July 5, 2023 • 37 mins
Rep. Mondaire Jones tells us about his newly announced congressional run for his former congressional seat. Alexander Stille, a Columbia Journalism School professor, explains how Silvio Berlusconi influenced Trumpism.
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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. We are on vacation this week, but
that doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you.
Columbia Journalism School Professor Alexander Still talk to us about
the recently deceased former Italian President Silvio Bertiscni and how
(00:24):
we can thank him for America's politics today, including trump Ism.
But first we have former Congressmen Monde Jones. Welcome too,
Fast Politics.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Your friend and mine. Mondere Jones, Mondair, do you have
some you want to tell me? Perhaps an announcement.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I do have an announcement to my district in the
seventeenth Congressional up in the Lower Hudson Valley to you
into the world, and that is I'm going to be
running for a term in Congress to continue the important
work that I started last year.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yes, what does that mean exactly running?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm running.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
He's running, folks, I am running.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm so excited to be continuing the fight to serve
the people who raised me in Rockland, Westchester, Huttnam and
Dutchess Counties and to Lower costs for working families, to
save democracy itself from this Republican fascist takeover of our country,
(01:24):
to make sure that we get weapons of war off
the streets, and yes, to protect basic freedoms like the
freedom to have an abortion. All of these things are
at risk because of what we are seeing come out
of Washington, particularly the House representatives, and what will likely
happen with the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
So you were in Congress before explain to us a
little bit about New York had a radical redistricting, eleventh
hour redistricting, and you kind of let the other guy
run talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Last year was a nightmare. I never imagined waking up
and seeing a redistricting process and political machinations come out
of Washington that resulted in my congressional district up in
the seventeenth being torn apart and being faced with the
prospect of running against a member of my own party
(02:19):
and a colleague in Congress. In that moment, we were
facing a nearly unprecedented assault on democracy by Republicans in
Congress and nationally, we were looking at the freedom to
have an abortion that was on its way to being
taken away. We had seen the draft opinion in DBBS.
We had seen so much coming from the Republican Party
(02:44):
that I did not want to make it less likely
that my constituent would continue to be represented by someone
who cared about democracy, by someone who would fight to
protect the freedom to have an abortion, by someone who
would continue to fight for working people like the family
I grew up in. And so rather than having bruising
primary with the chair of the D trible seat, I
(03:05):
decided to maximize the likely that my constituents, but can
you can you continue to be well represented, And as
a result ran in a different district, and that chair.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Of the D triple c actually lost.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
He lost anyway, by eighteen hundred and twenty votes to
a career political operative who will tell you anything you
want to hear, but who will do anything that Kevin
McCarthy and the extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress tell him
to do. And that person's name is Mike Laalt.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
I think it's important to pause for a minute. Democrats
lost a lot of seats in New York State, perhaps
because of the ghost of Andrew Cuomo and his non
partisan redistricting which he set up in twenty twelve, kicked
the can down the road a decade, and then we
(03:55):
found ourselves in the middle of a non partisan redistricting nightmare,
and his obsession was holding onto power in a theoretically
nonpartisan but really republican way. Democrats lost a bunch of
seats to Republicans, ultimately causing them to lose the House.
A lot of these candidates ran as not MAGA. They
(04:16):
ran as sort of quote unquote normal Republicans. But it
turns out it doesn't matter at all. They still vote
with Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
They vote with Kevin McCarthy and with the extreme mag
Republicans in Congress. They are indistinguishable from that cohort when
you look at their voting record. So let's run the team, right.
So the first legislative vote that Mike Waller took was
to repeal provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. Specifically, he
voted to gut the irs so that billionaire corporations and
(04:45):
very wealthy people could more easily cheat on their tax right.
Then had the nerve a few months later to complain
about the deficit after having just voted for a policy
that would have reduced the revenue that the US government
receives and, by the way, in the process of taking
us to the brink of default as a nation on
our debt, voted for a bill that would cut services
(05:06):
to veterans and reduce funding for law enforcement in the
midst of our nation's uniquely American gun violence epidemic. He
voted a few weeks ago to overturn the ATF rule
on gun braces, which would make us less safe from
gun violence, in particular from mass shootings. He continues to
oppose the freedom of women to have an abortion. He
(05:28):
opposes a ban on AR fifteen's and other assault weapons
weapons of war that have no business being in the
hands of civilians, but wants to talk about crime. I'm
happy to talk about crime, Miley. I relish the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
To talk about public safety in this I mean, the
incredible thing about the crime situation is that we have
a quote unquote democratic mayor. But that is really just
in quotes who is obsessed with making the case that
there's a terrible crime wife. But murders are down, and
a lot of these crimes are actually flat. I mean,
(06:02):
you may have complains, but that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Well, Look, I want to be clear. New Yorkers deserve
to feel and to actually be safe, and it's why
I have consistently voted for historic levels of police funding
every time I've gotten the chance in the United States Congress.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
In fact, last.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Fall, I was the deciding vote on a rule that
then resulted in six police funding bills getting a vote
on the House floor, and I voted for every last
one of them. It's also not lost on me that
the Lower Hudson Valley is one of the safest places
in America when you look at the US News and
World Report rankings from a year or two ago. Rockland
County third safist county in America, west Chester County fourbe
(06:43):
safist county in America, Putnam County twelfth safist county in America.
And at some point we had to have a discussion
about how the Republican description of the Hudson Valley as
this crime ridden health gape is an affront to the
important work that law enforcement officers every single day to
keep us safe. They're doing an outstanding job and we
(07:03):
have to continue to support them, and so I just
want to make clear my position on that. Well.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think it's really important that we talk about this,
because this is not with Republicans, just like with the border,
this is not about keeping people safe. If this is
about finding an issue to get the base excited.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Right, I mean, God forbid, Republicans have to run on
their record on the economy. I mean Joe Biden, for
all of the criticisms that people may have about his age,
perhaps in the minds of many voters, is someone who
has presided over and has a record that he can
take credit for of creating the most jobs, many millions
of jobs in his first term, which is not even
(07:42):
complete yet of any president in modern history, if not
in the history of this great nation. You know, we
have lowered the cost of prescription drugs so that by
the year twenty twenty five, people on Medicare like my
grandmother will not have to pay more than two thousand
dollars annually for prescription drugs. And we have seen incrementally
the effects of that legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act,
(08:04):
in that in January of this year. For example, as
of January of this year, no person on Medicare is
paying more than thirty five dollars monthly for the cost
of insulent This is a president that has, you know,
along with Democrats in Congress like myself, who I actually
negotiate a passage of the infrastructure law, brought the party
together in that moment. He passed the largest infrastructure bill
(08:27):
in generations, which has brought and will be bringing billions
of dollars to New York State alone to repair our
crumbling roads and bridges, and to complete the Gateway project,
for example, which is of great interest to my constituents
in the Hudson Valley. He passed a Respect for Marriage Act,
which made strides and ensuring marriage equality is the law
of the land. You know, this is a president who,
(08:49):
along with Democrats like myself, helped keep small businesses open
through our expansion of the paycheck protection program at the
height of the COVID nineteenth pandemic, and so much more.
You can tell I'm really passionate about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, I mean, I think it's really important that you know,
I continually think that Biden has really been underestimated and
underappreciated for many of the things he's done, including his
really liberal policies. I mean, he was not my pick
in twenty nineteen, but he has ultimately passed a lot
(09:22):
of really liberal legislation, and I think, you know, we're
seeing right now Republicans trying desperately because they see the
writing on the wall and they know Trump is going
to be the twenty twenty candidate, or at least they're
pretty sure, which we all are, you know, are trying
to get other people to run to the left of
Biden because they know that Biden. You know, Biden reads
(09:44):
like a normal Democrat, standard Democrat, but he has actually
done a lot of really progressive legislation.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
You know, I don't even think of it as progressive
legislation or liberal legislation. I think of it as legislation
for working people. When you do the poling, this stuff's
extremely popular, including Republicans. Do you remember, I think it
was sometime last year Congressman Byron Donald's Republican down in Florida,
and I think maybe some other people were present at
this private fundraiser and they got caught on the hot
(10:11):
mic talking about how, you know, if you start giving
the American people these policies, that they're going to start
voting Democratic because they're so popular. That's why you hear
these sort of manufactured, factually incorrect stories about new York
City trying to ban pizza ovens and nonsense like that,
because I don't want to talk about the bread and
(10:32):
butter issues.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
That people care about.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
People care about how did not put food on the
table for their families. And I know this intimately because
I grew up poor in Rockland County and my mom
worked multiple jobs to provide for our family, and because
the economy wasn't working to the point where she could
just work one job and have that be enough. And
of course she got help raising me from my grandparents.
My grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother clean homes,
(10:55):
and because childcare was so expensive.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
From which it still is, if not worse now, Yeah,
go on, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
You know often times I had to go to work
with her, and then, through the grace of God in
an entire community in Rockley County that raised me, made
it all the way to the halls of Congress, where
I got to represent the same people whose homes I
watched my grandmother crane growing up. But you know, no
one should have to go through what I went through
as a child. This is an economy that can work
for everybody, and I want to continue that fight, not
(11:22):
not give tax breaks to billionaires and billion dollar corporations
and try to play this sort of rhetorical jiu jitsu
where you know, Mike Lawler, the incumbent Republican, is saying
he wants to do something about the salt cap, that
ten thousand dollars limitation on the state and local tax deduction,
and not even acknowledge that it was Republicans in December
twenty seventeen. That's part of the first Trump tax scamp, right,
(11:44):
that that put that cap into place which crush families here,
and that's in Balley, right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I want to talk about that salt tax for a
minute because it's such a favorite topic of mine and
Jesse so loves it when I talk about it. But
you know that was ultimately the goal with the salt
deduction was that in a state where you had higher
local and state taxes, those taxes were usually used to
(12:09):
buttress schools, and you know they were used to create
a better quality of life for the people in blue states, right,
So you had higher state taxes because that money went
to public schools and went to services for people. And
in states like Texas where you didn't have state and
local income tax, that was because they didn't give a
(12:31):
fuck about children or public schools or anything like that.
So the idea was to punish those blue states by
raising their taxes.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Ad I'm proud to live in a state and in
a community where government invests in infrastructure and in great
public schools. You know, we've still got work to do
with some of our school systems, but you know, here
in Nuts and Valley, we've generally got great public school
and that's because we invest in creating great public schools.
I wish more communities had the resources to do that.
(13:02):
But we should not be punished by Mitch Vaccano and
other Republicans in Congress because of who we vote for
for president. And it is exactly what Republicans like Mike
Lawa did back in December twenty seventeen, and so he
doesn't get to run away from that record of his party.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, and I do think that it's really important when
we talk about, you know, the way the government is
supposed to work is that we are supposed to be
represented no matter who we voted for, no matter the
color of the state, a blue state, a red state.
The president is a president for everyone. What was interesting
about Donald Trump is that he had no interest in
(13:40):
growing the electorate, which is why he didn't get reelected,
and he just wanted to deliver for red states.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And this is sort of a vestige of that.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
It is a vessage of that.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And this guy is now likely to be the Republican
nominated for president next year. And I want people well
to really sit with that, because I know that there
is concern over the president running for reelection. But as
he has said, I think quite effectively, do not compare
(14:11):
me to the perfect, compare me to the alternative. And
I think that's right. This is a district here in
the Lower Hudsond Valley that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump
been by ten points. If we are not flipping seats
that Joe Biden won by ten points, then we are
simply not taking back the majority of the House of Representatives.
Of those eighteen House districts that Biden won, this is
(14:31):
his fifth largest margin of victory, so it is literally
the fifth vote required to take back the House of
Representatives so that we can finally pass voting rights and
other democracy reform legislation, so that we can pass legislation
to codify Roby Wade, so that we can pass legislation
to increase the federal menmum wage, which hasn't changed since
two thousand and nine, and it is an abomination at
(14:53):
the current level. So that we can continue to lower
the costs of prescription drugs, not just for people on men,
but for people throughout our economy and throughout our society.
Bees and so many other issues are what's at stake.
And it's not lost on me that Donald Trump is
even more dangerous than he was the first time that
people chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump, that you know,
(15:15):
this guy is going to pardon the insurrectionists that nearly
took my life in the lives of hundreds of other
members of Congress on January sixth, But he has just
been criminally indicted for the second time for doing what
I think few people had imagined, which was stealing and
then sharing national security secrets that cut our service members
(15:37):
and the nation at risk.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, and also it was funny because we're only two
indictments in.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I mean, there's still the fake the summer is not over.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
There is still the fake electorate indictment, which is coming
down the.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Pike it is, and then there's the January sixth investigation.
After Donald Trump was indicted for the second time this year,
time by the Department of Justice, Mike Lawler told the
press that the FBI and the DOJ were politicized. He
made that statement without any evidence, And I got to
(16:12):
tell you, I just never imagined waking up one day
and seeing my member of Congress now in this district
participate in the assault on the rule of law in
this country, especially coming from a guy who belongs to
a party that claims to care about the rule of law,
and the assault on our institution, which is an assault
on democracy itself.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
By the way, Yes, absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So just give us the two seconds here you have
a primary, when is it?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Give us the sort of the TLDR.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I've got a little bit of a primary that will
be decided by June of next year in New York State.
One of my opponents is the younger sister of the
governor of the state of Michigan. I have great respect
for anyone who would run against me in the primary,
and so look forward to a robust exchange of ideas,
and frankly, I look forward to campaigning on my record
(17:04):
of accomplishment of delivering actual results for people in the
Lower Hudson Valley these past two years. I am optimistic
based on the energy on the ground, people urging me
to run, urging me to restore the leadership that this
district deserves, and candidly moldy a lot of people who
were just really hurt by the unfair way in which
(17:26):
people in our district were treated last year, both by
National Democrats and yes by the acting Supreme Court judge
up in Stuben County who redrew the congressional district and
cause a lot of damage frankly to the interests of
the people here. And so I'm looking forward to making
right to addressing that injustice and continuing to deliver for
(17:50):
my constituents, who again I just love so much and
who took me from poverty, me to the halls of Congress.
The bond that I have is one that I cherished
with these people. So please, if you care about saving
our democracy and protecting basic freedoms and continuing to lower
costs for working people and getting weapons of war off
(18:10):
our streets, go to Monderefourcongress dot com and smash it.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Dony Bud Thank you so much, Monde. I hope you'll
come back. Of course, I'll come back.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I mean, there's gonna be a lot happening in these
next sixteen months, and it's important to continue this discussion.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Alexandra Still is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Alexandra, Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Very excited to have you.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
One of the many smart things you've written recently is
a really interesting idea that, in fact, for Thosconi walked
so that Trump could run.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Well, yeah, I mean I think that what I was
down intriguing about Billisconi. When he first kind of came
on the scene, A lot of people kind of just
missed him as a kind of comical figure. You know,
he'd been a cruoner on a cruise ship when he
was a student. He was kind of loud and vulgar.
He seemed like a product of a certain kind of
(19:13):
corrupt Italian culture. And what I think I noticed early
on was that he was also an extremely innovative and
whether you like it or not, had pioneered a new
kind of politics. That he was sort of like the
first postmodern politician. He understood that we had moved out
(19:34):
of an era of arty politics, ideology, class based politics
in which people voted their economic class, and that Berlo
Sconi had innovated a kind of inter class appeal. He
was a billionaire populist.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Tell our listeners a little bit about Italy when Berlasconi came.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
To power, what it looked like and how he did it.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Sure, I wonder if I could just take one step
back before even more.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That's great?
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Yeah, which is you know? Bert was going? He made
his first fortune in real estate and then quickly moved
into television. There was no such thing as private TV
before the mid nineteen seventies. Early it was the monopoly
of the Italian state TV known as RYE, and the
Italian High Court had ruled that there could be private TV,
(20:28):
but on a limited basis, purely on a only local broadcasts.
Berl's going. He saw an opportunity, jumped into it, brought
up a lot of local stations, and then, in typical
Ball was Going to Eat Fashion, skirted the rules by
broadcasting the same program like three seconds apart, claiming that
they were local, but then selling advertising nationally. So he
(20:50):
quickly gained an advantage over his competitors and became the
biggest figure in private TV. Brought up his two biggest competitors,
and by the early nineteen eighties had literally a monopoly
of private TV, ninety percent of the market of private
television and a kind of what was known as a
duopoly with the three state TV channels and his three
(21:11):
private channels having like a ninety percent of audience share
in the country. So that was the first really big
thing that he did. And in order to establish private TV,
he changed the culture of Italy and that what I
think is so interesting about Berlosconi is that he changed
the culture of the country and that culture then elected
(21:32):
him as a politician. And what I mean by that
is that the world before Berlosconi in Italy was a
kind of austere and moralistic. It was dominated by the
Catholic Church and the Communist Party, both of you which
were kind of moralistic in their own different ways. You couldn't,
literally for a long time, even advertise dog food on
(21:55):
the state TV because it was considered to be a
moral and Berlosconi instead realized, I'm going to make this
private TV thing where anything goes. All I care about
is audience and advertising. I'm going to get the cheesiest,
most popular programs. I don't work educating the public, and
I need to create a world of desire in which
a new Italians learned to long for things they didn't
(22:18):
even know they wanted before and them you know, so
I have you know, programs like Dallas and Dynasty which
create an atmosphere of luxury and wealth and material well being.
And then my my viewers are going to want those things.
So my advertisers are earned going to pay me a
lot of money in order to advertise their products. So
we created this kind of materialistic culture, which followed a
(22:42):
long period during the Cold War of ideological struggle between
left and right. There was you know, terrible terrorism in
Italy during the nineteen seventies, and it's Goni promised a
post ideological world, a world in which let's not worry
about you know, all this politics stuff. Let's have a
good time, Let's have on looking at scantily cloud women
(23:02):
and you know, watching cheesy programs and watching Baywatch. And
so he offered a different kind of society in which
you didn't have to be ashamed of being rich or
wanting to be rich, and that's a very important predicate
to his political large. So then what happens is that
in the early nineties, the political system that had sustained
(23:24):
Berlosconi and protected his monopoly began to crumble. There was
this big corruption investigation on his operation Clean Hands, which
start two and suddenly left him without his political protectors.
And by nineteen ninety three these people were going to prison,
fleeing the country community side, and he realized, holy shit,
if I don't do something fast, I'm going to go
(23:46):
the way of these people, and so, you know what,
I'm going to actually take over the political system. He
did something that nobody thought was possible. One thing you
have to credit Berlosconi with is with extraordinary audacity and guts,
and so he basically turned what was then already the
largest or the second largest private company in the country
(24:08):
into a political war machine. All parts of the company,
from the ad salesman to the people who sold mutual
for auds, to the executives and the TV company all
are working towards the aim of electing Berlisconi and his
newly formed party.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Really sounds like Trump and then it works.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
I mean it was. It was like Trump on steroids
in a sense. It was, you know, as if you
had somehow married Trump and the Murdoch Empire. And created
hybrid figure you'd have Berlosconi. So one of the other
things he did, which is very much should seem very
familiar to American listeners, is that his media, before the
(24:47):
creation of Fox News, created a hyperpowers and type of media.
His three TV networks, his magazine group, his ropers all
began flooding the zone with pro berliscone stuff and attacking
anyone that dared to attack or criticize him.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It's like Ruper Murdoch a little bit.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah, very much, very much, and it was very clear.
I mean, they are one of the people who participated
in these meetings and published a book in which he
recorded some of the conversations, and Bertolosconi said, we have
to sing in chorus so that the people who attack
us are then hit with concentrated fire and they will stop.
That's sort of what happened. Anytime you raise your head
(25:28):
and criticize Berolosconi, you could count on, you know, scurless
stories appearing about you, fake scandals, everything to kind of
distract people from what was happening with Bertolosconi. So that
ended up being a very successful model. He gets into
power in nineteen ninety four and then things get very
bumpy because a thing that is, in a sense, it's
(25:50):
not unlike Trump. Trump came in promising that he was
going to be the defender of the working class, and
he was going to stand up for the forgotten people
who didn't get represented from the coastal elites, et cetera,
et cetera. And then, of course, the one economic program
he actually passes is a big tax cut that goes
largely to the very rich. Brosconi did the same thing,
(26:11):
and he promised to be an economic miracle worker. He
was going to be the Italian Margaret Thatcher who was
going to cut bureaucracy at ape and liberate the economic
engine of the country. And he didn't do any of
that because he wasn't really interested in the boring, difficult
work of government, and what he really cared about was
(26:32):
protecting his media empire from regulation and staying out of
prison and keeping associates up right.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Like Trump very much.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
It's kind of a remarkable It does sort of make
you realize that there's something in this particular moment of history.
It produces these kinds of figures and then makes this
a kind of winning formula. What he has or had
that is also very much like Trump, is this ability
to appeal to people who are in a very different
(27:05):
economic class from him. So or working people who in
Italy used to vote for the Italian Communist Party are
suddenly voting for Bill Sconi. Why because he seems authentic?
Theyn't They know that his policies may not really align
with their interests, but you know, they find his personality appealing,
the fact that he is tells off color jokes, and
(27:28):
like Trump, yeah, very much. It's this idea in which
you replace programs with authenticity. So you're not buying a
political program, you are buying a personality, and authenticity has
become the value that you prize the most, rather than
let's say, ideological consistency or a program that makes sense
(27:50):
to you.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
This it's incredible. I mean why I read that piece.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And you know, I grew up spending a lot of
time in Italy because my mother had an Italian boyfriend
who I think boyfriend is a generous term for what
this relationship was, and so we spent a lot of
time there and I grew up during the eighties and nineties,
so Berlusconi was the guy, and my mother always hated
him because she thought he was a fascist. But they
had a very similar you know, they were both very
(28:16):
into sex. They were both very into dirtiness and naughtiness
and whatever, and and you know, he got involved with
a lot of scroll as people, et cetera, et cetera,
and he did really he went into office, and like Trump,
he had lots of trials.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Well, the thing you mentioned about sex, I think is
important because one of the things that he did, as
I mentioned, is that he changed the culture like you
would not have had you know, Nate Good or scantily
cloud women on Satle before Berolosconi. And so he's completely
unapologetic about doing that. He introduces the first nude game
(28:55):
show into Italy or the world as far as I
during all of his entertainment programs, even on serious subjects,
you'd have a woman standing there in a kind of
low cut dress showing her thighs, known as the velina,
and so that people could gawk at her while they're
listening to something about soccer or politics. So he introduces,
(29:19):
you know, sex and transgression becomes part of his trademark,
which is again very much like Trump. You know, he
would brag about his own sexual accomplishments, made no secret
of it, created you know, various scandals. You know, like
he's visiting an earthquake zone with an attractive female public
(29:39):
official who's like, you know, worrying about you know, people
who have ended up homeless, and he ends up saying,
you know, can I caress this woman?
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Also about Claude and Kiosi, he said, so that kind
of thing where he's these things that sort of right
thinking people were appalled by. To a lot of ordinary Italians,
it's like, okay, yeah, he's not really a traditional politician.
He's somebody liked me. I might say something like that.
Certainly I would have fought it. And he has the
guts to say what other people think but don't say.
(30:10):
So that's very much part of a Trump thing. Then
the scandals begin to accumulate almost as soon as he
gets into office, because he goes into politics in part
to head off these corruption investigations that are rising up
the ladder, and he knows that there are lots of
skeletons in his own corporate closet, and like many businesses,
(30:33):
he and his associates have had to pay bribes for years,
and eventually these things will be found out, and.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
In fact they are.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
It turns out that Berlusconi's chief lawyer has had various
judges on his payroll. Hundreds of thousands of money, hundreds
of thousands of dollars are traveling from berlisconi corporate accounts
into the Swiss bank accounts of a sitting judge. Twenty
one billion Lira, which is about fifteen million dollars, was
discovered going into the account of the socialist leader Batio
(31:03):
Craxy things like that. So all that stuff is accumulating
even as he's trying to govern, which makes of course
governing impossible because he's spending all of his time putting
out these fires and going from crisis to crisis. So
he ends up his first government collapses partly because of
these crises. But the thing about Bosconi is that you
can sort of map his career in the following way.
(31:27):
When he's in power, things go badly and he governs poorly.
As soon as he's out of power, it's like Superman
regaining his hours, and then he becomes an incredibly potent
opposition figure fighting to get back into power. Then he
gets back into power, he's bored. He starts to make
mistakes governs poorly, they kick him out, and then he
(31:49):
goes back into opposition mode. So there are these kind
of alternating periods, you know, when he's in power in
ninety four and then out of power until two thousand
and one, back in power and then again out and
then back in power in I think two thousand and
eight to twenty eleven.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
And then he also goes to jail.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
No, well he doesn't. He never went to jail. He
had many, many trials, right, Okay. One of the things
that's unfortunately it's a little tricky to explain, but I'll
keep it simple. Italy has three levels of judge of judgment,
so you can't be officially convicted until you've exhausted two
sets of appeals. So you can be convicted a trial,
(32:32):
but technically you're still not convicted until an appeals court
has ruled on it and then the highest court has
signed off on that.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So it's hard to go to jail in Italy, is
what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
It's hard to go to jail. But it's even worse
than that because all countries have something called the statute
of limitations, where you can't be prosecuted years and years
after the fact. But in almost all countries the statute
of limitation clock ends the moment judicial action begins, so
you can't draw a case out and have it thrown
out just because you've gone past the time limit. In Italy,
(33:04):
that's not the case, and so Bert's going with his
armies of lawyers and these three levels of appeal would
drag these cases out until the statute of limitations had
run and then he could say, hey, wait a second,
I was never convicted.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
So he can just run out the clock on everything
ran out the clock.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
And of course most Italians didn't grasp the distinction between
running out the clock with statute of limitation because he
was actually convicted numerous times at a trial level where
he's been on the second level of appeal, but the
case was then thrown out on statute of limitation grounds.
So there are many cases of that kind, including bribing
a sitting senator to get him to change his vote
(33:41):
and bring down a government to give you an idea.
He then is finally convicted and I think it's twenty
thirteen of a tax fraud case, and that case makes
it through all levels of judgment. He doesn't go to jail,
but he is prevented from holding office for I think
five years. That kind of puts in out of the
game for a good period of time.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Italy right now, what is happening over there.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Well, I think what's happening and in a sense, the
hangover of the Berlosconi era is that Berlosconi's lack of
interest in governing and incompetence meant that Italy was the
slowest growing country in Europe for about thirty years, and
so the country has been doing really quite poorly since
(34:29):
the early nineteen nineties. Over a million young people have
left the country because they don't see a future for
themselves in Italy. They are living in the US and
Canada and France, England and Germany, you name it. Those
who stay live with their parents until they're in their
thirties or forties. So there's a really bad situation, which
is meant that there's a lot of unhappiness and discontent
(34:51):
with the political system. That's meant that they've elected a
right wing government headed by Georgia Maloney together with Berlisk,
what remains of Belisconi's party and another conservative party. So
you can look at it as oh my god, the
post fascists are back. But I think it's perhaps more
useful to look at the fact that Italy is kind
(35:13):
of flailing around looking for a solution to these long,
very deep seated problems of huge public debt, slow economy,
almost non existent birth rate, you know, one point two
for children per woman, unhappiness of immigration, but a persistent
need for immigrant labor in order to make the run.
(35:35):
So they've got a whole lot of problems that they're
grappling with, and I don't know that they have the answers,
but it means at the moment that that favors a
right wing government and we'll see if they can do
something about these problems. But I think that the problems
are much deeper than that, and Belisconi's biggest disservice to
the country was failing to address all the issues that
(35:55):
he got into politics saying he wanted to address.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Maloney's government has been in for a year, Yeah, a
little less than a year. Is your sense that there's
anything good happening there?
Speaker 4 (36:05):
I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, the economy
is growing a little bit, but whether that has to
do with her government or not, or just picking up.
These things are really hard to parse. She's taking a
hard line on immigration, but immigration continues as much as ever.
She wants to make it easier for Italians to raise families,
(36:26):
but I don't see them reversing the demographic situation anytime soon,
So I think it's a little bit too early to tell.
But the problems are deep and are not going to
be sort of solved by rhetorical positions. You can say
I won't stop immigration, but I think last year, like
six hundred thousand Italians died and less than four hundred
(36:49):
thousand were born. So you have a deficit of two
hundred thousand people every year of people who are dropping
out of the workforce, added to the pension roles. So
Italy has to come to terms with the fact that
like it or not, it's going to become a multicultural
society and it's not culturally ready to do that, and
so that costs all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Thank you so much, Alexander. I found this completely fascinating.
I'm so just so interesting.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
I really appreciate you, right, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. We are on vacation this week, but
that doesn't mean we don't have an amazing show for you.
Columbia Journalism School Professor Alexander Still talk to us about
the recently deceased former Italian President Silvio Bertiscni and how
(00:24):
we can thank him for America's politics today, including trump Ism.
But first we have former Congressmen Monde Jones. Welcome too,
Fast Politics.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Your friend and mine. Mondere Jones, Mondair, do you have
some you want to tell me? Perhaps an announcement.
Speaker 3 (00:44):
I do have an announcement to my district in the
seventeenth Congressional up in the Lower Hudson Valley to you
into the world, and that is I'm going to be
running for a term in Congress to continue the important
work that I started last year.
Speaker 2 (00:57):
Yes, what does that mean exactly running?
Speaker 3 (01:00):
I'm running.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
He's running, folks, I am running.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
I'm so excited to be continuing the fight to serve
the people who raised me in Rockland, Westchester, Huttnam and
Dutchess Counties and to Lower costs for working families, to
save democracy itself from this Republican fascist takeover of our country,
(01:24):
to make sure that we get weapons of war off
the streets, and yes, to protect basic freedoms like the
freedom to have an abortion. All of these things are
at risk because of what we are seeing come out
of Washington, particularly the House representatives, and what will likely
happen with the Republican presidential nomination.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
So you were in Congress before explain to us a
little bit about New York had a radical redistricting, eleventh
hour redistricting, and you kind of let the other guy
run talk to us a little bit about that.
Speaker 3 (01:59):
Last year was a nightmare. I never imagined waking up
and seeing a redistricting process and political machinations come out
of Washington that resulted in my congressional district up in
the seventeenth being torn apart and being faced with the
prospect of running against a member of my own party
(02:19):
and a colleague in Congress. In that moment, we were
facing a nearly unprecedented assault on democracy by Republicans in
Congress and nationally, we were looking at the freedom to
have an abortion that was on its way to being
taken away. We had seen the draft opinion in DBBS.
We had seen so much coming from the Republican Party
(02:44):
that I did not want to make it less likely
that my constituent would continue to be represented by someone
who cared about democracy, by someone who would fight to
protect the freedom to have an abortion, by someone who
would continue to fight for working people like the family
I grew up in. And so rather than having bruising
primary with the chair of the D trible seat, I
(03:05):
decided to maximize the likely that my constituents, but can
you can you continue to be well represented, And as
a result ran in a different district, and that chair.
Speaker 2 (03:15):
Of the D triple c actually lost.
Speaker 3 (03:17):
He lost anyway, by eighteen hundred and twenty votes to
a career political operative who will tell you anything you
want to hear, but who will do anything that Kevin
McCarthy and the extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress tell him
to do. And that person's name is Mike Laalt.
Speaker 1 (03:34):
I think it's important to pause for a minute. Democrats
lost a lot of seats in New York State, perhaps
because of the ghost of Andrew Cuomo and his non
partisan redistricting which he set up in twenty twelve, kicked
the can down the road a decade, and then we
(03:55):
found ourselves in the middle of a non partisan redistricting nightmare,
and his obsession was holding onto power in a theoretically
nonpartisan but really republican way. Democrats lost a bunch of
seats to Republicans, ultimately causing them to lose the House.
A lot of these candidates ran as not MAGA. They
(04:16):
ran as sort of quote unquote normal Republicans. But it
turns out it doesn't matter at all. They still vote
with Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
They vote with Kevin McCarthy and with the extreme mag
Republicans in Congress. They are indistinguishable from that cohort when
you look at their voting record. So let's run the team, right.
So the first legislative vote that Mike Waller took was
to repeal provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act. Specifically, he
voted to gut the irs so that billionaire corporations and
(04:45):
very wealthy people could more easily cheat on their tax right.
Then had the nerve a few months later to complain
about the deficit after having just voted for a policy
that would have reduced the revenue that the US government
receives and, by the way, in the process of taking
us to the brink of default as a nation on
our debt, voted for a bill that would cut services
(05:06):
to veterans and reduce funding for law enforcement in the
midst of our nation's uniquely American gun violence epidemic. He
voted a few weeks ago to overturn the ATF rule
on gun braces, which would make us less safe from
gun violence, in particular from mass shootings. He continues to
oppose the freedom of women to have an abortion. He
(05:28):
opposes a ban on AR fifteen's and other assault weapons
weapons of war that have no business being in the
hands of civilians, but wants to talk about crime. I'm
happy to talk about crime, Miley. I relish the opportunity.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
To talk about public safety in this I mean, the
incredible thing about the crime situation is that we have
a quote unquote democratic mayor. But that is really just
in quotes who is obsessed with making the case that
there's a terrible crime wife. But murders are down, and
a lot of these crimes are actually flat. I mean,
(06:02):
you may have complains, but that's what it is.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Well, Look, I want to be clear. New Yorkers deserve
to feel and to actually be safe, and it's why
I have consistently voted for historic levels of police funding
every time I've gotten the chance in the United States Congress.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
In fact, last.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Fall, I was the deciding vote on a rule that
then resulted in six police funding bills getting a vote
on the House floor, and I voted for every last
one of them. It's also not lost on me that
the Lower Hudson Valley is one of the safest places
in America when you look at the US News and
World Report rankings from a year or two ago. Rockland
County third safist county in America, west Chester County fourbe
(06:43):
safist county in America, Putnam County twelfth safist county in America.
And at some point we had to have a discussion
about how the Republican description of the Hudson Valley as
this crime ridden health gape is an affront to the
important work that law enforcement officers every single day to
keep us safe. They're doing an outstanding job and we
(07:03):
have to continue to support them, and so I just
want to make clear my position on that. Well.
Speaker 1 (07:08):
I think it's really important that we talk about this,
because this is not with Republicans, just like with the border,
this is not about keeping people safe. If this is
about finding an issue to get the base excited.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Right, I mean, God forbid, Republicans have to run on
their record on the economy. I mean Joe Biden, for
all of the criticisms that people may have about his age,
perhaps in the minds of many voters, is someone who
has presided over and has a record that he can
take credit for of creating the most jobs, many millions
of jobs in his first term, which is not even
(07:42):
complete yet of any president in modern history, if not
in the history of this great nation. You know, we
have lowered the cost of prescription drugs so that by
the year twenty twenty five, people on Medicare like my
grandmother will not have to pay more than two thousand
dollars annually for prescription drugs. And we have seen incrementally
the effects of that legislation, known as the Inflation Reduction Act,
(08:04):
in that in January of this year. For example, as
of January of this year, no person on Medicare is
paying more than thirty five dollars monthly for the cost
of insulent This is a president that has, you know,
along with Democrats in Congress like myself, who I actually
negotiate a passage of the infrastructure law, brought the party
together in that moment. He passed the largest infrastructure bill
(08:27):
in generations, which has brought and will be bringing billions
of dollars to New York State alone to repair our
crumbling roads and bridges, and to complete the Gateway project,
for example, which is of great interest to my constituents
in the Hudson Valley. He passed a Respect for Marriage Act,
which made strides and ensuring marriage equality is the law
of the land. You know, this is a president who,
(08:49):
along with Democrats like myself, helped keep small businesses open
through our expansion of the paycheck protection program at the
height of the COVID nineteenth pandemic, and so much more.
You can tell I'm really passionate about this stuff.
Speaker 1 (09:00):
Well, I mean, I think it's really important that you know,
I continually think that Biden has really been underestimated and
underappreciated for many of the things he's done, including his
really liberal policies. I mean, he was not my pick
in twenty nineteen, but he has ultimately passed a lot
(09:22):
of really liberal legislation, and I think, you know, we're
seeing right now Republicans trying desperately because they see the
writing on the wall and they know Trump is going
to be the twenty twenty candidate, or at least they're
pretty sure, which we all are, you know, are trying
to get other people to run to the left of
Biden because they know that Biden. You know, Biden reads
(09:44):
like a normal Democrat, standard Democrat, but he has actually
done a lot of really progressive legislation.
Speaker 3 (09:50):
You know, I don't even think of it as progressive
legislation or liberal legislation. I think of it as legislation
for working people. When you do the poling, this stuff's
extremely popular, including Republicans. Do you remember, I think it
was sometime last year Congressman Byron Donald's Republican down in Florida,
and I think maybe some other people were present at
this private fundraiser and they got caught on the hot
(10:11):
mic talking about how, you know, if you start giving
the American people these policies, that they're going to start
voting Democratic because they're so popular. That's why you hear
these sort of manufactured, factually incorrect stories about new York
City trying to ban pizza ovens and nonsense like that,
because I don't want to talk about the bread and
(10:32):
butter issues.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
That people care about.
Speaker 3 (10:34):
People care about how did not put food on the
table for their families. And I know this intimately because
I grew up poor in Rockland County and my mom
worked multiple jobs to provide for our family, and because
the economy wasn't working to the point where she could
just work one job and have that be enough. And
of course she got help raising me from my grandparents.
My grandfather was a janitor and my grandmother clean homes,
(10:55):
and because childcare was so expensive.
Speaker 2 (10:57):
From which it still is, if not worse now, Yeah,
go on, yeah.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
You know often times I had to go to work
with her, and then, through the grace of God in
an entire community in Rockley County that raised me, made
it all the way to the halls of Congress, where
I got to represent the same people whose homes I
watched my grandmother crane growing up. But you know, no
one should have to go through what I went through
as a child. This is an economy that can work
for everybody, and I want to continue that fight, not
(11:22):
not give tax breaks to billionaires and billion dollar corporations
and try to play this sort of rhetorical jiu jitsu
where you know, Mike Lawler, the incumbent Republican, is saying
he wants to do something about the salt cap, that
ten thousand dollars limitation on the state and local tax deduction,
and not even acknowledge that it was Republicans in December
twenty seventeen. That's part of the first Trump tax scamp, right,
(11:44):
that that put that cap into place which crush families here,
and that's in Balley, right.
Speaker 1 (11:48):
I want to talk about that salt tax for a
minute because it's such a favorite topic of mine and
Jesse so loves it when I talk about it. But
you know that was ultimately the goal with the salt
deduction was that in a state where you had higher
local and state taxes, those taxes were usually used to
(12:09):
buttress schools, and you know they were used to create
a better quality of life for the people in blue states, right,
So you had higher state taxes because that money went
to public schools and went to services for people. And
in states like Texas where you didn't have state and
local income tax, that was because they didn't give a
(12:31):
fuck about children or public schools or anything like that.
So the idea was to punish those blue states by
raising their taxes.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Ad I'm proud to live in a state and in
a community where government invests in infrastructure and in great
public schools. You know, we've still got work to do
with some of our school systems, but you know, here
in Nuts and Valley, we've generally got great public school
and that's because we invest in creating great public schools.
I wish more communities had the resources to do that.
(13:02):
But we should not be punished by Mitch Vaccano and
other Republicans in Congress because of who we vote for
for president. And it is exactly what Republicans like Mike
Lawa did back in December twenty seventeen, and so he
doesn't get to run away from that record of his party.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
Yeah, and I do think that it's really important when
we talk about, you know, the way the government is
supposed to work is that we are supposed to be
represented no matter who we voted for, no matter the
color of the state, a blue state, a red state.
The president is a president for everyone. What was interesting
about Donald Trump is that he had no interest in
(13:40):
growing the electorate, which is why he didn't get reelected,
and he just wanted to deliver for red states.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
And this is sort of a vestige of that.
Speaker 4 (13:48):
It is a vessage of that.
Speaker 3 (13:49):
And this guy is now likely to be the Republican
nominated for president next year. And I want people well
to really sit with that, because I know that there
is concern over the president running for reelection. But as
he has said, I think quite effectively, do not compare
(14:11):
me to the perfect, compare me to the alternative. And
I think that's right. This is a district here in
the Lower Hudsond Valley that Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump
been by ten points. If we are not flipping seats
that Joe Biden won by ten points, then we are
simply not taking back the majority of the House of Representatives.
Of those eighteen House districts that Biden won, this is
(14:31):
his fifth largest margin of victory, so it is literally
the fifth vote required to take back the House of
Representatives so that we can finally pass voting rights and
other democracy reform legislation, so that we can pass legislation
to codify Roby Wade, so that we can pass legislation
to increase the federal menmum wage, which hasn't changed since
two thousand and nine, and it is an abomination at
(14:53):
the current level. So that we can continue to lower
the costs of prescription drugs, not just for people on men,
but for people throughout our economy and throughout our society.
Bees and so many other issues are what's at stake.
And it's not lost on me that Donald Trump is
even more dangerous than he was the first time that
people chose Joe Biden over Donald Trump, that you know,
(15:15):
this guy is going to pardon the insurrectionists that nearly
took my life in the lives of hundreds of other
members of Congress on January sixth, But he has just
been criminally indicted for the second time for doing what
I think few people had imagined, which was stealing and
then sharing national security secrets that cut our service members
(15:37):
and the nation at risk.
Speaker 1 (15:39):
Yes, and also it was funny because we're only two
indictments in.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
I mean, there's still the fake the summer is not over.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
There is still the fake electorate indictment, which is coming
down the.
Speaker 3 (15:52):
Pike it is, and then there's the January sixth investigation.
After Donald Trump was indicted for the second time this year,
time by the Department of Justice, Mike Lawler told the
press that the FBI and the DOJ were politicized. He
made that statement without any evidence, And I got to
(16:12):
tell you, I just never imagined waking up one day
and seeing my member of Congress now in this district
participate in the assault on the rule of law in
this country, especially coming from a guy who belongs to
a party that claims to care about the rule of law,
and the assault on our institution, which is an assault
on democracy itself.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
By the way, Yes, absolutely true.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
So just give us the two seconds here you have
a primary, when is it?
Speaker 2 (16:38):
Give us the sort of the TLDR.
Speaker 3 (16:41):
I've got a little bit of a primary that will
be decided by June of next year in New York State.
One of my opponents is the younger sister of the
governor of the state of Michigan. I have great respect
for anyone who would run against me in the primary,
and so look forward to a robust exchange of ideas,
and frankly, I look forward to campaigning on my record
(17:04):
of accomplishment of delivering actual results for people in the
Lower Hudson Valley these past two years. I am optimistic
based on the energy on the ground, people urging me
to run, urging me to restore the leadership that this
district deserves, and candidly moldy a lot of people who
were just really hurt by the unfair way in which
(17:26):
people in our district were treated last year, both by
National Democrats and yes by the acting Supreme Court judge
up in Stuben County who redrew the congressional district and
cause a lot of damage frankly to the interests of
the people here. And so I'm looking forward to making
right to addressing that injustice and continuing to deliver for
(17:50):
my constituents, who again I just love so much and
who took me from poverty, me to the halls of Congress.
The bond that I have is one that I cherished
with these people. So please, if you care about saving
our democracy and protecting basic freedoms and continuing to lower
costs for working people and getting weapons of war off
(18:10):
our streets, go to Monderefourcongress dot com and smash it.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Dony Bud Thank you so much, Monde. I hope you'll
come back. Of course, I'll come back.
Speaker 3 (18:22):
I mean, there's gonna be a lot happening in these
next sixteen months, and it's important to continue this discussion.
Speaker 1 (18:30):
Alexandra Still is a professor at the Columbia Journalism School.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4 (18:37):
Alexandra, Hi, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (18:39):
Very excited to have you.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
One of the many smart things you've written recently is
a really interesting idea that, in fact, for Thosconi walked
so that Trump could run.
Speaker 4 (18:52):
Well, yeah, I mean I think that what I was
down intriguing about Billisconi. When he first kind of came
on the scene, A lot of people kind of just
missed him as a kind of comical figure. You know,
he'd been a cruoner on a cruise ship when he
was a student. He was kind of loud and vulgar.
He seemed like a product of a certain kind of
(19:13):
corrupt Italian culture. And what I think I noticed early
on was that he was also an extremely innovative and
whether you like it or not, had pioneered a new
kind of politics. That he was sort of like the
first postmodern politician. He understood that we had moved out
(19:34):
of an era of arty politics, ideology, class based politics
in which people voted their economic class, and that Berlo
Sconi had innovated a kind of inter class appeal. He
was a billionaire populist.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Tell our listeners a little bit about Italy when Berlasconi came.
Speaker 2 (19:57):
To power, what it looked like and how he did it.
Speaker 4 (20:01):
Sure, I wonder if I could just take one step
back before even more.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
That's great?
Speaker 4 (20:06):
Yeah, which is you know? Bert was going? He made
his first fortune in real estate and then quickly moved
into television. There was no such thing as private TV
before the mid nineteen seventies. Early it was the monopoly
of the Italian state TV known as RYE, and the
Italian High Court had ruled that there could be private TV,
(20:28):
but on a limited basis, purely on a only local broadcasts.
Berl's going. He saw an opportunity, jumped into it, brought
up a lot of local stations, and then, in typical
Ball was Going to Eat Fashion, skirted the rules by
broadcasting the same program like three seconds apart, claiming that
they were local, but then selling advertising nationally. So he
(20:50):
quickly gained an advantage over his competitors and became the
biggest figure in private TV. Brought up his two biggest competitors,
and by the early nineteen eighties had literally a monopoly
of private TV, ninety percent of the market of private
television and a kind of what was known as a
duopoly with the three state TV channels and his three
(21:11):
private channels having like a ninety percent of audience share
in the country. So that was the first really big
thing that he did. And in order to establish private TV,
he changed the culture of Italy and that what I
think is so interesting about Berlosconi is that he changed
the culture of the country and that culture then elected
(21:32):
him as a politician. And what I mean by that
is that the world before Berlosconi in Italy was a
kind of austere and moralistic. It was dominated by the
Catholic Church and the Communist Party, both of you which
were kind of moralistic in their own different ways. You couldn't,
literally for a long time, even advertise dog food on
(21:55):
the state TV because it was considered to be a
moral and Berlosconi instead realized, I'm going to make this
private TV thing where anything goes. All I care about
is audience and advertising. I'm going to get the cheesiest,
most popular programs. I don't work educating the public, and
I need to create a world of desire in which
a new Italians learned to long for things they didn't
(22:18):
even know they wanted before and them you know, so
I have you know, programs like Dallas and Dynasty which
create an atmosphere of luxury and wealth and material well being.
And then my my viewers are going to want those things.
So my advertisers are earned going to pay me a
lot of money in order to advertise their products. So
we created this kind of materialistic culture, which followed a
(22:42):
long period during the Cold War of ideological struggle between
left and right. There was you know, terrible terrorism in
Italy during the nineteen seventies, and it's Goni promised a
post ideological world, a world in which let's not worry
about you know, all this politics stuff. Let's have a
good time, Let's have on looking at scantily cloud women
(23:02):
and you know, watching cheesy programs and watching Baywatch. And
so he offered a different kind of society in which
you didn't have to be ashamed of being rich or
wanting to be rich, and that's a very important predicate
to his political large. So then what happens is that
in the early nineties, the political system that had sustained
(23:24):
Berlosconi and protected his monopoly began to crumble. There was
this big corruption investigation on his operation Clean Hands, which
start two and suddenly left him without his political protectors.
And by nineteen ninety three these people were going to prison,
fleeing the country community side, and he realized, holy shit,
if I don't do something fast, I'm going to go
(23:46):
the way of these people, and so, you know what,
I'm going to actually take over the political system. He
did something that nobody thought was possible. One thing you
have to credit Berlosconi with is with extraordinary audacity and guts,
and so he basically turned what was then already the
largest or the second largest private company in the country
(24:08):
into a political war machine. All parts of the company,
from the ad salesman to the people who sold mutual
for auds, to the executives and the TV company all
are working towards the aim of electing Berlisconi and his
newly formed party.
Speaker 2 (24:24):
Really sounds like Trump and then it works.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
I mean it was. It was like Trump on steroids
in a sense. It was, you know, as if you
had somehow married Trump and the Murdoch Empire. And created
hybrid figure you'd have Berlosconi. So one of the other
things he did, which is very much should seem very
familiar to American listeners, is that his media, before the
(24:47):
creation of Fox News, created a hyperpowers and type of media.
His three TV networks, his magazine group, his ropers all
began flooding the zone with pro berliscone stuff and attacking
anyone that dared to attack or criticize him.
Speaker 2 (25:04):
It's like Ruper Murdoch a little bit.
Speaker 4 (25:06):
Yeah, very much, very much, and it was very clear.
I mean, they are one of the people who participated
in these meetings and published a book in which he
recorded some of the conversations, and Bertolosconi said, we have
to sing in chorus so that the people who attack
us are then hit with concentrated fire and they will stop.
That's sort of what happened. Anytime you raise your head
(25:28):
and criticize Berolosconi, you could count on, you know, scurless
stories appearing about you, fake scandals, everything to kind of
distract people from what was happening with Bertolosconi. So that
ended up being a very successful model. He gets into
power in nineteen ninety four and then things get very
bumpy because a thing that is, in a sense, it's
(25:50):
not unlike Trump. Trump came in promising that he was
going to be the defender of the working class, and
he was going to stand up for the forgotten people
who didn't get represented from the coastal elites, et cetera,
et cetera. And then, of course, the one economic program
he actually passes is a big tax cut that goes
largely to the very rich. Brosconi did the same thing,
(26:11):
and he promised to be an economic miracle worker. He
was going to be the Italian Margaret Thatcher who was
going to cut bureaucracy at ape and liberate the economic
engine of the country. And he didn't do any of
that because he wasn't really interested in the boring, difficult
work of government, and what he really cared about was
(26:32):
protecting his media empire from regulation and staying out of
prison and keeping associates up right.
Speaker 2 (26:40):
Like Trump very much.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
It's kind of a remarkable It does sort of make
you realize that there's something in this particular moment of history.
It produces these kinds of figures and then makes this
a kind of winning formula. What he has or had
that is also very much like Trump, is this ability
to appeal to people who are in a very different
(27:05):
economic class from him. So or working people who in
Italy used to vote for the Italian Communist Party are
suddenly voting for Bill Sconi. Why because he seems authentic?
Theyn't They know that his policies may not really align
with their interests, but you know, they find his personality appealing,
the fact that he is tells off color jokes, and
(27:28):
like Trump, yeah, very much. It's this idea in which
you replace programs with authenticity. So you're not buying a
political program, you are buying a personality, and authenticity has
become the value that you prize the most, rather than
let's say, ideological consistency or a program that makes sense
(27:50):
to you.
Speaker 2 (27:51):
This it's incredible. I mean why I read that piece.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
And you know, I grew up spending a lot of
time in Italy because my mother had an Italian boyfriend
who I think boyfriend is a generous term for what
this relationship was, and so we spent a lot of
time there and I grew up during the eighties and nineties,
so Berlusconi was the guy, and my mother always hated
him because she thought he was a fascist. But they
had a very similar you know, they were both very
(28:16):
into sex. They were both very into dirtiness and naughtiness
and whatever, and and you know, he got involved with
a lot of scroll as people, et cetera, et cetera,
and he did really he went into office, and like Trump,
he had lots of trials.
Speaker 3 (28:33):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:33):
Well, the thing you mentioned about sex, I think is
important because one of the things that he did, as
I mentioned, is that he changed the culture like you
would not have had you know, Nate Good or scantily
cloud women on Satle before Berolosconi. And so he's completely
unapologetic about doing that. He introduces the first nude game
(28:55):
show into Italy or the world as far as I
during all of his entertainment programs, even on serious subjects,
you'd have a woman standing there in a kind of
low cut dress showing her thighs, known as the velina,
and so that people could gawk at her while they're
listening to something about soccer or politics. So he introduces,
(29:19):
you know, sex and transgression becomes part of his trademark,
which is again very much like Trump. You know, he
would brag about his own sexual accomplishments, made no secret
of it, created you know, various scandals. You know, like
he's visiting an earthquake zone with an attractive female public
(29:39):
official who's like, you know, worrying about you know, people
who have ended up homeless, and he ends up saying,
you know, can I caress this woman?
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Right?
Speaker 4 (29:47):
Also about Claude and Kiosi, he said, so that kind
of thing where he's these things that sort of right
thinking people were appalled by. To a lot of ordinary Italians,
it's like, okay, yeah, he's not really a traditional politician.
He's somebody liked me. I might say something like that.
Certainly I would have fought it. And he has the
guts to say what other people think but don't say.
(30:10):
So that's very much part of a Trump thing. Then
the scandals begin to accumulate almost as soon as he
gets into office, because he goes into politics in part
to head off these corruption investigations that are rising up
the ladder, and he knows that there are lots of
skeletons in his own corporate closet, and like many businesses,
(30:33):
he and his associates have had to pay bribes for years,
and eventually these things will be found out, and.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
In fact they are.
Speaker 4 (30:40):
It turns out that Berlusconi's chief lawyer has had various
judges on his payroll. Hundreds of thousands of money, hundreds
of thousands of dollars are traveling from berlisconi corporate accounts
into the Swiss bank accounts of a sitting judge. Twenty
one billion Lira, which is about fifteen million dollars, was
discovered going into the account of the socialist leader Batio
(31:03):
Craxy things like that. So all that stuff is accumulating
even as he's trying to govern, which makes of course
governing impossible because he's spending all of his time putting
out these fires and going from crisis to crisis. So
he ends up his first government collapses partly because of
these crises. But the thing about Bosconi is that you
can sort of map his career in the following way.
(31:27):
When he's in power, things go badly and he governs poorly.
As soon as he's out of power, it's like Superman
regaining his hours, and then he becomes an incredibly potent
opposition figure fighting to get back into power. Then he
gets back into power, he's bored. He starts to make
mistakes governs poorly, they kick him out, and then he
(31:49):
goes back into opposition mode. So there are these kind
of alternating periods, you know, when he's in power in
ninety four and then out of power until two thousand
and one, back in power and then again out and
then back in power in I think two thousand and
eight to twenty eleven.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
And then he also goes to jail.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
No, well he doesn't. He never went to jail. He
had many, many trials, right, Okay. One of the things
that's unfortunately it's a little tricky to explain, but I'll
keep it simple. Italy has three levels of judge of judgment,
so you can't be officially convicted until you've exhausted two
sets of appeals. So you can be convicted a trial,
(32:32):
but technically you're still not convicted until an appeals court
has ruled on it and then the highest court has
signed off on that.
Speaker 2 (32:39):
So it's hard to go to jail in Italy, is
what you're saying.
Speaker 4 (32:42):
It's hard to go to jail. But it's even worse
than that because all countries have something called the statute
of limitations, where you can't be prosecuted years and years
after the fact. But in almost all countries the statute
of limitation clock ends the moment judicial action begins, so
you can't draw a case out and have it thrown
out just because you've gone past the time limit. In Italy,
(33:04):
that's not the case, and so Bert's going with his
armies of lawyers and these three levels of appeal would
drag these cases out until the statute of limitations had
run and then he could say, hey, wait a second,
I was never convicted.
Speaker 2 (33:17):
So he can just run out the clock on everything
ran out the clock.
Speaker 4 (33:20):
And of course most Italians didn't grasp the distinction between
running out the clock with statute of limitation because he
was actually convicted numerous times at a trial level where
he's been on the second level of appeal, but the
case was then thrown out on statute of limitation grounds.
So there are many cases of that kind, including bribing
a sitting senator to get him to change his vote
(33:41):
and bring down a government to give you an idea.
He then is finally convicted and I think it's twenty
thirteen of a tax fraud case, and that case makes
it through all levels of judgment. He doesn't go to jail,
but he is prevented from holding office for I think
five years. That kind of puts in out of the
game for a good period of time.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Italy right now, what is happening over there.
Speaker 4 (34:07):
Well, I think what's happening and in a sense, the
hangover of the Berlosconi era is that Berlosconi's lack of
interest in governing and incompetence meant that Italy was the
slowest growing country in Europe for about thirty years, and
so the country has been doing really quite poorly since
(34:29):
the early nineteen nineties. Over a million young people have
left the country because they don't see a future for
themselves in Italy. They are living in the US and
Canada and France, England and Germany, you name it. Those
who stay live with their parents until they're in their
thirties or forties. So there's a really bad situation, which
is meant that there's a lot of unhappiness and discontent
(34:51):
with the political system. That's meant that they've elected a
right wing government headed by Georgia Maloney together with Berlisk,
what remains of Belisconi's party and another conservative party. So
you can look at it as oh my god, the
post fascists are back. But I think it's perhaps more
useful to look at the fact that Italy is kind
(35:13):
of flailing around looking for a solution to these long,
very deep seated problems of huge public debt, slow economy,
almost non existent birth rate, you know, one point two
for children per woman, unhappiness of immigration, but a persistent
need for immigrant labor in order to make the run.
(35:35):
So they've got a whole lot of problems that they're
grappling with, and I don't know that they have the answers,
but it means at the moment that that favors a
right wing government and we'll see if they can do
something about these problems. But I think that the problems
are much deeper than that, and Belisconi's biggest disservice to
the country was failing to address all the issues that
(35:55):
he got into politics saying he wanted to address.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
Maloney's government has been in for a year, Yeah, a
little less than a year. Is your sense that there's
anything good happening there?
Speaker 4 (36:05):
I think it's a mixed bag. I mean, the economy
is growing a little bit, but whether that has to
do with her government or not, or just picking up.
These things are really hard to parse. She's taking a
hard line on immigration, but immigration continues as much as ever.
She wants to make it easier for Italians to raise families,
(36:26):
but I don't see them reversing the demographic situation anytime soon,
So I think it's a little bit too early to tell.
But the problems are deep and are not going to
be sort of solved by rhetorical positions. You can say
I won't stop immigration, but I think last year, like
six hundred thousand Italians died and less than four hundred
(36:49):
thousand were born. So you have a deficit of two
hundred thousand people every year of people who are dropping
out of the workforce, added to the pension roles. So
Italy has to come to terms with the fact that
like it or not, it's going to become a multicultural
society and it's not culturally ready to do that, and
so that costs all kinds of problems.
Speaker 1 (37:07):
Thank you so much, Alexander. I found this completely fascinating.
I'm so just so interesting.
Speaker 4 (37:14):
I really appreciate you, right, my pleasure.
Speaker 1 (37:17):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds
in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you
enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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