers, the list goes
on and on to try to build this party, and
I was confident that I would have the votes to
win again. David made a decision to focus his work
on leaders we deserve. I said it at the time.
You know, I really wish him the best. There is
nothing wrong with robust primaries. We have folks in organized
(34:05):
labor who endorse different people. We have you know, Emily's List,
Run for Something, which is an incredible organization that supports
young people running for office, Collective Pack Victory Fund, so
many different organizations. We're going to play in primaries, and
they should, and I'm going to be waiting for those
primaries to be over to support them. However, however we
can at the DNC.
Speaker 1 (34:25):
So then explain to me what happened with Randy Wineingarden.
Speaker 5 (34:31):
Yeah, so let me let me. Let me say this,
and I said this on the MSNBC. I think I
was on like right after this news broke. Randy and
Lee Saunders, our dear, dear friends of mine. Let me
say that there is no Malcolm Kenyata in politics without
asks me and AFT. The support of their members and
their support personally has meant so much to me, and
their friendship means so much to me, and I respect
(34:52):
their decision to step back. But I think the only
question that I think we really need to answer is
what are we going to do for working people and
working families to make their lives better. And you heard
me say this over and over again. Even Fox News
said they're sick of me saying yeah. But I think
the Democratic Party has a singular mission and ultimately a
singular message. We have to make life better and a
(35:14):
part of that equation obviously is making sure that people
get a fair wage, that they get the benefits and
dignity they deserve on the job. And no, you know,
there are very few people who have fought as hard
for those changes and for those rights and earned benefits
then Lease Honders and Randy Weingarten, So you know they're
taking a step back. I absolutely respect them, but I
(35:36):
know where I'm going to see them on a picket
line on some fight for justice, and they're going to
be fighting arm in arm with the Democratic Party to
elect Democratic candidates who care about those values. But I
think as a party right now, we are going to
be focused not on the past, but on what our
party must be. And I think you know, if you
want to get on TV right now, Molly, you know it.
You just say Democrats suck, write an op ed, it
(35:58):
gets published. You can be an a blog of any
show you want to be on and you know that's
all well and good. I think enough op eds have
been written about what the Democrats did wrong. I'm sick
of that shit. I think it's our responsibility to talk
about what we're going to do next, to tell people
who we are going to be and what we've been.
And so that's why I go all across this country
talking about how we're going to make life better for
(36:18):
working people and working families. And I have no doubt
that those two leaders are going to continue to do
that work, no matter what their role or title is.
Speaker 1 (36:25):
So they didn't step down because they were feeling that
the DNC wasn't doing what it should be doing.
Speaker 5 (36:32):
I can't get into their their heads here. We know
what they wrote in their letters and what's been reported.
But let me just say, you know they they did
this for you know a number of years. They have
done their their service and their time at the DMC.
They have huge organizations that they run, and those organizations
and the values of AFT, the values of AFTE are
(36:52):
the Democratic Party values. And when Democrats take the House
back in twenty twenty six, we better get about the
business of passing the pro forcing the Senate and the
President to be against making it easier for people to
organize on the job. You know. In a now viral
video where I work in Harrisburg, after a speech that
I gave about the minimum wage, the Republican leader gets
up on the floor and says, every job shouldn't have
(37:15):
a living shouldn't be a living wage because he's such
a you know, a jerk, you know, in an asshole.
He does not think people should be paid a dignified wage.
That's what we're up against right now. And Randy and
Lee are going to definitely be in the trenches helping
us do that work, you know, and we respect their leadership.
But now we have to move forward and do the
work that we must do, making sure that everybody hears
about how the Democratic Party wants to make life better
(37:38):
for working people and working families.
Speaker 1 (37:41):
Jerry Connelly he died in office the day before the
Big Beautiful Bill was passed by a one full margin.
In my mind, that strikes me as why we are
in so much trouble in this moment. Can you speak
to it?
Speaker 5 (37:57):
Yeah, So, first of all, I just want to say
just to Rep. Connolly's family and to his you know,
incredible wife, Kathy I know how hard this is, but
let me also say, I think that voters are having
these these conversations, all these conversations that you're talking about.
I want to see people who have a vision for
this country, people who have a good way of talking
(38:19):
about the future, to step up. And honestly, the people
need to step up the most are the folks who
have the most on the line. I mean, listen, I'm
not even thirty five yet I'm asking every single day,
am I gonna be able to breathe the damn air
and drink the water? Or me and my husband may
the start a family to live in a community that's safe.
And if we had kids, are they going to grow
up in some authoritarian, right wing maga QAnon regime? And
(38:44):
so I think invariably you are gonna have people who
understand the impact of this moment, including a bunch of
young people, step up and run for office. And they should.
People should step up and run for office. But we
shouldn't also so not continue to give Republicans a pass here.
And I think what often happens is, well, we assume
(39:07):
Republicans are bad, So why even talk about the fact
that they're bad? The big bullshit bill, which is what
I call it, passed because Republicans want it to pass,
because they do not give a damn about kicking fourteen
million people off of health care, because they don't care
about ripping food out of the mouths of kids, because
they don't care about shutting down critical research that helps
us deal with issues like cancer and HIV, because they
(39:31):
don't care about people being kicked out of their homes.
And the reality is that time and time and time again,
we are ignoring the advice that comes from a very
unexpected place. If you ever saw the show Silo, I
don't watch Silo. My husband watched Silo, and if I
want to sit in the fucking living room, I apparently
aren't have to watch Silo too, and so and so
(39:53):
and so. One of the characters on Silo said something
that I felt was so impactful. She said, we have
to figure out how to be angry with each other
and not at each other, because in this moment, the
things that we're even defending, I don't think even enough
Democrats know that this is something we did. Medicare, Medicaid,
social Security, these are programs that are deeply popular. The
(40:15):
Affordable Care Act programs that are deeply popular that Democrats passed,
and we have to get back to the business of
talking about how we're going to do that again, how
we're going to make life better and if you hear
me again, Hey, Malcolm, should young people run for office? Yes? Yes, yes,
they should run for office. Al Roker did a whole
documentary about my run for office called Do Not Wait
(40:35):
Your Turn. You can go watch it if you're bored. Okay,
So I'm all about this, but I just want to
be crystal clear that voters are going to decide who
those nominees are and I'm going to support them.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
Yeah, I get that, and I agree with everything you're saying.
I probably would have said it. I probably have said
it myself in a very similar way over the last
twenty four hours.
Speaker 5 (40:54):
Well you've said it better, I'm sure.
Speaker 1 (40:57):
No, I think about the same. But I want to
ask you for example, and I say this. You know
I'm a partisan, So what is responsibilityy with something like
the Jerry Connolly situation? Like? Because I mean, listen, I
like a lot of those people. I like a lot
of the people in the House, a lot of Democratic
Congress people I call a friend. I talk to people
(41:18):
before the vote. I know that a lot of people
liked him, but I just am curious, like basically what
I heard from people because I asked them why they
would elevate him instead of AOC because he was battling
throw cancer, was seventy six and also just was not
as good a communicator as AOC. And you know, you
can like him or love him, but he was not
(41:39):
a politician who broke through. Particularly so when I asked
people about why they were voting for him, they would say, well,
it's his turn. And I wonder, whose responsibility is it
to tell somebody in their seventies who's got throw cancer
that they can't be ranking member, Like obviously there's a
failure of leadership here, or doesn't it seem like if
(42:00):
I had a company and I were running a company
and you know, we just had And I don't mean
to push you on this because I really like you
and we're friends, and I have enough elected who are
mad at me.
Speaker 5 (42:10):
Oh please put me out.
Speaker 1 (42:11):
Yeah, but I just am wondering, like, whose responsibility isn't
like Republicans are craven, like we saw Republicans tell Steve
Scalice he couldn't be in leadership because he had blood cancer.
We heard Marjorie Taylor Green say that she was like,
you can't because you had blood cancer. So whose responsibility
is it to say to someone in their seventies who
has cancer? And I say this as someone who has
(42:32):
a husband who had cancer, like, whose responsibility is it
to say.
Speaker 5 (42:37):
That we listen? I think the antidote to all of
the problems we have in this moment are those three
words that open our constitution, We the people. It's not
like these conversations aren't being had. These conversations are being had.
We see voters every single day talking about the types
of candidates that speak to them, Candidates who can talk
(42:57):
about the future, candidates who have a vision, candidates who have,
you know, fire in the belly. To meet this moment
and treat this moment like it's the five alarm fire
that it is. Treat this moment like we have an
authoritarian in the White House who's sending the military against
its citizens. We have to treat it with that, with
(43:17):
that seriousness. But I want to be very clear with folks.
I want people to think about this for a second,
which is why I'm being careful you know, I chose
to run for a specific gig within the Democratic National Committee,
and there are a lot of people who look at
me and say, Malcolm, you always talk about, you know,
don't wait your turn, your young guy running running running
for office. The reality, though, is this, we do not
(43:42):
want officers of the DNC trying to make all of
these decisions. We don't want that. We don't want that.
And people think they want that right now because because
there's somebody who you think agrees with you, who's there.
But Malcolm's not going to be by sheriff of the
DNC forever. And what if the next vice chair of
the d NC says, know what, the progressives are the
problem with everything in the in the party, and we're
(44:03):
gonna do everything we can to get them out of
the party. You know that's wrong. I want to see
a party that is run by the people, and the
people are making their their voices heard. People are stepping
up every single day to run for office. I mean,
I saw a run for something talk about the amount
of people who've signed up with them to run for office.
And I think the best thing that I can do
(44:25):
is to say, in no uncertain terms and repeat to
folks that if you want to run for office, you
should step up and run. I think these conversations are,
you know, conversations that we that we should have. If
we're going to make life better for people, we certainly
have to be willing to have tough conversations as Democrats.
But I should not be trying to dictate those those conversations,
(44:48):
you know. And it's very rare that you have political
leaders that don't think they should be in charge of everything.
I don't think I should be in charge of everything.
I think that I should be listening to what voters
tell me to do, and what voters want me to
do right now is to make sure that we can win.
And a part of why the Democratic Party is not one,
in my view, is that we've treated ourselves for too
(45:09):
long like we exist to throw a big party every
four years and just elect a president. And we've changed that.
We're investing a million dollars a month in state parties,
the single largest investment out of DC into state so
we can do year round organizing. We started this program
like the Blueprint, so every day at ten am, we're
prebudding all of the lies that are going to come
(45:29):
from the john S Brady press room where this lady
gets up with her cross and then says everything that
Jesus would despise, and the list goes on and on.
So I have a job to do, and my job
is to build the infrastructure so Democrats can and can win.
I want to make sure they win. I want to
see younger leaders step up to run for office, and
(45:50):
I want to see leaders who have fire in the
belly to step up for run for office. And I
want all of them to be talking about my three
words on how they're going to make life better for
working people and working families. I think that's what voters
want to hear it too.
Speaker 1 (46:01):
Frankly, thank you, thank you, thank you, Malcolm.
Speaker 5 (46:04):
Thank you so much. I really appreciate this opportunity.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
No moment.
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Jesse Cannon Molly friend of the podcast, Mary Ziegler has
a great article on Slate about how the GOP keeps
losing public abortion votes.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
So now it's trying a new angle.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
Yeah, choice is popular, you know it's popular. The GOP
put abortion on the ballot a bunch of times, and
every time abortion wins. Missouri is an interesting state because
this is one of these states where they've been using
it as a test case for anti choice legislation. They
had a ballot initiative which enshrined creating constitutional reproductive rights.
(46:48):
But because it's Missouri, the legislators are all Republicans. It's
a Republican supermajority. So even though voters want to enshrine
reproductive rights, legislators don't because they're all Republicans. So instead
of doing what the voters wanted with the ballot initiatives,
and we saw this in Florida too. Right in Florida,
(47:09):
they wanted to restore voting to felons and the government
was like, no, fuck you, we're not going to do it,
even though you voted for it. So that's what's happening here.
Missouri is going to try now to pass a ballot
initiative which will overturn the most recent ballot initiative. This
is like yet another Republican's hate democracy moment. Right, they lose,
(47:34):
they don't care, They just cheat. When you realize that
trump Ism is an extension of this, when you realize
trumpsm doesn't happen in a vacuum, that the party that
jerry manders, that the party that does not accept losing
a ballot initiative that that party. Trump Ism is the
natural progression of that party.
Speaker 3 (47:55):
One hundred percent.
Speaker 1 (47:58):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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