March 13, 2024 • 52 mins
The Mary Trump Show’s Mary Trump roasts Lara Trump’s takeover of the RNC and the impending doom it spells for the organization. The New York Times' Nick Corasaniti details Republicans' latest moves to purge voting rolls. Project Liberty’s Frank McCourt examines his new book 'Our Biggest Fight: Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity, and Dignity in the Digital Age.'
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump has reversed his stance
on TikTok shortly after a major donor talk to him.
We have such a great show for you today. The
New York Times Nick Coruscinity tells us about Republicans' latest.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Moves to PURBs the voter rolls.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Then we'll talk to Frank McCort about his new book,
Our Biggest Fight, Reclaiming liberty, humanity and dignity.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
In the Digital Age. But first we have the host
of the.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Mary Trump Show, the One, the Only Mary Trump. Welcome
back Too Fast Politics, Mary Trump.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And Molly, how's it going.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I was going to do a whole introduction about how
much I like you, but I felt I would spare
you because I feel like, despite having the last name Trump,
you are not a person for whom a five minutes
soliloquy about how much you like them is an ad.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Oh, I know, it makes me wildly not uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In fact, I thought I would save you.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, yeah, you know, as a NEPO baby myself, you're
obviously not a Nepo baby, have a more complicated relationship
with your I like to call them qualifiers because it's
a little homage to alan On but with your famous
qualifier uncle. But I have a famous qualifier mother. And
so when you know my sort of qualifier does something embarrassing,
(01:29):
I feel quite a lot of embarrassment. Now, obviously you
are quite far removed, and you have done everything beyond
everything you could do to try and stop the freight
train that is your uncle. But I want to ask you,
as you see Lara Trump take over the RNC, not
(01:50):
even Don Junior's wife, but Eric's wife discuss I.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Must die, Yes, I will.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I just want to start by thing that it's different,
like I don't take Donald's horrible behavior personally, like that
doesn't embarrass me.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
What horrifies me and hurts me.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
And wounds me still to this day, is how many
people are okay with it and enable him to do worse.
You know, it's not his mocking President Biden's stutter, which
just as a human being is it, you know, offends
me to the core.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
It's all of the people in the audience who laughed.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I mean I get it.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yeah yeah, it's just like, that's that's what we need
to worry about, and here we are. The Republican National
Committee is now, as somebody wrote on Twitter, I think
a subsidiary of the moment's shop known as the drub organization,
which is infuriating in a totally different way. On the
(02:51):
one hand, it's just a dangerous indicator of the dark
slide we're on towards some fanata republic, which is the
old kind of republic. Thought old is qualified to rug,
But it's just that. Also, another reminder is that there
will always be somebody or some entity, whether it's the
RNC throwing the reins over him or Trubb posting bond
(03:15):
for him, there will always be somebody to bail him out,
which is why we need to figure out a better
way to box him in, because clearly.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Money's not going to do it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because when you're talking
about that, and I'd love to talk for another minute
about that, the story about how Trump did make fun
of Biden for the stutter and the crowd loved it,
and that was a sort of seminal moment in like
the scraping of the bottom in which we are living.
(03:48):
So I do think like that is really important thing
to just sort of pause and think about for a minute.
But the RNC giving itself up to Trump, I actually
think that ultimately this is one of these careful of
what you wish for things, right, Like the rn C
Rona had a relationship with a lot of the big donors.
Big donors didn't want to give to the R and
(04:09):
C because very wealthy people Obviously being wealthy is not
what makes them understand it. But sophisticated investors, I think,
know that that money is going to Trump's legal fees
and not too down ballid candidates, and so for them,
I think they were hesitant to give money to Trump.
And what I was explained to me was that earlier on,
(04:30):
when Nicki Haley was still in it, a lot of
large dollar donors gave to Nicki Haley because they felt
that she represented a sort of more normal Republican party
tax cuts without the fascism, right, I.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Mean, that's what they all want.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
But now she's out and the RNC needs money, and
so Trump decided to put Lara in there. But Lara
has a big problem, which is even though she's very
attractive and they use her face. Now, I'm sure you
saw that on the r and see fundraising emails.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
There are large dollar donors.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Who are probably pretty pissed off that Trump fired all
their people.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yeah, at sixty encounting, I thought.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I thought putting her her face on the blood red
banner was vickery Man very well done.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
Was it?
Speaker 5 (05:18):
I agree that they agree with you that it is
like the dog catching the car. Yeah, okay, Now, well,
now we're going to bankrupt the RNC. Even though Republicans
don't seem ever to remember this, Donald does nothing but
bankrupt things and waste money and throw money away. You know,
(05:39):
the fact that there's a real possibility he did not
have the eighty eight million dollars to come up to
this bond is insane.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So this is that.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Well, and then and FYI, there's still more money that
Trump needs to come up with a lot more money.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Half a billillion dollars more money, and probably more than that,
because he just defamed eating Carold again over the weekend.
So I know it's right if he's going to be
able to find other people to pay his wan of trouble,
there's no incentive for him to stop defrauding, defaming, et cetera.
And this whole RNC takeover is just another mechanism through
(06:21):
which he plans to use other people's money to get
himself out of trouble, because that's one of the very
few things he's good at, is burning through other people's money.
Speaker 7 (06:31):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
The truth of the matter is that Lara Trump is
just as qualified to the organization as Donald. So they're
in serious, serious trouble. And at this point, I think
the only hope for the party, not that I'd care,
but the future of the Republican Party is if Nickie
Hailey not to endorse Donald and try to draw a line,
you know, otherwise it's it's his party now and forever.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, no, now, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And I also think that if you wanted to have
a republic Party that was normal at some point, and
again I don't, so you know, I'm with fuck I'm.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Happy to have see them all go the way of
the wigs.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
But if you were a conservative who wanted lower taxes
but not authoritarianism, you would tell Nikki Haley to keep
her powder dry and to wait this one out and
to come back in twenty twenty five when the bloodbath
is over. And try to rebuild from the ashes, and
maybe that's how that plays out, or maybe Trump wins
(07:29):
and we're all in Gitmo together with Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yes, Jimmy Kimble and you and I and others have
seventy nine days to actually, so it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That you know, thanks thank you, Mary, thank you first,
that's seventy nine days.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
A life can happen in seventy nine days.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Side of residence. A good point. That's what's so weird
about this moment in American life is like every sort
of rational instinct I have says that Trump is absolute.
Just look, Trump is running for president, so he doesn't
go to jail.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I mean I didn't even say that. That was.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Republican one of the Republicans running against him, you know,
and the primary who said, you know, he's running so
he doesn't go to jail. So I mean, he's running
so he doesn't go to jail. And Republicans are still
scared of him because of Twitter, right, I mean that's
what this is, or because they're worried that they'll get primary.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, that's all this is.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
It's absolutely mind blowing that in eight years, you know,
he is completely this weak, pathetic and now quite old
man has remade his entire party into his image. And
where do you go from there? Because if things go
the way they should go and he loses, and the
fact that we've had to worry about it is such
(08:51):
a rustic indictment of our system. But we'll have to
deal with that at another time. If he loses, who
will ever trust this party again?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
This party has.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
No room to pivot to anything else, which I agree
with you is a very good thing. Let it burn
to the ground. We need something entirely out. We need
two parties. One is a progressive liberal party and the
other one the central central left party.
Speaker 7 (09:15):
That's what we did in this country.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Listen, I'll take it man. Yeah, man, you know you've.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Never tried that, and we've tried to such a right
and fascist, So let's try sent your left and progressive please.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, that sort of seems like where we are. So
Lara's going to run the RNC.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Republicans are going to try to make the case that
Trump is totally fine and that Biden is the one
with the problems. On Monday, Trump called in to squawk
Box was it Squawkbox? CNBC? His guy, his Roy Cohen
and CNBC. By the way, I feel so bad for
all the serious people who work at CNBC who like
(09:54):
have to live in like mortal embarrassment of that Joe guy.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But anyway, called in spent.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Like two hours an hour, I mean the amount of
time Oh yeah, and said and was all to it,
like just rambling, had thoughts about oil. You know, a
lot of like hot takes from the nineteen eighties. What
the last time Trump read a newspaper and it was bad?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I mean, how do you square that?
Speaker 5 (10:22):
It seems pretty simple to me. The Corkbork media has,
for whatever reason decided.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I'm going to just tell you CNN's take on it.
Trump's free wheelling CNBC interview gives glare willing the campaign
to come. Yeah, that was at the post of CNN.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
CNN and free whilling.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
But this is the thing, It's like, why didn't and
Donald to be democracy?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
True? True says it's bad. Biden says it's good.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
It's like one of them incited in its direction to
overthrow one the other one.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
I got.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
So this is this is what we're deal like with
a corporate media that when they do find something. Donald
has daughter said Nitties where they put it on page
twenty five. Otherwise it's all just baked in. He is
a rapist, So what do we need to talk about
that for any I mean, come on, we know that
he is. I cannot believe we're still having this conversation
(11:21):
since twenty fifteen. But it's they normalize all of it.
So that and between that and the delays in the judiciary,
which topic for you know, an other time, because that
is that is actually more dangerous and I think in
the long term more dangerous by delating. Thank you Merrek Garland.
(11:42):
The January sixth trial and the DIA pument stuff. What's
the message people who don't pay that much attention get
and are maybe inclined to want the status quo not
to rock any bootes. The message is it can't be
that important. If it's taking so long, what's the big deal.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Then I'm just going to interject a little bit of
Donald This is from the interview. I feel like I'm
a pioneer. Trump said of the indictments and the judgments
against him. What's happening is we have to be very careful.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
By the way.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
I love the idea that this guy is literally just
running because of the legal challenges, right, Like he's trying
to make a case that somehow defending Trump and candidate
Trump are the same person.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
What's happening is we have to be very careful.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
You know, we have a very fragile country, right, This
is he's talking about his legal cases. Here people are
rejecting it and they are watching. Wow.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Okay, so we got projection, and we've got paranoida. We've
got a description of the interior of his brain.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yes, so that's just fine.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And meanwhile, who is doing anything to tell them otherwise?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
There's no grown up in the Republican Party.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
There's no growd up in the arts. He think about
what's happening with his cases, which is nothing. He's saying
everything needs to be delayed because of the immunity case
in front of the Supreme Court, which is its infinite wisdom.
Doesn't seem to think it's an emergency. And meanwhile, two
out of those three fredual cases is on hold because
of that. He wants the third one on hold, the
(13:20):
one in New York for election fraud, right, And I
was just thinking about that this morning. It's like, Okay,
he's asking for immunity. He's not asking the Supreme Court
to say that he committed no crime. So can't we
in the meantime find out if he committed a crime
and then either way, like if he against community, it
won't matter, but at least we'll know, Like, it doesn't interfere.
(13:41):
You have to interfere with a jew indicating the facts
and evidence, does it?
Speaker 4 (13:45):
It's making me crazy?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yes, agreed?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And I think also what we're seeing here is that
this whole lie that the Guardrails held No, they didn't
fuck be hold right, like the guy did an insurrection,
and all the people down the scale, right, the violent people,
the people who smeared the feces on the wall of
the halls of Congress, those people, right, the guy who
(14:09):
put his feet on the desk of Fancy Pelosi, those people.
A lot of those people are either in jail or
paying huge fines. You know who's not in jail or
paying huge fines?
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Let me guess, did you get me hints? Anybody responsible
for planning the garden. It's not in jail up to
an including Doldrop.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
But the one good thing I think, and I'm curious
what you think about this is a number of people
think that because these sort of lower downs were taken
in that there's this sense in which these people are
less likely to do violence. Okay, but I mean it's
a pretty pathetic bright spot.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
But it's all we have.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
I don't even know if it is a bright spot.
First of all, on the guard rails didn't hold. And
by the way, we don't know how the insurrection ended
yet because it's it's not over.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
They'll part in all of them on day one of
his staship.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
So it gets a race from history as it practically
has been.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
I mean, there are all sorts of things that have
been shown not to be to durance, and he had
the opportunity, because of the failures of the system, to
activate even more people, to get them even more angry
and feel more agreed that I don't think.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
So.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
I mean, it's like the same reason people smoke. I'm
not going to be the one that gets sick. People
have ways of convincing themselves that their cause is so
righteous or you know, the pleasure they get out of
the activity is so worth it that the consequences don't
even enter into their consciousness. So we're talking about a
(15:47):
situation in which if he loses, and especially if the
the electoral colleges margin is very narrow in Biden state, Bor,
do we really think people are going to say, well,
you know, the four years ago people get with now
they're going to be so trigger intentional and trigger or
activated or whatever the word you want to use. I
(16:07):
don't actually think that the rational consideration of consequences is going.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
To come into play for anybody.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And that's really scary. Mary Trump. I hope my job back.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I also think you're probably right now that I'm listening
to you, I think you're probably right. Nick Corruscinity is
a reporter of The New York Times covering voting and democracy.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Welcome too Fast.
Speaker 7 (16:39):
Politics, Nick, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
It feels like you've been doing the voter beat a
little bit. We want to talk to you about Trump's
allies ramp up campaign targeting voter rolls.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
That's unscary. What does that mean?
Speaker 6 (16:52):
So what this is is kind of like a continuation
and escalation of what's become a kind of common tact
among a lot of right wing activists and volunteers and
some leaders to try and.
Speaker 7 (17:07):
In their minds, clean the voter roles.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
But what they're actually doing is combing through voter roles
using their own kind of software that they've developed, and
trying to identify voters that they think are erroneously on
the roles and challenge them to get them kicked off
the roles. Now, they're doing this through a bunch of
different methods, and a few that we've uncumbered are are
pretty aggressive and might even have like either created a
(17:30):
loophole or an actual conflict between state law and federal
law kind of protecting voters from being removed from any
kind of voting roles, either quickly or without due process.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
I want you to just.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Talk us through where this is happening and what it
looked like for my dad, who is actually quite smart,
but who might not be completely read in on this.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
Sure, so this is happening state by state, and because
our electoral system in every state, I can't say that
for sure, because, as I was just about to say,
the United States electoral systems so decentralized. It runs their
own elections, and in some states they just punt it
down to counties, and in some states they even punted
down to municipalities. So in Michigan, for example, there is
(18:10):
state law, but they're really run by sixteen hundred you know,
local election offices at the municipal level. So it's really
hard to get a national grasp of how wide this
challenge effort is and you know, kind of exactly how
aggressive they're going all over the country. Now, we've identified
some areas. We kind of focused on battleground states because
(18:31):
that's where you know, this can maybe have a bigger
impact than twenty twenty four. In almost every battleground state
there are activists seeking to challenge voters and get them
removed from the roles, often before the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, so that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Trump world knows that this is not a game of
the popular vote.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
This is a game of the swing states.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
But what this would look like is you go in
to vote and you're you're not on the rolls anymore.
Speaker 7 (18:56):
That would be the kind of worst case scenario that
could happen.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
And you know, we've iified a few voters who were
removed from the roles and were kind of unaware of
it until they were either notified by like activists on
the other side, or you know, journalists found problems presented
them to election officials and they had.
Speaker 7 (19:13):
To redo what it done.
Speaker 6 (19:15):
But the worst case scenario would be, yes, that you
show up to vote and your registration has either been
canceled or is in a challenged phase where you would
need to present more than sick, just like a simple
identification to prove that you are indeed registered to vote,
live in that jurisdiction and things like that.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
What would be the argument that Trump's people are using
to de register them?
Speaker 7 (19:36):
Basically so it does vary state to state.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
And these are you know, a very loose network of activists,
some you know with kind of more direct ties to
say that the Trump orbit, like Cleida Mitchell, you know
who was a lawyer in him in twenty twenty to
return the results?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Where is Cleita working?
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Clida has a very loose national umbrella organization and challenge
just has been you know, one of her main pushes.
She argues that, you know, voter roles are dirty and
they need to be cleaned up, and no one is
being disenfranchised if anything, allowing roles to stay quote unquote
dirty is diluting the votes of legal voters. A common
argument you hear on the on the conservative side.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That sounds like a lie though, because we know that
there aren't illegal and legal voters.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
If you're registered to vote, you are allegal voter.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
What I feel like needs to be said every time,
but you know, sometimes we operate as if it's just
an understood thing is that voter of fraud in the
United States is exceedingly exceedingly rare. Yes, you know, maybe
dozens or like, you know, in the low hundreds number
of fraud or fraudulent registration or anything like that every cycle.
So it's a little bit that happens, but nothing that
ever comes close to any kind of margin, especially you
(20:47):
know what far President Trump says, like in the hundreds
of thousands or tens of thousands. That's right, never happens.
Bulshit never happened in American history, and you know kind
of can't given all of the systems we have in
place to check for that. What allow of these acts
are doing is seizing on either state laws or procedures
and trying to go a little bit further than say,
the average voteral clean up process would go. So for example,
(21:09):
in Michigan, activists found a law from nineteen fifty four
that has been kind of rarely used and referenced. And
what with this law says is that any elector in
the state can challenge another elector singular with a like
affid davit or official attestation that they know that that
elector doesn't live here anymore, and that starts a process
(21:30):
that you know, sends out a card to the voter
to check and if they don't respond within thirty days,
they get removed from the roles.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
So this is like using the Comstock Act to stop
people from getting the abortion pill in the mail, right Like,
it wasn't originally made for this, it's just Republicans have
tried to figure out a way to use it.
Speaker 6 (21:49):
I think it's a little different than the Comsak Act
because that is certainly like kind of two different areas.
This is a law from nineteen fifty four that is
indeed designed to kind of help keep voter rolls clean,
but it was never designed to be a mass challenge tool,
which is, you know, kind of what has happened in
the post twenty twenty election is these activists aren't challenging
(22:10):
a couple voters here or there. They're challenging hundreds or
thousands or in Georgia tens of thousands. This was never
designed for that. Also, it was designed to kind of
help stop like a lot of mail going to the
wrong place, and you know, in the fifties when that
was a popular way of campaigning, it was designed to
kind of each the burden of campaigning on residents. So
it certainly wasn't lying to have this mass removal effect
(22:33):
that also, you know, it was passing fifty four. But
it is kind of in direct conflict with the NVRA,
which is a national law that says, you know, if
a voter is challenged in there, you know, to be
removed from the roles, you need two federal election cycles
to go through before they're officially removed. So this sets
up a conflict where election officials are told by these activists,
(22:53):
you'd have to remove these people in thirty days.
Speaker 7 (22:54):
You have to follow the law. It's the law.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
If not, you know, we'll raise official complaints. But then
they're also you know, remembering training that will wait the
national you know, the NBRA says no, it's two federal
election cycles. So it's that level of detail that I
think we're seeing is evidence of this expansion and this
kind of accelerated effort to try and challenge voters and
remove them from the roles in these in these key
(23:18):
battleground states.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So are there people on the like on the left
making sure this doesn't happen or is it just going
along unchecked?
Speaker 6 (23:27):
Well, I think a lot of election officials are starting
to catch up to this. You know, when you look
at different states, there's different levels of preparedness. So Michigan
is kind of perceiving this first big wave right now
that you know wasn't as prevalent, say in the mid terms,
Whereas in Georgia in the Senate runoff elections in twenty
twenty one, you know, kind of immediately following the point
(23:47):
twenty election that their election day was January sixth, there
was three hundred and sixty thousand challenges to voters just
in that small runoff window.
Speaker 7 (23:54):
Wow. In Georgia.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, because they thought that would help them when you
don't have to editorialize, I well continue.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
There's actually email evidence showing that they did. Inde'd think
if you did these challenges and clean these roles, it
would have helped at least Trump make up his deficit
in the trial between fair Fight and True The vote
that email was brought into evidence. But so Georgia County
election officials are very very very well versed in the
challenge law and the challenge preparations, so they're you know,
(24:22):
doing their best to make sure no one is erroneously removed.
As for like organizations on the left, who are you know,
seeking to either rate these wrongs or anything.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
There's certainly some.
Speaker 6 (24:31):
I'm sure I haven't been necessarily focused on them in
my reporting, but there's voting rights groups in every state.
There's you know, fair fight in Georgia, the CLU that
you know are looking to prevent this spot. I'm not
as aware as to their operations or measures at the
state level.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
So crazy.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Speaking of voting, there is a Democratic primary in New
Jersey for the Senate, and you have a really important
piece about this and basically, and again, as a beneficiary
of nepotism myself, I always.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Am hesitant to call it bad.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
No, I'm just kidding, it's bad talk to me about
these ballots.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
So what's unique in New Jersey is in the primary
system they have a thing called the line. And what
that is is it's a specific column or row on
a physical ballot in each county where a candidate is
given preferential treatment. So if you in the line and
say Hudson County for the Democrats, you appear with all
(25:32):
the other Democrats from county freeholder to senator, all in
one line. That gives the impression that these are the
official Democratic candidates. And then other candidates can be all
over the place. Some are put in what's known as
ballot Siberia, which is, you know, four to ten columns
over and you wouldn't even know if unless we're looking
for them. So it's this system that creates an appearance
(25:53):
of an official endorsement that if you're a Democratic voter,
these are the people you should look for, and that's
on the physical ballot. Now, how the line is one
varies from county to county, but often in a lot
of situations, the county party chair carries immense influence over
the line endorsement. In some it's just the county chair
(26:14):
and a few others. In some it's this committee and
others their endorsement helps guide the precinct delegates who are
going to vote for this, and then in others it
truly is an open convention. What's really unique about this
already unique system in New Jersey is that this year
Danny Murphy, the first lady, is running for a Senate
and seeking the line in different counties, while her husband,
(26:36):
Governor Murphy, is still the sitting governor and will be
next year, so he's in charge of the next two
budgets for New Jersey. Now, each of these county chairs
in their personal lives has some business tied to the
state summer lobbyists, some are lawyers, some have state government
positions and are drawing state government paychecks. So regardless of
necessarily you know how they're going to step back and
(26:58):
view the race between Ammy Murphy and Andy kim is,
the other most prominent candidate running, They're going to have
their own financial interest in the back of their head.
So we saw very quickly as soon as Tammy Murphy announced,
all of these powerful county chairs fall in line and
immediately endoor service. Within I think a week, most of
the major population centers fell, and that bothered a lot
(27:20):
of Democratic base bullers in New Jersey who saw it
as either a coronation or an anointing, or kind of
moving beyond the simple, open primary process that you know
they claim to support. So as evidence, I think of
how angry some of these voters are at the open conventions.
Andy Kim, who was considered an underdog to Tammy Murphy,
(27:40):
has been winning most of these open conventions, including one
in Mommut which kind of set the pace for exactly
how this primary is starting to play out. So it's
this weird system in New Jersey that's always had a
little bit to a lot of insider powers, smoke filled
back rooms, back dealing, that this year was so much
more at the forefront simply due to the dynamics of
(28:01):
the first lady running while the sitting governor is still
in office and will be in office next year.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
That is crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And really the ballot staff is really unusual, Like there
are forty nine other states and nobody else has.
Speaker 7 (28:15):
That as far as I know, That's.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
What Andy told us. Yeah, it could be wrong.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
It would shock me because I mean, granted, I'm from
New Jersey and a proud, proud and loud New Jersey
and but I've you know, written a couple articles about
this over the past five years and have never heard
anyone else say, oh, this is how we do it.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
You know it.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Certainly maybe they did years ago it certainly has, you know,
those relics of political machines, and New Jersey is one
of the few states where, like political machines really do
still matter. About six or seven years ago, George north
Cross was at the height of his power as this
unelected but powerful insurance broker from South Jersey who really
commanded the entire South Jersey delegation and could you know,
force ben governors to as will both Murphy and former
(28:56):
Governor Chris Christy. Now there's you know, the hundred in
county politically machine, that's the most popular county populist, so
they move or as most Democratic voters, so they can
move a lot. So New Jersey still is very much
a political machine state, whereas in other states we've seen
machines completely crumble and fall.
Speaker 7 (29:13):
Just you know, looking at AOC's.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Election that was actually a long time, which it feels
it's like a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I want to get to a PC. He wrote.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Pretty recently, racial turnout gap has widened with a Weekend
Voting Rights Act. So in twenty thirteen, the Supreme Court
Justice Roberts Weekend that some of these protections were no
longer necessary and surprise, surprise, what happened.
Speaker 7 (29:37):
Well, what's kind of always been presumed is that when
you've removed the kind of the most critical part of
the Voting Rights Act, that it would have negative impact
on communities of color and turn out among voters of color.
But up until this Brennan study that you know, was
completed a few weeks ago, those attempts at kind of
quantifying this possible change was left to either exit polling,
(30:01):
or opinion surveys or the census, all of which are
like a little bit more imperfect than what Brennan decided
to do, which was take about a billion voter files
from multiple elections since twenty thirteen and assess exactly what
has happened in all the counties and states that were
covered by this part of the Voting Rights Act that
was changed in twenty thirteen. And what they found was that,
you know, it was a five percent difference that had
(30:24):
the Shelby decision not happened, the racial gap in these
counties and states would have been five percent lower than
it is right now. And five percent is a significant
margin in modern elections. I mean, so many as swing
states you know, are within two to three in some
of these counties that were. You know, under section five
are massive counties.
Speaker 6 (30:44):
Harris County, you know, in Texas is bigger than I
think twenty three states in terms of population.
Speaker 7 (30:49):
That's home to Houston.
Speaker 6 (30:50):
What they found was, you know, kind of a statistical
proof that the Shelby County decision did indeed exacerbate the
racial turnout gap, and that it beyond other like qualifiers
that people have often sought. So it persists across class, income,
education lines, even in poorer communities. While turnout was down
(31:11):
amongst poorer computer communities, across the line, there was still
a greater racial gap. You know, poorer white voters still
voted at a greater turnout than poorer voters of color.
At the very wealthy, wealthier white voters still voted at
a higher rate than voters of color. And they found
this racial turnout gap growing nationwide over the past ten
years since the twenty twelve election, but it grew at
(31:33):
a faster rate in these former Shelby counties.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
It's not surprising, but it's still upsetting. Do you think
that enough attention is being paid to this voter role?
Speaker 6 (31:43):
Staff, It's tough for me to say, you know, where
people should be focusing their attention. I do think election
officials are becoming, you know, more familiar with the challenges,
with the rules and regulations that are guiding what should
be done to keep voters on the rolls or not.
I do think probably the biggest challenge to this challenge program,
(32:07):
like repeating myself, is that these election officials are still
overworked and underfunded. In the I forget if it was
the budget or another recent funding bill or whatever a
fiscal cliff we decided to near or shut down over
there was money, you know, that was supposed to be
given to run the twenty twenty four election, and that
kept getting whittled down to nowhere near what the request was.
And so even with have A funds and the other
(32:28):
federal money that's came to elections, it's just simply not enough.
And there's been you know, new laws that he about
other forms of funding elections outside funding of elections. So
these local officials are really kind of, you know, between
a rock and a hard place. And so when you
layer in all of this extra work of sifting through
these challenges making sure you're both protecting everyone's right to
(32:52):
vote while at the same time not you know, erroneously
keeping someone who shouldn't be on the rolls on the rolls.
It's a massive effort. And so while they're having to
do this, they're still having to make sure polling locations
are open in the right place, make sure that they're
doing the right testing of the machines, making sure that
like voting locations have the right power to power the machines,
like we saw that in the Georgia primary in twenty twenty. So,
(33:15):
you know, there's so much that goes into this, and
there's so much of these election fishals that to do,
and often they're volunteers or they're part time, and so
to layer on all of these challenges I think is
something that there hasn't been the proper kind of relief,
either adding help to them or financial help to them.
That I think is kind of where the biggest gap
is at the moment.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 7 (33:36):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Frank McCord is the founder of Project Liberty and author
of Our Biggest Fight, Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And Dignity in the Digital Age. Welcome to Fast Politics, Frank.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Well Wall, it's great to be with you. Looking forward
to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Explain to us, how you got to this idea.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Like you and millions of others, I see and feel
what's wrong, and it's something's wrong right, something's big as
a myths, and so I get curious about that and
started to dig into it. And that's where I, you know,
came to the conclusion that all these things that you know,
we find creepy and all the harms that we see
being done or many of them, can be linked back
(34:21):
to how technology is currently being used, and how the
Internet has been almost hijacked right by a few big companies.
And I, you know, I say that should mention that
I'm a fifth generation builder and my family's been building
the infrastructure for over one hundred and thirty years and
a great great grandfather started building roads when Henry Ford
started building cars. So it's kind of hardwired. We look
(34:42):
at problems and you know, try to figure out what's
strong and go fix it. I brought that mentality, let's say,
to this problem. But I'll tell you one anecdote that
really stuck with me. And this was after I had
started a public policy school with Georgetown University in Washington,
d C. And you know, that was at twenty thirteen
(35:02):
and we knew that big data was important, and we
put a massive data institute inside of the Court School,
and a faculty member there who was doing great research
it told me the following story. She had a theory
that you could predict when a large scale human migration
was going to occur by seeing what words got amplified
(35:23):
on social media. And she developed this theory based on
what she was able to pull together on your publicly
available social media. Our government was quite interested in that
project and gave her two hundred thousand dollars to refine
her model, because if there was in fact a predictor
of large scale migration, that would be massively helpful to
humanitarian organizations a society more broadly. So, yeah, she got
(35:45):
a couple hundred thousand to do the project, and new
Twyter had the information she needed and went to them
to get the data and they said, yep, we have it,
but it will cost you one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
And she said, I can't give you a hundred thousand
dollars because I could get the data, I won't be
able to do the project because I don't have the budget.
And they said, well, you can't have it then, So
that really said a lot to me. Moly, because you
have the most vulnerable people in the world who created
the data. Right. It was their conversations that this academic
who was not going to commercialize this, just wanted to
improve the lot of society, help these four souls. And
(36:19):
they have Twitter, who's sitting on this data and saying
it's it's mine, you can't have it unless you pay me.
And I just felt the entire Internet was upside down.
It's our data. We should own it and control it.
If we want to use it for a good purpose,
we should be able to do that, and we shouldn't
be help hostage by big platforms. And by the way,
they are making massive amounts of money.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
So run our data.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah, from our data, So let's share on that as well.
The value.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
It's such an interesting solve. I'm hoping you could sort
of talk us through. The idea is actually quite complicated,
or at least it's complicated to someone like me who
knows many things very superficially. But I'm hoping you could
sort of explain to us this idea because if it
were to exist, it would be a decentralized internet, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Well, it would be decentralized to the extent that we'd
be in control, right, and we'd don't to control our data,
and we'd have visibility and how it's baking used, and
we'd be able to share the value. But you know,
the Internet was built as a decentralized technology. That's why
it was built. You know, it was built too so
that we had a decentralized form of communication and the
(37:25):
effect of attack way back from the Soviet Union. And
then it evolved into the World Wide Web, and that,
by the way, was thirty five years ago today. Tim
burgers Ley released Stage GTP into the world and the
World Wide Web was created. And you know, I've talked
to him extensively about this, and his intention was that
it be a decentralized, human centric, empowering Internet, one that
(37:47):
would be the proverbial tide that less solve boats, right,
something where we could share information and get smarter as
a society, and not something that it became fifteen years later,
and especially over the last ten years, which has been
highly centralized, autocratic, surveillance based, app based internet. The apps
have taken ownership of they'd hijack the Internet. So you
(38:08):
know what I say in my book, our biggest fight
which comes out today is that we're back where we
were when in a way, when Thomas Paine in seventeen
seventy five wrote Common Sense, that powerful call to arms,
you know, the pamphlet that he wrote before the United
States became the United States, and he said to his
fellow settlers at the time, you have a choice. You
(38:29):
could continue to be a subject of a monarch and
not have any rights to speak of or be able
to own anything, or you could choose to be a citizen,
and with that comes all kinds of rights, including you know,
you're born with you know what became known as unalienable rights,
the rights that you're bo the same rights the king has.
And you're a human being of worth, and you have freedom,
(38:51):
you have liberty, you have choice, autonomy, agency, and you
can own things and create value. And that happily we
chowse citizenship and we created this country. And I would
argue that we, as you say, we can make this
complicated if we want through it. I actually think it's
pretty simple. Now we're at another juncture. We have a choice.
We can be dragged into a future, buy machines and
(39:12):
be subjects again and lose our citizenship, or we could
create technology that actually allows us and celebrates the fact
that we are now digital citizens. We're being treated like subjects,
we're losing our rights, and we're not treated at all
like human beings on the current Internet. And so I
asked the question, why, pretel, would we give up all
of our rights for the ability to use the Internet.
(39:34):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Right, at one time it was not thought of as
giving up all of our rights, but now in hindsight,
that was what we were all doing. So what I
think is cool about this idea is that you are
doing this as an act of philanthropy. Right, you were
not making money on this idea. You're really trying to
(39:57):
sort of go in and make something that is really wrong.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
If Congress wanted to, they could do this right now, right,
I mean, when that solved many of our technological problems.
If they said, like, no, we're going to have this
decentralized internet. Everyone needs to be a real person, no
more bot forms.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Like if you have.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
To have a birth certificate or a driver's license or
a passport, you have to have a digital identity. I mean,
there's a world where that happens.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Right, there's a world where that happens, but it's obviously
not going to happen in the world we live in
because our politics is also become highly polarized and dysfunctional
because of the same technology that I'm referring to that
is designed to polarize us and separate us. It's not
designed to help us reach consensus. They reaching consensus is
(40:49):
no fund for an algorithm that's designed to keep you
online endlessly and in a triggered state constantly, you know,
responding to something someone says. So let's go back to
your premise. Though DS and P is an open source protocol,
then our labs team developed that would allow people to
own and control their data, as you say, have a
(41:11):
digital entity, and let all of us benefit from the
network effect of the Internet. Open source, it's been gifted
to humanity. People need to build on this molly for
it to be a real thing, and so there will
be lots of commercial endeavors that people will engage in
our rotam will probably engage some things that they build
(41:31):
on this protocol because without it, there's not going to
be a real alternative to the current Internet. So, but
the point is it needs to be built on by
millions of people. This is not you know, one person,
one family, one company project. It's never going to happen.
This is a collective action and we need to demand
(41:52):
it better.
Speaker 7 (41:53):
A better intet.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Now, if the government wanted to say, hey, everybody needs
to adopt a protocol like DSNP, then that would help
move things along. We don't need the government to mandate
it is the point.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Right, But if they did, it would be solved tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
It would be accelerated, sure, and then suddenly you'd be
in a situation where we adopted other standards. Right, We
adopted other protocols, and what we didn't know when we
were adopting them is that we were giving power to
a few big platforms to own us. And I don't
want to be owned by someone else, whether it's the
Chinese government because of you know, TikTok, or whether it's
the you know, a few big American platforms. We need
(42:30):
to put human beings in charge of themselves on the
Internet for the first time.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
We need to stop being an IP address, a device,
or stop just being viewed as data, as a as
a product. We're human beings. It's a privilege to use
the Internet, and we should be required to be a
person or at least verified as such to be on
the Internet. That doesn't mean we have to give up
our privacy or anything like that. We should be able
to live on the Internet like we lived prior to that,
(42:54):
where if you're dealing with a community that you know
and trust, well, you share a lot of details about yourself. Well,
if you're dealing with strangers, you don't share anything about yourself.
You or I don't share things about ourselves when we
walk down a city street to a stranger, at least
most people don't. But then when you get to know people,
you share more. And then we have close friends and
significant others and family members, you share a lot. Well,
(43:16):
the Internet should operate in a similar way where we
have control over what's shared about us, with whom and
on what terms.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
So right now we're in the middle of a news
cycle about TikTok where it looked for a minute like
TikTok was going to be either forced as a sale
or banded, and there was like an incredible amount of movement,
and now it looks like that's not happening because Kelly
(43:44):
and Conway is a lobbyist for TikTok and Trump. Some
people got to Trump, And so I'm just curious, is
that the problem with tech regulation?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
This is like an obsession of mine.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
For example, you know, they're always congressional here things about
tech regulation. We're constantly seeing that, but we're not actually
seeing any regulation come out of any of this. I mean,
we have seen so much like carnage from technology. A
lot of great stuff too, but a lot of carnage.
It seems like our Congress and our politicians just seem
completely uninterested in providing any kind of regulation.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah, when you said, you know, this carnage and there's
a lot of harm, but this good stuff being done too,
I actually share myself kind of saying that from time
to time, and I hear others saying that, like it's
almost like we're defense mechanism or this obligation to say, well, well,
there's some good stuff too. And I've come to the conclusion,
if we get our construction company right, or some municipality
(44:42):
or or somebody built a plumbing system, a water system
for a city of a million people, and we turned
on the water, or people turned on the water in
their homes and six hundred thousand people got clean, healthy,
nutritional water, and four hundred thousand people got toxic poison
water that was causing illnesses and even some people to die.
(45:03):
Would we be saying, oh, but the water system that
that water system does some good stuff too, or would
we be focusing on the damage that's done and be
saying fix that. That's unacceptable. So I just want to
put this in context that I think if they stop
being apologetic, oh yeah, but they do some good things too,
and just say enough is enough Number one, number two
(45:26):
on your issue of policy and so forth. We now
know and we learn more and more every day about
the damage being done by the way the Internet is
being used, and you know this surveillance technology, the harms democracy,
our information ecosystem is being contaminated, trouble, civil discourse is
police officers at school board meetings, and most importantly we
(45:48):
see the harms to young people right, and they're very real.
The first stop should be to go to these big
tech platforms and say, look at there's damage being done.
Speaker 7 (45:57):
Fix it.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Stop causing the damage, right, stop putting the water into
the pipe, stop fix this. And that hasn't been done.
And what we get is these apology tours and oh
I didn't know that, go back and check and fix it.
But then information comes out, and of course we now
learned they knew it. You know that Mark Zuckerberg knew
that the technology was designed to prey on young kids,
(46:20):
and so on and so forth, and yet it's still
not So then where do we turn. We turned to
our elected officials and our political system, right like we
did with tobaccos for instance, right, Well, we found out
it was harmful and the tobacco companies didn't fix it.
We went to our elected officials and said, please, we
need new regulations because they're not fixing it themselves. And
(46:41):
then those regulations came into place. There were warnings on cartoons,
there was a tax put on it so that there
was more expensive, so people would file us and people
were it was an educational campaign, and there were regulations
at laws, and you couldn't smoke under a certain so
on and so for you couldn't sell to a certain
and our political appbretes went into here. So now let's
(47:01):
come back to technology. We go to our political apparatus
and say, big tech, and is it in these social
media platforms? Aren't fixing themselves, please fix the problem. And
like you say, we see the theater, we see the hearings,
but nothing happens. I've come to the conclusion that either
our political elected officials are not understanding the technology and
(47:22):
the harm it's doing, or they are taking money from
these big platforms that are the wealthiest companies ever created
and have lobbyists and advocates all over the place, or
they're actually and this may be the most damaging evolve,
they're using the very platforms that we're talking about here
that are doing the damage and causing the polarization to
(47:42):
raise money and take extreme views and get followers and
clicks and donations. And so it's the ultimate irony here
or sad irony, is that what I talk about in
our biggest fight that we need to fix is very
technology that is disabling our political apparatus as well and
(48:04):
our ability to adopt good policies, which used to happen
years ago, and it's not happening now because of the
all powerful nature of this technology. So that's where I
come to the Project Liberty and the need for us
to actually take matters into our own hands, actually diagnose
the engineering problem, fix it. And then have a call
(48:27):
to action to demand that we have this alternative and
incentivize builders to build on it and get citizens just
people demanding the alternative. And I want to see people
talking about this at their kitchen table, at the sidelines
of the soccer kids soccer game, at their school board meetings,
you know, after church and so on and so forth,
(48:49):
so that we start to socialize this because we the
people need to fix this, because the platforms themselves aren't
fixing it in our elected officials.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah, exactly, Thank you so much, Frank Well, I appreciate
you saying that.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
I just ask that your listeners, you know, take a
couple of hours and read our Biggest Fight and because
it's it's hard and twenty minutes to get everything across,
but you know, the book that I had the privilege
of writing with Michael Casey, I think does a decent
job of explaining the problem and the solution so we
don't have to be helpless and hopeless. Here there is
hope and there is a bright future. And we're definitely
(49:27):
pro technology. It's not about being anti tech. We're definitely
pro tech, but use it the right way. Or your
listeners can go to our biggest fight dot com and
learn much more about the project. Thank you, Thank you,
Mollie a.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Moment, pet Jesse Cannon, Molly Jung Fast, Robert hur takes
the stand in Congress today, and oh and.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
He reveals himself to be the partisan hack we had
suspected he was.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
There were a lot of moments to choose from.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
I say, just play the whole hearing at the DNC,
but if you're pressed for time, definitely there were so
many moments. The best and the worst was him. So
Ted Lew asked Robert her her questions that were purportedly
about Biden but really about Trump. That was a pretty
(50:21):
amazing moment, just in a very typical Republican fashion. Before
the report came out, her you know, sort of got
ahead of it and said that at points Biden couldn't
remember the day that bo died, which is actually just
a lie because when you look at the transcript, he
knew exactly what the day was, and then he was
sort of trying to figure out it was twenty fifteen
or twenty sixteen, But Madeline Dean said he did know
(50:44):
the day, and her refuse to admit it went back
to the transcript and then ultimately just punted.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
So I thought that was the moment.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
But there were a lot of incredible moments in that hearing.
It's worth going over them, and it's really clear that
like the mainstream media fucked up right. They ran hers
comments just like they did when they used Bill Barr's
comments about the Mueller investigation instead of using the actual
Muther investigation.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
They took Republican's word for it. They let them shape
the narrative.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
And we've seen this before, so we lived through weeks
and weeks of Joe Biden didn't know when bo Biden.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Died, when in fact, he knew exactly when Bo Biden died.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
And so for that partisan hack Robert HRR, who by
the way, refused to answer a question when Eric Swowell
asked him if he would take an appointment in Trump's
White House, partisan hack, her is our moment of fuck ray.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
(51:50):
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for a
snag
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Donald Trump has reversed his stance
on TikTok shortly after a major donor talk to him.
We have such a great show for you today. The
New York Times Nick Coruscinity tells us about Republicans' latest.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
Moves to PURBs the voter rolls.
Speaker 1 (00:23):
Then we'll talk to Frank McCort about his new book,
Our Biggest Fight, Reclaiming liberty, humanity and dignity.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
In the Digital Age. But first we have the host
of the.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Mary Trump Show, the One, the Only Mary Trump. Welcome
back Too Fast Politics, Mary Trump.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
And Molly, how's it going.
Speaker 1 (00:44):
I was going to do a whole introduction about how
much I like you, but I felt I would spare
you because I feel like, despite having the last name Trump,
you are not a person for whom a five minutes
soliloquy about how much you like them is an ad.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Oh, I know, it makes me wildly not uncomfortable.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In fact, I thought I would save you.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
Yeah, yeah, you know, as a NEPO baby myself, you're
obviously not a Nepo baby, have a more complicated relationship
with your I like to call them qualifiers because it's
a little homage to alan On but with your famous
qualifier uncle. But I have a famous qualifier mother. And
so when you know my sort of qualifier does something embarrassing,
(01:29):
I feel quite a lot of embarrassment. Now, obviously you
are quite far removed, and you have done everything beyond
everything you could do to try and stop the freight
train that is your uncle. But I want to ask you,
as you see Lara Trump take over the RNC, not
(01:50):
even Don Junior's wife, but Eric's wife discuss I.
Speaker 4 (01:55):
Must die, Yes, I will.
Speaker 5 (01:59):
I just want to start by thing that it's different,
like I don't take Donald's horrible behavior personally, like that
doesn't embarrass me.
Speaker 4 (02:08):
What horrifies me and hurts me.
Speaker 5 (02:10):
And wounds me still to this day, is how many
people are okay with it and enable him to do worse.
You know, it's not his mocking President Biden's stutter, which
just as a human being is it, you know, offends
me to the core.
Speaker 4 (02:25):
It's all of the people in the audience who laughed.
Speaker 1 (02:28):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, No, I mean I get it.
Speaker 5 (02:31):
Yeah yeah, it's just like, that's that's what we need
to worry about, and here we are. The Republican National
Committee is now, as somebody wrote on Twitter, I think
a subsidiary of the moment's shop known as the drub organization,
which is infuriating in a totally different way. On the
(02:51):
one hand, it's just a dangerous indicator of the dark
slide we're on towards some fanata republic, which is the
old kind of republic. Thought old is qualified to rug,
But it's just that. Also, another reminder is that there
will always be somebody or some entity, whether it's the
RNC throwing the reins over him or Trubb posting bond
(03:15):
for him, there will always be somebody to bail him out,
which is why we need to figure out a better
way to box him in, because clearly.
Speaker 3 (03:24):
Money's not going to do it.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
Yeah, it's such an interesting thing because when you're talking
about that, and I'd love to talk for another minute
about that, the story about how Trump did make fun
of Biden for the stutter and the crowd loved it,
and that was a sort of seminal moment in like
the scraping of the bottom in which we are living.
(03:48):
So I do think like that is really important thing
to just sort of pause and think about for a minute.
But the RNC giving itself up to Trump, I actually
think that ultimately this is one of these careful of
what you wish for things, right, Like the rn C
Rona had a relationship with a lot of the big donors.
Big donors didn't want to give to the R and
(04:09):
C because very wealthy people Obviously being wealthy is not
what makes them understand it. But sophisticated investors, I think,
know that that money is going to Trump's legal fees
and not too down ballid candidates, and so for them,
I think they were hesitant to give money to Trump.
And what I was explained to me was that earlier on,
(04:30):
when Nicki Haley was still in it, a lot of
large dollar donors gave to Nicki Haley because they felt
that she represented a sort of more normal Republican party
tax cuts without the fascism, right, I.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Mean, that's what they all want.
Speaker 1 (04:44):
But now she's out and the RNC needs money, and
so Trump decided to put Lara in there. But Lara
has a big problem, which is even though she's very
attractive and they use her face. Now, I'm sure you
saw that on the r and see fundraising emails.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
There are large dollar donors.
Speaker 1 (05:03):
Who are probably pretty pissed off that Trump fired all
their people.
Speaker 4 (05:08):
Yeah, at sixty encounting, I thought.
Speaker 5 (05:11):
I thought putting her her face on the blood red
banner was vickery Man very well done.
Speaker 6 (05:18):
Was it?
Speaker 5 (05:18):
I agree that they agree with you that it is
like the dog catching the car. Yeah, okay, Now, well,
now we're going to bankrupt the RNC. Even though Republicans
don't seem ever to remember this, Donald does nothing but
bankrupt things and waste money and throw money away. You know,
(05:39):
the fact that there's a real possibility he did not
have the eighty eight million dollars to come up to
this bond is insane.
Speaker 4 (05:46):
So this is that.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Well, and then and FYI, there's still more money that
Trump needs to come up with a lot more money.
Speaker 5 (05:57):
Half a billillion dollars more money, and probably more than that,
because he just defamed eating Carold again over the weekend.
So I know it's right if he's going to be
able to find other people to pay his wan of trouble,
there's no incentive for him to stop defrauding, defaming, et cetera.
And this whole RNC takeover is just another mechanism through
(06:21):
which he plans to use other people's money to get
himself out of trouble, because that's one of the very
few things he's good at, is burning through other people's money.
Speaker 7 (06:31):
You know.
Speaker 5 (06:31):
The truth of the matter is that Lara Trump is
just as qualified to the organization as Donald. So they're
in serious, serious trouble. And at this point, I think
the only hope for the party, not that I'd care,
but the future of the Republican Party is if Nickie
Hailey not to endorse Donald and try to draw a line,
you know, otherwise it's it's his party now and forever.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
Yeah, no, now, I think that's right.
Speaker 1 (06:56):
And I also think that if you wanted to have
a republic Party that was normal at some point, and
again I don't, so you know, I'm with fuck I'm.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
Happy to have see them all go the way of
the wigs.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
But if you were a conservative who wanted lower taxes
but not authoritarianism, you would tell Nikki Haley to keep
her powder dry and to wait this one out and
to come back in twenty twenty five when the bloodbath
is over. And try to rebuild from the ashes, and
maybe that's how that plays out, or maybe Trump wins
(07:29):
and we're all in Gitmo together with Jimmy Kimmel.
Speaker 5 (07:33):
Yes, Jimmy Kimble and you and I and others have
seventy nine days to actually, so it's not.
Speaker 1 (07:39):
That you know, thanks thank you, Mary, thank you first,
that's seventy nine days.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
A life can happen in seventy nine days.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Side of residence. A good point. That's what's so weird
about this moment in American life is like every sort
of rational instinct I have says that Trump is absolute.
Just look, Trump is running for president, so he doesn't
go to jail.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
I mean I didn't even say that. That was.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Republican one of the Republicans running against him, you know,
and the primary who said, you know, he's running so
he doesn't go to jail. So I mean, he's running
so he doesn't go to jail. And Republicans are still
scared of him because of Twitter, right, I mean that's
what this is, or because they're worried that they'll get primary.
Speaker 4 (08:26):
Yeah, that's all this is.
Speaker 5 (08:29):
It's absolutely mind blowing that in eight years, you know,
he is completely this weak, pathetic and now quite old
man has remade his entire party into his image. And
where do you go from there? Because if things go
the way they should go and he loses, and the
fact that we've had to worry about it is such
(08:51):
a rustic indictment of our system. But we'll have to
deal with that at another time. If he loses, who
will ever trust this party again?
Speaker 4 (09:00):
This party has.
Speaker 5 (09:01):
No room to pivot to anything else, which I agree
with you is a very good thing. Let it burn
to the ground. We need something entirely out. We need
two parties. One is a progressive liberal party and the
other one the central central left party.
Speaker 7 (09:15):
That's what we did in this country.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Listen, I'll take it man. Yeah, man, you know you've.
Speaker 5 (09:20):
Never tried that, and we've tried to such a right
and fascist, So let's try sent your left and progressive please.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Yeah, that sort of seems like where we are. So
Lara's going to run the RNC.
Speaker 1 (09:31):
Republicans are going to try to make the case that
Trump is totally fine and that Biden is the one
with the problems. On Monday, Trump called in to squawk
Box was it Squawkbox? CNBC? His guy, his Roy Cohen
and CNBC. By the way, I feel so bad for
all the serious people who work at CNBC who like
(09:54):
have to live in like mortal embarrassment of that Joe guy.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
But anyway, called in spent.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
Like two hours an hour, I mean the amount of
time Oh yeah, and said and was all to it,
like just rambling, had thoughts about oil. You know, a
lot of like hot takes from the nineteen eighties. What
the last time Trump read a newspaper and it was bad?
Speaker 2 (10:21):
I mean, how do you square that?
Speaker 5 (10:22):
It seems pretty simple to me. The Corkbork media has,
for whatever reason decided.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
I'm going to just tell you CNN's take on it.
Trump's free wheelling CNBC interview gives glare willing the campaign
to come. Yeah, that was at the post of CNN.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
CNN and free whilling.
Speaker 5 (10:41):
But this is the thing, It's like, why didn't and
Donald to be democracy?
Speaker 2 (10:47):
True? True says it's bad. Biden says it's good.
Speaker 5 (10:52):
It's like one of them incited in its direction to
overthrow one the other one.
Speaker 4 (10:57):
I got.
Speaker 5 (10:58):
So this is this is what we're deal like with
a corporate media that when they do find something. Donald
has daughter said Nitties where they put it on page
twenty five. Otherwise it's all just baked in. He is
a rapist, So what do we need to talk about
that for any I mean, come on, we know that
he is. I cannot believe we're still having this conversation
(11:21):
since twenty fifteen. But it's they normalize all of it.
So that and between that and the delays in the judiciary,
which topic for you know, an other time, because that
is that is actually more dangerous and I think in
the long term more dangerous by delating. Thank you Merrek Garland.
(11:42):
The January sixth trial and the DIA pument stuff. What's
the message people who don't pay that much attention get
and are maybe inclined to want the status quo not
to rock any bootes. The message is it can't be
that important. If it's taking so long, what's the big deal.
Speaker 1 (11:58):
Then I'm just going to interject a little bit of
Donald This is from the interview. I feel like I'm
a pioneer. Trump said of the indictments and the judgments
against him. What's happening is we have to be very careful.
Speaker 2 (12:09):
By the way.
Speaker 1 (12:10):
I love the idea that this guy is literally just
running because of the legal challenges, right, Like he's trying
to make a case that somehow defending Trump and candidate
Trump are the same person.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
What's happening is we have to be very careful.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
You know, we have a very fragile country, right, This
is he's talking about his legal cases. Here people are
rejecting it and they are watching. Wow.
Speaker 5 (12:36):
Okay, so we got projection, and we've got paranoida. We've
got a description of the interior of his brain.
Speaker 4 (12:44):
Yes, so that's just fine.
Speaker 5 (12:49):
And meanwhile, who is doing anything to tell them otherwise?
Speaker 2 (12:55):
There's no grown up in the Republican Party.
Speaker 5 (12:57):
There's no growd up in the arts. He think about
what's happening with his cases, which is nothing. He's saying
everything needs to be delayed because of the immunity case
in front of the Supreme Court, which is its infinite wisdom.
Doesn't seem to think it's an emergency. And meanwhile, two
out of those three fredual cases is on hold because
of that. He wants the third one on hold, the
(13:20):
one in New York for election fraud, right, And I
was just thinking about that this morning. It's like, Okay,
he's asking for immunity. He's not asking the Supreme Court
to say that he committed no crime. So can't we
in the meantime find out if he committed a crime
and then either way, like if he against community, it
won't matter, but at least we'll know, Like, it doesn't interfere.
(13:41):
You have to interfere with a jew indicating the facts
and evidence, does it?
Speaker 4 (13:45):
It's making me crazy?
Speaker 2 (13:46):
Yes, agreed?
Speaker 1 (13:47):
And I think also what we're seeing here is that
this whole lie that the Guardrails held No, they didn't
fuck be hold right, like the guy did an insurrection,
and all the people down the scale, right, the violent people,
the people who smeared the feces on the wall of
the halls of Congress, those people, right, the guy who
(14:09):
put his feet on the desk of Fancy Pelosi, those people.
A lot of those people are either in jail or
paying huge fines. You know who's not in jail or
paying huge fines?
Speaker 5 (14:18):
Let me guess, did you get me hints? Anybody responsible
for planning the garden. It's not in jail up to
an including Doldrop.
Speaker 7 (14:30):
Right.
Speaker 1 (14:31):
But the one good thing I think, and I'm curious
what you think about this is a number of people
think that because these sort of lower downs were taken
in that there's this sense in which these people are
less likely to do violence. Okay, but I mean it's
a pretty pathetic bright spot.
Speaker 2 (14:49):
But it's all we have.
Speaker 5 (14:50):
I don't even know if it is a bright spot.
First of all, on the guard rails didn't hold. And
by the way, we don't know how the insurrection ended
yet because it's it's not over.
Speaker 4 (15:01):
They'll part in all of them on day one of
his staship.
Speaker 5 (15:06):
So it gets a race from history as it practically
has been.
Speaker 4 (15:09):
Anyway, I don't know.
Speaker 5 (15:10):
I mean, there are all sorts of things that have
been shown not to be to durance, and he had
the opportunity, because of the failures of the system, to
activate even more people, to get them even more angry
and feel more agreed that I don't think.
Speaker 7 (15:26):
So.
Speaker 5 (15:26):
I mean, it's like the same reason people smoke. I'm
not going to be the one that gets sick. People
have ways of convincing themselves that their cause is so
righteous or you know, the pleasure they get out of
the activity is so worth it that the consequences don't
even enter into their consciousness. So we're talking about a
(15:47):
situation in which if he loses, and especially if the
the electoral colleges margin is very narrow in Biden state, Bor,
do we really think people are going to say, well,
you know, the four years ago people get with now
they're going to be so trigger intentional and trigger or
activated or whatever the word you want to use. I
(16:07):
don't actually think that the rational consideration of consequences is going.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
To come into play for anybody.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
And that's really scary. Mary Trump. I hope my job back.
Speaker 1 (16:21):
I also think you're probably right now that I'm listening
to you, I think you're probably right. Nick Corruscinity is
a reporter of The New York Times covering voting and democracy.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
Welcome too Fast.
Speaker 7 (16:39):
Politics, Nick, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (16:42):
It feels like you've been doing the voter beat a
little bit. We want to talk to you about Trump's
allies ramp up campaign targeting voter rolls.
Speaker 2 (16:50):
That's unscary. What does that mean?
Speaker 6 (16:52):
So what this is is kind of like a continuation
and escalation of what's become a kind of common tact
among a lot of right wing activists and volunteers and
some leaders to try and.
Speaker 7 (17:07):
In their minds, clean the voter roles.
Speaker 6 (17:08):
But what they're actually doing is combing through voter roles
using their own kind of software that they've developed, and
trying to identify voters that they think are erroneously on
the roles and challenge them to get them kicked off
the roles. Now, they're doing this through a bunch of
different methods, and a few that we've uncumbered are are
pretty aggressive and might even have like either created a
(17:30):
loophole or an actual conflict between state law and federal
law kind of protecting voters from being removed from any
kind of voting roles, either quickly or without due process.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
I want you to just.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Talk us through where this is happening and what it
looked like for my dad, who is actually quite smart,
but who might not be completely read in on this.
Speaker 6 (17:49):
Sure, so this is happening state by state, and because
our electoral system in every state, I can't say that
for sure, because, as I was just about to say,
the United States electoral systems so decentralized. It runs their
own elections, and in some states they just punt it
down to counties, and in some states they even punted
down to municipalities. So in Michigan, for example, there is
(18:10):
state law, but they're really run by sixteen hundred you know,
local election offices at the municipal level. So it's really
hard to get a national grasp of how wide this
challenge effort is and you know, kind of exactly how
aggressive they're going all over the country. Now, we've identified
some areas. We kind of focused on battleground states because
(18:31):
that's where you know, this can maybe have a bigger
impact than twenty twenty four. In almost every battleground state
there are activists seeking to challenge voters and get them
removed from the roles, often before the twenty twenty four election.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
Yeah, so that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (18:44):
Trump world knows that this is not a game of
the popular vote.
Speaker 2 (18:48):
This is a game of the swing states.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
But what this would look like is you go in
to vote and you're you're not on the rolls anymore.
Speaker 7 (18:56):
That would be the kind of worst case scenario that
could happen.
Speaker 6 (18:58):
And you know, we've iified a few voters who were
removed from the roles and were kind of unaware of
it until they were either notified by like activists on
the other side, or you know, journalists found problems presented
them to election officials and they had.
Speaker 7 (19:13):
To redo what it done.
Speaker 6 (19:15):
But the worst case scenario would be, yes, that you
show up to vote and your registration has either been
canceled or is in a challenged phase where you would
need to present more than sick, just like a simple
identification to prove that you are indeed registered to vote,
live in that jurisdiction and things like that.
Speaker 1 (19:31):
What would be the argument that Trump's people are using
to de register them?
Speaker 7 (19:36):
Basically so it does vary state to state.
Speaker 6 (19:39):
And these are you know, a very loose network of activists,
some you know with kind of more direct ties to
say that the Trump orbit, like Cleida Mitchell, you know
who was a lawyer in him in twenty twenty to
return the results?
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Where is Cleita working?
Speaker 6 (19:55):
Clida has a very loose national umbrella organization and challenge
just has been you know, one of her main pushes.
She argues that, you know, voter roles are dirty and
they need to be cleaned up, and no one is
being disenfranchised if anything, allowing roles to stay quote unquote
dirty is diluting the votes of legal voters. A common
argument you hear on the on the conservative side.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
That sounds like a lie though, because we know that
there aren't illegal and legal voters.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
If you're registered to vote, you are allegal voter.
Speaker 6 (20:25):
What I feel like needs to be said every time,
but you know, sometimes we operate as if it's just
an understood thing is that voter of fraud in the
United States is exceedingly exceedingly rare. Yes, you know, maybe
dozens or like, you know, in the low hundreds number
of fraud or fraudulent registration or anything like that every cycle.
So it's a little bit that happens, but nothing that
ever comes close to any kind of margin, especially you
(20:47):
know what far President Trump says, like in the hundreds
of thousands or tens of thousands. That's right, never happens.
Bulshit never happened in American history, and you know kind
of can't given all of the systems we have in
place to check for that. What allow of these acts
are doing is seizing on either state laws or procedures
and trying to go a little bit further than say,
the average voteral clean up process would go. So for example,
(21:09):
in Michigan, activists found a law from nineteen fifty four
that has been kind of rarely used and referenced. And
what with this law says is that any elector in
the state can challenge another elector singular with a like
affid davit or official attestation that they know that that
elector doesn't live here anymore, and that starts a process
(21:30):
that you know, sends out a card to the voter
to check and if they don't respond within thirty days,
they get removed from the roles.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
So this is like using the Comstock Act to stop
people from getting the abortion pill in the mail, right Like,
it wasn't originally made for this, it's just Republicans have
tried to figure out a way to use it.
Speaker 6 (21:49):
I think it's a little different than the Comsak Act
because that is certainly like kind of two different areas.
This is a law from nineteen fifty four that is
indeed designed to kind of help keep voter rolls clean,
but it was never designed to be a mass challenge tool,
which is, you know, kind of what has happened in
the post twenty twenty election is these activists aren't challenging
(22:10):
a couple voters here or there. They're challenging hundreds or
thousands or in Georgia tens of thousands. This was never
designed for that. Also, it was designed to kind of
help stop like a lot of mail going to the
wrong place, and you know, in the fifties when that
was a popular way of campaigning, it was designed to
kind of each the burden of campaigning on residents. So
it certainly wasn't lying to have this mass removal effect
(22:33):
that also, you know, it was passing fifty four. But
it is kind of in direct conflict with the NVRA,
which is a national law that says, you know, if
a voter is challenged in there, you know, to be
removed from the roles, you need two federal election cycles
to go through before they're officially removed. So this sets
up a conflict where election officials are told by these activists,
(22:53):
you'd have to remove these people in thirty days.
Speaker 7 (22:54):
You have to follow the law. It's the law.
Speaker 6 (22:56):
If not, you know, we'll raise official complaints. But then
they're also you know, remembering training that will wait the
national you know, the NBRA says no, it's two federal
election cycles. So it's that level of detail that I
think we're seeing is evidence of this expansion and this
kind of accelerated effort to try and challenge voters and
remove them from the roles in these in these key
(23:18):
battleground states.
Speaker 1 (23:19):
So are there people on the like on the left
making sure this doesn't happen or is it just going
along unchecked?
Speaker 6 (23:27):
Well, I think a lot of election officials are starting
to catch up to this. You know, when you look
at different states, there's different levels of preparedness. So Michigan
is kind of perceiving this first big wave right now
that you know wasn't as prevalent, say in the mid terms,
Whereas in Georgia in the Senate runoff elections in twenty
twenty one, you know, kind of immediately following the point
(23:47):
twenty election that their election day was January sixth, there
was three hundred and sixty thousand challenges to voters just
in that small runoff window.
Speaker 7 (23:54):
Wow. In Georgia.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, because they thought that would help them when you
don't have to editorialize, I well continue.
Speaker 6 (24:01):
There's actually email evidence showing that they did. Inde'd think
if you did these challenges and clean these roles, it
would have helped at least Trump make up his deficit
in the trial between fair Fight and True The vote
that email was brought into evidence. But so Georgia County
election officials are very very very well versed in the
challenge law and the challenge preparations, so they're you know,
(24:22):
doing their best to make sure no one is erroneously removed.
As for like organizations on the left, who are you know,
seeking to either rate these wrongs or anything.
Speaker 7 (24:30):
There's certainly some.
Speaker 6 (24:31):
I'm sure I haven't been necessarily focused on them in
my reporting, but there's voting rights groups in every state.
There's you know, fair fight in Georgia, the CLU that
you know are looking to prevent this spot. I'm not
as aware as to their operations or measures at the
state level.
Speaker 2 (24:46):
So crazy.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
Speaking of voting, there is a Democratic primary in New
Jersey for the Senate, and you have a really important
piece about this and basically, and again, as a beneficiary
of nepotism myself, I always.
Speaker 2 (25:05):
Am hesitant to call it bad.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
No, I'm just kidding, it's bad talk to me about
these ballots.
Speaker 6 (25:11):
So what's unique in New Jersey is in the primary
system they have a thing called the line. And what
that is is it's a specific column or row on
a physical ballot in each county where a candidate is
given preferential treatment. So if you in the line and
say Hudson County for the Democrats, you appear with all
(25:32):
the other Democrats from county freeholder to senator, all in
one line. That gives the impression that these are the
official Democratic candidates. And then other candidates can be all
over the place. Some are put in what's known as
ballot Siberia, which is, you know, four to ten columns
over and you wouldn't even know if unless we're looking
for them. So it's this system that creates an appearance
(25:53):
of an official endorsement that if you're a Democratic voter,
these are the people you should look for, and that's
on the physical ballot. Now, how the line is one
varies from county to county, but often in a lot
of situations, the county party chair carries immense influence over
the line endorsement. In some it's just the county chair
(26:14):
and a few others. In some it's this committee and
others their endorsement helps guide the precinct delegates who are
going to vote for this, and then in others it
truly is an open convention. What's really unique about this
already unique system in New Jersey is that this year
Danny Murphy, the first lady, is running for a Senate
and seeking the line in different counties, while her husband,
(26:36):
Governor Murphy, is still the sitting governor and will be
next year, so he's in charge of the next two
budgets for New Jersey. Now, each of these county chairs
in their personal lives has some business tied to the
state summer lobbyists, some are lawyers, some have state government
positions and are drawing state government paychecks. So regardless of
necessarily you know how they're going to step back and
(26:58):
view the race between Ammy Murphy and Andy kim is,
the other most prominent candidate running, They're going to have
their own financial interest in the back of their head.
So we saw very quickly as soon as Tammy Murphy announced,
all of these powerful county chairs fall in line and
immediately endoor service. Within I think a week, most of
the major population centers fell, and that bothered a lot
(27:20):
of Democratic base bullers in New Jersey who saw it
as either a coronation or an anointing, or kind of
moving beyond the simple, open primary process that you know
they claim to support. So as evidence, I think of
how angry some of these voters are at the open conventions.
Andy Kim, who was considered an underdog to Tammy Murphy,
(27:40):
has been winning most of these open conventions, including one
in Mommut which kind of set the pace for exactly
how this primary is starting to play out. So it's
this weird system in New Jersey that's always had a
little bit to a lot of insider powers, smoke filled
back rooms, back dealing, that this year was so much
more at the forefront simply due to the dynamics of
(28:01):
the first lady running while the sitting governor is still
in office and will be in office next year.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
That is crazy.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
And really the ballot staff is really unusual, Like there
are forty nine other states and nobody else has.
Speaker 7 (28:15):
That as far as I know, That's.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
What Andy told us. Yeah, it could be wrong.
Speaker 6 (28:21):
It would shock me because I mean, granted, I'm from
New Jersey and a proud, proud and loud New Jersey
and but I've you know, written a couple articles about
this over the past five years and have never heard
anyone else say, oh, this is how we do it.
Speaker 3 (28:34):
You know it.
Speaker 6 (28:34):
Certainly maybe they did years ago it certainly has, you know,
those relics of political machines, and New Jersey is one
of the few states where, like political machines really do
still matter. About six or seven years ago, George north
Cross was at the height of his power as this
unelected but powerful insurance broker from South Jersey who really
commanded the entire South Jersey delegation and could you know,
force ben governors to as will both Murphy and former
(28:56):
Governor Chris Christy. Now there's you know, the hundred in
county politically machine, that's the most popular county populist, so
they move or as most Democratic voters, so they can
move a lot. So New Jersey still is very much
a political machine state, whereas in other states we've seen
machines completely crumble and fall.
Speaker 7 (29:13):
Just you know, looking at AOC's.
Speaker 6 (29:14):
Election that was actually a long time, which it feels
it's like a few years ago.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
I want to get to a PC. He wrote.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
Pretty recently, racial turnout gap has widened with a Weekend
Voting Rights Act. So in twenty thirteen, the Supreme Court
Justice Roberts Weekend that some of these protections were no
longer necessary and surprise, surprise, what happened.
Speaker 7 (29:37):
Well, what's kind of always been presumed is that when
you've removed the kind of the most critical part of
the Voting Rights Act, that it would have negative impact
on communities of color and turn out among voters of color.
But up until this Brennan study that you know, was
completed a few weeks ago, those attempts at kind of
quantifying this possible change was left to either exit polling,
(30:01):
or opinion surveys or the census, all of which are
like a little bit more imperfect than what Brennan decided
to do, which was take about a billion voter files
from multiple elections since twenty thirteen and assess exactly what
has happened in all the counties and states that were
covered by this part of the Voting Rights Act that
was changed in twenty thirteen. And what they found was that,
you know, it was a five percent difference that had
(30:24):
the Shelby decision not happened, the racial gap in these
counties and states would have been five percent lower than
it is right now. And five percent is a significant
margin in modern elections. I mean, so many as swing
states you know, are within two to three in some
of these counties that were. You know, under section five
are massive counties.
Speaker 6 (30:44):
Harris County, you know, in Texas is bigger than I
think twenty three states in terms of population.
Speaker 7 (30:49):
That's home to Houston.
Speaker 6 (30:50):
What they found was, you know, kind of a statistical
proof that the Shelby County decision did indeed exacerbate the
racial turnout gap, and that it beyond other like qualifiers
that people have often sought. So it persists across class, income,
education lines, even in poorer communities. While turnout was down
(31:11):
amongst poorer computer communities, across the line, there was still
a greater racial gap. You know, poorer white voters still
voted at a greater turnout than poorer voters of color.
At the very wealthy, wealthier white voters still voted at
a higher rate than voters of color. And they found
this racial turnout gap growing nationwide over the past ten
years since the twenty twelve election, but it grew at
(31:33):
a faster rate in these former Shelby counties.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
It's not surprising, but it's still upsetting. Do you think
that enough attention is being paid to this voter role?
Speaker 6 (31:43):
Staff, It's tough for me to say, you know, where
people should be focusing their attention. I do think election
officials are becoming, you know, more familiar with the challenges,
with the rules and regulations that are guiding what should
be done to keep voters on the rolls or not.
I do think probably the biggest challenge to this challenge program,
(32:07):
like repeating myself, is that these election officials are still
overworked and underfunded. In the I forget if it was
the budget or another recent funding bill or whatever a
fiscal cliff we decided to near or shut down over
there was money, you know, that was supposed to be
given to run the twenty twenty four election, and that
kept getting whittled down to nowhere near what the request was.
And so even with have A funds and the other
(32:28):
federal money that's came to elections, it's just simply not enough.
And there's been you know, new laws that he about
other forms of funding elections outside funding of elections. So
these local officials are really kind of, you know, between
a rock and a hard place. And so when you
layer in all of this extra work of sifting through
these challenges making sure you're both protecting everyone's right to
(32:52):
vote while at the same time not you know, erroneously
keeping someone who shouldn't be on the rolls on the rolls.
It's a massive effort. And so while they're having to
do this, they're still having to make sure polling locations
are open in the right place, make sure that they're
doing the right testing of the machines, making sure that
like voting locations have the right power to power the machines,
like we saw that in the Georgia primary in twenty twenty. So,
(33:15):
you know, there's so much that goes into this, and
there's so much of these election fishals that to do,
and often they're volunteers or they're part time, and so
to layer on all of these challenges I think is
something that there hasn't been the proper kind of relief,
either adding help to them or financial help to them.
That I think is kind of where the biggest gap
is at the moment.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 7 (33:36):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (33:38):
Frank McCord is the founder of Project Liberty and author
of Our Biggest Fight, Reclaiming Liberty, Humanity.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
And Dignity in the Digital Age. Welcome to Fast Politics, Frank.
Speaker 3 (33:53):
Well Wall, it's great to be with you. Looking forward
to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
Explain to us, how you got to this idea.
Speaker 3 (34:00):
Like you and millions of others, I see and feel
what's wrong, and it's something's wrong right, something's big as
a myths, and so I get curious about that and
started to dig into it. And that's where I, you know,
came to the conclusion that all these things that you know,
we find creepy and all the harms that we see
being done or many of them, can be linked back
(34:21):
to how technology is currently being used, and how the
Internet has been almost hijacked right by a few big companies.
And I, you know, I say that should mention that
I'm a fifth generation builder and my family's been building
the infrastructure for over one hundred and thirty years and
a great great grandfather started building roads when Henry Ford
started building cars. So it's kind of hardwired. We look
(34:42):
at problems and you know, try to figure out what's
strong and go fix it. I brought that mentality, let's say,
to this problem. But I'll tell you one anecdote that
really stuck with me. And this was after I had
started a public policy school with Georgetown University in Washington,
d C. And you know, that was at twenty thirteen
(35:02):
and we knew that big data was important, and we
put a massive data institute inside of the Court School,
and a faculty member there who was doing great research
it told me the following story. She had a theory
that you could predict when a large scale human migration
was going to occur by seeing what words got amplified
(35:23):
on social media. And she developed this theory based on
what she was able to pull together on your publicly
available social media. Our government was quite interested in that
project and gave her two hundred thousand dollars to refine
her model, because if there was in fact a predictor
of large scale migration, that would be massively helpful to
humanitarian organizations a society more broadly. So, yeah, she got
(35:45):
a couple hundred thousand to do the project, and new
Twyter had the information she needed and went to them
to get the data and they said, yep, we have it,
but it will cost you one hundred thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (35:55):
Wow.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
And she said, I can't give you a hundred thousand
dollars because I could get the data, I won't be
able to do the project because I don't have the budget.
And they said, well, you can't have it then, So
that really said a lot to me. Moly, because you
have the most vulnerable people in the world who created
the data. Right. It was their conversations that this academic
who was not going to commercialize this, just wanted to
improve the lot of society, help these four souls. And
(36:19):
they have Twitter, who's sitting on this data and saying
it's it's mine, you can't have it unless you pay me.
And I just felt the entire Internet was upside down.
It's our data. We should own it and control it.
If we want to use it for a good purpose,
we should be able to do that, and we shouldn't
be help hostage by big platforms. And by the way,
they are making massive amounts of money.
Speaker 2 (36:37):
So run our data.
Speaker 3 (36:39):
Yeah, from our data, So let's share on that as well.
The value.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
It's such an interesting solve. I'm hoping you could sort
of talk us through. The idea is actually quite complicated,
or at least it's complicated to someone like me who
knows many things very superficially. But I'm hoping you could
sort of explain to us this idea because if it
were to exist, it would be a decentralized internet, right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:05):
Well, it would be decentralized to the extent that we'd
be in control, right, and we'd don't to control our data,
and we'd have visibility and how it's baking used, and
we'd be able to share the value. But you know,
the Internet was built as a decentralized technology. That's why
it was built. You know, it was built too so
that we had a decentralized form of communication and the
(37:25):
effect of attack way back from the Soviet Union. And
then it evolved into the World Wide Web, and that,
by the way, was thirty five years ago today. Tim
burgers Ley released Stage GTP into the world and the
World Wide Web was created. And you know, I've talked
to him extensively about this, and his intention was that
it be a decentralized, human centric, empowering Internet, one that
(37:47):
would be the proverbial tide that less solve boats, right,
something where we could share information and get smarter as
a society, and not something that it became fifteen years later,
and especially over the last ten years, which has been
highly centralized, autocratic, surveillance based, app based internet. The apps
have taken ownership of they'd hijack the Internet. So you
(38:08):
know what I say in my book, our biggest fight
which comes out today is that we're back where we
were when in a way, when Thomas Paine in seventeen
seventy five wrote Common Sense, that powerful call to arms,
you know, the pamphlet that he wrote before the United
States became the United States, and he said to his
fellow settlers at the time, you have a choice. You
(38:29):
could continue to be a subject of a monarch and
not have any rights to speak of or be able
to own anything, or you could choose to be a citizen,
and with that comes all kinds of rights, including you know,
you're born with you know what became known as unalienable rights,
the rights that you're bo the same rights the king has.
And you're a human being of worth, and you have freedom,
(38:51):
you have liberty, you have choice, autonomy, agency, and you
can own things and create value. And that happily we
chowse citizenship and we created this country. And I would
argue that we, as you say, we can make this
complicated if we want through it. I actually think it's
pretty simple. Now we're at another juncture. We have a choice.
We can be dragged into a future, buy machines and
(39:12):
be subjects again and lose our citizenship, or we could
create technology that actually allows us and celebrates the fact
that we are now digital citizens. We're being treated like subjects,
we're losing our rights, and we're not treated at all
like human beings on the current Internet. And so I
asked the question, why, pretel, would we give up all
of our rights for the ability to use the Internet.
(39:34):
It makes no sense.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
Right, at one time it was not thought of as
giving up all of our rights, but now in hindsight,
that was what we were all doing. So what I
think is cool about this idea is that you are
doing this as an act of philanthropy. Right, you were
not making money on this idea. You're really trying to
(39:57):
sort of go in and make something that is really wrong.
Speaker 2 (40:01):
Right.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
If Congress wanted to, they could do this right now, right,
I mean, when that solved many of our technological problems.
If they said, like, no, we're going to have this
decentralized internet. Everyone needs to be a real person, no
more bot forms.
Speaker 2 (40:16):
Like if you have.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
To have a birth certificate or a driver's license or
a passport, you have to have a digital identity. I mean,
there's a world where that happens.
Speaker 3 (40:28):
Right, there's a world where that happens, but it's obviously
not going to happen in the world we live in
because our politics is also become highly polarized and dysfunctional
because of the same technology that I'm referring to that
is designed to polarize us and separate us. It's not
designed to help us reach consensus. They reaching consensus is
(40:49):
no fund for an algorithm that's designed to keep you
online endlessly and in a triggered state constantly, you know,
responding to something someone says. So let's go back to
your premise. Though DS and P is an open source protocol,
then our labs team developed that would allow people to
own and control their data, as you say, have a
(41:11):
digital entity, and let all of us benefit from the
network effect of the Internet. Open source, it's been gifted
to humanity. People need to build on this molly for
it to be a real thing, and so there will
be lots of commercial endeavors that people will engage in
our rotam will probably engage some things that they build
(41:31):
on this protocol because without it, there's not going to
be a real alternative to the current Internet. So, but
the point is it needs to be built on by
millions of people. This is not you know, one person,
one family, one company project. It's never going to happen.
This is a collective action and we need to demand
(41:52):
it better.
Speaker 7 (41:53):
A better intet.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
Now, if the government wanted to say, hey, everybody needs
to adopt a protocol like DSNP, then that would help
move things along. We don't need the government to mandate
it is the point.
Speaker 1 (42:05):
Right, But if they did, it would be solved tomorrow.
Speaker 3 (42:08):
It would be accelerated, sure, and then suddenly you'd be
in a situation where we adopted other standards. Right, We
adopted other protocols, and what we didn't know when we
were adopting them is that we were giving power to
a few big platforms to own us. And I don't
want to be owned by someone else, whether it's the
Chinese government because of you know, TikTok, or whether it's
the you know, a few big American platforms. We need
(42:30):
to put human beings in charge of themselves on the
Internet for the first time.
Speaker 1 (42:34):
Right.
Speaker 3 (42:34):
We need to stop being an IP address, a device,
or stop just being viewed as data, as a as
a product. We're human beings. It's a privilege to use
the Internet, and we should be required to be a
person or at least verified as such to be on
the Internet. That doesn't mean we have to give up
our privacy or anything like that. We should be able
to live on the Internet like we lived prior to that,
(42:54):
where if you're dealing with a community that you know
and trust, well, you share a lot of details about yourself. Well,
if you're dealing with strangers, you don't share anything about yourself.
You or I don't share things about ourselves when we
walk down a city street to a stranger, at least
most people don't. But then when you get to know people,
you share more. And then we have close friends and
significant others and family members, you share a lot. Well,
(43:16):
the Internet should operate in a similar way where we
have control over what's shared about us, with whom and
on what terms.
Speaker 1 (43:23):
So right now we're in the middle of a news
cycle about TikTok where it looked for a minute like
TikTok was going to be either forced as a sale
or banded, and there was like an incredible amount of movement,
and now it looks like that's not happening because Kelly
(43:44):
and Conway is a lobbyist for TikTok and Trump. Some
people got to Trump, And so I'm just curious, is
that the problem with tech regulation?
Speaker 2 (43:55):
This is like an obsession of mine.
Speaker 1 (43:57):
For example, you know, they're always congressional here things about
tech regulation. We're constantly seeing that, but we're not actually
seeing any regulation come out of any of this. I mean,
we have seen so much like carnage from technology. A
lot of great stuff too, but a lot of carnage.
It seems like our Congress and our politicians just seem
completely uninterested in providing any kind of regulation.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
Yeah, when you said, you know, this carnage and there's
a lot of harm, but this good stuff being done too,
I actually share myself kind of saying that from time
to time, and I hear others saying that, like it's
almost like we're defense mechanism or this obligation to say, well, well,
there's some good stuff too. And I've come to the conclusion,
if we get our construction company right, or some municipality
(44:42):
or or somebody built a plumbing system, a water system
for a city of a million people, and we turned
on the water, or people turned on the water in
their homes and six hundred thousand people got clean, healthy,
nutritional water, and four hundred thousand people got toxic poison
water that was causing illnesses and even some people to die.
(45:03):
Would we be saying, oh, but the water system that
that water system does some good stuff too, or would
we be focusing on the damage that's done and be
saying fix that. That's unacceptable. So I just want to
put this in context that I think if they stop
being apologetic, oh yeah, but they do some good things too,
and just say enough is enough Number one, number two
(45:26):
on your issue of policy and so forth. We now
know and we learn more and more every day about
the damage being done by the way the Internet is
being used, and you know this surveillance technology, the harms democracy,
our information ecosystem is being contaminated, trouble, civil discourse is
police officers at school board meetings, and most importantly we
(45:48):
see the harms to young people right, and they're very real.
The first stop should be to go to these big
tech platforms and say, look at there's damage being done.
Speaker 7 (45:57):
Fix it.
Speaker 3 (45:57):
Stop causing the damage, right, stop putting the water into
the pipe, stop fix this. And that hasn't been done.
And what we get is these apology tours and oh
I didn't know that, go back and check and fix it.
But then information comes out, and of course we now
learned they knew it. You know that Mark Zuckerberg knew
that the technology was designed to prey on young kids,
(46:20):
and so on and so forth, and yet it's still
not So then where do we turn. We turned to
our elected officials and our political system, right like we
did with tobaccos for instance, right, Well, we found out
it was harmful and the tobacco companies didn't fix it.
We went to our elected officials and said, please, we
need new regulations because they're not fixing it themselves. And
(46:41):
then those regulations came into place. There were warnings on cartoons,
there was a tax put on it so that there
was more expensive, so people would file us and people
were it was an educational campaign, and there were regulations
at laws, and you couldn't smoke under a certain so
on and so for you couldn't sell to a certain
and our political appbretes went into here. So now let's
(47:01):
come back to technology. We go to our political apparatus
and say, big tech, and is it in these social
media platforms? Aren't fixing themselves, please fix the problem. And
like you say, we see the theater, we see the hearings,
but nothing happens. I've come to the conclusion that either
our political elected officials are not understanding the technology and
(47:22):
the harm it's doing, or they are taking money from
these big platforms that are the wealthiest companies ever created
and have lobbyists and advocates all over the place, or
they're actually and this may be the most damaging evolve,
they're using the very platforms that we're talking about here
that are doing the damage and causing the polarization to
(47:42):
raise money and take extreme views and get followers and
clicks and donations. And so it's the ultimate irony here
or sad irony, is that what I talk about in
our biggest fight that we need to fix is very
technology that is disabling our political apparatus as well and
(48:04):
our ability to adopt good policies, which used to happen
years ago, and it's not happening now because of the
all powerful nature of this technology. So that's where I
come to the Project Liberty and the need for us
to actually take matters into our own hands, actually diagnose
the engineering problem, fix it. And then have a call
(48:27):
to action to demand that we have this alternative and
incentivize builders to build on it and get citizens just
people demanding the alternative. And I want to see people
talking about this at their kitchen table, at the sidelines
of the soccer kids soccer game, at their school board meetings,
you know, after church and so on and so forth,
(48:49):
so that we start to socialize this because we the
people need to fix this, because the platforms themselves aren't
fixing it in our elected officials.
Speaker 1 (49:00):
Yeah, exactly, Thank you so much, Frank Well, I appreciate
you saying that.
Speaker 3 (49:05):
I just ask that your listeners, you know, take a
couple of hours and read our Biggest Fight and because
it's it's hard and twenty minutes to get everything across,
but you know, the book that I had the privilege
of writing with Michael Casey, I think does a decent
job of explaining the problem and the solution so we
don't have to be helpless and hopeless. Here there is
hope and there is a bright future. And we're definitely
(49:27):
pro technology. It's not about being anti tech. We're definitely
pro tech, but use it the right way. Or your
listeners can go to our biggest fight dot com and
learn much more about the project. Thank you, Thank you,
Mollie a.
Speaker 2 (49:43):
Moment, pet Jesse Cannon, Molly Jung Fast, Robert hur takes
the stand in Congress today, and oh and.
Speaker 1 (49:52):
He reveals himself to be the partisan hack we had
suspected he was.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
There were a lot of moments to choose from.
Speaker 1 (50:01):
I say, just play the whole hearing at the DNC,
but if you're pressed for time, definitely there were so
many moments. The best and the worst was him. So
Ted Lew asked Robert her her questions that were purportedly
about Biden but really about Trump. That was a pretty
(50:21):
amazing moment, just in a very typical Republican fashion. Before
the report came out, her you know, sort of got
ahead of it and said that at points Biden couldn't
remember the day that bo died, which is actually just
a lie because when you look at the transcript, he
knew exactly what the day was, and then he was
sort of trying to figure out it was twenty fifteen
or twenty sixteen, But Madeline Dean said he did know
(50:44):
the day, and her refuse to admit it went back
to the transcript and then ultimately just punted.
Speaker 2 (50:52):
So I thought that was the moment.
Speaker 1 (50:54):
But there were a lot of incredible moments in that hearing.
It's worth going over them, and it's really clear that
like the mainstream media fucked up right. They ran hers
comments just like they did when they used Bill Barr's
comments about the Mueller investigation instead of using the actual
Muther investigation.
Speaker 2 (51:14):
They took Republican's word for it. They let them shape
the narrative.
Speaker 1 (51:18):
And we've seen this before, so we lived through weeks
and weeks of Joe Biden didn't know when bo Biden.
Speaker 2 (51:24):
Died, when in fact, he knew exactly when Bo Biden died.
Speaker 1 (51:27):
And so for that partisan hack Robert HRR, who by
the way, refused to answer a question when Eric Swowell
asked him if he would take an appointment in Trump's
White House, partisan hack, her is our moment of fuck ray.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
(51:50):
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for a
snag
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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