September 10, 2025 • 45 mins
Evil Geniuses Author Kurt Andersen explains how the 90s brought us the deranged Republican nightmare we’re in now. Iowa State Rep. Josh Turek about his run for the open Iowa Senate seat.
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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 the US economy added nine hundred
and eleven thousand fewer jobs than previously reported in the
largest ever revision. We have such a great show for
you today. Evil Genius' author Kurt Anderson stops by to
(00:24):
talk to us about how the nineties brought us the
deranged Republican nightmare we live through today. Then we'll talk
to Josh Touric about his run for the open Iowa
Senate seat. But first we have the stories the media
is missing.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My oh boy, it's a day. So I thought this
was really interesting. We've talked a lot about this character,
Bill Polti, who we haven't said much about before until
recent weeks. But the House is going to probe him.
And I mean just yesterday there was reports that Scott
Bessett was going to well, he was going to be
the sixth person that Scott besson threatened to punch. What
do you see in here? This is wild?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, So I think we can all agree that as
much as a lot of us don't agree with Scott Bessant,
Treasury secretary. We all respect his ability to get into
physical violence. We certainly saw Scott Bessen had an altercation
with the Elon Musk. Now he has threatened to punch
(01:20):
Bill Pulty in the face. And Poulty is mostly famous
for running this very sleepy branch of government, the Trump administration.
He's a housing official. But what I think is really
interesting about him is that he's basically found all this
mortgage stuff. How he's found it, we don't know. So
(01:42):
he uses it against the president's enemies. So he used
it against Lisa Cook. He has used it against New
York ag Tish James, so he basically trots us out.
Now we have found that his parents use this using
two houses. So basically Poulty had accused Cook of listing
(02:04):
both a house in Michigan and a condo and Atlanta
as a primary resident. Poultice's parents did this, And I
think the bigger question is why is he using this
federal agency to investigate Donald Trump's enemies. I don't think
any of this is legal. So let's see what happens here.
We got democrats. Raskin sent Pulty a letter. He demands
(02:28):
that Pulty produce all records related to selective investigations. I
think this is really the way forward for Democrats that
the only way that anyone is ever going to take
them seriously is if they do stuff like this, like
they just push and push and push and hold these
(02:48):
people accountable. So I think this is really good again,
like we're seeing members of the House do this, We're
just not seeing it from leadership. And I wish we were.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
After the drawing of what we thought was going to
be a woman's body and now many interpretations say is
a girl's body. On Trump's birthday letter to Epstein, we're
thinking that this discharge petition might actually go through that
Thomas Massey's pushing what do you see him?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So basically this is what they told me this whole
time there comms people had said that there are two
Democratic seats that are going to be filled. One is
the seat in Virginia. That was Jerry Connolly's seat. You'll
remember they put him as the head of Oversight instead
of AOC and then he died. But Democrats wanted because
(03:38):
he had seniority, even though he had throw cancer, he
got the job even though he was in treatment, and
then he died. So that seat is now being filled,
and then there's another seat that Democrats are going to get.
So even if Republicans don't do the right thing here
and sign this discharge petition, they will get to the
number in these special elections. So Johnson has already so
(04:01):
embarrassed himself with this story. He said that Donald Trump
was an FBI in format. There is no evidence to
support this that he was trying to shut down Epstein
from the inside. Mike Johnson walked it back. Always a
great sign and always a little bit shocking when someone
from Trump World actually walks something back like amazing. But yeah,
(04:23):
walked it back.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting. There's a lot of
Milton down there.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Trump is still goetting to sue Rupert Murdoch for ten
trillion dollars because numbers, what do they mean?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Trump has never met a lawsuit he'll potentially lose that
he doesn't like, so it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And also since numbers no longer have any meanings, Since
Trump is getting ten trillion dollars in tariffs, why not
sue Rubert Murdoch ten zillion dollars.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
People always say the thing is like Bennon's theory that
you throw six things at the wall.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Esjra.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Trump had some really interesting comments about domess violence that
really disturbed a lot of people, including me yesterday, A
level fight with the wife is a saying that you
don't want to see belittled in language.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Ever, this was actually pretty shocking when I saw it.
Yet another moment where I was like, that can't be real. This,
this is me, my sad gen X situation. That can't
be real, young gen X, I might add. Donald Trump
went to the Museum of the Bible, which I've actually
been to because one of my kids wanted to go.
(05:29):
It was funded by the hobby lobby crew. Oh yes, yes, yeah,
and it includes lots of artwork that some of which
is fake, some of which is looted antiquities, some of
which is repurposed to be nonsense. But it's a very
interesting museum and everyone should go there. It's also free
(05:50):
because they feel it is aligned with their mission. But anyway,
so Trump is in this museum giving a talk about
religious tolerance. These are like he's trying to hit the
notes that get the base excited. So evangelicals are being
discriminated against is a big one, and he gets in
it and he just starts musing and macking about domestic
(06:12):
violence and he calls it a little fight with the wife.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Real who amongst us energy.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, really does. And he says a little fight with
the wife, and then he sort of goes into you know,
why should the police be involved if you're just beating
up your wife. What I think is so interesting about
this moment that we're in is that Donald Trump is,
while he has captured all these institutions and we're such
(06:40):
a weak and soft country that we've sort of let
him do whatever he wants to does, he's really still
got a sort of Shakespearean thing where he can't stop
telling on himself, he can't stop sort of self destructing.
You know, there's a real lesson here about people getting
what they want. I think this kind of stuff is
pretty interesting. I mean it's obviously quite disturbing. Kurt Anderson
(07:06):
is the author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasy Land. Welcome
to Fast Politics, Kurt Anderson.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Happy to be in Fast Politics once again.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Every day is a greater descent into fantasy Land. I mean,
it is the myths, the and also everything is nineteen
ninety four, forever and ever until we die.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Discuss I would give anything for it to be nineteen
ninety four again.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
But you know, it certainly is the beginnings of ging
Rich and the descent of the Republican Party into that
the morass of the last thirty years.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, it is. It is. I mean in fantasy land.
And as long as we're talking about titles in my
books Evil Guiniusness, which came afterwards, I really thought of
them both as a double volume, the first one being Yes,
this longstanding American weakness for the excitingly untrue right. And
Donald Trump has embodied that. He came along just as
(08:05):
I was finishing that book, and it was like, you know,
I felt some guilt, like, oh, I have my poster
boy here for this, but he is so that and
you know it was published in his first year, and
you know, the week after it was published, QAnon started.
And then there's Donald Trump lying about everything and building
(08:26):
this movement, this true movement. You can unders states that
of people who who share, you know, not a coherent ideality.
That's the thing, right, It's interesting they share all kinds
of fantasies and conspiracy theories in the Bobby Kennedy flavor
and the government's taking over this or that, you know,
and and and just the inconsistency and incoherence of it
all is phenomenal. And you know, people keep saying, oh,
(08:49):
you should update it, right anew and well, no, it's
just there, it is. I mean, you know, I could
devote my entire life to doing a daily thing about it. No,
it's it's nuts. And and I don't know what to say,
you know, and I keep waiting for enough people to
have since slapped into them. And I think, as I
talk about in fantasy land, when the economics go wrong
(09:09):
as they did in two thousand and eight, right, you
can't pretend there's not a giant, great recession. You can't
pretend prices aren't going up, you can't pretend the economy
is now starting to go into recession, so that there
is the reality slap of economic reality, which at this point,
you know, I guess I'm depending on because in political terms,
(09:32):
because he can't wish that away. They can't wish that away.
And just as you know, not to compare it to
Joe Biden, but just as we the Biden and Democrats
can say, oh no, the inflation is really yeah, it's
going away. It's Okay, shit, you know you're not feeling it. Well,
people didn't buy hat and they're not going to buy this.
And more than more than ever again my hope, I
(09:53):
always find the glimmers of hope and green shoes. You know,
this is so clearly and so undern mily his he
still occasionally tries as, oh, no, it's Biden. I'm I
heerd Biden. You didn't. Terrorists are years, you know, all
all of its years, the the the you know, this
radical change in the labor market, apart from the grotesque
(10:15):
street thug fascism of the master importations, you know, all
of it is going to is going to be his
and and uh you know, I mean I was already
hopeful about the midterms, and and the timing of the
of the economic wreckage looks just great for politically speaking,
you know, a year from now it's going to be terrible.
(10:37):
So that's my failing. But as you said that, you're
framing the descent into fantasy land and the degree to
which the evil geniuses, which is to say, rich people
and corporate ba by and large and the elected Republicans
in Washington have all all you know, as we know
ninety six percent of them absolutely bought in and hope
(11:02):
there will be a price to pay, because and I
think there will be. And I think this is not
going to last forever anymore. I say to myself, not
off in a public anymore than it did in Germany.
We just got to keep as nearly as we can
shouting the truth in you know, non hair on fire.
But it's extreme and it's not normal. And what it's
going to take all kinds of new things, whether it's
(11:22):
letting the government shut down in a couple of weeks
or or whatever it is to it's a new ball game.
It's a new ball game.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That's where I have to say.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
I'd love you to talk about the Birthday Book, because
the Birthday Book feels like something that I mean, it can't.
You know, it was put together in the nineties, early
two thousands, right before Epstein's first arrest, right when he
gets this got the Sweetheart deal, which was two thousand
and four. But it exists in this time. I mean,
(11:53):
what I think is so interesting about what I've seen
of it so far is that you know, there's stuff
from Trump, there's stuff from Less Wexler, there's stuff from
dersh weed. There's you know, it feels like another world.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
You know it does. And I said to my wife,
yesterd boy, there there was this parallel, dirty, rich universe
going on in our midst and we're just you know,
Pollyanna innocence. Yes, it does feel like you know the world.
But I don't think it is another world. I think
that world exists in different form right now, and it's
(12:29):
tooner layer it will be exposed too. No, I don't
you know it is. It is of another time because
of the names and less West and Alan Dershowitz and
all the rest are everybody except Donald Trump are gone
more or less. The entitlement is still absolutely there. And
I see I still see that. I mean, and and
(12:51):
I would say, I mean obviously the great wealth and
I can do anything because I'm rich. Thing is here
more than ever. And I see not Epstein, sex trafficking,
examples of it all over all the time, but but
similar things. It's just as grotesque. The thing about that too,
I mean again in terms of in terms of just
the delusional or welly and fantasy. The denial yesterday by
(13:16):
the the you know, Deputy White House Chiefs and Staff
in charge of comms and by the Press Secretary of like, no, no, no,
look these things obviously aren't his. Well, they look just
like the ones you were showing. And they look just
like the ones I have in my personal files. First
of all, and and and then the Wall Street Journal,
which in it's.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
By the famous liberal famous.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Are analyzing why the signature looks is the same, Why, yes,
he looked at all these drawings he's done. Yes, look
at all the times he's used enigmental.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
You know, it's just like boom boom boom, like this
forensic spy magazine, like tickdown that is fantastic, you know,
good for in his ya last days alive.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, as he's he ruined the country, but he's getting
his last licks and at Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
So anyway something and again you know, and and and
what's her name? Carolyne Lovett said no, and the Wall
Street Journal story proves this has all been false. Uh no,
it proves the opposite. So anyway it is. It is remarkable,
and it's you know, I remember, you know, speaking of
the nineties. I don't know, you may be too young,
remember bag Dad Bob during the war.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
But that's what this is.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
The embodiment of like, no, no, they're not. The Americans
are nowhere in there. We're fine, We're good. That's all right,
we'll see. I mean, and and and again that you
can't make it up daily thing like oh, we're gonna
make We're gonna make Eric Adams, Mayor of New York,
get out of the way for Andrew Cuomo by making
(14:55):
him the ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I mean, I amazing, amaze, and.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Man, that would be a great reality show, yes, but
it's just it is astonishing. And you know, and as
I said, so let's well the mom Donnie thing, is
it glimo?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, but let's I want to stay on this idea
that the world that we're living in right now is
created in the nineties, because I actually think it was
a lot of the people who are funding this presidency
or running this White House are creatures of that world.
(15:32):
And I think of like Susie Wild who came up
under Bush too. You know, Donald Trump obviously most of
his friends and the people around him, And I just
wonder if you know the the thing that made Trump
and the thing you know, I was talking to someone
who knew him and had talked to him pretty recently
(15:53):
and said that one of the things he spends the
most time worrying about is is this breaking through? Like
are people watching? Are people seeing me? Are people right?
Am I getting the airtime? Is it being shown now?
Because he's right, he's still thinking about like traditional linear
television and not necessarily where a lot of people are.
(16:15):
But I think that you know, he was at the
US Open yesterday, He is at He is trying to
be at every sporting event. He wants to have USC
fighters on the on the lawn of the White House.
And I just wonder if you could talk about this
idea of being downstream of culture and how Donald Trump
(16:40):
learned that and how that equates the nineties.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Well, he is was and is a show business person.
Right when he was somebody in real estate, he said, oh,
I'm I'm you know, sixty years ago, more than six
years ago, he said, I was thinking about getting into
show business and producing Broadway plays and stuff. But I'm
going to do I went to be in real estate
and make that show business too. And as I've written about,
(17:05):
you know, it was in this long, perfectly calibrated timed
way to do what has always been done in America,
which is everything is show business, you know, I mean,
religion was show business in the United States, or in
America before it's the United States unlike anywhere else, and
everything and every you know, Buffalo Bill, all of it
(17:26):
was show business. And you know, presidential politics had started
that becoming how with television and then Robt Reagan and
then up to Donald Trump. And he was perfectly positioned
to do that. And so being a WWE famous guy
before he was you know, I mean, that was as
important a part of his fame in the nineteen nineties
(17:49):
as anything else. You know, then came apprentice orything and
playing the character that this character against that rival evil
character and just doing whatever it took to make people
watch and cheer and like, Okay, they know it's a fake,
but but like, well, we still like it, right, And
to bring that to make our politics, at least our
Republican politics, at least his unique and singular version of
(18:14):
politics that was, you know, I mean, it's like a
wild movie, a piece of satire, might judge idiocracy thing
that a novel I wrote in nineteen ninety nine about
the murder of reality and and and and television and
it's it's it's just come true. So yes, the seeds
(18:34):
robbed too laid there. And of course all of these
people too, just because of their age, because they're you know,
the nineties, people were still young enough to now be
compositions of power. But so many of these people, of course,
were not in politics at all. I mean, Bobby Kennedy
of the nineties was still you know, a drug addict
and a failed and a failed district attorney who had
then become apparently a legit environmental lawyer and stuff. But yeah,
(18:58):
I mean, but again there the why is he there
because his last name is Kennedy? Period and destroyed? Why
is our public health system being destroyed? And and and
years and years of important all kinds of medical and
other scientific work being destroyed because this kid, my cocaine
dealer's name is Kennedy. And again it's this crazy you know,
(19:21):
celebrity tale wagging the dog of the republic in a
way that yes, it begs all understanding.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right there, There is an attention to brands, an attention
to names that is very Trumpian, right. I also think
that RFK, that was the way he appealed to women voters,
was that he saw that they were Trump friendly women
voters who liked Maha and who thought Maha was somehow
(19:53):
something that would solve their problems. And I think there
is also a sort of post COVID emotional meltdown that
has happened in our country that.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
More the COVID, I think the effects obvious and less
of this of COVID are still with us and messing
with all kinds of in them.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Have Maha without COVID.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Absolutely, And you know, speaking of Maha, and you know,
almost everyone I know says, well, there are a lot
of things about Earth. There are some things aboubby Kennedy.
Yes he's a nut, yes he's yes, yes he's destroying science.
But there's things he says that if you just did those,
you know whatever, taking chemicals out of food, you know,
taking pharmaceutical prescription, pharmaceutical lives off television, all on there.
(20:41):
There are things like yeah, sure, if that's Maha, I'm
down with it, until you get into no, all vaccines
are bad and and I should be able to not
take vaccines if I want all that and tell you
into the craziness that there's there's you know, saying Maha
and and simply like California, you know, healthiness and and
(21:03):
and then there's insanity and and you know you I
think it's important to distinguish those and and make make
the people who were attracted to the right reasonable part
of it. Like I understand like this guy is uh,
you know is I mean, you're going to make your
kids die and make us make make your parents die.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I mean the best example of them how craziness is
Florida where they're where they're no longer making kids get vaccinated.
I mean that is an intense.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
And again it takes a while. You know, the herd,
the immune herd has protected everybody for so long they
they forget if they ever knew or ever understood that
that's what That's why people didn't get these horrible, deadly child.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
We're going to see bad, bad stuff happen real soon,
do you think. Like one of the things that I
often think to myself is like, we are actually hurtling
towards disaster pretty and the question.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Is which disaster or disasters are we hurtling toward. Yeah,
and I don't know how quickly, but and I don't
like it. You know, it's like one of these numbers
is going to come up, and whether it's unnecessarily uncontrolled epidemics, well,
god knows, I don't need.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
To, right, it doesn't matter. But you can see that
we're hurtling towards something bad. The lack of regulation when
it comes to stable coin, the disassembling our security. I mean, like,
clearly something catastrophic is we're hurdling towards.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Well, it's a reasonable bet. Unfortunately, I think it is.
Lenin famously said, and is you know, the worse the better,
you know, you get things terrible, and then the revolution
will come. I've never been there. Yeah, but this is
not going to end well, it just is not going
to end well. I hope you know, whatever disaster comes,
(22:52):
it's it's not so existential that it can't be recovered.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
From the thing that I am stressedtruck by is like
we have government. Government is good and does things for people,
and disassembling it is bad and we're about to find
out why.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yes, and you can still stipulate that, Yes, of course,
there's lots of blowdered, old fashioned, inefficient things. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
I mean again, there are reasonable versions of everything, just
as there are reasonable versions of my mother's are reasonable
reasonable version of a doge thing like, yeah, let's see
what isn't doing its job anymore. Let's not just assume
that the most regulation is the better or all of it.
(23:32):
But you know, I mean the buy the crazy binariness,
and and here we are way over here like in
the real burn it down sense, And and that nihilism,
the burn it down nihilism is is a significant part
of the Trump uh base movement feeling, you know, just
(23:53):
fuck it, fight it, yeah, burn it down. It's not working.
It's rigg you know, And and that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Fuck Kurt Anderson, please come.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Back, always will you? And always happy too.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Josh Turik is a member of the Iowa House of
Representatives from the twentieth district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Josh,
thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Very excited to have you. So you are running in Iowa.
Just tell us your origin story.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Sure, origin story. I was born right here. We're not
exactly where I'm sitting, but in this town of Council Bus, Iowa,
which is a blue collar town, you've got sixty five
percent of the people that live at or below the
poverty line. Here. I was born to a working class
to say lower middle class, oftentimes poor family. I've got
three sisters in one brother. I was born to a
(24:50):
Vietnam veteran father that was exposed to agan ORNs, so
I was born with a condition called spina bifida, had
my first surgery at one day old and had twenty
one surgeries by the age of twelve. And someone that
went through an enormous amount of economic adversity and certainly
on the healthcare side. A family that we shared clothes
and got a lot of our clothes from the Goodwill
(25:12):
and a mother that at times that was putting the
groceries on the credit card. In the summer times, we
were going to the free summer lunch programs to get
our food. And I'm grateful that I grew up in
Iowa at a time when we were number one in
public education, and I had a lot of support from
the AAS which provides special education here. Thankfully for me,
what really saved my life was I was exposed to
(25:33):
wheelchair basketball and an adaptive sports program across the river
in Omaha, Nebraska, and that really gave me everything that
I needed from friends and it legitimately saved my life.
I played well enough in wheelchair basketball that I was
able to get a partial scholarship to play at the
collegiate level. I went to a place called Southwest Minnesota
State University along with the help of vocational Rehabilitation. Had
(25:56):
it not been for wheelchair basketball or voke rehabit never
would have went to Calle and played well enough there
that I set a lot of records, scored sixty three
points in a game, and scored four thousand career points,
which I'm proud I barely eked out Caitlin Clark there
and then had the opportunity to play something I did
not actually know existed when I was in college, which
is professional wheelchair basketball, which doesn't exist in America, so
(26:19):
the have to play abroad. So I had the opportunity
to live and play basketball in places like France and
Spain and Italy and Australia. But by the time it
was done and the biges accomplishment was I had the
opportunity which was my goal from day one, which was
to represent the country in the Paralympic Games, which the
Summer of Paralympic Games is the second largest sporting event
(26:39):
on Earth behind the Summer Olympic Games. Played in four
Paralympic Games and won two gold medals in wheelchair basketball
back to back, and finished my career in Tokyo. Last
game that I played was winning a gold medal. Along
the way, got a bachelor's degree in history, got a
master's degree in business administration. Briefly was a small business
owner as well for more than ten years been a
(27:00):
director of a nonprofit organization that helps disabled kids have
access to adaptive sports programs like wheelchair basketball, just because
it honestly had saved my life and profound impact it
made on me, and to be a role model to
other kids with disabilities because they don't see enough role
models from the from the disabled community. And then as well,
what got me interested in politics is when I finished
(27:22):
my basketball career, I started working as well with disabled individuals.
Working for a company called New Motion. I was assessing
and providing wheelchairs, power both power wheelchairs and manual wheelchairs
and mobility devices for the disabled population. And it was
in there that every single day we were dealing with
denial rates and delay rates. I was working specifically with
(27:42):
individuals with muscular dystrophe and als LU Garrig's disease, and
these are people that just do not have time for
denial rates. And we were showing that since Iowa had
privatized the medicaid system, we were showing a thousand percent
increase and the denial rate, and I felt that that
was wrong. And then with a little bit of recent search,
had found out that Iowa we had never had a
permanently disabled member in the Iowa legislature. That's one hundred
(28:05):
and fifty year history of the state, a governing body
of one hundred and fifty members. Meanwhile, we have one
in five io ones that are blind or death or
intellectually disabled or physically disabled. And I thought, well, is.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That higher than others dates.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
In terms of the lack of representation.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Yeah, and also in terms of the level, like one
in five is that what most states are?
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Now? There's variants in terms of the statistics on that.
I would say a bare minimum, the number that we've
always used is the silent fifteen. We the fifteen, So
a bare minimum, it's fifteen percent of the population would
be considered disabled. It gets a little bit tricky in
terms of that number, especially what is your definition of disability?
The invisible disabilities, those with autism, et cetera. Right, but
(28:47):
here in Iowa, we could have a slightly higher rates
one in five here here in Iowa. But you know,
along with our cancer rates, we could have higher levels
of disabilities.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, and so you ran for state legislature.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Yeah, ran for state legislature. And I knew it was
to be difficult. I'm out here in the rightest part
of the state, which is western Iowa, and knew it
was going to be very, very difficult. Especially in twenty
twenty two. It was not a good year to run
as Democrats. Most people said it would be impossible to win,
and I did. If you've seen the launch video, that's
exactly how I went out every single day and just
drug my wheelchair upstairs to have conversations with Independence and
(29:20):
Republicans day after day. I outperformed the top of the
ticket by thirteen points and won my first election by
just six votes, and then turned around in a year
that was actually twenty four was actually even worse out here.
Trump won my county by twenty points, one of the
two communities that I represent, by double digits, and I
was able to win by nearly six percent. So I
was very proud of that outperformed the top of the
(29:40):
ticket by much more than any other Democrat in the state.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
So how did you do it?
Speaker 4 (29:45):
First? Is that it's hard work. I say that the
right candidate, with the right message and the right work ethic,
you can win in very adverse conditions. What I did
was that I went out every single day. I never
took a day off, it didn't matter rain or shine harder.
And I went out and drug my wheelchair up to
have conversations with and it was almost exclusively Republicans and
(30:06):
independence and I found that although I wasn't particularly efficient,
you know, sometimes it would take me ten or fifteen
minutes to crawl up there, that I became very effective.
And I would find that, regardless of where people sat
on the political spectrum, always the very first question that
I would be asked is, well, how in the world
did you get up here? Well, I crawled up here.
That's how important your vote is. And then I would
find that even if it was the most extreme Republican
(30:28):
or conservative, that they would be willing to give me
three or four minutes of their time given the fact
that I just drugged my wheelchair up there and crawled
up there to have a conversation with them, and I
would find that in you know, four or five minutes
of conversation, I could be very effective about here's who
I am, here's what I've done, here, here's why I'm running.
And I would focus on the kitchen table issues. That's
what I talked about was I'm doing this because I'm
(30:50):
someone that's gone through an enormous amount of economic struggle
and an enormous amount of health care struggle, and people
are people are struggling legitimately, it doesn't matter where you
said on the political spectrum of a livable wage, of
keeping food on the table, keeping the lights on, of
you know, struggling with their healthcare cost. I would hear
over and over and over from people they didn't have
(31:10):
insurance or they were underinsured, or the waiting list, or
the denial rates, the out of pocket costs, and these
are people even that were on private insurance. And then
even more grotesque, I would hear over and over from people,
you know, I've changed my job, I've changed my insurance,
and now I can't afford to take my insulin or
I can't afford to take my medication. It's just fundamentally
wrong to live in the richest nation on Earth and
(31:31):
people happen to make the determination do I take my medication,
do I take my pills, or do I pay my bills?
It's just wrong, and these are things that I focused on.
I also talked a lot about Iowa was growing cancer rate,
because that's something that affects people all over. We don't
do anything really about that at the at the Iowa level,
and certainly now with what we're looking at with nih cuts,
we're the only state with a growing cancer rate.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Are you the only state with the growing cancer right?
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Yes, recently, I believe it was Utah that had a
very very percentage of increase, but their overall cancer rates
are so low it's almost minuscule in terms of the difference.
Now we are number two in terms of overall cancer rates,
behind only Kentucky, but we are quickly catching them, and
at the rate that we're continuing, we are going to
(32:15):
surpass them. We are the only state with a significant
rate of cancer.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
What kind of cancer?
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Fith In terms of pediatric cancer, We're seeing a large
amounts of breast cancer, We're seeing a large amounts of
skin cancer. I actually was doing a bill in my
first session, there was something called the EhP that was
in intermitted catheters, and so those of us with that
are disabled or are using this to go to the restroom,
(32:41):
and it's a known carcinogen in this DHP, and the
cather industry has the ability to do this without the
cancer's cartomes. So I ran a bill for Iowa to
be the very first state to ban the EhP and
have no state appropriation go with time. So I was
actually spending a lot of time at the University of
Iowa talking with him about the can rates because my
assumption was where they are going to see the highest
(33:03):
rates of cancer, we're going to be in the disabled population,
those that are using intermittent catheters, because we were seeing
a bladder cancer epidemic, and they were saying no, by far,
the areas that we are seeing the highest rates of
cancer are in these rural communities and those that are
exposed to the glaveh of states and the pesticide and
lack of water qualities.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Brunt Off so crazy.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
We have really had rails a rate on here. We
have really high levels of obesity, we have high levels
of smoking, we have high levels of alcohol. But the
real issue, if you're to look at the cancer map,
it very closely mimics our water quality epidemic as well.
I think they're directly coordinlated. And we're not doing enough
about either of those two issues here in Iowa.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
So you talk to these voters who are losing stuff
under Republicans and yet full maga. What's the cognitive dissonance there?
Speaker 4 (33:53):
It is interesting. I think it's twofold one. I think
the Republican Party has done a good job of of
diverting the attention to issues that are largely irrelevant, focusing
on the culture war issues, and so people are showing
up and that's what they're voting on, is they're voting
on cultuur war issues. And then the other issue is
(34:14):
that maybe we have not done a good enough job
of ensuring that we are the party of the workers
of the middle class, that we are the party that
is going to ensure that you're going to have a
livable wage, that you're going to have affordable housing, and
that you're going to have affordable healthcare. One of the
fascinating things for me and going out there and knocking
(34:35):
basically every single door in my district twice now in
a very red district. Is that the one singular issue
that I found that was unanimously supported was that our
healthcare system is fundamentally broken, that we're the only country
that doesn't provide at least a baseline level of health
care for its citizens. That we pay three times as
much as any other nation on earth for our health care,
(34:57):
but we get by far the worst outcomes. However, I
found that it was a complete disconnect of when people
are showing up to vote, them not understanding that the
way that they're voting, both at the local level, certainly
at the state level, and certainly at the federal level,
that that was directly correlated to how their healthcout outcomes
(35:18):
were coming out. So's you're right, there is a disconnect
there and something that I tried to make a good
job of saying, no, No, I am a prairie populist.
This are the things that I'm focusing on, and that
is driving down the cost and making sure that you
have access to all these things so that you're not
voting against your own self interest.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So I like this idea of being a prairie populist brand,
the Democratic brand, not super popular at this moment, How
do you run against the brand but with the brand, because.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
We're internally transforming that brand, and I think by candidates
like myself, that's how we're doing it is we're saying,
this is what a democrat is, this is what an
FDR JFK democrat is, this is what a Tom Harkin
prairie populist democrat is. You asked me what a prairie
populist is. It is someone that is fighting for the
(36:08):
average worker. It is someone that is fighting for the
middle class. It's someone that's fighting for working families, someone
that's fighting for small farms. It's someone that's fighting for
our public schools, that's fighting for affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals.
It's voting for affordable housing, which is really the essence
of the American dream. That's fighting for a livable wage
(36:30):
in a a in a minimum wage. That to me
is what true populism is. I think that one of
the big mistakes that with that that we have made
is that too many people have sat back and said, oh,
you know, there's there's just there's just too many ignorant
people that are that are voting for the Trump administration
or for you know, people like Joni Urns and Chuck Grassley.
I have said that Donald Trump accurately addressed that the
(36:53):
the status quo is not working for the middle class,
that the middle class is being hollowed out, the system
is rare, the system is rigged, absolutely, that the middle
class is disappearing, that the people are legitimately struggling with
keeping a roof above their head and keeping food on
the table. The problem is that his policies of faux
populism are not addressing it. They're actually just making it worse.
(37:14):
And that we are now living into Americas the haves
and the have nots. It is literally a second Gilded Age.
It is the ninety nine versus the one. And that
is what I have talked about, is I am a
genuine populist, a true populist, someone that is not only
accurately addressing that you're struggling, but I'm going to actually
go up there and fight for you, not just for billionaires,
(37:34):
not just for large corporations, not just for lobbyists, but
fight for you. And I think that that is an
important distinction. And I think that people see an authenticity
and a genuineness to me and to my story. You know,
I'm someone that I've won gold medals, I've accomplished my goals.
I didn't need to get involved in this, certainly at
the state level. I've made an enormous amount of sacrifice
for this. But I understand in like a genuine patriotic
(37:58):
sense that people are strong buggling, and they're struggling both
on the economic side and on the healthcare side, and
they need someone that understands that and empathizes with that,
but also is going to work worth with the party
and with the other party, work in a bipartisan way
to provide solutions to their problems. That's what people want
at their essence. They don't even care red versus Blue.
(38:18):
They want someone that really cares and is actually going
to do the hard work to provide solutions to the problems. That,
to me is what a very populist is as well.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
How do you win in a place like Iowa that
is so red, I mean like we've gotten our hopes
up before, we really have, like Sarah Gillian, and so
much heartbreak in this political system, And tell me how
do you win in Iowa?
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Well, I'll tell you first at the Iowa level, and
then about myself. One is I would say that Iowa,
we are not a red state. We are a common
sense state. We are a state that voted twice for
Obama and now three times for Trump. We have more
Obama Trump counties than any other state in the Union.
We are a state that for thirty years we had
my political hero, Senator Tom Harkin. We are someone as
(39:05):
recent as Trump's first midterm, and I'm feeling a whole
lot more energy now than even in Trump's first midterm,
where we won three of the four congressional races and
we nearly won all four of our congressional seats. We
are as recent as twenty twenty two, so we're not
talking about old history in old time that we were
only one point five percent away from having three of
(39:26):
our six statewide officials being Democrats. We are, at our essence,
we are a common sense state. And I would say
that I am a common sense Prairie populist. And you
ask how we win, well, the greatest future, you know,
indicator of future success is previous success. And I am
the Democrat that has been winning out here in the
reddest part of the state, outperforming by the largest margin
(39:47):
of any Democrat, outperforming by fourteen points in what was
a very very red Trump district. And I did that
by what I told you. It's the right candidate, the
right work ethic, and the right message you can win.
And I believe that my story, my background, my resume,
but even more so my grit, my determination, my work ethic,
(40:08):
and arguably most importantly, the issues that I'm going to
focus on the kitchen table issues. Doing something about the
actual plights of Iowans of driving down cost a livable wage,
affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals, doing something about our cancer rate,
doing something about our water quality issues, supporting our public schools,
supporting infrastructure, supporting family farms. This is what's going to
(40:29):
win because islands are ready for change. I feel everywhere
that I go, we're getting turnouts that we haven't seen.
That's both in the rural areas in the urban areas.
And I'll tell you this that it is a scary
time right now to be in rural Iowa, and Trump's
chaotic tariffs are only making this situation dramatically worse. There
are a lot of farmers that are terrified We're not
moving any of our soybeans. Commodity prices are going down,
(40:52):
and we are looking at the possibility of moving into
a second farm crisis here, and people are tired of it.
I hear over and over and over everywhere I go,
but particularly in the rural communities. I voted for Trump.
I voted for Ernest, but I did not vote for
this naked corruption and certainly not to cut people's health
care and food assistance to poor kids and disabled individuals
(41:14):
just to give tax breaks to billionaires. And I think
that we are common sence state and we are ready
for change.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
So you really are hearing Trump regret.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
One hundred percent everywhere that I go, and we're seeing
turnout in enthusiasm and engagement that we have just not
seen certainly since Trump's first midterm.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, it's so interesting because, like you clearly see, you know,
I'm in a coastal city, but I definitely see, you know,
when I talk to people who are out there, they're saying,
and I see these crowds, you know, these huge crowds.
So what is the next move for you? What does
it look like now? What's the sort of calendar forward?
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Hard work? It's going out and traveling the state it's
long days. Like last weekend, I was in Cedar Rapids,
I was in Iowa City, I did an event in Ames, Iowa.
Then was back in Des Moines and I did event
and very very rural Iowa, which we had an amazing turnout,
about three hundred people out there in Nashville, Iowa. And
so it's returning home at you know, one or two
(42:09):
o'clock in the morning and starting up and doing it
again at eight o'clock the next day. It's really really
hard work. We've got an east coast trip coming up.
We're going to go out to Davenport, to Burlington and
Dubuque and Waterloo. That's what it's going to take is we,
as Iowans and as Iowa Democrats, we cannot anymore just
rely on the urban areas turning out and voting for us.
(42:29):
We've got to be willing to go out there to
these red communities, to these small rural communities and preach
this message of prairie populism and talk about the issues
that actually matter. We got three point two million islands
that need to have a roof above the head, that
need to have a Liverpool wage, that need to have
healthcare and talk to them about enough of the faux populism.
We need to get back to genuine populism and that
I'm someone that is practicing what I'm preaching. I'm not
(42:52):
taking any corporate pack money. I'm going to be up
there fighting for Iowa in Iowans, not just looking out
for billionaires in large corps operations.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Thank you so much for joining us, Josh, Absolutely, my
pleasure a moment second, Jesse Cannon, Hi, John fast So.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
I think a lot of people don't realize this, but
like non compete agreements really can for freelancers like me,
it can be really nightmare things. We have to navigate
get taken out of contracts all the time. And we
were on a road where a lot of states were
banning these and it looked like there would be a
national band, but nope, Trump administration has come in and
it's estimated that four hundred billion dollars in worker pay
(43:35):
will be lost from this.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, I mean, noncompete, anything that makes life better for workers.
Donald Trump is not into we have just like you know,
that's what it is. And the Supreme Court will let
him do all of that stuff. The Supreme Court let
him fire Rebecca Slaughter. Then, so basically Trump fire Rebecca
(43:57):
Slaughter who was in the FTC. They brought her back,
the court said it wasn't allowed, and then the Supreme
Court said, no, do whatever you want. So we see
Donald Trump just destroying these government institutions and the Supreme
Court saying he's fine to do it. The other thing
that just to add for a moment of fucker, because
I think it really is something that we should is
(44:18):
that the Supreme Court said that ICE can detain Americans
based on race. By the way, they said, you can't
allow people to get into college based on race, but
you absolutely can detain people based on race. This is
pretty wild stuff. And it also means that ICE will
now have open season on Latino's. Latino voters, some of
(44:39):
whom voted for Trump, now have less freedom and if
you look a certain way, you are now less free
than other people in this country. Just a mind blowing
thing for the Supreme Court to do. That's it for
this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
(45:00):
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 the US economy added nine hundred
and eleven thousand fewer jobs than previously reported in the
largest ever revision. We have such a great show for
you today. Evil Genius' author Kurt Anderson stops by to
(00:24):
talk to us about how the nineties brought us the
deranged Republican nightmare we live through today. Then we'll talk
to Josh Touric about his run for the open Iowa
Senate seat. But first we have the stories the media
is missing.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
My oh boy, it's a day. So I thought this
was really interesting. We've talked a lot about this character,
Bill Polti, who we haven't said much about before until
recent weeks. But the House is going to probe him.
And I mean just yesterday there was reports that Scott
Bessett was going to well, he was going to be
the sixth person that Scott besson threatened to punch. What
do you see in here? This is wild?
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Yeah, So I think we can all agree that as
much as a lot of us don't agree with Scott Bessant,
Treasury secretary. We all respect his ability to get into
physical violence. We certainly saw Scott Bessen had an altercation
with the Elon Musk. Now he has threatened to punch
(01:20):
Bill Pulty in the face. And Poulty is mostly famous
for running this very sleepy branch of government, the Trump administration.
He's a housing official. But what I think is really
interesting about him is that he's basically found all this
mortgage stuff. How he's found it, we don't know. So
(01:42):
he uses it against the president's enemies. So he used
it against Lisa Cook. He has used it against New
York ag Tish James, so he basically trots us out.
Now we have found that his parents use this using
two houses. So basically Poulty had accused Cook of listing
(02:04):
both a house in Michigan and a condo and Atlanta
as a primary resident. Poultice's parents did this, And I
think the bigger question is why is he using this
federal agency to investigate Donald Trump's enemies. I don't think
any of this is legal. So let's see what happens here.
We got democrats. Raskin sent Pulty a letter. He demands
(02:28):
that Pulty produce all records related to selective investigations. I
think this is really the way forward for Democrats that
the only way that anyone is ever going to take
them seriously is if they do stuff like this, like
they just push and push and push and hold these
(02:48):
people accountable. So I think this is really good again,
like we're seeing members of the House do this, We're
just not seeing it from leadership. And I wish we were.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
After the drawing of what we thought was going to
be a woman's body and now many interpretations say is
a girl's body. On Trump's birthday letter to Epstein, we're
thinking that this discharge petition might actually go through that
Thomas Massey's pushing what do you see him?
Speaker 1 (03:16):
So basically this is what they told me this whole
time there comms people had said that there are two
Democratic seats that are going to be filled. One is
the seat in Virginia. That was Jerry Connolly's seat. You'll
remember they put him as the head of Oversight instead
of AOC and then he died. But Democrats wanted because
(03:38):
he had seniority, even though he had throw cancer, he
got the job even though he was in treatment, and
then he died. So that seat is now being filled,
and then there's another seat that Democrats are going to get.
So even if Republicans don't do the right thing here
and sign this discharge petition, they will get to the
number in these special elections. So Johnson has already so
(04:01):
embarrassed himself with this story. He said that Donald Trump
was an FBI in format. There is no evidence to
support this that he was trying to shut down Epstein
from the inside. Mike Johnson walked it back. Always a
great sign and always a little bit shocking when someone
from Trump World actually walks something back like amazing. But yeah,
(04:23):
walked it back.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah, I think it's pretty interesting. There's a lot of
Milton down there.
Speaker 3 (04:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (04:28):
Trump is still goetting to sue Rupert Murdoch for ten
trillion dollars because numbers, what do they mean?
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Trump has never met a lawsuit he'll potentially lose that
he doesn't like, so it really doesn't matter.
Speaker 1 (04:41):
And also since numbers no longer have any meanings, Since
Trump is getting ten trillion dollars in tariffs, why not
sue Rubert Murdoch ten zillion dollars.
Speaker 4 (04:51):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:51):
People always say the thing is like Bennon's theory that
you throw six things at the wall.
Speaker 4 (04:56):
Esjra.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Trump had some really interesting comments about domess violence that
really disturbed a lot of people, including me yesterday, A
level fight with the wife is a saying that you
don't want to see belittled in language.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Ever, this was actually pretty shocking when I saw it.
Yet another moment where I was like, that can't be real. This,
this is me, my sad gen X situation. That can't
be real, young gen X, I might add. Donald Trump
went to the Museum of the Bible, which I've actually
been to because one of my kids wanted to go.
(05:29):
It was funded by the hobby lobby crew. Oh yes, yes, yeah,
and it includes lots of artwork that some of which
is fake, some of which is looted antiquities, some of
which is repurposed to be nonsense. But it's a very
interesting museum and everyone should go there. It's also free
(05:50):
because they feel it is aligned with their mission. But anyway,
so Trump is in this museum giving a talk about
religious tolerance. These are like he's trying to hit the
notes that get the base excited. So evangelicals are being
discriminated against is a big one, and he gets in
it and he just starts musing and macking about domestic
(06:12):
violence and he calls it a little fight with the wife.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
Real who amongst us energy.
Speaker 1 (06:17):
Yeah, really does. And he says a little fight with
the wife, and then he sort of goes into you know,
why should the police be involved if you're just beating
up your wife. What I think is so interesting about
this moment that we're in is that Donald Trump is,
while he has captured all these institutions and we're such
(06:40):
a weak and soft country that we've sort of let
him do whatever he wants to does, he's really still
got a sort of Shakespearean thing where he can't stop
telling on himself, he can't stop sort of self destructing.
You know, there's a real lesson here about people getting
what they want. I think this kind of stuff is
pretty interesting. I mean it's obviously quite disturbing. Kurt Anderson
(07:06):
is the author of Evil Geniuses and Fantasy Land. Welcome
to Fast Politics, Kurt Anderson.
Speaker 3 (07:12):
Happy to be in Fast Politics once again.
Speaker 1 (07:14):
Every day is a greater descent into fantasy Land. I mean,
it is the myths, the and also everything is nineteen
ninety four, forever and ever until we die.
Speaker 3 (07:28):
Discuss I would give anything for it to be nineteen
ninety four again.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
But you know, it certainly is the beginnings of ging
Rich and the descent of the Republican Party into that
the morass of the last thirty years.
Speaker 3 (07:43):
Yeah, it is. It is. I mean in fantasy land.
And as long as we're talking about titles in my
books Evil Guiniusness, which came afterwards, I really thought of
them both as a double volume, the first one being Yes,
this longstanding American weakness for the excitingly untrue right. And
Donald Trump has embodied that. He came along just as
(08:05):
I was finishing that book, and it was like, you know,
I felt some guilt, like, oh, I have my poster
boy here for this, but he is so that and
you know it was published in his first year, and
you know, the week after it was published, QAnon started.
And then there's Donald Trump lying about everything and building
(08:26):
this movement, this true movement. You can unders states that
of people who who share, you know, not a coherent ideality.
That's the thing, right, It's interesting they share all kinds
of fantasies and conspiracy theories in the Bobby Kennedy flavor
and the government's taking over this or that, you know,
and and and just the inconsistency and incoherence of it
all is phenomenal. And you know, people keep saying, oh,
(08:49):
you should update it, right anew and well, no, it's
just there, it is. I mean, you know, I could
devote my entire life to doing a daily thing about it. No,
it's it's nuts. And and I don't know what to say,
you know, and I keep waiting for enough people to
have since slapped into them. And I think, as I
talk about in fantasy land, when the economics go wrong
(09:09):
as they did in two thousand and eight, right, you
can't pretend there's not a giant, great recession. You can't
pretend prices aren't going up, you can't pretend the economy
is now starting to go into recession, so that there
is the reality slap of economic reality, which at this point,
you know, I guess I'm depending on because in political terms,
(09:32):
because he can't wish that away. They can't wish that away.
And just as you know, not to compare it to
Joe Biden, but just as we the Biden and Democrats
can say, oh no, the inflation is really yeah, it's
going away. It's Okay, shit, you know you're not feeling it. Well,
people didn't buy hat and they're not going to buy this.
And more than more than ever again my hope, I
(09:53):
always find the glimmers of hope and green shoes. You know,
this is so clearly and so undern mily his he
still occasionally tries as, oh, no, it's Biden. I'm I
heerd Biden. You didn't. Terrorists are years, you know, all
all of its years, the the the you know, this
radical change in the labor market, apart from the grotesque
(10:15):
street thug fascism of the master importations, you know, all
of it is going to is going to be his
and and uh you know, I mean I was already
hopeful about the midterms, and and the timing of the
of the economic wreckage looks just great for politically speaking,
you know, a year from now it's going to be terrible.
(10:37):
So that's my failing. But as you said that, you're
framing the descent into fantasy land and the degree to
which the evil geniuses, which is to say, rich people
and corporate ba by and large and the elected Republicans
in Washington have all all you know, as we know
ninety six percent of them absolutely bought in and hope
(11:02):
there will be a price to pay, because and I
think there will be. And I think this is not
going to last forever anymore. I say to myself, not
off in a public anymore than it did in Germany.
We just got to keep as nearly as we can
shouting the truth in you know, non hair on fire.
But it's extreme and it's not normal. And what it's
going to take all kinds of new things, whether it's
(11:22):
letting the government shut down in a couple of weeks
or or whatever it is to it's a new ball game.
It's a new ball game.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:30):
That's where I have to say.
Speaker 1 (11:31):
I'd love you to talk about the Birthday Book, because
the Birthday Book feels like something that I mean, it can't.
You know, it was put together in the nineties, early
two thousands, right before Epstein's first arrest, right when he
gets this got the Sweetheart deal, which was two thousand
and four. But it exists in this time. I mean,
(11:53):
what I think is so interesting about what I've seen
of it so far is that you know, there's stuff
from Trump, there's stuff from Less Wexler, there's stuff from
dersh weed. There's you know, it feels like another world.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
You know it does. And I said to my wife,
yesterd boy, there there was this parallel, dirty, rich universe
going on in our midst and we're just you know,
Pollyanna innocence. Yes, it does feel like you know the world.
But I don't think it is another world. I think
that world exists in different form right now, and it's
(12:29):
tooner layer it will be exposed too. No, I don't
you know it is. It is of another time because
of the names and less West and Alan Dershowitz and
all the rest are everybody except Donald Trump are gone
more or less. The entitlement is still absolutely there. And
I see I still see that. I mean, and and
(12:51):
I would say, I mean obviously the great wealth and
I can do anything because I'm rich. Thing is here
more than ever. And I see not Epstein, sex trafficking,
examples of it all over all the time, but but
similar things. It's just as grotesque. The thing about that too,
I mean again in terms of in terms of just
the delusional or welly and fantasy. The denial yesterday by
(13:16):
the the you know, Deputy White House Chiefs and Staff
in charge of comms and by the Press Secretary of like, no, no, no,
look these things obviously aren't his. Well, they look just
like the ones you were showing. And they look just
like the ones I have in my personal files. First
of all, and and and then the Wall Street Journal,
which in it's.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
By the famous liberal famous.
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Are analyzing why the signature looks is the same, Why, yes,
he looked at all these drawings he's done. Yes, look
at all the times he's used enigmental.
Speaker 6 (13:53):
You know, it's just like boom boom boom, like this
forensic spy magazine, like tickdown that is fantastic, you know,
good for in his ya last days alive.
Speaker 1 (14:03):
Yeah, as he's he ruined the country, but he's getting
his last licks and at Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (14:08):
So anyway something and again you know, and and and
what's her name? Carolyne Lovett said no, and the Wall
Street Journal story proves this has all been false. Uh no,
it proves the opposite. So anyway it is. It is remarkable,
and it's you know, I remember, you know, speaking of
the nineties. I don't know, you may be too young,
remember bag Dad Bob during the war.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
But that's what this is.
Speaker 3 (14:32):
The embodiment of like, no, no, they're not. The Americans
are nowhere in there. We're fine, We're good. That's all right,
we'll see. I mean, and and and again that you
can't make it up daily thing like oh, we're gonna
make We're gonna make Eric Adams, Mayor of New York,
get out of the way for Andrew Cuomo by making
(14:55):
him the ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
I mean, I amazing, amaze, and.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Man, that would be a great reality show, yes, but
it's just it is astonishing. And you know, and as
I said, so let's well the mom Donnie thing, is
it glimo?
Speaker 1 (15:11):
Yeah, but let's I want to stay on this idea
that the world that we're living in right now is
created in the nineties, because I actually think it was
a lot of the people who are funding this presidency
or running this White House are creatures of that world.
(15:32):
And I think of like Susie Wild who came up
under Bush too. You know, Donald Trump obviously most of
his friends and the people around him, And I just
wonder if you know the the thing that made Trump
and the thing you know, I was talking to someone
who knew him and had talked to him pretty recently
(15:53):
and said that one of the things he spends the
most time worrying about is is this breaking through? Like
are people watching? Are people seeing me? Are people right?
Am I getting the airtime? Is it being shown now?
Because he's right, he's still thinking about like traditional linear
television and not necessarily where a lot of people are.
(16:15):
But I think that you know, he was at the
US Open yesterday, He is at He is trying to
be at every sporting event. He wants to have USC
fighters on the on the lawn of the White House.
And I just wonder if you could talk about this
idea of being downstream of culture and how Donald Trump
(16:40):
learned that and how that equates the nineties.
Speaker 3 (16:43):
Well, he is was and is a show business person.
Right when he was somebody in real estate, he said, oh,
I'm I'm you know, sixty years ago, more than six
years ago, he said, I was thinking about getting into
show business and producing Broadway plays and stuff. But I'm
going to do I went to be in real estate
and make that show business too. And as I've written about,
(17:05):
you know, it was in this long, perfectly calibrated timed
way to do what has always been done in America,
which is everything is show business, you know, I mean,
religion was show business in the United States, or in
America before it's the United States unlike anywhere else, and
everything and every you know, Buffalo Bill, all of it
(17:26):
was show business. And you know, presidential politics had started
that becoming how with television and then Robt Reagan and
then up to Donald Trump. And he was perfectly positioned
to do that. And so being a WWE famous guy
before he was you know, I mean, that was as
important a part of his fame in the nineteen nineties
(17:49):
as anything else. You know, then came apprentice orything and
playing the character that this character against that rival evil
character and just doing whatever it took to make people
watch and cheer and like, Okay, they know it's a fake,
but but like, well, we still like it, right, And
to bring that to make our politics, at least our
Republican politics, at least his unique and singular version of
(18:14):
politics that was, you know, I mean, it's like a
wild movie, a piece of satire, might judge idiocracy thing
that a novel I wrote in nineteen ninety nine about
the murder of reality and and and and television and
it's it's it's just come true. So yes, the seeds
(18:34):
robbed too laid there. And of course all of these
people too, just because of their age, because they're you know,
the nineties, people were still young enough to now be
compositions of power. But so many of these people, of course,
were not in politics at all. I mean, Bobby Kennedy
of the nineties was still you know, a drug addict
and a failed and a failed district attorney who had
then become apparently a legit environmental lawyer and stuff. But yeah,
(18:58):
I mean, but again there the why is he there
because his last name is Kennedy? Period and destroyed? Why
is our public health system being destroyed? And and and
years and years of important all kinds of medical and
other scientific work being destroyed because this kid, my cocaine
dealer's name is Kennedy. And again it's this crazy you know,
(19:21):
celebrity tale wagging the dog of the republic in a
way that yes, it begs all understanding.
Speaker 1 (19:30):
Right there, There is an attention to brands, an attention
to names that is very Trumpian, right. I also think
that RFK, that was the way he appealed to women voters,
was that he saw that they were Trump friendly women
voters who liked Maha and who thought Maha was somehow
(19:53):
something that would solve their problems. And I think there
is also a sort of post COVID emotional meltdown that
has happened in our country that.
Speaker 3 (20:07):
More the COVID, I think the effects obvious and less
of this of COVID are still with us and messing
with all kinds of in them.
Speaker 1 (20:17):
Have Maha without COVID.
Speaker 3 (20:19):
Absolutely, And you know, speaking of Maha, and you know,
almost everyone I know says, well, there are a lot
of things about Earth. There are some things aboubby Kennedy.
Yes he's a nut, yes he's yes, yes he's destroying science.
But there's things he says that if you just did those,
you know whatever, taking chemicals out of food, you know,
taking pharmaceutical prescription, pharmaceutical lives off television, all on there.
(20:41):
There are things like yeah, sure, if that's Maha, I'm
down with it, until you get into no, all vaccines
are bad and and I should be able to not
take vaccines if I want all that and tell you
into the craziness that there's there's you know, saying Maha
and and simply like California, you know, healthiness and and
(21:03):
and then there's insanity and and you know you I
think it's important to distinguish those and and make make
the people who were attracted to the right reasonable part
of it. Like I understand like this guy is uh,
you know is I mean, you're going to make your
kids die and make us make make your parents die.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
I mean the best example of them how craziness is
Florida where they're where they're no longer making kids get vaccinated.
I mean that is an intense.
Speaker 3 (21:33):
And again it takes a while. You know, the herd,
the immune herd has protected everybody for so long they
they forget if they ever knew or ever understood that
that's what That's why people didn't get these horrible, deadly child.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
We're going to see bad, bad stuff happen real soon,
do you think. Like one of the things that I
often think to myself is like, we are actually hurtling
towards disaster pretty and the question.
Speaker 3 (22:01):
Is which disaster or disasters are we hurtling toward. Yeah,
and I don't know how quickly, but and I don't
like it. You know, it's like one of these numbers
is going to come up, and whether it's unnecessarily uncontrolled epidemics, well,
god knows, I don't need.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
To, right, it doesn't matter. But you can see that
we're hurtling towards something bad. The lack of regulation when
it comes to stable coin, the disassembling our security. I mean, like,
clearly something catastrophic is we're hurdling towards.
Speaker 3 (22:32):
Well, it's a reasonable bet. Unfortunately, I think it is.
Lenin famously said, and is you know, the worse the better,
you know, you get things terrible, and then the revolution
will come. I've never been there. Yeah, but this is
not going to end well, it just is not going
to end well. I hope you know, whatever disaster comes,
(22:52):
it's it's not so existential that it can't be recovered.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
From the thing that I am stressedtruck by is like
we have government. Government is good and does things for people,
and disassembling it is bad and we're about to find
out why.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
Yes, and you can still stipulate that, Yes, of course,
there's lots of blowdered, old fashioned, inefficient things. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes,
I mean again, there are reasonable versions of everything, just
as there are reasonable versions of my mother's are reasonable
reasonable version of a doge thing like, yeah, let's see
what isn't doing its job anymore. Let's not just assume
that the most regulation is the better or all of it.
(23:32):
But you know, I mean the buy the crazy binariness,
and and here we are way over here like in
the real burn it down sense, And and that nihilism,
the burn it down nihilism is is a significant part
of the Trump uh base movement feeling, you know, just
(23:53):
fuck it, fight it, yeah, burn it down. It's not working.
It's rigg you know, And and that's that's dangerous.
Speaker 1 (24:01):
Fuck Kurt Anderson, please come.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
Back, always will you? And always happy too.
Speaker 1 (24:09):
Josh Turik is a member of the Iowa House of
Representatives from the twentieth district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Josh,
thank you, thanks for having me.
Speaker 4 (24:19):
It's a pleasure to be here.
Speaker 1 (24:20):
Very excited to have you. So you are running in Iowa.
Just tell us your origin story.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
Sure, origin story. I was born right here. We're not
exactly where I'm sitting, but in this town of Council Bus, Iowa,
which is a blue collar town, you've got sixty five
percent of the people that live at or below the
poverty line. Here. I was born to a working class
to say lower middle class, oftentimes poor family. I've got
three sisters in one brother. I was born to a
(24:50):
Vietnam veteran father that was exposed to agan ORNs, so
I was born with a condition called spina bifida, had
my first surgery at one day old and had twenty
one surgeries by the age of twelve. And someone that
went through an enormous amount of economic adversity and certainly
on the healthcare side. A family that we shared clothes
and got a lot of our clothes from the Goodwill
(25:12):
and a mother that at times that was putting the
groceries on the credit card. In the summer times, we
were going to the free summer lunch programs to get
our food. And I'm grateful that I grew up in
Iowa at a time when we were number one in
public education, and I had a lot of support from
the AAS which provides special education here. Thankfully for me,
what really saved my life was I was exposed to
(25:33):
wheelchair basketball and an adaptive sports program across the river
in Omaha, Nebraska, and that really gave me everything that
I needed from friends and it legitimately saved my life.
I played well enough in wheelchair basketball that I was
able to get a partial scholarship to play at the
collegiate level. I went to a place called Southwest Minnesota
State University along with the help of vocational Rehabilitation. Had
(25:56):
it not been for wheelchair basketball or voke rehabit never
would have went to Calle and played well enough there
that I set a lot of records, scored sixty three
points in a game, and scored four thousand career points,
which I'm proud I barely eked out Caitlin Clark there
and then had the opportunity to play something I did
not actually know existed when I was in college, which
is professional wheelchair basketball, which doesn't exist in America, so
(26:19):
the have to play abroad. So I had the opportunity
to live and play basketball in places like France and
Spain and Italy and Australia. But by the time it
was done and the biges accomplishment was I had the
opportunity which was my goal from day one, which was
to represent the country in the Paralympic Games, which the
Summer of Paralympic Games is the second largest sporting event
(26:39):
on Earth behind the Summer Olympic Games. Played in four
Paralympic Games and won two gold medals in wheelchair basketball
back to back, and finished my career in Tokyo. Last
game that I played was winning a gold medal. Along
the way, got a bachelor's degree in history, got a
master's degree in business administration. Briefly was a small business
owner as well for more than ten years been a
(27:00):
director of a nonprofit organization that helps disabled kids have
access to adaptive sports programs like wheelchair basketball, just because
it honestly had saved my life and profound impact it
made on me, and to be a role model to
other kids with disabilities because they don't see enough role
models from the from the disabled community. And then as well,
what got me interested in politics is when I finished
(27:22):
my basketball career, I started working as well with disabled individuals.
Working for a company called New Motion. I was assessing
and providing wheelchairs, power both power wheelchairs and manual wheelchairs
and mobility devices for the disabled population. And it was
in there that every single day we were dealing with
denial rates and delay rates. I was working specifically with
(27:42):
individuals with muscular dystrophe and als LU Garrig's disease, and
these are people that just do not have time for
denial rates. And we were showing that since Iowa had
privatized the medicaid system, we were showing a thousand percent
increase and the denial rate, and I felt that that
was wrong. And then with a little bit of recent search,
had found out that Iowa we had never had a
permanently disabled member in the Iowa legislature. That's one hundred
(28:05):
and fifty year history of the state, a governing body
of one hundred and fifty members. Meanwhile, we have one
in five io ones that are blind or death or
intellectually disabled or physically disabled. And I thought, well, is.
Speaker 1 (28:15):
That higher than others dates.
Speaker 4 (28:17):
In terms of the lack of representation.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
Yeah, and also in terms of the level, like one
in five is that what most states are?
Speaker 4 (28:24):
Now? There's variants in terms of the statistics on that.
I would say a bare minimum, the number that we've
always used is the silent fifteen. We the fifteen, So
a bare minimum, it's fifteen percent of the population would
be considered disabled. It gets a little bit tricky in
terms of that number, especially what is your definition of disability?
The invisible disabilities, those with autism, et cetera. Right, but
(28:47):
here in Iowa, we could have a slightly higher rates
one in five here here in Iowa. But you know,
along with our cancer rates, we could have higher levels
of disabilities.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, and so you ran for state legislature.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
Yeah, ran for state legislature. And I knew it was
to be difficult. I'm out here in the rightest part
of the state, which is western Iowa, and knew it
was going to be very, very difficult. Especially in twenty
twenty two. It was not a good year to run
as Democrats. Most people said it would be impossible to win,
and I did. If you've seen the launch video, that's
exactly how I went out every single day and just
drug my wheelchair upstairs to have conversations with Independence and
(29:20):
Republicans day after day. I outperformed the top of the
ticket by thirteen points and won my first election by
just six votes, and then turned around in a year
that was actually twenty four was actually even worse out here.
Trump won my county by twenty points, one of the
two communities that I represent, by double digits, and I
was able to win by nearly six percent. So I
was very proud of that outperformed the top of the
(29:40):
ticket by much more than any other Democrat in the state.
Speaker 1 (29:43):
So how did you do it?
Speaker 4 (29:45):
First? Is that it's hard work. I say that the
right candidate, with the right message and the right work ethic,
you can win in very adverse conditions. What I did
was that I went out every single day. I never
took a day off, it didn't matter rain or shine harder.
And I went out and drug my wheelchair up to
have conversations with and it was almost exclusively Republicans and
(30:06):
independence and I found that although I wasn't particularly efficient,
you know, sometimes it would take me ten or fifteen
minutes to crawl up there, that I became very effective.
And I would find that, regardless of where people sat
on the political spectrum, always the very first question that
I would be asked is, well, how in the world
did you get up here? Well, I crawled up here.
That's how important your vote is. And then I would
find that even if it was the most extreme Republican
(30:28):
or conservative, that they would be willing to give me
three or four minutes of their time given the fact
that I just drugged my wheelchair up there and crawled
up there to have a conversation with them, and I
would find that in you know, four or five minutes
of conversation, I could be very effective about here's who
I am, here's what I've done, here, here's why I'm running.
And I would focus on the kitchen table issues. That's
what I talked about was I'm doing this because I'm
(30:50):
someone that's gone through an enormous amount of economic struggle
and an enormous amount of health care struggle, and people
are people are struggling legitimately, it doesn't matter where you
said on the political spectrum of a livable wage, of
keeping food on the table, keeping the lights on, of
you know, struggling with their healthcare cost. I would hear
over and over and over from people they didn't have
(31:10):
insurance or they were underinsured, or the waiting list, or
the denial rates, the out of pocket costs, and these
are people even that were on private insurance. And then
even more grotesque, I would hear over and over from people,
you know, I've changed my job, I've changed my insurance,
and now I can't afford to take my insulin or
I can't afford to take my medication. It's just fundamentally
wrong to live in the richest nation on Earth and
(31:31):
people happen to make the determination do I take my medication,
do I take my pills, or do I pay my bills?
It's just wrong, and these are things that I focused on.
I also talked a lot about Iowa was growing cancer rate,
because that's something that affects people all over. We don't
do anything really about that at the at the Iowa level,
and certainly now with what we're looking at with nih cuts,
we're the only state with a growing cancer rate.
Speaker 1 (31:51):
Are you the only state with the growing cancer right?
Speaker 4 (31:54):
Yes, recently, I believe it was Utah that had a
very very percentage of increase, but their overall cancer rates
are so low it's almost minuscule in terms of the difference.
Now we are number two in terms of overall cancer rates,
behind only Kentucky, but we are quickly catching them, and
at the rate that we're continuing, we are going to
(32:15):
surpass them. We are the only state with a significant
rate of cancer.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
What kind of cancer?
Speaker 4 (32:21):
Fith In terms of pediatric cancer, We're seeing a large
amounts of breast cancer, We're seeing a large amounts of
skin cancer. I actually was doing a bill in my
first session, there was something called the EhP that was
in intermitted catheters, and so those of us with that
are disabled or are using this to go to the restroom,
(32:41):
and it's a known carcinogen in this DHP, and the
cather industry has the ability to do this without the
cancer's cartomes. So I ran a bill for Iowa to
be the very first state to ban the EhP and
have no state appropriation go with time. So I was
actually spending a lot of time at the University of
Iowa talking with him about the can rates because my
assumption was where they are going to see the highest
(33:03):
rates of cancer, we're going to be in the disabled population,
those that are using intermittent catheters, because we were seeing
a bladder cancer epidemic, and they were saying no, by far,
the areas that we are seeing the highest rates of
cancer are in these rural communities and those that are
exposed to the glaveh of states and the pesticide and
lack of water qualities.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
Brunt Off so crazy.
Speaker 4 (33:24):
We have really had rails a rate on here. We
have really high levels of obesity, we have high levels
of smoking, we have high levels of alcohol. But the
real issue, if you're to look at the cancer map,
it very closely mimics our water quality epidemic as well.
I think they're directly coordinlated. And we're not doing enough
about either of those two issues here in Iowa.
Speaker 1 (33:43):
So you talk to these voters who are losing stuff
under Republicans and yet full maga. What's the cognitive dissonance there?
Speaker 4 (33:53):
It is interesting. I think it's twofold one. I think
the Republican Party has done a good job of of
diverting the attention to issues that are largely irrelevant, focusing
on the culture war issues, and so people are showing
up and that's what they're voting on, is they're voting
on cultuur war issues. And then the other issue is
(34:14):
that maybe we have not done a good enough job
of ensuring that we are the party of the workers
of the middle class, that we are the party that
is going to ensure that you're going to have a
livable wage, that you're going to have affordable housing, and
that you're going to have affordable healthcare. One of the
fascinating things for me and going out there and knocking
(34:35):
basically every single door in my district twice now in
a very red district. Is that the one singular issue
that I found that was unanimously supported was that our
healthcare system is fundamentally broken, that we're the only country
that doesn't provide at least a baseline level of health
care for its citizens. That we pay three times as
much as any other nation on earth for our health care,
(34:57):
but we get by far the worst outcomes. However, I
found that it was a complete disconnect of when people
are showing up to vote, them not understanding that the
way that they're voting, both at the local level, certainly
at the state level, and certainly at the federal level,
that that was directly correlated to how their healthcout outcomes
(35:18):
were coming out. So's you're right, there is a disconnect
there and something that I tried to make a good
job of saying, no, No, I am a prairie populist.
This are the things that I'm focusing on, and that
is driving down the cost and making sure that you
have access to all these things so that you're not
voting against your own self interest.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
So I like this idea of being a prairie populist brand,
the Democratic brand, not super popular at this moment, How
do you run against the brand but with the brand, because.
Speaker 4 (35:47):
We're internally transforming that brand, and I think by candidates
like myself, that's how we're doing it is we're saying,
this is what a democrat is, this is what an
FDR JFK democrat is, this is what a Tom Harkin
prairie populist democrat is. You asked me what a prairie
populist is. It is someone that is fighting for the
(36:08):
average worker. It is someone that is fighting for the
middle class. It's someone that's fighting for working families, someone
that's fighting for small farms. It's someone that's fighting for
our public schools, that's fighting for affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals.
It's voting for affordable housing, which is really the essence
of the American dream. That's fighting for a livable wage
(36:30):
in a a in a minimum wage. That to me
is what true populism is. I think that one of
the big mistakes that with that that we have made
is that too many people have sat back and said, oh,
you know, there's there's just there's just too many ignorant
people that are that are voting for the Trump administration
or for you know, people like Joni Urns and Chuck Grassley.
I have said that Donald Trump accurately addressed that the
(36:53):
the status quo is not working for the middle class,
that the middle class is being hollowed out, the system
is rare, the system is rigged, absolutely, that the middle
class is disappearing, that the people are legitimately struggling with
keeping a roof above their head and keeping food on
the table. The problem is that his policies of faux
populism are not addressing it. They're actually just making it worse.
(37:14):
And that we are now living into Americas the haves
and the have nots. It is literally a second Gilded Age.
It is the ninety nine versus the one. And that
is what I have talked about, is I am a
genuine populist, a true populist, someone that is not only
accurately addressing that you're struggling, but I'm going to actually
go up there and fight for you, not just for billionaires,
(37:34):
not just for large corporations, not just for lobbyists, but
fight for you. And I think that that is an
important distinction. And I think that people see an authenticity
and a genuineness to me and to my story. You know,
I'm someone that I've won gold medals, I've accomplished my goals.
I didn't need to get involved in this, certainly at
the state level. I've made an enormous amount of sacrifice
for this. But I understand in like a genuine patriotic
(37:58):
sense that people are strong buggling, and they're struggling both
on the economic side and on the healthcare side, and
they need someone that understands that and empathizes with that,
but also is going to work worth with the party
and with the other party, work in a bipartisan way
to provide solutions to their problems. That's what people want
at their essence. They don't even care red versus Blue.
(38:18):
They want someone that really cares and is actually going
to do the hard work to provide solutions to the problems. That,
to me is what a very populist is as well.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
How do you win in a place like Iowa that
is so red, I mean like we've gotten our hopes
up before, we really have, like Sarah Gillian, and so
much heartbreak in this political system, And tell me how
do you win in Iowa?
Speaker 4 (38:43):
Well, I'll tell you first at the Iowa level, and
then about myself. One is I would say that Iowa,
we are not a red state. We are a common
sense state. We are a state that voted twice for
Obama and now three times for Trump. We have more
Obama Trump counties than any other state in the Union.
We are a state that for thirty years we had
my political hero, Senator Tom Harkin. We are someone as
(39:05):
recent as Trump's first midterm, and I'm feeling a whole
lot more energy now than even in Trump's first midterm,
where we won three of the four congressional races and
we nearly won all four of our congressional seats. We
are as recent as twenty twenty two, so we're not
talking about old history in old time that we were
only one point five percent away from having three of
(39:26):
our six statewide officials being Democrats. We are, at our essence,
we are a common sense state. And I would say
that I am a common sense Prairie populist. And you
ask how we win, well, the greatest future, you know,
indicator of future success is previous success. And I am
the Democrat that has been winning out here in the
reddest part of the state, outperforming by the largest margin
(39:47):
of any Democrat, outperforming by fourteen points in what was
a very very red Trump district. And I did that
by what I told you. It's the right candidate, the
right work ethic, and the right message you can win.
And I believe that my story, my background, my resume,
but even more so my grit, my determination, my work ethic,
(40:08):
and arguably most importantly, the issues that I'm going to
focus on the kitchen table issues. Doing something about the
actual plights of Iowans of driving down cost a livable wage,
affordable healthcare, affordable pharmaceuticals, doing something about our cancer rate,
doing something about our water quality issues, supporting our public schools,
supporting infrastructure, supporting family farms. This is what's going to
(40:29):
win because islands are ready for change. I feel everywhere
that I go, we're getting turnouts that we haven't seen.
That's both in the rural areas in the urban areas.
And I'll tell you this that it is a scary
time right now to be in rural Iowa, and Trump's
chaotic tariffs are only making this situation dramatically worse. There
are a lot of farmers that are terrified We're not
moving any of our soybeans. Commodity prices are going down,
(40:52):
and we are looking at the possibility of moving into
a second farm crisis here, and people are tired of it.
I hear over and over and over everywhere I go,
but particularly in the rural communities. I voted for Trump.
I voted for Ernest, but I did not vote for
this naked corruption and certainly not to cut people's health
care and food assistance to poor kids and disabled individuals
(41:14):
just to give tax breaks to billionaires. And I think
that we are common sence state and we are ready
for change.
Speaker 1 (41:18):
So you really are hearing Trump regret.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
One hundred percent everywhere that I go, and we're seeing
turnout in enthusiasm and engagement that we have just not
seen certainly since Trump's first midterm.
Speaker 1 (41:28):
Yeah, it's so interesting because, like you clearly see, you know,
I'm in a coastal city, but I definitely see, you know,
when I talk to people who are out there, they're saying,
and I see these crowds, you know, these huge crowds.
So what is the next move for you? What does
it look like now? What's the sort of calendar forward?
Speaker 4 (41:48):
Hard work? It's going out and traveling the state it's
long days. Like last weekend, I was in Cedar Rapids,
I was in Iowa City, I did an event in Ames, Iowa.
Then was back in Des Moines and I did event
and very very rural Iowa, which we had an amazing turnout,
about three hundred people out there in Nashville, Iowa. And
so it's returning home at you know, one or two
(42:09):
o'clock in the morning and starting up and doing it
again at eight o'clock the next day. It's really really
hard work. We've got an east coast trip coming up.
We're going to go out to Davenport, to Burlington and
Dubuque and Waterloo. That's what it's going to take is we,
as Iowans and as Iowa Democrats, we cannot anymore just
rely on the urban areas turning out and voting for us.
(42:29):
We've got to be willing to go out there to
these red communities, to these small rural communities and preach
this message of prairie populism and talk about the issues
that actually matter. We got three point two million islands
that need to have a roof above the head, that
need to have a Liverpool wage, that need to have
healthcare and talk to them about enough of the faux populism.
We need to get back to genuine populism and that
I'm someone that is practicing what I'm preaching. I'm not
(42:52):
taking any corporate pack money. I'm going to be up
there fighting for Iowa in Iowans, not just looking out
for billionaires in large corps operations.
Speaker 1 (43:00):
Thank you so much for joining us, Josh, Absolutely, my
pleasure a moment second, Jesse Cannon, Hi, John fast So.
Speaker 2 (43:13):
I think a lot of people don't realize this, but
like non compete agreements really can for freelancers like me,
it can be really nightmare things. We have to navigate
get taken out of contracts all the time. And we
were on a road where a lot of states were
banning these and it looked like there would be a
national band, but nope, Trump administration has come in and
it's estimated that four hundred billion dollars in worker pay
(43:35):
will be lost from this.
Speaker 1 (43:37):
Yeah, I mean, noncompete, anything that makes life better for workers.
Donald Trump is not into we have just like you know,
that's what it is. And the Supreme Court will let
him do all of that stuff. The Supreme Court let
him fire Rebecca Slaughter. Then, so basically Trump fire Rebecca
(43:57):
Slaughter who was in the FTC. They brought her back,
the court said it wasn't allowed, and then the Supreme
Court said, no, do whatever you want. So we see
Donald Trump just destroying these government institutions and the Supreme
Court saying he's fine to do it. The other thing
that just to add for a moment of fucker, because
I think it really is something that we should is
(44:18):
that the Supreme Court said that ICE can detain Americans
based on race. By the way, they said, you can't
allow people to get into college based on race, but
you absolutely can detain people based on race. This is
pretty wild stuff. And it also means that ICE will
now have open season on Latino's. Latino voters, some of
(44:39):
whom voted for Trump, now have less freedom and if
you look a certain way, you are now less free
than other people in this country. Just a mind blowing
thing for the Supreme Court to do. That's it for
this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
(45:00):
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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