Rick Wilson, Amanda Litman & Jim Wallis

The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson weighs President Biden’s progress in winning over swing voters. Run For Something’s Amanda Litman updates us on the local races to watch this election year. Jim Wallis details his new book 'The False White Gospel: Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds, and Donald.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
Trump told billionaires he'll keep their textes low at his
latest fundraising gala. We have such a great show today,
Run for Something, as Amanda Littman stops by to talk
to us about the local races to watch the selection
year that we'll talk to the director of Georgetown University
Center on Faith Injustice, Jim Wells about his new book,
The False White Gospel, Rejecting Christian Nationalism, Reclaiming True Faith,

(00:31):
and Refounding Democracy. But first we have the host of
the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.

Speaker 3 (00:39):
Hello, Rick Willson, Molly Jong Fast, A happy day to you.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
It's a funny voice today here Fast Politics. Funny voices.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
They're funny, Molly Jung Fast, not funny, very very very
not funny. And in the new Europe Trump administration, I'm
telling you.

Speaker 1 (01:01):
Oh no, oh god, you're doing Alan Aldwin doing Donald Trump.
We're going to end up all of us.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
I'm so sorry again, We're all going to get about.

Speaker 1 (01:09):
I was on this panel last week where the host
asked me about Trump's plan to jail his political enemies.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
Yay, that's us.

Speaker 1 (01:20):
And I was like talking about how cash Batel had
actually said he would also so like this was about
members of the January sixth committee, But of course cash
Batel had also was planning to reach out and grow
that thesis to include the mainstream media. I mean, how
are we living through this time? This is crazy?

Speaker 3 (01:39):
Let me tell you how we're living through it badly.
We're not doing well. We're not really prospering in this
particular regard. And I'll tell you I have a pretty
strong sense that no matter what you've read so far
this week, when you finally get around to reading Isaac
Orangsdorf's new book, Finish what we started, you probably won't

(02:02):
sleep for a week.

Speaker 1 (02:03):
Wait, so tell may.

Speaker 3 (02:04):
I read it in one sitting last night.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Wait? Who is this again?

Speaker 3 (02:08):
He's a Washington Post reporter and he's written a story,
a history of the post January sixth hyper radicalization of
the Republican Party and just how intentional they are about
what they're going to do to this country if Donald
Trump takes office again. Isaac Orangsdorf, I really recommend it.
These people are as they always do, telling you exactly

(02:30):
what they're going to do. They're telling you exactly what
they're going to do, and what they're going to do
is all of the horror shows that you hear Bannon
and Patel and Miller and others haha joking about with
reporters like I'm gonna put you in jail, you son
of a bitch.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
Ha ha.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
They mean it. They mean it. And here's the thing.
A lot of these reporters in the mainstream media who
go back to Steve Bannon over and over again because
he gives good quote, are like, well, no, that's just there.
They're just cosplay. They're just play acting. What the heck,
it's all just silly fun. No, y'all, it's not. It's
not They're not joking. They're not playing around with this.

(03:11):
This is now what they believe is the best way,
the best outcome for their version of America. And I
am sorry. We are not taking it as a country
seriously enough. We are not taking this seriously enough. We
are not treating this with the level of intensity and
crisis that it demands. And honestly, I'm profoundly concerned about it.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
Yeah, no, no, no, I mean I agree. And look,
I mean the reality is they keep telling us. You
remember that Fox interview with Sean Hannity where Sean Hannity
is like, just make everyone feel better. You're not going
to be dictator on day one.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Right, and Trump looks at him like, who the fuck
are you talking to, bro?

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah, And by the way, the fake reason is he said,
I'm gonna drill, baby, drill. We are the largest exporter
of natural gas.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
We're the largest producer of all forms of hydrocarbon based
and fossil fuel based energy in the world, not only that,
but in the history of the world.

Speaker 1 (04:16):
So that is why it's so fucking stupid that that
is his life.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
You know.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yeah, I'm gonna drill everywhere. And coal, no, you're not.

Speaker 3 (04:27):
So there's a reason coal is out it. Coal miners
don't have jobs anymore. It's because it's a terrible business.
It's because natural gas is a zillion times cheaper and cleaner,
relatively speaking. And all of these things that Trump talks
to his audience about are echoes of a dead religion
in a distant past. This is not a country anymore.

(04:49):
And you can say this for better or for worse.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Okay, Yeah, because coal was so good for everyone. Just
coal was just a big winner.

Speaker 3 (04:58):
You're gonna have a Houli lyrics.

Speaker 1 (05:00):
Great, Yeah, I mean, like, what are we even doing here?

Speaker 3 (05:04):
It is really a silly on the one hand, but
terrifying on the other spell that he casts on these people.
And what I worry about is this temptation for this
nostalgia that he talks about with his people, that it
takes them back into this world that doesn't exist anymore.
You know, mommy in the kitchen and no black people nearby,
and dad working down with the auto factory. That's over.

(05:25):
It's all gone. Whether you love it or hate it,
it's all gone. But he has this ability to sell
his people on it. And look, the President is as
big a guy about industrial American industrial might and industrial
policy as you could hope for. And he understands it
a lot better than Trump does. But he's realistic about it,
which is which is difficult because realism doesn't sell in
this country. Fantasy sells in this country, and so Trump

(05:47):
sells in this fantasy. And it's like, oh, the reason,
by the way, you don't have that great union job,
but the auto plan anymore is the black folk or
the brown folk or whoever scary person in blah blah blah.

Speaker 1 (05:58):
But what's interesting, I mean, the reason we got here.
I always talked to Eddie gold about this.

Speaker 3 (06:04):
I love Eddie Glod.

Speaker 1 (06:05):
Yeah, he's amazing, And whenever I run into him, I'm
We're always talking about this because this is really the
theory of the case, right, is that this is this
post reconstruction, last gasp of American anti democracy, right racism.
This is the white races saying, you know, no, we
can't have a multi racial democracy. We have to continue

(06:28):
in this sort of you know, really untenable, not democratic system.
And and you know it's they can't get their head
around the idea that in fact it's over. That world
is gone, thank god. I mean it was not a
great world.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
This country is poised to enter a new era of prosperity,
but it's not the one that involved turning wrenches on
an assembly line. And it's not the one that a
lot of people would love to go back to. In
part would love to go back to because some of
it now codes in their minds as the pre civil

(07:06):
rights era, the pre civil rights posture.

Speaker 1 (07:09):
But some of it is just nostalgia. Is an illness.
I mean, nostalgia does not real ever.

Speaker 3 (07:15):
No, nostalgia is a lovely and wonderful sort of ability
in people's minds to return to something they never had
to get back onto Trump for a second. And the
reason it works that I still think is a danger
in this campaign going forward is that a lot of
the people that are listening to it are not sophisticated people.
They are not people who understand that they're being played.

(07:38):
And I worry about those folks turning up again. I
worry about the fact that people will believe things that
are objectively not true. And I worry also that they're
being pregamed right now, very heavily. They're being told, oh, well,
they're going to steal the election from Trump again. They're
going to take it the deep state, liberals, Jews, immigrants, gays,

(07:58):
fill in the blank. They're telling the people right now
that the election is about to be stolen from Trump.
They are about to take it from him. They are
about to go and make your kids become you know, gay,
Sharia married, or whatever weird fantasy conglomeration in their head
cells for the fear mangers. I know, I sound a
little more serious than usual today. But I have been
really thinking about like the power of the delusions that

(08:21):
he's able to induce and his people.

Speaker 1 (08:24):
But now we need to talk about something really important.
No labels has no candidates.

Speaker 3 (08:29):
No candidate, no campaign, ain't got nothing. It's over. It's done.
Stick a fork in it, roll it around on the
grill for a while, wait until it reaches the correct
internal temperature. And that is that this is a moment
where nothing they said was going to happen happened. They
never had a path to two hundred and seventy electric
College votes. They never got on the number of states

(08:52):
they claimed they would get on.

Speaker 1 (08:53):
But they did get on a lot of ballot.

Speaker 3 (08:55):
They got on nineteen ballots, of which eleven are what
we call the easy states, the easy ballot states.

Speaker 1 (09:00):
Okay, right, But they got on swingy states too, where
they really fucked up Biden.

Speaker 3 (09:04):
They got in a few swing states, and they really
spent their money in a few of the swing states,
like Arizona, where they really wanted to be on the ballot,
because that's going to be a tight state. That's going
to be one of the tightest states in the race.
It's going to be so close there that they could
have split off enough votes from Biden to give Trump
the win, which is what they wanted to do.

Speaker 1 (09:22):
Is RFK spoiler on that?

Speaker 3 (09:25):
Listen, here's the thing about RFK. RFK is in a
posture right now where yes, he takes some votes from Biden,
but there's a rising sense of panic on the right.
Then he's also messaging about the January sixth protesters being activists,
talking about all this anti vax stuff and crypto stuff,

(09:45):
and you know, and basically doing the rounds of the
kind of messaging that appeals to Trump voters. And there's
a reason, you know that the Trump people are freaked
out about r He was on you know, All In,
and he was on all these other podcasts and all

(10:06):
these other shows on Fox and everywhere else when he
was in a position where he was running as a
Democratic primary opponent to Joe Biden. What happened, though, was
when he became a threat to Trump by taking up
Trump's messaging, That's when it all split. That's when they
stopped doing this, That's when they stopped, you know, covering him.

(10:28):
So what you're going to see here is he's going
to end up drawing some out of Trump some out
of Biden. I don't know what the final configuration of
that is, but I do know that with No Labels
off the radar screen, I have now plenty of extra
time to torture the living hell out of him. I

(10:48):
don't think I won't.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Will you tell us about no Label's last hell? Mary pass?

Speaker 3 (10:54):
Oh my god? Look, they may have gone behind a
Greyhound bus station and tried to find some guy with
the shape drinking Sterno out of a sock. After this,
with their last big play was to go to Asa
Hutchison and say you're our last hope. And Asa just said, no,
I'm all passed. That'll be fine, thanks for playing. They

(11:14):
went to from what we know because for whatever reason,
we have the uncanny, weird ability to get people inside
organizations to talk to us. And so we had four
separate people inside the no Labels world at every different
level like okay, here, here's what's going on. This sense

(11:35):
among all of these people, these grassrootsy people that thought
no Labels was this where we're just do gooders. We're
moderate centrists who just want everybody to work together and
sing Kumbaya in the pale moonlight as we dance naked
before the idol of an ancient Assyrian god. Sorry about that.
The last parts of my parties, you've.

Speaker 1 (11:53):
Really just moved on to that. I feel like you're
doing great. Just keep going, doing great, Wilson, doing great.
It's doing you going.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Those volunteers and those grassroots types, the people that became
the delegates to the No Labels convention, they are so disheartened,
they're so sad. They realized, you know, this is like
the guy who's wired his last ten thousand dollars to
the Nigerian prints hoping for the wire transfer to come in.
These poor people they just got their shit handed to

(12:22):
them and they don't understand why. They don't get it,
and it's really sad. It's really sad in a lot
of ways because look, there are people in the country
who would love for this world to be something different
than it is. But it's not right.

Speaker 1 (12:36):
No, it's a good point. And now what will Nancy
Jacobson and Mark Penn do.

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Well, Look, they're living in Miami most of the time now, Yami,
and they've had their house in DC it was on
the market. I think they're going to become naturally Florida residents.
Now Mark is going to go to Trump. Bet me
a dollar because you're going to see Mark Penn on
Fox any day now saying, well, there's no way that
Joe Biden can win working class voters in Pennsylvania. There's

(13:05):
no way Joe Biden because if you go back for
the last couple of years and watch any clip of
Mark Penn on Fox, he's like, yes, mister Trump, can
I wash your car a second?

Speaker 4 (13:13):
Toe? H?

Speaker 3 (13:13):
Would you like a foot massage? Mister Trump? It is
ridiculous how in the sack he is for Donald Trump?
And it is ridiculous how deeply delusional people are.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
You know who else I think is very trumpy?

Speaker 3 (13:26):
Blank fronts.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
I was going to say that weird guy with the
pollster who pretends not to be trumpy but used to
live with Kevin McCarthy still does. Yeah, what's that guy's name?

Speaker 3 (13:36):
Frank Luntz.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
Frank Lunz, They're basically the same.

Speaker 3 (13:40):
Well, listen, Frank will end up next with RFK Junior.

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Oh really you think so?

Speaker 3 (13:45):
He will? I listen. I've known Frank. I've known Frank
since the nineties. He will go wherever he can get,
Like I'm gonna be like I caught a classic guy.
I'm gonna be the one who tells you like it is,
and it always is. It's always the worst person you
can imagine, from Ross Parrot to RFK. It's a lovely arn't.

Speaker 1 (14:06):
And here we are, Rick Wilson. Let's talk about Florida.
Big news out of Florida this week, really interesting ballad
initiative and also a very repressive abortion change.

Speaker 3 (14:22):
So the Supreme Court upheld Rondasantis' six week abortion band,
which moved it from the unreasonable fifteen weeks to the
poison of six weeks. And by poison, folks, I mean
Ronda Santis's own polsters, whom I know were in a
room with him when he was going to sign the
six week bill begging him, big strong polsters with tears

(14:44):
in their eyes, begging him to not sign this effing bill,
begging him okay, because they knew that if he got
to the General by some weird miracle, this thing was
a kill shot against him. This thing was a radioactive
waste pile on top of a burning tire mountain. It

(15:05):
was every terrible potential political outcome. What they did was
to go into the Supreme Court. They approved that it
also triggered a horrible political pushback, and now we're going
to have a ballot initiative to unwind the six week band.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
Okay, so here's my question for you. We all know
about the ballot initiative and two weeks. Really sorry, I
mean we know that it is. It changes the calculus,
It does a lot of things, and also ballot initiatives
tend to overperform the partisan lean. But what I want
to ask you about this is you grew up in Florida.

(15:45):
So Florida has historically always been a state where abortion
has sort of been okay, and it's been sort of
the one southern state that's allowed abortion. That's a real
sea change for the state. You live in.

Speaker 3 (15:58):
Florida always had a kind of of vaguely libertarian stance
on abortion. It was always sort of like, yeah, you
know what, we're not going to get too deep into
the weeds on this. There were a few pieces that passed,
you know, over the years, on marginal things. You know,
some things about like regulating where doctors and had to
be certified, but it was all small ball. Okay, Desantus

(16:19):
comes along. They did the fifteen weeks. They moved the
fifteen weeks down to six. And what's happening right now
in Florida is that vaguely libertarian take on it has
now become one of the most restrictive in the country.
And this is different than Mississippi or Alabama. First off,
it's the third largest state in the country. This isn't
going to be four or five or ten women a

(16:39):
month that have an ectopic pregnancy that kills them or
a medical emergency because they can't get care. It's going
to be thousands. It's going to be thousands of women
the month. You are going to see a public health
consequence to this in Florida that you would not see
anywhere else. And DeSantis has decided he is going to
be waging a big public war over this, which actually

(17:02):
is kind of good for the initiative. It's kind of
good for it because Desas is like the polar opposite
of charisma.

Speaker 1 (17:09):
Also, how is he polling well?

Speaker 3 (17:12):
He is now upside down in his fave n faves,
where he was about sixty forty last year, he's now
about forty five fifty five with fifty five unfave. That's
headed south quickly, by the way. But look, I think
that you are going to see that this is replicating
a larger social moment in America on the question of abortion,

(17:32):
on the question of how much do you want to
have the white bro Republican dudes in Tallahassee or wherever
you live, deciding on what birth control you can use
or if you can have birth control at all, you know,
whether you can have IVF or not.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
We've gone too far, Rick Wilson yet again, once again,
Too damn far.

Speaker 3 (17:55):
That's the name of my a hit new show, Too
Far with Rick Wilson.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Spring is here and I bet you are trying to
look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store
with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
and top bags. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
Amanda Littman is the co founder of Run for Something.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Welcome back, too Fast Politics, one of my favorite on
the ground activists bringing democracy, really bringing democracy back to
some red states and doing like really cool stuff. That
really is where democracy starts.

Speaker 4 (18:44):
Amanda Lipman, thanks for having me, Molly So Amanda.

Speaker 1 (18:48):
You you have an organization called Run for Something and
many listeners on this podcast have heard about Run for Something,
but I'm wondering if you could just give us like
a quick TLDR on.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
It, I would be delighted. So Run for Something recruits
and supports young, diverse progressives running for local office all
across the country. We launched back in twenty seventeen and
since then have identified more than one hundred and fifty
thousand young people who raise their hands to say yeah,
think about running for something like school board or city
council or state legislature. And we've helped a lot more

(19:23):
than a thousand of them across nearly every state, mostly women,
mostly people of color, who are remarkable and are doing real,
meaningful stuff to make things better for people.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
We just had a bunch of primaries. Talk to me
about where you are right now?

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Yes, so just earlier this week it was election day
and a bunch of places. But for Run for Something,
we had candidates in Wisconsin, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Alaska and
we're still waiting for that Alaska race. To get college.
Other things are looking good for Carl Jacobs, our school
board candidate in Anchorage. But overall, we had fourteen folks
win their elections, which is a fifty eight percent win rate.

Speaker 1 (19:59):
For the day.

Speaker 4 (20:00):
And these winners are amazing. So do you want to
hear about a couple of them?

Speaker 1 (20:04):
Yes, talk about the candidates, but then also talk about
your larger theory of the case and why a school
board and Anchorage leads to a congressional seat, leads to
a Senate seat, leads to flipping a state, or leads
to change at a at a grassroots level.

Speaker 4 (20:19):
Well, our school board candidate in Angridge, Carl Jacobs, is
actually running against a mom's for Liberty candidate. His race
really matters for the community of Anchorage. And we've seen
this over and over again. You know, in Wisconsin this
week Kelly Leebold, who's a brain cancer survivor and a
community leader and a young woman who really saw the
need for youth representation on the Lacrosse County Board one

(20:40):
against a guy who was the former and I believe
still a party officer, the former Republican County Party chair
who was a fake Trump elector one of the people
who like try to submit his pledge to the Electoral
College fraudulently. He was literally forced by a lawsuit to
acknowledge that Biden won the election. She beat him in
a really critical role for help that helps oversee the

(21:01):
county and in some ways plays the role in administering
the election. Also in Wisconsin, Stephanie nez want a seat
on the Kenosha County Board. She's a college professor of chemistry.
I believe she's been a fierce advocate for inclusion in
the classroom. This is particularly important in Kenosha, where the
county board was trying to make public libraries literally ban
people under the age of eighteen from adult collections, which

(21:22):
includes things like classics and research books and a whole
ton of things that especially high school students should absolutely
have access to.

Speaker 1 (21:30):
It really matters research, folks. I mean, I shouldn't laugh
because the stakes are actually real fucking high, but it
is insane how much these people are just like not
very smart.

Speaker 4 (21:41):
No, they're really not. And I think it's compelling. You know,
when we run, we can beat them. We just need
to have kids on the ballot who can really make
the case. You know. We had Sabrina Landry want to
See on the Kenosha School Board. She was the one
of the top three finishers, which ensured that not a
single mom's for Liberty. Candidate won a seat in that office,
which is awesome.

Speaker 1 (22:01):
Which means that if you have a kid in public
school in Kenosha, they are not going to be subjected
to don't say gay laws. They'll be able to like
just read normal books.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
That's all we're asking for, just like keep it boring,
keep it boring. Down in Arizona, we work with Casey Clothes,
who's been a long time run for something. Candidate is
our third time running and she want to see on
the Salt River Project Agricultural Improvement and Power District, which
is a very long name for what is one of
the most powerful offices controlling one of the largest public
utilities in the country. So this is a big win

(22:34):
for climate change because when you're controlling look utility company.
One of the reasons that she ran is because she's
a climate scientist and activist. She knows stuff here and
one of the things they want to do is make
the public utility carbon free or at least carbon neutral.
That's really, really, really important. It's been so cool to
see these folks run and win and then know that

(22:54):
they're going to make a real difference for people.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
One of the many reasons why I'm so obsessed with you.
I'm so obsessed with run for something. Is because one
of the things I've always felt like Democrats lack the
ability to do is the like tiny nitty grit and
it's not that tiny, right, Like these are actually big
consequential positions, But it's a question of like finding the
right person who wants the job and is willing to

(23:18):
run for it and then can also do the job
and is local and not you know, a carpetbager coming
in like all the Republican Senate candidates. I would love
you to talk about your theory, the case about why
having normal people on a school board helps the up
ballot races.

Speaker 4 (23:35):
Yes, we've done a bunch of research on this. No.
Back in twenty twenty, we looked at state legislative racism
in particular, because they're the easiest to measure, sort of
apples to apples. We found that simply having a candidate
on the ballot can increase turnout for the entire ticket,
especially the top of the ticket, by anywhere from zero
point three to two point three percent. That's a meaningful

(23:55):
margin of victory for Joe Biden or in twenty twenty
for the Georgia set race in particular, we found it
was instrumental, and we actually did a little bit more
research this year, especially knowing some of the challenges that
President Biden has with younger voters, especially younger voters of color,
and we asked them, you know, eighteen to twenty nine
year olds in battleground states, if there was a young
progressive running for state or local office in your community,

(24:18):
how would that change your likelihood to vote? Sixty one
percent of young Democrats told us that having a young
progressive on the ballot would make them more likely to
vote this fall.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Right, those are crazy high numbers, But I also think
it's a question of like, do you have agency right?
One of the reasons that we have trouble getting young
people to turn out is because they don't feel they
have agency right.

Speaker 4 (24:40):
Totally right, and like they're looking at a federal government
in Washington that is not or seems like it's not
doing shit to make their lives better. And one of
the things I think is the most obvious, the issue
where it's often the most clear is housing, where it
is such a revitalized issue and the experience of an
eighteen to twenty nine year old or a thirty to
forty year old in the housing market right now is

(25:01):
wildly different from that of a fifty or sixty year old.
It's almost incomprehensible.

Speaker 1 (25:07):
To you know.

Speaker 4 (25:07):
I think about like my grandma to understand what it
was like when I was trying to find a you know,
a room in a house on Craigslist. But we've seen
run for something along in California and Ohio and New
York and Massachusetts and Arizona and Rhode Island and Michigan,
you know, all across the country, just in the last
couple of weeks, take really concrete steps to fight for

(25:27):
affordable housing, to make it easier for renters, to increase
ten of protections, to make it harder to get evicted,
to rezone communities. All of this makes people who like
engage in these races feel the impact of them. It's like,
you get to move into the apartment that the elected
official you helped elect and made possible. You get to
ride on the bike lane, you get to go to

(25:48):
the restaurant, you get to send your kids to the school.
It's so specific and personal, and it like makes government
feel like a net good, which I think is really,
really important for especially for young voters who feel creative,
disillusioned by the whole things.

Speaker 1 (26:02):
Like I think so much about in Florida, where you
have a convergence of like ballad initiatives, you have young people,
you have a state party that is not killing it.
You know, the Democratic State Party in Florida has not
been great for a long time, but you have Nikki
Friedez now is now running it, so that's new. And
then you have some really great young progressives coming out

(26:26):
of that state, like Maxwell Frost who's a member of Congress,
and Anna Escimani, right, who's a state rep. So talk
to me about that Florida.

Speaker 4 (26:35):
Yeah, I think Florida is a really good example of
how young people are leading the charge there. An Escamani's
a run for something alone. In Indo Ventries, Driscol who's
the minority leader in the state House, has a run
for something alone. Even we have an alum who's running
for Congress down in Miami. She was previously on the
Miami Dade school Board. She was one of the fiercest
advocates against some of the anti LGBTQ stuff that the

(26:57):
DeSantis Master and we're trying to pass there and in
some cases, did the leaders that you want I actually do.
I say, for Florida, it is not too late to
get on the ballot in Florida into a twenty four.
The filing of the line is coming up, but it's
not too late. So if you want to be on
the ballot, especially in a moment where abortion is quite
literally there and until his amendment passes, there is a
six week band that goes into effect next month, which

(27:17):
I think is devastating for people seeking care in the state.
Legal weed will be on the ballot. Good thing. And
we know the same theory behind the case of like
why do these ballot initiatives seem to drive turnout time
to bring people out? Same is true with local candidates.
They can connect with voters on a different issue in
a different way that maybe the top of the ticket
just can't or doesn't be local folks, and these local

(27:38):
issues really can And in Florida, there's an incredible opportunity
this year to really further the case.

Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah, I'm really so impressed with the way that these
down ballot races do actually change things in states. I'm
wondering if you could talk a little bit one of
the things that Moms for Liberty did was that it
really showed us how important school boards were. Right, school
boards had never been like a topic of like mainstream

(28:05):
media focus, and all of a sudden, school boards are battlegrounds.
And in Florida they really did. They were able to
take over some of these schools. And you do find,
you know, librarians quitting and teachers with bookshelves with red
tape on them you know you can't, you know, and
books removed. So I'm wondering, what are there of these
sort of smaller down ballot races do you think are

(28:28):
important and where you'd like to see more people running
or you'd like to see more attention.

Speaker 4 (28:33):
I think it's you know, worth naming. There's no office
that's unimportant, but there's some that I think are really underrated.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
As we're sleeper offices, We'll say.

Speaker 4 (28:43):
You know, in a lot of places you can get
a library board. A lot of New York City I've
looked into it. I was really love what in other
places that you can run for a library board. And
that's a position that often oversees the library budget and
the community services that they offer, and libraries are often
the primary only place people really the government. They are
like a community hub and often the keeper of what

(29:04):
it means to live in that place. It's really beautiful
and it's really important. And boy do Republicans love taking
over libraries and underfunding them, destroying them and the like.
So librares around foreigner is another one that's sort of
under discussed.

Speaker 1 (29:17):
Did you just say coroner? Sure did, I'm glad we've
gotten to the coroner part of the interview.

Speaker 4 (29:22):
Now. This is something really came up during COVID, especially
when people who were anti vaccine anti trying to be
like deceptive about the numbers. You would see corner candidates
and corner like elected to try and undercount some of
the numbers there. We also have seen this in particular
with things like homicide stats around trans people, which are

(29:45):
unfortunately like disproportionately present in those kinds of numbers, trying
to misgender people after death. All of this is abot
a place where progressive values can really come to light
if we allot people who really care. The third thing
I think is really important that we don't talk about enough,
especially as it relates to democracy, is these municipal offices.
You know, elections are actually shared on the local level. This
is a program run for something's been running for a

(30:06):
couple of years now. We call it our clerk work
Clerk with an E, work with an media. If you're
feeling sassy, the idea of being met local election administrators,
people like county clerks, town trustees. In some places, it's
even things like tax assessor or unfortunately sheriff as a
holdover from when property taxes helped shape whether or not
you could or could not vote, have a role to

(30:27):
play in administering the election. And we have seen the
Republican Party and sort of the mag extremists over the
last couple of years try and weasel their way into
these positions to undermine democracy. No, we've helped been able
to stop them in a number of places, but I
think especially in twenty twenty four, you know it's going
to be really really important to have pro democracy folks
in these positions. Even if they win this November, some
of them are going to take office like December. First

(30:49):
presidential and other races are probably not going to be
done by them. So you don't want to leave any
opening for a malicious actor or an incompetent one, or
a combination of the two to jump in and try
and undermine the life.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
It's so scary. Let's go further on that and talk
a little bit about like, aren't there some elected positions
that are involved with elections totally?

Speaker 4 (31:13):
You know, elections are administered in some places on the
town level and some places over the county level. In
other places it's by party, So it's a little bit
messy depending on where you are. But we've been really
intentional about recruiting pro democracy candidates for these offices, especially
in places where we know the election is likely to
be really close. And so for exactly we did a

(31:34):
ton of this work in Pennsylvania, where the county commissions
actually oversee the elections budgets. One of my favorites isn't
in Dauphin County, which is like around Harrisburg. We worked
with a guy named Justin Douglas who's this incredible leader.
He was a pastor, He worked with the homeless community there.
He actually got fired from his congregation for being too
welcoming to LGBTQ worshippers people who wanted to come be

(31:55):
a part of there. We sent out a whole bunch
of text mesterses, and calls to folks in the area
being like, Hey, do you want to run for office.
Here's a county commission race. It's really important for democracy.
And he was like, Eh, I don't know. Let we
have a conversation. Maybe I know someone, And we talked
to him into running and got on the ballot. He
was outspent something like ten to one. He was knocking doors,
talking to voters, reminding them about the stakes of this race.

(32:16):
Also talking really focused about the crisis and the jail
system in the county which had let prisoners die out
of neglect. In a way it was really heartbreaking. He
was able to win his race, but I think ultimately
the margin was about one hundred and forty one hundred
and fifty votes. He helped flip the county Commission for
the first time in over one hundred years. And one
of the people he'd beat, or the person he beat,

(32:37):
had been a really active fighter against things like making
it easier for people to drop off their ballots, hearing
ballots after election day, even certifying the election. So his
presence on the Dauphin County Commission in Pennsylvania and election
we won in twenty twenty three is going to make
it easier for us to win the big elections in
twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (32:57):
I mean, local is really how you a get people
into politics and be how you get voters engaged, and
also how you get young people engaged.

Speaker 4 (33:08):
Right absolutely. I mean we've heard this anecdotally from people
doing youth organizing four years. You know, they think about
local politics as the gateway. Maybe if someone doesn't give
a shit about who's their member of Congress or the
president presidential candidates, they're never going to meet them, They're
never going to hear from them. The issues they talk
about feel really abstract. But their city council candidate or
their school board or candidate is someone they know, someone

(33:28):
they meet, someone maybe they play basketball with at the
gym where they see a school drop offline, or they
went to college with, or work with at the local
retail place, at the restaurant. It's someone they know. I
think that is a really powerful driver. In fact, political
science research has shown the strongest indicator that someone's going
to show up to the polls is a personal relationship
between candidate and voter. Everything else about it is meant

(33:50):
to replicate that, try to recreate that intimacy but a
personal relationship between candidate and voter is so powerful, and
that's what local candidates can do in a way that's
really genuine and authentic that the top of the ticket
just can't, at least not the same way.

Speaker 1 (34:03):
When you say this, it does sound like the Biden
campaign is opening hundreds of field offices in these swingy districts.
Wouldn't that be a way for the top of the
ticket to try to connect locally.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, I think that's a huge part of it, And
a lot of our local candidates work out of those
field offices, and many places they'll be coordinated campaign offices.
And our local candidates have already been knocking doors in
many places for the last six months to a year
to longer. I get report outs from our states team
and our campaigns team every week, and they'll talk about,
you know, Katerina has been out knocking. She's not ten

(34:35):
thousand doors. She's going through her universe three or four times.
You know, Jose has been knocking doors since last summer.
These are people who have really built relationships, So I
think it all helps. No election exists in a vacuum.
The doors that our school board candidates knock and our
state legislative candidate's knock also help Biden and the ads
that the Biden theme runs. The organizing they're doing also

(34:56):
helps these local races. The I think sort of thing
that sometimes people forget but is the places that the
Biden campaign is going to focus, which as they should
strategically based on where they need to win, and the
places where some of the most dangerous Republican local candidates
are running are not always the same.

Speaker 1 (35:13):
Right right, No, No, really important important point.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
On like a very practical level. You know, it's going
to be incumbent on the Biden campaign to for example,
really engage voters in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and in some
really targeted suburbs, and some of the worst Republicans in
Pennsylvania are running in places that are just not going
to make sense for the Biden campaign to focus as
much any resources or energy. The same is true in
so many states across the country. And you know, especially

(35:38):
when you think about some of the other races on
the ballot like Shared Brown and Ohio and John Tester
in Montana, it's going to be really really helpful that
they have city council and school board candidates in those
states knocking doors because it's just not where the national
campaign is likely to be at all or as much
as they need to be to help the rest of
those candidates. So all that's to say, you know, you

(35:59):
invest in these small races, you can win the big
ones and also make a difference in people's lives. It's
such a win win win in terms of your investment.

Speaker 1 (36:07):
Amanda, Thank you run for something. I hopefully will have
you back a lot before the selection anytime.

Speaker 3 (36:16):
Jim Wallace is.

Speaker 2 (36:17):
The director of Georgetown University Center on Faith Injustice and
the author of The False White Gospel, Rejecting Christian Nationalism,
Reclaiming True Faith, and Refounding Democracy.

Speaker 1 (36:29):
Welcome Too Fast Politics.

Speaker 5 (36:31):
Jim Wallace, it's a blessing to be here for me.

Speaker 3 (36:35):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (36:36):
Explain to us a little bit about this book you wrote,
and I would love it if you could even it's
called False White Gospel, but even before that, if you
could just explain to us a little bit about your
personal trajectory.

Speaker 5 (36:51):
Well, I am at Georgetown now. I was a founder
of Sojournals and for fifty years now I'm named after
my mentor. I'm the our Bishop Desmond Tutu, Chair of
Faith and justice a Jewish set, which is a wonderful
name for my friend and mentor of Desmond Tutu. And
we do faith and justice. That's what we talk about.
And so this book is saying we have a test

(37:13):
before us. It's a clear test, certainly a test of democracy,
as Molly you say so well and so often. It's
also a test of faith, a test of our faith
communities and whether they will stand up and speak the
truth here. And it's talking about this white Christian nationalism,
which the name spells the problem. First, the most welcoming

(37:37):
inclusive gospel message in history is made white. But secondly
it's Christian. But if they don't mean love and sacrifice
and service, I mean domination, control for power, and finally nationalism,
I mean Jesus gave a great commission to his disciples
go into all the world, making disciples of every nation,

(37:58):
teaching them to go or whatever I have commanded you.
So the book is about six iconic biblical texts, ancient texts.
I rephrase and reframe them that can apply to people,
whether Christian or religious or not. I like Jesus saying
you'll know the truth, and the truth will set you free.
In John's Gospel. That means the opposite of truth isn't

(38:20):
just less lying, it's captivity. And so truth and freedom
are indivisible. So people are captive. So many people are
captive to this increasingly religious talking, this false messiah. Now
it's quite incredible of Donald Trump. And so I'm trying
to let Jesus do the talking here and let's get

(38:40):
back to these things that we say we believe and
not just say what's wrong, but say here's a way forward.
A lot of people are hungry for a better, different
conversation and what I call the faith factor. In twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (38:54):
Four, I mean, I really do think a lot about
how former Vice President pens really did give evangelicals a
permission structure to support Trump. Wasn't he sort of like
a critical part of this whole organization.

Speaker 5 (39:12):
Yeah, A naming hands gave assurance to a lot of
evangelicals that this was it was okay, and then Pence
broke with them at that constitutional moment and now is
in supporting them or endorsing him. So it's very interesting
how this choice we're making now is a faith choice
and not just This isn't just politics, isn't democratic republican

(39:35):
left or right. It's really about what kind of country,
what kind of people, what kind of nation do we
want to be. So one of the texts that I
have in this book that I love is imagine, while
you and I are surrounded by political noise, the fact
it's our vocation to listen to the noise and offer perspective.

Speaker 3 (39:53):
Right, you and I?

Speaker 1 (39:55):
Right, yes, it is. It happens to be in fact.

Speaker 5 (39:59):
So the first chapter, first book of the Bible, Genesis
one twenty six says, in the middle of illinoise, I
like to think. Then God said, like me, quiet noise.
And then I said, let us create human kind, all
of human kind after our own image and likeness. So
right there is the foundation for all of our earthly
talk of human rights and voting rights is a theological

(40:22):
foundation that divinely created equality between all of us. So
in the beginning, you might say God created all of us,
all God's children, with God's image and dignity. And then
beginning of the United States. However, it was a doctrine
of discovery that led to the obliterating and the stealing

(40:43):
of lands from indigenous people, then the kidnapping of Africans
for slavery, So we were a slave holding republic. Now
I didn't say democracy, and that is there, Molly. I
think all that's coming to a crescendo now, a culmination
what I call America's original sin is coming on the nation.
They're fighting this. This is their their last fight, and

(41:06):
they'll use any means necessary, any means. The trajectory of
politics of fear and hate in violence, that's their trajectory.
So we have to counter that, not just with partisan
politics or our own our own hawking points. This is
going to be confronted at a deep level with this

(41:26):
is let's call it idolatry. That's a word that some
of your listening quite know what it means. It means
false worship, means working the nation and not worshiping God.
He has a Bible he's selling for sixty bucks to
pay his legal fees for his trials about a porn star,
and on the front of the Bible says you bless

(41:47):
Usa Bible in the front of the Bible. So and
it's also heresy. Now that's a big word people will
get scared by. Heresy is anything that draws us away
from Christ. For Christians, draws us away well, this is
his vision. His values are literally anti christ and that
must be said. There are black evangelicals who are pretty different.

(42:09):
For white evangelicals. The word white evangelical, the real word
they're the big word is not evangelical. It's white. White
dominates the phrase white Christian. So that's what we have
to change and be transformed by, because people are captive.

Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yeah, what I'm struck by is this sort of like
white evangelicals. Even though Mike Pence did break with Trump
eventually and is saying he won't support Trump or not endorsed,
which strikes me as a big deal, evangelicals are not
breaking with Trump.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
But again, let's let's clarify white evangelical right exactly. I
was asking, why can Christians talk about race? I said, well,
they they do. Black Christians do all the time. White
Christians don't want to talk about that's so we've got
to Really I'm from that evangelic tradition. I was raised
in that, and I defined evangelical by Jesus opening Sermon

(43:06):
at Nazareth, which I call is Nazareth Manifesto. He quoted
Isaiah and he said, the spirit of the Lord is
upon me because he has annoyed me to bring good
news and the word for good news. There is evangel
in the Greek good news to the poor. So any
gospel that isn't good news to the poor is not
the gospel of Jesus Christ. That's just period. That's a fact.

(43:27):
So in the book I talked about how when Jesus
says I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked,
I was a stranger. The word means immigrant there in scriptures.
I was sick, I was in prison. And what you
do to the least of these, he says, you've done
to me. He's saying it was me that Matthew twenty
five Gospel test with was my conversion text out of

(43:49):
the student movement back in the day that brought me
to faith. And that is the economics of Jesus, which
turns our politics literally upside down. So I want to
talk about what the real Jesus is saying and doing.
Jesus suffered identity theft on January sixth, with islands storming.

(44:09):
Attackers lifted his flag and she like alongside a Confederate flag,
and when they got to taking over the Senate, they
shouted Jesus name in prayer. That's something that I, as
a Christian, am not going to just accept that that's
going to be directly fundamentally challenged. And so this book
is an interrogation Molly of fate at a crisis time.

(44:33):
It's interrogation of faith. So what I'm finding is there
real hunger out there, you know, a hunger out there
for a different kind of faith factor, a different kind
of faith narrative in the middle of this critical twenty
twenty four election season.

Speaker 1 (44:47):
So one of the things I've heard do you say
when you're interviewed, is that this is actually a book
for pastors. Will you talk to me a little bit
about what that means.

Speaker 5 (44:57):
It's for pastors and all their congregants, and it's also
for at George and I Love my classes and their
students who usually they're in the none of the above category.
They signal out for religious hiliation, they don't know about
their faith, they're struggling. It's for all the people outside
the church who are struggling with these things too. But

(45:19):
pastors are facing literally molly. Pastors who want to say
what they know is true are facing death threats, even
from people in their own congregations.

Speaker 3 (45:30):
This is amazing and.

Speaker 5 (45:31):
Outdiede and others have totally politicized their gospel to be
a Trump religion. So there's a battle going on. And
the book hopefully provides for pastors or other congregational leaders,
or just ordinary people in their small groups or Bible
studies or community groups. Here are some texts, here is
some language. Here is some way to apply ancient biblical texts,

(45:56):
whether we're believers or not through this moment. And I
want to take them on with the texts, and I
don't want to just take them on with alternative media
or something. So the title of the book was going
to be do we believe this or not? There's been
a political taco of the white evangelical world, not the
black churches, but the white evangelical world.

Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah. One of the things that Trump did was Trump
gave white evangelicals a permission structure for being significantly sort
of their worst instincts in a way that you probably
wouldn't have that permission structure for white evangelicals otherwise. Do
you think that there's any way to sort of put
that genie back in the bottle?

Speaker 5 (46:38):
You've said now this word permission structure twice, So let's
unpack at bit. It goes again deep riven politics. Every nation,
every nation, Bullius, you know, has its better angels and
its worst teamons. And Trump isn't just He's a marketer,
not a leader. He's a market He's marketing not only
racial grievance. I would say Trump is marketing our worst demons.

(47:02):
And those demons run very deep. And so what's at
stake here is the integrity of faith communities, whether our
demons in this nation will take them over, which is happening.
And I call them mega mega churches, which are the
big churches that are going for Trump. It's all politics now,

(47:23):
it's all been politicized. So I want to challenge a
lot of those Trumps surrogus to debates about the Bible.
What does the Bible say. There's a lot of younger leaders,
even white evangelically younger ones who are really unsettled. They're
sometimes appalled by what's going on and the book. I
talk about maybe a new what I'm calling remnant church,

(47:47):
which would be white believers, parchic younger ones who want
to join with black and brown church leaders to create
really literally a new American church in this country. Now,
how many of those Evangelicals will break with Trump. I
don't know, but it's not these angelicals as mainline Protestants,

(48:07):
as Catholics. The issue is whiteness, right white, and when
whiteness has taken over, and that's literally an idolatry. So
I want it, you know, as Jesus is saying about freedom,
set people free from their captivity. As I've said that,
you've heard me say, every every movement has to decide

(48:30):
who they can persuade, but also who they must defeat,
and I mean violently, I mean the ballot box. But
this book says that'll be a controversial lie in his
book because I want to persuade people, and some can
be persuaded, so I think, But I want to give
people the tools to defeat these people, to feed them
at the ballot box. The religious political power people who

(48:52):
are just going for power and using religion. To use
religion to go for power is blasphemous, to use a
religious world.

Speaker 1 (49:00):
So interesting, and also I would say, like so important
what you're doing. One of the things that my husband,
you know, we're both reform Jews. I grew up a Unitarian.
My stepmom's a Unitarian minister. But you know, we raise
our children reform jew but very liberal. We love our Rabbi.

(49:20):
My daughter loves her so much because she did this
whole asserment about how she doesn't believe everything happens for
a reason. Very progressive and groovy. But one of the
things that we often talk about is how the right
has gotten very like if you look at the Supreme Court,
they put Catholics on the court and not Protestants on
the court because I think a lot of the thinking

(49:43):
in the republican federalist society world is that Catholics are
more open to this very regressive legislation when it comes
to a lot of the rights and I'm thinking reproductive
rights that we in this country have had taken for
granted for so long. Do you do you think that
Protestants have kind of gotten squeezed out of this Well.

Speaker 5 (50:04):
That's interesting. I think people are put there for their
it's sorry to say, for their political ideology the federal level,
and religion can come along with that. But you know,
Pope Francis continues to encourage and inspire me. He doesn't
even in the single issue politics, a worship being the
only issue he talks about. A consistent ethic of life,

(50:27):
where the death penalty is a life issue, and poverty
is a life issue, and supporting families is a life issue.
Nuclear weapons is a life issue. Has broader view which
Renstance embodies is being narrowed and politicized in this country
in some Catholic churches and some bishops. Some bishops are
saying really powerful frances like things, and others are not.

(50:50):
So the way they use ideology put together with religion.
It's almost like the ideology of the America's original sin
we've had for a very long time, and yet now
there's a theology underneath that's a false theology. And so
that's ideology and heresy go together at the same time.
So that's being put together. So how can we some

(51:13):
you know people you and I know some feel that
the best answer to bad religion is no religion. I
understand that certainly in some days he says with trump
Bibles and all the rest. But I think the answer
to bad religion is better religion, or good faith or
true faith. The subtitle is the book is you know,

(51:34):
it's rejecting Christian nationalism, reclaiming true faith, and refounding democracy.
So I want to bring good faith, true faith into
this and confront the bad faith on religious grounds and say, no,
you got it wrong. Here's what Jesus said, Here's what
the first book in the Bible, in Genesis says. Here's
what the apostle Paul says in Galatians three twenty eight

(51:57):
about breaking down barriers of race and class and gender
which are always there. And this Galatians text was a
baptismal formula in the early Church in Christ. There's no
ge or gentile, bonder, free male or female. They read
that at every baptism. They were saying, literally, we're followers
in the side tenor at brownskin Palestinian rabbi who has

(52:21):
us that we have to overcome these pillars, these divisive
factors which are always there, as you know so well,
always race, class, and gender.

Speaker 3 (52:29):
And they're saying, we're not.

Speaker 5 (52:31):
Perfect, but it's our vocation to overcome those things, not
extracurricular or volunteer time. So they were saying, so, if
you don't want to be hoarded that kind of community,
you better go somewhere else. Now imagine if American churches
we're using that Galicians text in all their baptisms. That
text by the way I learned in my research here

(52:52):
was Galatians three twenty eight was banned taken out of
all the white slaveholder Bibles.

Speaker 1 (52:59):
We're out of time. I hope you'll come back, though.
It's such a rich topic and I feel like we
didn't even really scratch the service.

Speaker 3 (53:07):
Well.

Speaker 5 (53:08):
I like your voice when I see you personally, so
I'm happy to come back. And I think I'm hoping
this what can be a tool to use to the
persuadables and even those who we have to confront and
really defeat them in the narrative about what good faith
really means. No moment o fuck, Rick Wilson, Molly Jong fasts.

Speaker 3 (53:37):
Would you like a moment of fuckery?

Speaker 1 (53:39):
Yes, I.

Speaker 3 (53:42):
I've got one. I go Virginia. Republicans eat a giant
sack of ass. You are not renaming Dulles International Airport
after Donald Trump. Listen, if you want to name something
after Donald Trump, it's going to be the laundry facility
at the Florence ad X Supermax prison. It's gonna be

(54:03):
it's gonna be a goddamn railyard in bumfuck as Crack, Oklahoma.
You're not naming a goddamn international airport where people come
from around the world after the worst president in the
history of the United States. I will burn my own
ass down before I see this happen. It is unbelievable, Molly.
Can you imagine like people will be like, I'm flying

(54:25):
the Trump Trump, Where are you flying it to Washington? Oh? Oh? National?
Now it would be humiliating for this country.

Speaker 1 (54:33):
Okay, Now, Dulles is humiliating for this country. And it's
also like two hours out of Washington. Honestly, I can't
speak to Dallas because I've never flown through it.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
Dullas is a very lovely airport.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
You're welcome Dulles, and it's it's located somewhere near Washington, DC.

Speaker 3 (54:49):
It is located somewhere in the DC metroplex.

Speaker 1 (54:52):
Yes, I metroplex.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
By the way.

Speaker 1 (54:55):
Listen, you want to name an airport that no one
goes to for Donald Trump? Maybe that's a good plan.

Speaker 3 (55:01):
Anyway, Listen, a lot of people go there though it's
a big international HUBY fly in and out of there
all the time.

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Yes, it is our moment of fuckery.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
I'm sorry if people don't find this moment of fuckery
as exciting as other moments of fuckery. But honestly, I
mean they renamed fucking highway in Florida after Donald Trump.
I won't drive on it. Fuck them not do it?

Speaker 1 (55:19):
All right, Well, and that is our moment of fuckery.
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.