Mehdi Hasan, Lydia Polgreen & Jordan Weissmann

MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan stops by to talk about his new book Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating. The New York Times Lydia Polgreen talks to us about the political realignments she’s seen across the globe. Plus, Semafor’s Jordan Weissmann explains to us the nuances of what is really going on with our railways and regulations.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds and Rupert Murdoch gave Jared Fox's debate
questions before Trump debated Biden. We have a fascinating show today,
Semaphores Jordan Weissman explains to us the nuances of what

(00:22):
is really going on with our railways and their regulations.
Then we'll talk to New York Times opinion columnists Lydia
Paul Green about the political realignment she's seeing across the globe.
But first we have the one the only author of
Win Every Argument MSNBC is Mattie Hassan. Welcome to Fast Politics, Maddie.

(00:47):
Thank you for having me, Molly. So, the question is
with this book, when Every Argument the art of debating, persuading,
and public speaking, can you transfer what you do to
us by reading a book. I'm skeptical. Yeah, I don't
blame you from being skeptical because a lot of people
think that public speaking, being able to argue, debate rhetoric,

(01:11):
TV interviewing, TV hosting is something that you're kind of
born with. There's a lot of talk about natural born
speakers natural born orators, and I don't quite buy that. Look,
is there an element of nature too? Of course there is,
but there's a lot of nurture. There's a lot of
training and practicing that goes into it. And the reason
I wrote this book and I wouldn't have written otherwise.

(01:31):
There was twenty other books I could have written, But
I genuinely wrote this book because I believe that these
skills are transferable, they are learnable, they are teachable, and
it's been going on for centuries. You don't have to
date my work for it go back to the ancient Greeks,
the ancient Romans. They came up with how to teach
this stuff. A lot of the lessons and tips in
the book are stuff that have been around for millennia.

(01:51):
And if you go back. I tell the story of
Demosthenes in the book Legendary Ancient Greek orator, lawyer, speech writer.
The guy was hopeless as a public speaker. He was
so bad. He had he had a stutter and a stammer.
He had a shortness of breath when he spoke. He
was embarrassed when he was out in public. He lacked confidence.
So what does this guy Demostenes do. He basically builds

(02:13):
himself an underground cave batman style, goes down there for
months at a time. To make sure he doesn't come
out of there. He shaves off behalf of his head
so he'll be too embarrassed to go out in public.
And he sits down there practicing, speaking, delivering, standing in
front of a mirror. He runs up a hill when
he does come out of the cave to work on
his shortness of breath while he speaks as he runs

(02:34):
up the hill. And Plutarch talks about this, that this
guy Demostenes becomes one of the greatest orators of all time.
He's the guy when it comes to rhetoric in ancient Greece.
And I tell stories about Martin Luther King and Winston
Churchill and others who we consider today to be great orators,
great debaters, but they didn't start out that way. Winston
Judge Will practiced while sitting in the bathtub, right his

(02:55):
valet would overhear him murmuring in the tub. So yeah,
I do think that you can learn this stuff. I
think people try and wing it. People think you're either
a natural one orator not true, or they think you
can just wing it not true either. And the point
of this book is to say you don't have to
be a natural one orator, but you do have to
work at it. There is a body of evidence as
to how you can win over an audience, how you

(03:16):
can corner an opponent with facts and figures, how you
can connect with people emotionally, how you can kind of
duck and dodge and evade your opponent's rhetorical attacks. There's
a body of literature and work out there, and I
try and bring it together in this book. And I
try and bring it together with examples from my own life,
my own career, and from history. So I want to
ask you about this idea that there's sort of a

(03:36):
way to stop bullshitters like Trump. Yes, so explain to
us how we do that, because that could be useful.
So I started writing this book, and I say, I
say in the introduction to this book, there's a lot
of books on rhetoric and oratory out there. I'm not
the first person to go with. In fact, I rely
on a lot of other great authors who I cite
in the book. I mean, they're not that common, right, Like,
I mean, it's a pretty cool move there's also an

(03:58):
issue of have you actually done it? I say in
the introduction, a lot of books are written by experts
on rhetoric, history, professors, debate coaches. I'm coming here saying, look,
I'm the guy who has argued with people all over
the world. I'm the guy who's argued inside the White House.
I've argued inside Number ten downing Strey. I've argued inside
the Saudi Embassy and managed to walk away with my
life thankfully a few. Yeah. So I'm saying I'm bringing

(04:18):
practical experiences. I'm not just a guys saying here it
is in theory I try and say in the book,
and here's how I did it, and what I would
say on the bullshitting front is. As I wrote this book,
I realized, look, a lot of these lessons are not
new lessons. I need to address what's going on right
now and right now. And you and I've discussed many
a time, Molly on my show and yours, that we
live in an era of kind of post truth conservatism

(04:41):
and not a reality based Republican party. A former president
who wants to be president again, who is a serial
liar and bullshitter, whose own top strategist Steve Bannon famously said,
our opponents are not the Democrats, they are the media.
And the way to deal with the media, Steve Bannon said,
is to flood the zone which shit. And that is
exactly what they've done. You and I I cannot cope

(05:01):
with the number of controversy, scandals, lies, gaffs because there's
just so many of them. We rebut one lie, and
there's one hundred behind them. And that is what Trump
has perfected. And what I say in the book is
beware the Gish galloper because Trump is not the first
to do this. There is a technique known as the
Gish gallop and it comes from a guy called Dwayne
Gish who was a creationist, a Christian evangelical who went
around debating with evolutionists, with scientists, with biologists about evolution.

(05:25):
And the way he beat them, and he did beat
them in public debates, was just by overwhelming them with
cherry pick statistics, out of context quotes, misquoted scientific papers.
But he would do it in such a confident, eloquent,
fast paced way that an audience of lay people sitting
at home or watching in the hall would say, wow,
he knows his stuff, and the scientist hasn't rebutted every

(05:46):
single thing he says, and that's how he was able
to run rings around people. And that's where one scientist
came up with this phrase, beware of the Gish gallop,
and Trump does that, right. It's an incredible phrase. By
the way, the Gish gallup it is. I think it's
Eugenie Scotland name was who was the scientist her name is,
I should say, who came up with this phrase because
she said, look, I'm not going to debate with these people.
I'll go on radio with them, but I won't do

(06:07):
these debates which allow them to gallop uninterrupted. And that
is what Trump does, right. We saw him in the
Joe Biden I think it was the first debate with
Chris Wallace in twenty twenty, where he just goes on
and on and on and Wallace can't control it. Chris Wallace,
who was a great interviewer, cannot stop him. Joe Biden
cannot rebut every piece of nonsense he says. But at
one point, I think he says a lie every nine seconds.
And my point in the book is there is actually

(06:28):
a way to stop a gift galloper and I say
there's a three part structure that I use, and that
is Number one. You pick your battles. You cannot stop
every lie, don't try and do everything. Pick out the
most ridiculous or dumb or offensive one, knock that one down,
and allow the rest of the house of cards to fall.
The second way you do it is to call it out.
A lot of people don't know what's going on here.
You've got to identify it to the audience. You've got

(06:50):
to say this is what they're doing, this is what
Trump is doing, this is what Dwayne gets She's doing.
They're trying to overwhelm you with nonsense. They don't want
to stop and get deep into anything. Call it out.
And the third point is don't budge. This is what
I say to a lot of my colleagues in the
US media. We move on too quickly in interviews. We
need to have the follow up question. We need to say,
hold on, hold on, I've asked about this, and you've

(07:11):
given me seventeen different answers. I only want to know
the answer to my question, and I'm not going on
to the next question until you answer this one. And
I point out it's my pinned tweet. That clip I
did with Steve Rogers, who was a Trump advisor in
twenty eighteen, which went viral, has had ten million views
on Twitter because that was an interview where we decided
my team and I Al Jezier English at the time,
said we're not going to budge. We're going to ask

(07:33):
him about Trump slie about steel mills. Trump had said, oh,
they've opened new steel mills. No, they hadn't opened any,
and he wanted to move on. I only tried his
best to say, let's talk about this, let's talk about that.
No steel mills. We're not budging. So that is how
you do it. It can be done, but it requires
a strategy. People think Trump doesn't have a strategy. He does,
so you have to have one too. And when I
say Trump, I mean Trump is mini Trumps, all of

(07:54):
the people who are spreading through the country and around
the world. It's become a worldwide phenomenon, this Trumpian approach
to interviews and debate. I mean, that's such a good
point because you really can stop and get stuck in
this kind of For example, Nicki Haley recently asked about
Trump and she just you know, they don't feel any

(08:14):
accountability to answer the question because they know you'll just
move on. Yeah, don't budge is my motto. Don't budge, right,
And I actually remember from like the nineties in the UK,
you know you'd watch interviews where they would say no,
but I asked you about this, what about this? Well
there was a legendary clip and I heard your listeners
to go look it up on YouTube. Jeremy Paxman, who

(08:35):
was a kind of hero of mine when I was
growing up in the UK. He was the attack dog
on the BBC, the most famous ruthless political interview. He
once said, I start every interview by thinking in my head,
why is this lying bastard lying to me? And he
he famously did an interview with the Home Secretary, the
UQUA equivalent of the Attorney General, Michael Howard at the time,
who had fired I think a prison governor, and the

(08:56):
prison governor had said I can't remember the details. There
was some argument about he fired the prison governor, and
Paxman asked him about the governor thirteen times or fourteen
times the same question because Howard hasn't answered it. And
can you imagine on American TV having a public a
government official on and asking the same question thirteen times. Amazing. Yeah, No,

(09:16):
I think you really have a good point here about
the sort of style of interviewing that we really do
need to go back to. I want to ask you
about Democrats. Why are Democrats better at this? I've got
multiple theories. I can't say for sure. I do think
there is this kind of technocratic element to the Democratic Party,
and it's a lawyerly element. Although you can't just blame

(09:37):
in the law, but I do think there's a lot
of lawyers in the Democratic Party, a lot of policy
wants who think that if you argue with enough statistics,
just one more policy paper, just one more statistic, one
more fact or figure, and you will convince the nation.
And it doesn't work like that. That is not how
the American public, That's not how human beings. And I

(09:57):
explain this in the second chapter of the book. I
have to have facts, but you need to approach feelings too.
It's not just facts. You need to address people's feelings.
Aristotle told us this more than two thousand years ago
in his book Rhetoric, that you need to focus on
people's pathos, on the emotional appeal. You move people by
hitting them in their heart, not just their head. And
too many Democratic leaders for too long have focused just

(10:20):
on their head. If we rationally win the argument, if
we point out the contradiction and the other persons, if
I have enough pages in my policy document, I will
win them over. And I should think of the twenty
sixteen presidential election, Molly, and I think Donald Trump understood
this and understands this very well. The right have understood
how to energize their base by appealing to their emotions.
And the emotions they appeal to, sadly are bigotry, anger, resentment.

(10:43):
They are very good at kind of negatively demogogically riling
up their base. But there's a theory behind it, which
is people respond to emotion. Now I'm not telling Democrats
to do that, but I'm saying, offer another emotional message,
whether it's one based on hope or one based on
anger at the right people that the point one percenters,
the bankers, the people who actually screw you, not migrants,
not trans kids. Right, And I think what happened in

(11:04):
twenty sixteen was Donald Trump comes on and says, lock
her up, build the wall, ban Muslims, Hi, easy to
remember and gets you really worked up all those issues.
Tillary comes along and says, hey, here's my childcare proposal.
It's seventeen points. It's really good. And I'm not saying
it wasn't a good childcare proposal. I'm sure it was
a great childcare proposal, but it's not going to win

(11:24):
you a presidential election. And think about it, Molly. There
have been six presidential elections in the twenty first century.
I keep making this point, it's so important. Three Democratic victories,
three Democratic losses. The Democratic losses were Al Gore, John Kerry,
and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic wins were Barack Obama and
Joe Biden. What do Barack Obama and Joe Biden having
common They talk like normal people. They talk in a

(11:47):
way that's authentic. They're not just rehearsing talking points. Whereas Kerry, Gore,
and Clinton, for all their brilliant they didn't inspire or
move people. One of the things that I think all
of us are thinking about all the time is can
me Ron, I'm sorry, Ron de Santis, can he you
know this fantasy of Trumpism without Trump right, which is

(12:08):
really authoritarianism. Let's be honest, because there's not there's a
you know, it's slogans and fascism. Can Trumpism without Trump
be a thing? And what I think a lot of
these people in the Donald request don't understand is that
Ron de Santis is not a charismatic guy. No. On
my book, I would say there are three chapters you

(12:28):
can read which will tell you why Ron de Santis
probably won't beat Donald Trump. The first is that chapter
I mentioned on emotion, on appealing to people's emotions. He's
been doing it well with his own kind of Florida
captive audience. But Donald Trump is an expert at rilling
people up, and in terms of that, he's a better speaker.
What if we think about Donald Trump, in all his craziness,
he knows in a kind of demagogue way, how to

(12:48):
move crowds and rallies. To Santis, I was going to say,
to sanctimonies. And that leads me to my next point,
which is I have a chapter in the book on
am arguments. Why ad hominum arguments work. People keep telling
you in debate schooling, high school debating, who play them ball,
not the man? Don't attack people individually, attack the arguments.
In the real world, Donald Trump showed us in twenty sixteen,
he defeated sixteen Republicans, all of whom were more qualified

(13:10):
than he wants, often by just calling them names low energy, Jeb,
you know, lion Ted. We were all the little Marco
and whether we like it or not, we could say, oh,
that's so gross, are so offensive, that's so childish. It worked.
It totally undermined his opponents. And good luck to Ron
de Santis or Ron de Sanctimonius, or meet Moron when
he's on a debate stage with Donald Trump. And again
the third chapter I mentioned is that is the gish galloping.

(13:31):
Trump will just gallop all over him. We saw DeSantis
in the debate with Charlie Christ. He couldn't even take
on Charlie Chris. Charlie Chris absolutely rhetorically destroyed him. Now,
Charlie Chris didn't win the races because Charlie Chris wasn't right.
Canada and Florida basically isn't a swing state anymore. I
don't see how Ron de Sands beats Donald Trump in
a debate. I just don't. I also think Tramp won't
let him like Trump, maybe can't win, but he can

(13:54):
make sure that DeSantis won't exactly I think that's the
best bet for Democrats if you want the best personally,
either Ron Desantist can't beat Trump. But let's say I'm wrong,
and I've been wrong before, I was wrong about Trump
winning in twenty sixteen. Let's say Desantist does beat Trump.
That's probably the best scenario for the Democrats, is that
DeSantis beat Trump. Trump doesn't concede, of course, he never
concedes defeat. He says it was stolen and he either

(14:16):
goes scorched earth on Desantists just attacking him and running
as a third party candidate, or he says to his followers,
stay at home from Mara Lago. And that is probably
the Democrats best bet. If the reporting a body is
divided between Desanders and Trump on the eve of November
twenty twenty four, Yeah, this is going to be so stressful, Andy,
and I could really use a break. I was promised
that the world would go back to normal, by the way,

(14:37):
just to get into sort of something I'm curious about
my own personal edification. I mean, was this always going
to be this kind of messy process to try to
come back as a country or do you think it's
been made worse by this incredibly smileless Republican Party. You
can see, I have no opinion on that. I was
going to say, you could have gone anywhere with that sentence,

(14:58):
because I thought you'll send was it going to end
with the spinelessness of the d J well also that yeah,
because I would argue that I had no expectations of
the Republican Party. I didn't think they were going to go, hey,
get rid of Donald Trump, let's clean up our party.
That became clear when Kevin McCarthy went to bow to
him at Moral Lago after to January the sixth. That
was the moment you knew we do want to shadow

(15:20):
of a doubt this party's not going to disown Trump.
You see Nicki Haley right now being asked about Trump.
She say, oh, I don't kick sideways. It's okay, good
luck to because he does. By the way, also, it's
up Donald Trump sideways up. Yeah, you're not the equal
of Donald Trump for whatever you think you're appolling at
six percent? Good luck. Yeah. What I would say is
I didn't expect anything the Republican Party, but I did

(15:41):
expect a democratic administration to do something substantive on these issues.
And we know they tried and failed with the various
bills to protect democracy, and Joe Manchin and kist In
Cinema screweders all over. And we know that we now
have a special counsel who seems to be taking all
sorts of interesting actions, but in my view, all too little,
too late. The idea that Donald Trump think about this,

(16:02):
Just imagine that a proverbial Martian lands near your house
and says, what's going on in American politics? And you say,
all right, let me give you a quick summary. The
president who lost the election last time around, didn't concede
the election, incited a violent insurrection, tried a coup to
stay in power, was condemned by everyone in America, including
his own party, for about twenty four hours, and then
he left office and nothing happened to him. And he's

(16:24):
now running for president again and leading in his polls.
That's ridiculous. And the Democratic body have to take some
responsibility for that. The Biden administration has to take some
responsibility for that. I mean, if this was another country,
we always say the Brendon nine line, what would you
say if you saw this in another country, that a
president who's incited insurrection tried a coup is now inex
basically in self imposed exile out of the capitol, still

(16:46):
inciting violence, still lying, and possibly about to come back
to power. We would judge that country to be in
our own offensive terms. Banana Republic failed date all of
that stuff. That's America in twenty twenty three. No, I know,
I mean, it's just completely an utterly I mean, Merrick
Garland was not the right guy man for this job
in my opinion. I've said this on my show. He's
a great lawyer, I'm sure a very decent human being.

(17:08):
Democrats thought they were owning the cons by putting the
guy who Mitch McConnell a rejected of the Supreme Court
in the DOJ. But it just you needed someone like
an Elizabeth Warren in the DOJ. You needed a kind
of fighter who was going to come out the gate
and say, let's clean this mess up. Democracy is under threats.
My job to protect democracy right now, not try and
appeal across the aisle and be this kind of fake
bipartisan figure. Yeah, he just doesn't seem like the Fanny

(17:32):
Willis case in Georgia. I mean, I don't know that
that's a perfect case either. I mean, in theory, it's
a perfect case. I've been I as a non lawyer,
I've been saying for a while, like, what else do
you need to lock him up? If I had been
caught on tape telling Brad Ravensberger to find my candidate
eleven tho, I'd be in prison. You and I would
be in prisoned by now, right, Oh, no question, we've
been j at least we'd be awaiting trial for sure.

(17:53):
It's literally on take, and there's no secondhand here say
issues now this week, these past few days, we've been
worried about what might happen because the grand Jury four
person has been doing media rounds and giggling her way
through interviews. She's someone I wish had read my book
before she went on TV, because her appearances didn't do
her any favors and may not have done the Georgia
case any favors. But let's see, I'm not a lawyer,

(18:14):
and legal experts are mixed on that. But you know,
as I've pointed out many a time, Georgia all his
businesses won six and the incitement of violence, those are
multiple cases. Just go back to obstruction of justice from
Muller report. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to be
the anarak on the Mulla Report. But Robert Muller outlined
ten cases of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump. He
then went and sat in front of Congress and said

(18:35):
there's no immunity for a former president. He could be
tried after he left office. He leaves office. Merrick Garland
doesn't bring a single one of those cases before the
statute of limitations runs out, they should just prosecute him
for that, right, No, it's true, Maddie. You are one
of my favorites. Thank you. I hope you will come back.
Thank you so much for having me. Jordan Weissman is

(18:58):
the Washington bureau editor at Semaphore. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Jordan,
thank you for having me on. Happy to be here.
I want to talk to you about the rail disaster
in East Palestine. A rail disaster causing innumerable problems we
don't even know the scope of them, largely environmental, much
of which is caused by a lack of regulation. It

(19:21):
appears so. I mean, right now that the federal government
is still digging in, they're still investigating exactly what went wrong,
but already people in Washington lawmakers are starting to get
a sense of ways this possibly could have been prevented,
and there are a lot of policy options that have
already been put forward or people are discussing that. Yeah,

(19:41):
I mean, I would say in general, the catastrophe disaster,
I mean, just this whole thing is brought a lot
of attention to an issue that has just gone under
the radar forever, which is rail safety, and thankfully because
it affects a lot of communities, especially in rural America. Yeah,
so I want to go for one, which is like

(20:01):
a stupid question, but I need you to debunk it. Anyway,
There's been a lot of like pushback on the Republican
side of like, while the particular regulation that Trump rolled
back would not have prevented this, and while that is,
I guess theoretically true, I would love for you to

(20:24):
explain why, you know, this is not actually about one
specific regulation. This isn't about one specific regulation. It's more
about a general approach to rail safety. That's it kind
of stretched back for a long time. You know, some
people who have blamed the Obama administration too for maybe
not doing enough fun to you in the past, or
at least being too willing to kind of give into
industry lobbying. But I think, yeah, we can talk about

(20:47):
Trump briefly and what he did, and then we can
talk more broadly about what's going on here. And so
let's start with the controversy over Trump. And so at
one point, the Obama administration put out a rule that
involved what are known as highly hazardous flammable trains or
trains that are carrying highly hazardous flammable material, which is

(21:08):
a very important term here, and I want your listeners
to remember. It's a very evocative term, but it actually
needs a very specific thing. And part of that, there
were all sorts of safety rules attached to these trains
that were rolling through communities and basically posed a risk
of explosion. And one of the rules that Obama tried
to put in place would have required that they use
essentially more modern, advanced electronic breaks instead of the sort

(21:32):
of nineteenth century technology a lot of American rails equipped with.
Right now, this seems like a good investment, seems like
a reasonable thing to do, right and especially given the
kinds of freight we were talking about it. And this
rule was really designed to apply to trains that were
carrying oil. It came out of the fracking boom sort of,

(21:53):
and when a lot of trolling products were being transported
by a train inst of pipeline, and sometimes they were
derailing and causing serious environmental hazards and communities. We shouldn't
laugh because this is so horrible. I'm only laughing because
it is so horrible. Yeah, it's very one of the
things that are you just look into like kind of
the grim void of the way we do business in

(22:15):
this country sometimes and you just it's dark, and you
do have to laugh sometimes it's dark. Exactly. They put
this rule in place, and so this rule got a
lot of pushback from the industry, and Congress listened to
the lobbying and they passed the law that said you
need to kind of rethink this rule, and then they
made them do what it's called a new cost benefit
analysis on it. And after Congress did that, then the

(22:36):
Trump administration came into office and they used this new
law and the new cost benefit analysis as an opportunity
to roll back this rule saying you have to put
modern breaks on trains that are carrying explosive oil. Like, right,
and yes, a crazy rule. Yes, yeah, this isn't the
only instance where Trump rolled back or tried to kind

(22:57):
of power back some real safety rules. But it's the
one that everyone been focused on. Now. The reason this
wouldn't have helped. This rule that Trump nixed would not
have helped prevent this specific disaster is that it actually
would not have covered trains carrying the specific type of
explosive chemicals that this Norfolk Southern train was carrying. The

(23:18):
highly hazardous Flammable Train rule really applied to things like oil,
specifically what are known as Class three flammable liquids, and
vinyl chloride, which is the chemical that was aboard this
train in these Palestine is not a liquid. It is
not a classy flammable liquid. And I apologize deeply. I
cannot remember the specific classification of this chemical. I think

(23:40):
we've got enough for our non experts here. Yeah, so
it wasn't actually covered by this rule, and so I think.
But what that illustrates is that, you know, there's been
this partisan back and forth about oh, well Trump undid
the rule, and well, oh wouldn't have covered anything in
the first place. And you know why if Biden cared
so much, why didn't he try to do anything in
the past years, A lot of people involved in this

(24:01):
discussion are kind of looking at this situation and going, wait, okay,
we can all agree something is really messed up here. Well,
And I mean, I think that one of the things
I would love you to talk about now is that
when the Biden administration came in, the Trump rhetoric actually
worked on regulation, right. It made Democrats and I think

(24:23):
other nonpartisans if there already left anxious about the idea
of putting in more regulation because Trump had for so
long said like regulation kills business. I mean, he wasn't
the only one. Obviously. This is from a long line
of conservative quote unquote thinking. But I would love for
you to talk about the hesitation that Democrats had when
they came in. But it's been pretty aggressive in a

(24:44):
lot of ways about trying to reregulate certain industries. Part
of the issue here is that it can just be
really difficult to reregulate an industry that has been deregulated.
Just sort of a logistical level. There are all sorts
of laws and steps you have to take in order
to get a new regulation in place. And part of
what Congress and Trump did was they made it harder. Essentially,

(25:07):
to reregulate the industry. They put certain kind of hurdles
in place if anybody wanted to come back and say, actually, no,
you should have electronic breaks on these trains. And that
is something that Peputigg has been pointed too often when
people have accused him of being too slow and too
hesitant to try and tackle trains safety roles. He has
essentially said, hey, you guys shackled me. There's only so
much we can really do here. Nonetheless, it does appear

(25:30):
that this disaster has really motivated is galvanized, Yeah, exactly,
is galvanized the administration to maybe be more aggressive and
try to push things harder and also ask for help
from Congress. I would say a combination of maybe conservative rhetoric,
but also just more the concrete roadblocks that Republicans have
put in place have made it a little tricky to
regulate this industry. Yeah. I mean. One of the things

(25:52):
that I think is really interesting that has come out
of this environmental crisis is you hear a lot of
Republican including Hillbilly Senator Jady Vance and Ivy grad Yale
law school graduate, I think, saying a lot of things
about that They almost sound like they're on the populace left. Yeah,

(26:15):
there's been a little bit of that. I mean, the
rhetoric around this accident has been a combination of interesting
and kind of horrifying, right exactly, there's a real play
to make this a thing that you know, white people
are being forgotten, and that I mean is just craven
but not unexpected, right, I mean, it's sort of you

(26:37):
would anticipate it and maybe wrongful, maybe be naively a
little bit surprised with how aggressively certain conservative talking heads
really just dove right in to saying, oh, Democrats don't
care about white Charlie Kirk wasn't surprising, but Charlie kar
Verbatim said, if this is a result of the war
on white people, Jesse Waters and Fox said they were
trying to fight environmental racism by dumping toxic chemicals on

(27:00):
poor white people, and Tucker Carlson had a whole spiel
about how the fact that they were white and conservative
was why their plight was being ignored, and jad Vance
kind of danced on the edge of that in some
of his comments. He basically said at one point that
Pete Boutajidge was so wrapped up in fake woke quote
issues like whether or not construction companies are hiring too

(27:20):
many white workers, which was sort of a distortion of
some comments he made, right, that was their favorite distortion
of comments. But you know, poo Boodagage basically gave a
conference where he said that you could hire more workers
of color and communities where you're building things. But that's
besides the thing. You know, he said that Boodagude was
so wrapped up in these kinds of woke issues that

(27:40):
he was ignoring real things like train safety. But you know,
leaving that kind of mud slinging part of the conversation aside.
And I don't think we should ignore it, but just
for the moment. Yeah, there has also been this kind
of populous sentiment among certain Republicans who've been saying, yes,
the train company should pay for it, Yes, we shouldn't
let these corporate just get away with it, which is

(28:02):
the basis of the Republican Party as I remember in
my youth. Yeah, I mean, yeah, right, it was laz
a fair sort of a light touch, to say the least.
And yeah, people have accused him of saying, well where
were you during the Trump years? In JV. Vance's case,
he actually wasn't in Congress, so that gives him a
little bit more credibility. Although he's been hesitant to criticize Trump,

(28:22):
and if you ask his people about that, they'll say,
we shouldn't be making this about Trump. This is about
the year now. But he's been on the ground barn storming.
And while he's been criticizing Biden, he's also been criticizing
the company and saying more needs to be done. And
he's been also working with Democrats on sending out letters
and asking about possible policy responses. And as I wrote
in an article this week, you know, his office tells

(28:42):
me he's been workshopping legislation with members of both parties,
which is that's why I say it's an interesting development.
I don't know if you're Jesse and I age. We
grew up during the time of the exon Valdis, and
you will remember the Republicans were basically like, you know,
the birds are fine, you know they need a little soap.
So I do think this is like a real development

(29:04):
in its own strange way. I did think that the
stuff with DeWine was fascinating because you know, he has
during the Trump administration been held up as a sort
of more rational Republican, and then we really saw he
was kind of allergic to the federal help. Yeah, I
guess that's one way to put it. Dwine's been interesting

(29:24):
because he said, on the one hand, we don't need
federal help. He's like, or he hasn't, he doesn't. He said,
if we need it, we'll use it. We just haven't
felt we haven't felt like we're missing anything, right, I mean,
your cat will be fine, you know. You know, DeWine's
response is less like keep the federal government away and
more just that, yeah, people are handling this competently. And

(29:45):
one notable thing about his response is that a lot
odd Republicans early on have tried to suggest that Biden
was too slow and that it was a problem that
you know, senior officials weren't on the ground immediately and
that they weren't doing enough to help. And DeWine has
has literally said, I have no complaints about Biden's response. Right.
He has said he's gotten up there and said, yeah,
they're you know, offering whatever I need and it seems
to be going to you know, we're getting the material

(30:06):
that's necessary, and officials are helping us when we ask.
You know, it's been a funny contrast. Like there was
one point where um, and he's I think he's generally
been trying to urge calm. There was one point where
Vance challenged Biden officials to drink the tap water in
East Palestine if they thought it was okay, this is
so stupid. Yes, what happened with then Michael Reagan like

(30:28):
showed up, Michael Regan, the EPA administrator. He went there
and he and Dwine got together said cheers point classes
to drink so stupid. You know, Dwine has been his impulses,
like you said, kind of urge calm and and just
be a mellow sort of what we thought of as
an Ohio Republican for decades, kind of a Portman style Republican.

(30:51):
You know, it's the demure small business owner who just
wants to taxes low. That's sort of his m and
it seems like the way he's trying to comport himself here. Yeah,
it's so interesting, And I mean I do want to
point out there's been like criticism of the Biden administration,
which I think is totally fair, criticism of the Ohio
Republican governor, which I also think is quite fair. But

(31:14):
there was I mean, the EPA was on the ground
that day, I mean supposedly within two hours though right
the heads of the departments weren't immediately there. But the
people who actually do this job day in and day out,
you know, the civil servants and the experts were on
the ground figuring out what needed to be done. So
every no one really denies that. I mean it's a
very meta conversation in a way, like a lot of

(31:35):
the criticisms have just been, oh, you didn't show like,
you didn't show you cared enough, you weren't there, although
I will say there have been. You know, there was
one former head of the EPA under George H. W. Bush,
who I believe toiled political that he thought that it
was a mistake that they didn't make a bigger deal
of it, because it really would have helped communicate with
the local population and made them feel safer in that sense.
The communications response was sort of fumbled, and so you

(31:58):
could possibly genuinely criticize on those grounds, But in general,
the folks who are supposed to show up in the
wake of a disaster showed up. Yeah, I mean that
I think is a really important point. And again, like
I think there's really a sense in which this is
an issue that Democrats can be leading on, and so
when they, you know, there was a certain sense in

(32:20):
which they ceded the opportunity by not getting in there sooner,
and so that would be my criticism is that this
environmental regulation could be sort of the cornerstone of democratic
legislation period paragraph and especially with the Chips Act coming
down the pike, we're going to have another opportunity act

(32:43):
for environmental legislation and make the case. So I do
think in that way. You know, if mayor Pete had
been there the day after her, there would have been
an opportunity. Yeah, and you know, I think just to
harp from politics a little bit more, you know, one
thing that Biden really emphasized early on in his administration
was that he was going to be a president for everybody, right,

(33:05):
He really made that point. And one of the most
concrete ways in which Trump kind of made it clear
he wasn't a president for everybody was disaster response, where
he would sort of dangle it in front of the
state of California and act like, oh, maybe I'm not
you know, maybe you guys don't deserve my help because
you don't vote for me, or because he haven't been supportive,
whereas Bid came in and made it very clear that

(33:26):
he wasn't going to be that sort of a vindictive
you know, chief executive, and in general, he's been extremely
his administration has been extremely responsive to disasters everywhere and
has been responsive here, but maybe lost sight of the
need to really show it. And that might possibly because
the week this happened, all of Washington was totally obsessed

(33:48):
with that balloon that flew over the United States. Right, Oh,
that's right, I forgot about the balloon. You've already forgotten
about the damn balloon. But like that week, all of
DC was just talking about nothing up the balloon and
so and they were mad that he hadn't shot down
the balloon sooner it was right, which that was he
was sitting there saying, you know, that could actually cause
a little bit of a disaster in one of these

(34:09):
rural communities. Meanwhile, but that was all of Watchington was
focused on this balloon. And so you know, maybe if
that hadn't been the case, that the administration would have
done a better job kind of handling the communication side
and making sure that the local community felt like it
was being looked after. When there was this massive, terrifying
smoke plumes right rising from this controlled burn of the train,

(34:32):
you know, it was you know, white noise had suddenly
become real life. That is I think also a fair criticism,
maybe again just to talk about the optics as opposed
to the substance of what happened. Yeah, I mean, I
think that's a really good point. This rail disaster really
does show us at all. Politics ultimately is local, and
Ohio is going to have a Senate race in twenty

(34:54):
four We're going to be talking a lot about Ohio.
It's gonna be a throwdown. It's going to be a throwdown.
I don't know who the Republicans are going to run,
so it might not end up such a road. Yeah,
it depends. Right, Shirt Brown is girding himself and if
you'll notice, he's also all over this crap. I mean
he's he and Vants are working together on stuff. You know,
they're sending letters. You're saying, oh, I'm gonna work with

(35:16):
Van Stuy make sure there's a long term plan to
look after East Palestine and ensure that the local environment
is safe for everybody. I mean, he clearly sees the
political importance of this. Thank you so much. I hope
he'll come back, Jordan, have me anytime. Lydia. Paul Green
is an opinion columnist at The New York Times. Welcome

(35:37):
too Fast Politics, Lydia. Oh my gosh, I'm thrilled to
be here. A long time listener, first time caller. Oh well,
we're delighted to have you, and you are a newly
minted opinion columnist since October. Since you have come to opinion,
and this is not obviously your first rodeo. You come
from writing and editing and podcasting. But one of the

(35:58):
things that I think has been incredibly cool, and this
leads to why we're having you today, is that you
have done opinion with more reporting than is the standard,
and in a very exciting an international way, which makes
sense because you were also a war correspondent. Well, thank you.
That's very kind of you. I always say that I
actually don't have a ton of opinions, and the only

(36:20):
way I can figure out what I think is to
go out and report. So this is just really a
laborious way of me figuring out what my opinions are
is going out into the world and seeing what I
can see. So, but I had a long career as
a foreign correspondent, and that I think has always kind
of been the heart and soul of my work and
the thing that I'm most passionate about. The first column

(36:41):
you wrote, your debut column, was about Haiti, and I
want you to just explain to us a little bit
about why you chose Haiti and why that was such
an important column for you to write, and then we'll
get on to what you're focused on now. Yeah, I
mean I have been engaged with Haiti two thousand and four,
when I was sent there as a very very young

(37:03):
reporter at the New York Times. It was really my
first experience as a foreign correspondent, and it's a place
that really gets under your skin. A lot of people
have worked there and have kind of made their bones
there as foreign correspondence. And I've always thought a lot
about the work that we do as foreign correspondence, the
way that we kind of parachute into places, the extractive
nature of the work, and how our sort of quick

(37:25):
impressions can have a lasting impact on the places that
we covered. And so I wanted to go back and
really reflect on the current situation and my own work
there on the relationship with the United States, as a
sort of statement of purpose that I was, as a
columnist going to go out into the world. I was
going to report, and I was also going to hold
by self to account and really think about my own
role as an observer and a chronicler of these things.

(37:47):
So that's why it felt really important to me to
go to Haiti. Yeah, that's such an interesting point. I mean,
because I see so many people that I am friendly
with or tangentially. Now those people are all in Ukraine
right now, and then they'll go to and so I
think it's really interesting. I was really impressed that you
went to Syria, though, because I feel this way, maybe

(38:08):
because my cousins grew up in Lebanon during the eighties,
and so there are always those countries where it feels
like America has decided the country is too far gone,
which was always growing up, my feeling that America had
sort of had decided that Lebanon was sort of an
unsavable country. And so everything I've read about Syria has

(38:29):
given me the sense that they're just it's so complicated
and there's so much tragedy. So I thought it was
really impressive that you went back there, and so can
you talk a little bit about that. It's remarkable the
extent to which we've all kind of memory hold the
conflict in Syria, Right, This is a war that started, well,
it actually started as part of the Arab Spring and
a kind of civilian uprising that then kind of morphed

(38:52):
into an armed struggle. And you know, it's been going
on since twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and in these like
really fundamental ways, if you think about it, it has
shaped the world that we live in now. It's really
hard to imagine the rise of right wing parties in Europe,
for example, and to a certain extent, the rise of
Donald Trump in the United States, were it not for

(39:12):
the huge migration crisis that the Syrian conflict set off.
Looking back, it seems clear that Russia getting involved in
Syria was very much a kind of training wheels moment
for what they would ultimately do in Ukraine and the
kind of brutality that they would bring to bear. And
I think that a big part of why I really
wanted to go to Syria was because because of that forgetting.
And I feel like a big part of my role

(39:33):
as a columnist is to remind people of things that
we'd rather not think about and try to link them
to the present in a way that makes them more
real and more pressing. And I think also just to
remind people like, we're all human beings, and you know,
I met the family that I met there, I mean,
how could you not be moved by the extraordinary story
of loss that they have been through. And I think
it's just really important that as human beings we actually

(39:57):
see each other's human stories. Yeah, I think saying about
Russia's really so interesting because it's absolutely true, and we
saw so much of this early propaganda disinformation come through
the war in Syria. I was wondering if you could
talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I mean, again,
that's another example of something that, you know, the sort
of information wore that the Syrian government and also later

(40:20):
the Russians helped prosecute in Syria was really kind of
a portent of what was to come. And we've seen
the credible technology prowess that and also just kind of
human intelligence prowess that the Russians have in being able
to manipulate the conversation in any given society, and that
certainly happened in Syria. It certainly happened in Europe. As

(40:40):
relates to Syria. That was absolutely a harp in Europe.
What was to come? Yeah, Oh, it's such a releak
time in American life. One of your columns, there's like
a tad phrase about how, you know, Americans think of
themselves as the center of the world, but we're really
you know, we're really just part of it. I'm not
quoting verbade him at all. I'm butchering the whole thing.

(41:02):
But growing up, I would always be so impressed when
you go to another country and people would just make
fun of you for being American, because Americans are social centered.
Would always be my what the takeaway I would get?
But what's happening in India right now is and you've
written about this is kind of like we don't devote
a lot of national news to it, but it's a

(41:22):
pretty big deal. Oh, it's a huge deal. And you know,
I would also say, Molly, like just to your earlier
point about you know, who's the center of the universe.
I had a psychoanalyst who I saw for many years
who had this line that has always stuck with me,
and he said, ninety five percent of what people say
is about themselves, and so is the other five percent.
It's human nature to think that you're the center of
the universe, right like we all we all do it.

(41:44):
And I think that the United States has a particular
virulent strain of that disease. I think that what's really
striking about Indian and I've been following India for quite
some time. I first went there in two thousand and
nine as a foreign correspondent. At the time that I
went there, you know, it was this sort of world's
largest democracy, and it sort of seemed like a lot
of the problems that had bedeviled India in the past

(42:05):
we're really sort of firmly in the past, including the deep,
deep divisions between Hindus and Muslims, which had been a
sort of recurring motif again and again. And the thing
that really struck me in just looking at the rise
of the current Prime Minister Norrendermodi, but also the relationships
that he's built around the world and the way in
which he's kind of playing on this international stage which

(42:26):
has become much more multipolar, with the rise of China,
the rise of Russia. It's fascinating to see how the
United States and other Western powers are sort of turning
a blind eye both to the prejudice and in some
cases atrocities that are happening to Muslims and other religious
minorities in India, but also the increasing consolidation of power
that makes India look a lot less like a democracy

(42:48):
than it used to. Part of what I was trying
to say in that column was that as Americans, we've
always had a foreign policy that is utilitarian towards our interests,
and you know, it's useful for us to pretend that
India is this amazing democracy and to pretend that none
of these problems are actually happening, right and going on,
And so I just wanted to remind people, Look, we

(43:08):
may think of this as our great democratic ally, but
actually Narandramodi is in the process of essentially trying to
become a figure non unlike Shijing Ping in China. So
I just think it's really important for us to to
think about these things in a global context and also
with some real kind of historical knowledge. So that's what
I always try to bring It is so by the way,
incredibly grim to see this happening. Like every time we

(43:32):
lose another democracy, it does ultimately, you know, America, I
think for a long time we all thought, or at
least I certainly thought, will never be one of those
countries that's on those you know, democracy watch lists, but
we did end up there. I think that this is
another thing about thinking about the centrality of America to

(43:53):
the world thing. And I'm actually writing about this right
now because I'm working on a column about Turkey, which
was the other place that was really affected by the earthquakes,
much more so. I mean, fifty thousand people died, and
ninety percent of them died in Turkey. But what we're
seeing right now is we're really in the age of
the elected autocrat. You know, where you have elections and
those elections produce a winner. They're elections where you know,

(44:14):
technically people go to the polls and file their ballot
and you know, elect somebody. But the person who's on
the ballot who wins has usually undertaken a huge number
of measures beforehand in order to make sure that he's
the only viable candidate. And of course it's always a heat,
almost always a heat right, And so you know, they've
cracked down on the independent media. They've really really reduced

(44:36):
the role of civil society. They've made sure that that
the parliament or the legislature has essentially no role in
overseeing or checking their power. You know, use the judiciary
to make sure that none of your viable opponents can
actually run against you. That's the thing that's happened in Turkey,
which is going to have an election, which was supposed
to have an election in May. We'll see when it
actually happens because they're dealing with this devastating earthquake. But

(44:59):
you hear that set of facts, and it's hard not
to think about our own country, right, the way in
which various politicians are trying to take the judicial or
the legislative or and this is happening more at the
state level than at the national level. Of that, the
Supreme Court is a whole other conversation. But it's very,
very striking to see how we're actually not that different

(45:21):
from these other places, right. It's the De Santist plan.
Crackdown on the media, make sure that people are studying
what you want them to study. Don't allow people to vote,
write like Florida had voted to let people who have
been incarcerated vote, and then he sets up these stings
to make it so people who were incarcerated can't, you know,

(45:43):
I mean, just a lot of the stuff that we
see in Turkey, we're seeing in this modern day Republican Party.
I think. I mean, I feel like there's a real
shift that in certain parts of this world, we're seeing
a sort of embrace of this autocracy. Absolutely, and I
think that those policies are coming along with a kind
of social revanchism as well, which gets into another topic

(46:05):
that I've spent some time writing about. I think that
we're living in this age of I think tremendous backlash
against the social progress that we've made around gender, around LGBTQ,
issues around race, and that is absolutely playing out here
in the United States, but it played out earlier in
places like Hungary. You're seeing in Israel, for example, which

(46:25):
was a pioneer of lgbt right, a very very strong
pushback and roll back from the reactionary conservative forces within
the government. And so I think we're really living in
this age of reaction and all of the old kind
of political chivalleths about the right is actually about freedom,
and you know it's up as down, down as up,
and words in many ways feel like they just don't

(46:46):
have any meaning anymore. Agreed, And it's such an interesting time.
I mean, do you think I want to like now
we need to do? This is something I always do
in interviews, which I think people find very annoying, but
I enjoy it. I want to know, like, I mean,
there's a historical precedent for times in which there is
a lot of progress and then there is a kind

(47:08):
of backlad Susan Valuti wrote about it. Do you think
that we are in one of those backlashes and that
democracy will continue or do you think that we really
run a field and this is going to We're going
to go into something more horrible. I'm inherently an optimistic person,
and I think that the reality is that curveballs come

(47:29):
that we don't expect, right, I mean, take Turkey for instance.
You know it it seemed to be on this trajectory
that you know that the current president type air to one,
was just going to kind of continue on and consolidate power.
But a couple of things happen that we're outside of
his control. One is this huge economic crisis related to

(47:50):
you know, COVID and interest rates and all that kind
of stuff, which was already eroding his popularity, right and
then now, like a literal act of God, an earthquake
has brought all of this condomation down on his government
because of the slowness of how they responded, because a
lot of the buildings were shoddy and the government hadn't
done enough to make sure that building codes were adhered
to and so on, and so I think, like this

(48:12):
sounds a little grim, but the place where I find
optimism is that, like, we can't really predict what's coming
around the corner, and earthquake is actually a little bit
like climate change. It's this thing that we know is coming,
but like we sort of think about it as a
thing that's in the distant future. But I think that
there are things like that out on the horizon that
you know, they could end up sort of sharpening and
pushing us further in on the trend line that we

(48:32):
already seem to be on, but they could also push
us in an entirely different direction. And it's just hard
to know. And I think our work is people who
care about other human beings and who want the world
to be a better, more inclusive place, who believe in
self governance and all those kinds of things. It's our
job to really sort of focus and build even in
these moments that feel like they're filled with despair. And

(48:54):
you know, as a journalist, I feel like it's my
job to highlight the places where people are doing that
work and trying to make change happen, because when the
opportunity arises, never let a good crisis go to ways,
there is the moment to say, actually, this needs to change,
and let's radically shift the direction that we're going. I
have one more question because this hits on something I've
been thinking about a lot. This environmental crisis, this trained

(49:16):
crisis in East Palistin is one of these moments where
we're seeing why we have regulation. I think about this
all the time because during the Trump I don't want
to even say presidency because I don't know that that
was what it was, but the Trump fever dream there
was he would constantly get up there and say regulation

(49:36):
is bad, and everyone would be like, is regulation bad?
Maybe regulation is bad, you know, because like it's one
of those things where, until you have an accident, you
can't quite figure out, you know, it's hard to make
a case for a regulation. We're seeing, really here a
moment where the American people in a red state, in
a red town, or seeing really firsthand the value of

(50:00):
regulation and the value of holding these companies accountable for
their misdeeds. I mean, do you think there's an opportunity
for legislation and do you also think it's craven to
think this way? More importantly, well, I mean, I try
not to judge when it comes to legislation, and under
the current political situation, you know, I don't know if

(50:22):
we can say this, but the current political clusterfuck in Washington,
it's hard to imagine. It seems like we're just going
to have a parade of crazies doing investigations into Jewish
space lasers. So I don't know about legislation. What I
do know is that, you know, I do think that
we're coming to terms with the fact that we have
two kinds of problems in this country when it comes

(50:42):
to regulation. One is we're incredibly lax when it comes
to corporations and environmental rules and things like that. And
that's absolutely what we're seeing in East Palestine right this
is a chemical that like absolutely should not have been
transported in the way that it was. Those railways should
have been upgraded long and long long ago. So it
feels like there is a place where we need, you know,

(51:03):
much more stringent action and more regulation. But there are
other places where we have regulation, sometimes for environmental reasons
or reasons that seem on their face like oh yeah,
I agree with that, like local control and things like
that that get in the way of solving other problems, like,
for example, the housing crisis. So much of our housing
crisis comes from the fact that it's very, very difficult
to build anything, and that is a very very complicated thicket.

(51:25):
So I think that we need to think really really
carefully about like what sort of rules we make for
ourselves as a society and what the knock on effects
are going to be. And ultimately the question is, you know,
qui bono, who benefits? And in every case we need
to think about how do we spread the benefits of
the protection or the benefits of the loosening of a
regulation towards more and more people, which I think gives

(51:48):
an opportunity for it to be more sort of human
centered and less for corporations or for wealthy homeowners in
both cases. So that's I think the direction that we
need to be moving in Lydia. They thank you so much.
I hope you'll come back. Such a pleasure and anytime,
Molly Jesse Cannon by John Fast did you know that

(52:12):
I'm a director? You're a director? Tell me more well
by GOP congressperson standards of what they do for there's
resumes these days. I once audited next Girlfriends UCLA film
studies classes three different times, and really by their standards
these days, that means I can say I'm an expert

(52:34):
film director. This is my favorite new GOP fabulous first
term Congressman Andy Ogles. I kind of like Googles, like
it feels more fun. Googles claims to have graduated from
Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in international relations. However,

(52:55):
it turns out he has a degree in Liberal studies
and is only take in one single economics class, for
which he received a see congratulations to all the people
who enabled this to happen. The modern day Republican Party

(53:16):
is prepperd Grate. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday Wednesday and Friday to your the
best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks

(53:36):
for listening.