Rick Wilson, Mike Hixenbaugh & Melissa Walker

The Lincoln Project’s own Rick Wilson skewers Trump’s embarrassing appearance at the Libertarian Party’s convention. NBC’s Mike Hixenbaugh discusses his book, They Came for the Schools: One Town's Fight over Race and Identity, and the New War for America's Classrooms. The States Project's Melissa Walker examines how they are helping Democrats win elections through giving circles.

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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.

Speaker 2 (00:09):
And Samuel Alito's wife claims that the upside down American
flag was an international sign of distress.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
We have such a great show today.

Speaker 2 (00:17):
NBC's Mike Hickson Blasstopspy to talk to us about his
new book, They Came for the Schools, One Town's fight
over race and identity in the New War for America's Classrooms.
Then we'll talk to the States Projects Melissa Walker about
how they're helping Dems to win elections with giving circles.
But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Rick Wilson.

Speaker 4 (00:45):
Mollie John Fast, I join you. Much recovered from the
pneumonia which had stricken me in our previous encounter.

Speaker 5 (00:51):
Yeah, you sound really good.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
I am feeling enormously better. Gods modern medicine.

Speaker 5 (00:57):
Yes, you know who did not have a good night
last night?

Speaker 4 (01:01):
That would be dipshit Trump at the Libertarian Convention. I
wrote a piece about it this morning on Substack called
Atlas Thugged he got his ass eaten.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Ugh, I'm here for it.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
So let's talk about that. The Libertarian convention. I just
want you to talk for a minute about you've been
to libertarian conventions, you know this strange species. Explain to
our listeners who they are and what they do.

Speaker 4 (01:28):
As I like to tell people, I have a kind
of genial, small L libertarian streak in me. I believe
that individual liberty is really important.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
I believe that.

Speaker 4 (01:39):
The state and the power of government over the lives
of individuals should be as minimally invasive as possible and
as minimally coercive as possible. I would sooner go into
a weak, old dumpster behind old Uncle Tomaine shrimpshack than
be a registered big L libertarian in the Libertarian Party,

(02:00):
because those people are the biggest group of beardy, weirdy
and cell crypto fuck bros you have ever encountered in
your life. These are people who think Anne Rand actually
is a good writer. These are terrible, terrible human beings
who are the strangest, angriest, most egregiously obsessive. I mean,

(02:24):
there are so many phrases I could use here, all
of which would get you and me both canceled immediately.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
But this is weaponized autism and it's worst.

Speaker 5 (02:35):
See.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
I'm going to push back on you here because I
am very friendly with nichol Aspie, who, while I don't
agree with a lot of his beliefs, he's a really
a lovely guy. And I think there are some very
smart Libertarians.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yes there are. You'll notice none of them. What I
said was that they were dumb. They're just weird, okay,
and they believe in weird things. They believe in odd
they have an odd belief set. And I'm going to
tell you something, none of none of the people that
are devoted enough to go to the Libertarian presidential nominating

(03:12):
convention are normal people they believe in And look, here's
the crowning irony of this. You ended up with the
libertarians who believe that freedom is but a moment away
from being utterly extinguished in this country, bringing the most
authoritarian and statist presidential candidate running in twenty twenty four

(03:35):
onto the stage, and let's remember he is surrounded by
people who are backing the idea of Project twenty twenty five,
which is not exactly what you would call a recipe
for limited government. These people are expansive in their power
of the state and government.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
So one of the things that I think is interesting
about this, and you're a campaign guy, so I'd love
you to speak about this, is that this was an
unforced error, like Biden was invited to speak at this thing,
and he was like a normal Democratic presidential candidate, like
no way. And the reality is like the fact that
Trump did it is kind of bad candidate ness, right,

(04:18):
bad campaigning, isn't it. I mean, you'll have this visual
of him getting booed. What does that do for him?

Speaker 4 (04:24):
Somebody's getting fired over this one. Even if Trump said
I want to go, I can convince them. Only I
can convince them this was bad planning. They did not
read the room properly well in advance, they did not
read the room properly.

Speaker 3 (04:35):
On the evening of the.

Speaker 4 (04:37):
Event, they allowed him to walk on the stage. And folks,
if you haven't seen the libertarian parties become ungovernable logo,
I want you to think back to your trapper keeper
in high school in nineteen ninety two, because that's the
sort of scribble that you would have had on it.

Speaker 3 (04:54):
Become ungovernable.

Speaker 4 (04:55):
Okay, cool, But he's up on the stage. The room
is badly let He's behind this horrifying logo. Folks, what
I tell you, it's a terrible logo. Just google the
damn thing. And he gets up on stage and he's
getting booed, he's getting yelled at, he's getting called it
a hypocrite, and all the crazies are holding their signs

(05:15):
up in front of the cameras blocking the view of Trump,
and the entire night was a train wreck.

Speaker 3 (05:22):
It was.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
It was like the clown train to burning tire Mountain.
This guy gets up there and starts saying I want
you votes and your indorsement, and they're literally laughing at him. Yeah,
it is an amazingly bad moment. He was flailing to
He finally starts saying, like, I will give you more
than two percent of the vote, three percent of the
you want to be winners, come with. Here's the fundamental

(05:45):
thing he's missing out on. The Libertarians don't care about winning.
If they cared about winning, they would name people to
the top of their ticket who could what's the word win?
And again, I have no sympathy for Donald Trump thinking
he could persuade these people. But there are enough folks
around Donald Trump, who are not stupid, who are not idiots.

(06:07):
And I got to tell you, I think they must
have been taking the weekend off, because he really got
his head handed to him at this event. It was
really ugly, folks. If you watch the video, it's out
there on YouTube, It's out there on CSPAN. If you
watch the video, this guy he was really off his game,
which I think is more and more of the case.
I don't think he has the game he had in
twenty twenty or twenty sixteen, and in a very hostile room,

(06:29):
he was uncomfortable and I'm here for it.

Speaker 5 (06:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
I mean, the headlines from it say things like keep
getting your three percent. Trump mock's libertarians in bid to
win their votes.

Speaker 5 (06:40):
That's yahoo.

Speaker 1 (06:41):
No wanna be dictators, Trump booed at Libertarian convention. He's
more delusional than I thought. Libertarians jeer Trump. During convention speech,
Trump met with Booze asking libertarians for nomination. Trump tells
libertarians to nominate him and a mock him with Booze.
That's the New York Times.

Speaker 3 (07:04):
The don loses control the video. MAGA does not want
you to see.

Speaker 5 (07:08):
Matt Drudge right, Wow, I mean, just incredible.

Speaker 4 (07:13):
He got a brutal, brutal reception there, and look, let's
be honest, he deserves it.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
But you know, I'm hoping you could pull back and
make another connection for me.

Speaker 5 (07:25):
So this is Trump being Trump.

Speaker 1 (07:27):
Right. Maybe there was someone who worked for the campaign
who thought he should go to the Libertarian Convention, but
it's very likely, well.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Mike Lee clearly thought he should go. Mike Lee, I
think might have facilitated this because Mike Lee went out
and tried to pitch Trump, saying, you know, he's a
great libertarian president.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
But one of the things that I want to point
out is like, so Trump has this legal case, this
criminal trial in New York, the one that he was
not able to punt, and it's going to wrap up
on Tuesday, and during it, his lawyers have made a
number of unforced errors, and you have to wonder how

(08:08):
much you know, some of his lawyers are bad, but
some of them, you know, are lifelong prosecutors, have had
a lot of experience, Susan Hofstetter, and a lot of
the things they've done during this trial have seemed nonsensical,
as if they were being told what to do by
someone who didn't really understand the law, and so you
have to wonder how much of that is also Trump

(08:30):
trying to drive the Trump trains.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
You could see at.

Speaker 4 (08:33):
A number of inflection points during the trial in Manhattan
that Trump was directing the strategy of his own attorneys. Now,
you know the old a lawyer or a doctor who
has himself for a client is necessarily a fool. But
a lawyer who allows Donald Trump to tell him how
to or her how to handle their legal operations is
equally a fool.

Speaker 3 (08:53):
And so that's why that's right. Essentially, you could see.

Speaker 4 (08:56):
That Trump when Stormy Daniels was on the stand, Trump
was essentially saying, call her ahola, call her aha make
or admit she's a hoola, you know. And with Cohen's
on the stand, he wants them to punch him as
you're a liar and a criminal. You're a liar and
a criminal, you know. And Stormy Daniels, of course, very
coolly and very smartly, just said, I'm an adult entertainer. Okay, next,

(09:17):
what's your next question? Moving on? And Michael Cohen, to
his credit for the most part, was like, yeah, I
was working for a very bad guy, doing very bad
things at his orders and Finally, when they brought Costello
to the stand. You know, that was also one of
these things where I think Trump thought, oh, we can
make a great defense argument from Costello, and Costello may
have single handedly torpedoed the defense's case. So all these

(09:41):
things with Trump thinking he's smarter than the people who
he's hired to do the things that he needs to do,
whether it's the campaign or whether it's the legal stuff,
he comes across over and over again in a position
where he ends up being, you know, worse served than
he would have if he just picked some body at
random and let them do their job.

Speaker 5 (10:01):
Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1 (10:03):
And I think that it is, you know, he has
some really bad instincts places where candidate Trump actually really hurts.

Speaker 5 (10:13):
Well, now he has some.

Speaker 1 (10:14):
Good instincts because people like to see him and look,
that rally in the Bronx did what he wanted it
to do. It made other voters think he wasn't a racist, right.

Speaker 4 (10:26):
Well, the other part of it is he convinced a
lot of reporters who absolutely knew better that tens of
thousands of people were swarming to Unnald Trump. They love
him in the Bronx and the Bronxes in play, y'all.
If the Bronx is in play, it's the damn apocalypse.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
It's not in play.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
I find the whole conceit that Trump is somehow wiser
and smarter and more capable than the people advising him.
It actually makes me optimistic, because he does stupid things,
and people like me can manipulate him into doing incredibly
stupid things from time to time. And so I think
that he is going to continue to believe that he

(11:03):
is his own best lawyer, his own best political consultant,
his own best image consultant. And while it works, sometimes
when you see it confront reality, it doesn't work quite
as well. It didn't work in twenty twenty. I don't
think it's going to work the same way this time,
and I certainly don't think it worked in court for him.

Speaker 1 (11:20):
A lot of people who listen to this podcast are
really stressed about the elections and the polls.

Speaker 5 (11:25):
What do you tell them?

Speaker 4 (11:26):
In twenty twenty, we were confronted with a flood of
polls constantly, Donald Trump is He's going to win?

Speaker 3 (11:33):
Donald Trump? Is this?

Speaker 4 (11:34):
Donald Trump? Is that we were confronted in twenty twenty two.
The red wave is coming it's endless. Republicans have learned
how to game the polling averages very effectively. Okay, they've
learned how to play the game of dumping tons and
tons of low quality polls and pushing the polling averages. Look,
is Joe Biden where I wanted to be in every

(11:54):
swing state survey?

Speaker 3 (11:55):
He is not.

Speaker 4 (11:56):
Does Donald Trump still have a significant hold over the
g he does. Are there more voters in the wind
than there were before? Yes, I am optimistic about that
at a profound level. I have told people repeatedly this
will never be an easy election. It was never going
to be an easy race. It was never going to
be a fun race. It was never going to be

(12:17):
a race where you wake up in the morning and go, man,
I wish we were running every election like this. What
could go wrong? Because it's a misery. It's tough, it's
a hard race, and the Biden campaign is starting to
publicly say that they get it that they have to
go more aggressive against the guy. They have to push harder,
they have to be right up in his grill all
the time. They get it. They're starting to get it,

(12:37):
at least they're starting to get that. The messaging cannot
be driven by policy questions. You're not going to win
this election based on arguments about parts per billion of
carbon in the atmosphere. You are going to have to
win this election based on convincing people the economy is
not mad Max Healscape. You are going to have to
win this election based on that Donald Trump presents a
risk to American women that is so beyond and most

(13:00):
people's understandings that when you tell them the story of
what they want to do to American women, you will
split off a lot of them. When you tell Republicans,
soft Republican voters that they're going to have to live
with the consequences of their children growing up with Donald
Trump as president a second time. See how that goes.
They do rebel against Trump. There's a lot of ways

(13:22):
to beat this guy, but you have to do them
all because you don't know which one's going to work.

Speaker 3 (13:26):
And then look at Lincoln.

Speaker 4 (13:27):
We're doing our thing that we do talking to those
soft Republican voters and messing with Trump. Those are our
two lanes. I'm not trying to go out and get
African American voters turn up. That's not where my area
of expertise is people have to work their lane, work
their skill set, push as hard as they can in
their zone, and everybody's going to do a lot of
work between now and the election day.

Speaker 3 (13:45):
This is never going to be an easy one. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (13:48):
I think that's a really good point.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
But he's beatable, Molly. He's beatable, and that means you
have to beat him. Beata bull does not mean he's
going to lose automatically.

Speaker 1 (13:56):
What states do you see a little bit of release
to be optimistic that might not otherwise be on the map.

Speaker 4 (14:03):
I'll give you one right off the top, and that's Pennsylvania.
I've been seeing some motion moving in Biden's direction in
Pennsylvania down ballot and at at the top line. You
know what, And I will just tell you right now.
I was not comfortable with saying this earlier, but I
now feel like Georgia might be starting to be in
play maybe a little bit.

Speaker 5 (14:23):
All right, I know.

Speaker 4 (14:24):
I'll be honest, I'm feeling a little less sanguine about
Arizona because that seems to be slipping a little bit.

Speaker 3 (14:29):
But we are in a moment.

Speaker 5 (14:31):
Where anything can happen.

Speaker 4 (14:33):
Yes, a lot of externalities will obtain a lot of
chaos is going to be pushing and pushing and pushing
up against us, and a lot of it is what
Trump will do. Trump will be the source of much
of the chaos and much of the dissension and much
of the insanity that's going to come out and end
up harming him.

Speaker 1 (14:51):
Yeah, it's definitely true. It's definitely true. That is the
good news in a way and not the bad news.
Just one more saying about these polls. Have you noticed
how much Democrats down the ticket overperformed the partisan Yep.

Speaker 4 (15:08):
Look, that's the same thing we saw in twenty eighteen,
in twenty twenty and in twenty twenty two. And yes,
people go, well, the Republicans took what the structural things
in the House with redistricting and Jerrymander and all that,
those are what they are. We're not going to be
in the era where we have massive swings in the
House anymore. We will have close splits there. But the

(15:29):
Democrats in House races are overperformed. Yeah, the Democrats in
a lot of Senate races are overperforming. A lot of
places where the Republicans felt very confident that they were
going to.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
Just roll it up.

Speaker 4 (15:41):
Are they are less confident than they were a few
months ago. The negative quality of their candidates, the low
quality of their candidates, is also becoming a significant burden
on the Republicans. They've got basically one decent US Senate
candidate right now who's got much need to spend that
Stave McCormick, and even he is not blowing the doors

(16:03):
off in Pennsylvania.

Speaker 3 (16:05):
And so we have a very interesting and very.

Speaker 4 (16:07):
Opaque political situation coming where if the Democrats in these
states right now overperform, if they end up, you know,
starting to open up some real range on the Republicans,
you may find that that starts to impact the presidential race.

Speaker 3 (16:23):
I mean, we're we're looking.

Speaker 4 (16:24):
Right now at North Carolina because Robinson, the Republican governor.

Speaker 1 (16:28):
Canada, recently said women were to Mauley, right, he doesn't
like Maldi women.

Speaker 3 (16:33):
They said women or two mouthy. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (16:35):
Look, he is the Doug Mastriano of North Carolina. And
if you want to know why Josh Shapiro is in
office in Pennsylvania, it's because Doug Masterano poisoned to the
whole ticket. You wonder why Katie Hobbs is in office
because Kerrie Lake and Blake Master's poisoned the whole ticket.
We may end up with North Carolina being competitive in
the presidential race because of insanity on the part of

(16:57):
this guy who is I mean, he makes Doug mastera
looked like Winston.

Speaker 5 (17:01):
Churchill Rick Wilson.

Speaker 3 (17:03):
Thank you, as always, my pleasure.

Speaker 1 (17:13):
Spring us here, and I bet you are trying to
look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all
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with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
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Speaker 2 (17:34):
Mike hickson Ball is a senior reporter at NBC and
author of They Came for the Schools, One Towns Fight
over Race and Identity and the New War for America's Classrooms.

Speaker 1 (17:44):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Mike, Thanks for having me on.
Delighted to have you so talk to me about the book.

Speaker 3 (17:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (17:52):
So the book is called They Came for the Schools,
and it tell us the story of what's happened in
the past few years in our schools as the right
and then specifically the Christian right, have waged kind of
an all out assault and an attempt to impose a
certain worldview in our public school systems, and I tell
that story through the lens of one town in North Texas.

(18:14):
That kind of represents what's been happening in America. So
the goal with the book was, if you're sitting in
the suburbs outside of Philadelphia or Georgia, in Atlanta, or
outside Nashville, and you've seen angry parents packing school board
meetings complaining about well, critical race theory or woke gender
ideology or trying to ban books, that you could read

(18:34):
the story of Souft Lake, Texas and understand why that's
happening in your town.

Speaker 1 (18:40):
So let's talk about that. What does that look like?
I mean, is it working well?

Speaker 6 (18:46):
I think we all remember in twenty twenty one when
we were suddenly seeing school board meetings leading national news
coverage as parents were revolting against what Chris Rupo and
Donald Trump had called critical race theory. At that time,
Steve Bannon went on his national podcast TV show The
War Room and declared that the key to saving America
runs through the school boards. And what he meant was,

(19:08):
we're going to win back suburban white voters who were
repulsed by Donald Trump by running hard on this anti
DEI program through local school board elections. And so we'll
retake school boards, but in the process we'll win back
these voters, win back state houses, win back Congress, take

(19:29):
the presidency, and save America. Right, you asked, is it working.
We'll just skip to the end here.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Basically, the idea was save America from diversity, right from
anyone who wasn't a white Christian man.

Speaker 6 (19:42):
Yeah, And you know, really it was a Donald Trump
back in office, really, and Steve Bannon's theory of the case,
in Chris Rufo's theory of the case that these school
board fights were going to be this major driver of
electoral success Republicans, it hasn't really played out. Instead, what
they've successfully done is they've taken all of just the
ugliest divisiveness of national politics and just superimpose that onto

(20:07):
what used to be pretty quiet non partis and local
school board elections. And so what you have now is
national political consultants running really divisive campaigns in local elections
accusing these local basically unpaid school board trustees of trying
to destroy America, being sexual predators, trying to groom children

(20:27):
change their genders. All this really ugly unfounded, divisive attack
that you're used to seeing in like a congressional race
that's now standard and our school board races. And if
you're a school district that was a Trump plus twenty district,
well the anti crch folks are going to win. And
if you're in a purpowl district where Biden did well,
then you're going to beat the monster Liberty. So they're

(20:47):
not changing hearts and minds, they're just tearing communities apart.

Speaker 5 (20:51):
Wow, So what does that look like? I mean, how
do they do that?

Speaker 6 (20:55):
So the storytell again is focused on this town outside
of Dallas and Fort Worth called South It's a very
affluent suburb, and like a lot of suburbs, it's a
place that was white by design, created in the nineteen
fifties after Brownie Board, and for a long time was
very white and for the last thirty years has gotten
much more diverse. And so this is the community that

(21:16):
really set off this fight that the same pattern we've
seen all over the country. School districts during the Trump
years tried to reckon with racism in these communities and
in their school districts. There was the blowback in twenty twenty,
and so what South Lake Conservatives did led by this
is a very affluent city, so there's people like Dana
lash who lives there. It's the former NRA spokeswoman Stiva

(21:37):
Southlake President. So she and others got together and put
together a political action committee called south Lake Families Path
to Defeat a local diversity plan. In twenty twenty and
twenty twenty one, they raised like two one hundred and
fifty thousand dollars, put together a slate of conservative kind
of form right school board candidates, including one candidate who
was like the former clerk for Sam Alito and Clarence

(21:59):
Thomas on this is a pre court, so like big
name people on the right kind of getting involved, and
they took over their school board by kind of launching
this attack accusing the other candidates of being on this
mission to destroy America with woken doctrination. And what happened
in the spring of twenty twenty one when Southflake Family's
pack did that, their election was really the first one

(22:19):
of these, and so their triumph in that election led
to lord Ingram's program in May of twenty twenty one.
It was a symbol to Republicans everywhere that oh, we
can again do with Steve benn said, save America through
the school boards. And so what happened after that is
South Lakes Families Pack style political action committees cropped up

(22:39):
in communities all over the country. There's a Williamson Families
Pack in the suburbs outside of Tennessee. Outside of Nashville,
there's a Francis Howell Famili's Pack. On the west side
of Saint Louis. There's a Lakes Travis Stanley's Pack. Now
outside of Austin, dozens of these political action committees riving
the same strategy, trying to take control of school board

(23:00):
words and ban LGBTQ equision policies, ban DEI trainings, make
sure kids learn a patriotic version of America's history.

Speaker 5 (23:09):
What does a patriotic version of America's history look like?

Speaker 6 (23:12):
Well, remember this is all watched like in the summer
of twenty twenty when some of us thought we were
having kind of be reckoning in America over the history
of race and racism. And so a patriotic history is
one where you don't discuss the sixteen nineteen projects gramming
that looks at the lasting legacy of slavery, and so
there's literally laws that have been passed in Texas and

(23:34):
in other states and at the local level saying well,
if you can teach the kids about lavery, but you
have to tell them that it is not reflective of
America's true and good founding ideals, and that anytime you
talk about these divisive subjects, their language is these are
divisive subjects. You have to present all both perspectives, all perspectives,

(23:56):
and you can't teach kids that America was fundam mentally
or systemically racist. And in Texas especially, they apply that
also to the state history, and so you can't teach
kids that Texas was inherently racist, that it's founding even
though it's founding documents were really built around the idea
of maintaining slavery.

Speaker 5 (24:15):
Yeah, so basically they don't teach real history, is what
you're saying.

Speaker 6 (24:19):
Well, these laws are all worded in a very vague way.
The net result of all of it has been teachers
are afraid to touch this stuff. There was a survey
by rand and Nationwide Survey Teachers that found two thirds
of teachers nationally, so tens of thousands of teachers said
they have been self censoring or holding back on discussing

(24:39):
these issues or avoiding discussing issues around racism, LGBTQ inclusion,
or bigotry. And what was really interesting about that was
that was happening not just in red states or school
districts where monster Liberty style packs had taken over. Teachers
everywhere were doing that, and in large part because they
were afraid. All it takes is one parent forward to it,

(25:00):
he's a teacher that this teacher is trying to sexually
grow my child, or this teacher is trying to teach
my white child to hate in South and hate America.
And so teachers got the message of the last few years.
I think as a result, in many places, kids are
getting kind of a distorted picture of what America, a
distorted picture of America's history, especially when it comes to race, racism,

(25:21):
and the idea that we're a pluralistic society where everyone's
faith and views are welcome.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Also, isn't there a problem where teachers are disappearing, like
they're having trouble finding teachers to hire.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
I mean, doesn't this have a chilling effect.

Speaker 6 (25:35):
Tcha is a tough profession as it is, It's a
lot of pressure, especially with the growth of the test
and culture of the last couple of decades, and so
this is just layered on top of that. And so
I documented in the book several cases where teachers who
are celebrating their communities like the loved by their students
and librarians are saying, I can't keep doing this. And
I give an example. As a journalist reporting on this's

(25:57):
I got a little taste of what teachers are getting
in this era when I reported on a story basically
just documenting the kind of wave of anti LGBTQ book
bands in the suburb outside of Houston called Katie, Texas.
I spoke with a queer teenager for that story, and
she shared with me how the school library was the
one place where she felt safe and secure to read

(26:18):
stories that reflected who she is because her parents weren't supportive.
After I wrote that story, a bunch of moms in Katie,
Texas got a hold of my phone number and blasted
me with text messages and emails telling me that they
were going to the police, that me having spoken to
the student was a sign of grooming, and that they
were going to file a police report or soliciting a minor.

(26:40):
And so Mollie. I know that you get nasty messages.
You know, if you work in this space, you're a journalist,
you get me emailed to get criticisms. I'm used to that,
got big skin. But this allegation from these parents. I'm
a dad of four and they're saying, oh, you're a
child sexual predator and we're going to tell the police.
It messed me up and knocks the wind out of me.
For a moment, was like, why am I doing this?

(27:01):
Do I want to be a journalist?

Speaker 5 (27:02):
Well, that's the goal, right.

Speaker 6 (27:04):
The next thought was what's a teacher or librarian going
to do when they get allegation? And the answer is
some of them are quitting. They're leading.

Speaker 1 (27:11):
Yeah, and I think that is really that's really what
they're banking on. Is there any pushback? I mean, are
these red state schools just descending into a kind of
Fox News friendly fakeness?

Speaker 6 (27:27):
I mean, like I said that, there are groups now
on the left. It's basically this coalition of progressives and
moderate kind of Romney Republicans who are fighting back against
this at the local level and districts all over the place.
Lots of them are winning and beating moms for liberty.
But the bigger piece I think that I'll call out is,
you know, there's a certain extent some of these issues
that are being debated are around student civil rights in America.

(27:49):
Every student has a right to an equal shot at
an education without being discriminated against a bully based on
their race, or sex or now gender and sexual orientation
under new guidelines by the administration. So that's enforced by
the Federal Education Department's Office for Civil Rights. There's actually
an active eight cases in the district I write about
south Lake that could end up forcing them to implement

(28:11):
some diversity training and strengthening the student Code of Conduct,
you know, the same stuff that they rejected as CRT
a few years ago. But this is all on the
ballot in November. Donald Trump has said his plan is
to abolish the federal Education Department and send all of
that work back to the state. But the states handle
education policy, including the civil rights stuff and Project twenty

(28:33):
and twenty five. I know your listeners know all about
this kind of playbook for detailing what a second Trump
term would look like. And they also want to abolige
the Education Department and basically end the federal enforcement of
civil rights laws by the Education Department, and so the
net results will be, as we've seen in other areas,
kind of two sets of constitutional rights in America depending

(28:54):
on what state you live in, and that'll, you know,
just like with abortion, and that'll, in their vision, be
applied to education as well.

Speaker 5 (29:00):
This is so bleak. Is there anything you can tell
me that is less bleak?

Speaker 6 (29:04):
Well, like I mentioned, these things aren't broadly not actually
popular right, which is important, and the division here isn't
really a clean break left first right on these issues,
and so, like I mentioned, like there's this growing coalition
of progressive and moderate conservatives in these communities that are
fighting back against this, and especially the element that's really

(29:26):
uniting progressives and moderate conservatives is this next level where
the Christian right is really steeping on this as an
opportunity to not just remove DEI, but to impose conservative
Christian worldview. So, like, there's all these laws to put
up to ten commandments in public schools, to bring in
Christian chaplains, to start praying at events, and to get

(29:48):
public funding for private Christian schooling. And it does not
seem that most of these objectives are popular, probably with Americans,
and so part of the reason I write the book
that you know, I'm I'm not trying to tell people
how to vote or what they need to do, but
I think the more people become aware of what's happening,
who's behind it, and what their goals are, people will
make maybe better decisions.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
You know, It's funny because it's like, it's so clear
to me that in these elections when people too now,
normal people lose, right the normal people to people who
don't want their students indoctrinated into Christianity, who just want
them to go to school, who don't want all this
political ideology, who want to study history like normal history

(30:34):
and not weird trumpy history that says slavery they didn't
really mean slavery, like who cares, you know, of course
they meant it, and that kind of stuff that when
people pay attention, they they vote against this.

Speaker 5 (30:49):
But the problem is it's very hard to get people
to pay attention.

Speaker 6 (30:52):
The other piece is not everyone's telling the full story
to what's happening here, and so if not every media
outlet is telling us. On Fox News, there's depiction of
America's education system as this this way foreign left radical
enterprise that is trying to get your kid to change
their gender as part of this lot to destroy America.

(31:13):
And so I've talked with people and there's more of
these stories coming out who heard that message, were terrified
by it and voted for some of these kind of
far right school board candidates. Now a year or two later,
they're looking taking a closer look and seeing, wait a second, wait,
what are they doing? And they're realizing it's first of all,
the story that they were fed was untrue. It was

(31:34):
just a strong man to get them routed up. And
then they're seeing the policies that they're putting forward, removing books,
bringing in chaplains, all these sorts of things, and they're saying, wait,
that's not what I wanted. I feel duped. And so
I think there are people, even not just moderate Republicans,
just you know, maybe even Trump voting Republicans who are

(31:55):
tapping on this. And I've seen that in communities. I've
seen I've seen school board members. There were one in
North Texas recently. There's an article on who ran on
this anti woke agenda. She's going to save the kids
and get on the school board. And then she got on.
She took a look at the policies and the curriculum,
and she thought, wait, this is just all they're doing

(32:15):
is teaching kids to be kind to each other. There's
no secret plot here. And so she's now come out
and changed her cortunity is going public with that story.
And so I do think it's just a challenge of
telling people the truth about what's happening.

Speaker 1 (32:29):
That is an amazing thing, because you know, I was
on this show with Jordan Klipper and I asked him
if people ever have this come to Jesus moment where
they like listen to themselves, and he said they never
ever do so, and that got me pretty depressed, so
hearing that there are some people who are still intellectually

(32:50):
honest or at least with it enough to be able
to be like, this is not real. And again, like
American history, recent American history is lined with people who
have who have been in red states, had Red senators
and then been like this is too much like think
of Kansas.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (33:09):
In fact, one of the moms who was the most
vocal voices pushing to take over the school board in
South Flay. I mean this is someone who was like
she would make the news when she spoke itscore meeting
because she was so firery and over the top and
wanting criminal charges against board members. And I've been watching
her on social media and as she's watched the school

(33:31):
board kind of go into this, the Carrol School board
in South Flake is just you know, they're all seven
members are now from this faction that was anti CRT,
anti DEI, and she's seeing the kind of Christian nationalism
piece of it, and she didn't know that was going
to be part of it. And so this mom who
was the most extreme is trying to like lead a
recall effort forri Ki's board members that she she supported.

(33:52):
She supported it. She's not progressive, she's not liberal. She's
not even a modern conservative. She's very conservative. She's saying
that's enough.

Speaker 5 (33:59):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, Mike.

Speaker 6 (34:01):
Yeah, thanks for doing this. Appreciate you.

Speaker 2 (34:05):
Melissa Walker is the head of Giving Circles at the
States Project.

Speaker 5 (34:09):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Melissa, Oh, thanks so much for
having me excited.

Speaker 7 (34:14):
To be here.

Speaker 1 (34:15):
Let's talk about the States Project. Tell us why you
decided to do this.

Speaker 8 (34:20):
I have kind of a funny origin story here because
I was writing young adult and middle grade novels and
working in teen magazines in the fall of twenty sixteen,
but when Trump was elected, I really felt like I
had to pause and find a way to put.

Speaker 5 (34:37):
Out the fire.

Speaker 7 (34:38):
And I was lucky enough to attend a publishing holiday
party in December of twenty sixteen where I heard a
New York State Senator, Daniel Squadron speak, and what he
said really blew my mind and turned my world around,
because I started to understand that everything I was worried about,
and everything I cared about, was being decided in state
capitals and not in Washington, d C. From education funding

(34:59):
to environment policy, to healthcare, to civil rights to abortion,
to the core of our democracy, voting rights, and of
course jerrymandering, the drawing of the district lines that decide
who goes to Congress, all in the hands of state lawmakers.
And when I realized that, and I realized that I
wanted to focus on it, I tried to figure out
how I could have the biggest impact, and I really
started to organize my community in that direction. And six

(35:22):
months later, Daniel Squadron resigned from New York State Senate
to start the States Project, and I joined him there
because I believed in the mission so much to change
the balance of power in state chambers to elect majorities
that are focused on improving people's lives.

Speaker 5 (35:36):
What does that look like.

Speaker 1 (35:38):
I feel like there are so many people who are
like I want to do something, they really feel powerless.
So talk to us about what you do and how
it's been meaningful.

Speaker 7 (35:50):
Yeah, absolutely so. The sentence that really galvanized me that
night in that at that holiday party was this one
from Daniel Squadron. It is often cheaper to change the
balance of power in an entire state chamber than it
is to win a single competitive congressional seat. Right, Congressional
races cost millions and millions of dollars, and state legislative

(36:10):
races do not. So when I started to realize that
there were these fifty mini congresses in our country that
were deciding so much about how we live our lives
and about the state of our democracy, and that it
was like, actually cheaper to influence and affect these races
than it would be to affect federal races, I understood
that I had the power to gather rooms together, you know,

(36:31):
backyards with ten people with sushi and beer, or you know,
living rooms with eight people in pizza and wine and
talking about state legislatures. And once I started to learn
how the right wing had focused on shifting power and
state legislatures, I started to learn that if we could
do it that way too, it would be incredibly impactful
to flips of these states. So I started to form

(36:53):
what I called the Giving Circle, which was just a
bunch of people coming together and putting in whatever they
could to pool resources. And we really learned a lot.
So we learned things like from twenty ten to twenty sixteen,
Democrats lost nearly one thousand state legislative seats. As we
stared at the White House and felt good about having
elected President Obama, but in those states where their right

(37:15):
toook power in state houses and state senate, they made
people's lives bad. They defunded the education and put in
right to work laws and got it environmental protections. But
people didn't say that must be my state senator, my
state house rep. Because most people don't know who goes
to their state capital for them. And once we started
to see these power centers that had been operating in
darkness and how little we needed to get together to

(37:37):
help change them, we started to kind of walk through
the world with more power by pooling our resources together
with friends and neighbors and families. And that first year
in twenty seventeen, right when Daniel Squadron resigned from Albany
to start the State's Project, we went into Virginia with him.
It was twenty seventeen. Virginia has odd year elections for
their state legislature. We were trying to help slip the

(37:59):
House Delegates and there were ten candidates who we finished
the funding for. Nine of those folks won their seats,
and the balance of power in Richmond got so close,
just one seat away from flipping that The next year,
Virginia expanded Medicaid, and we felt connected to that policy
outcome and we wanted to see more change. So that's
when I really stopped writing and started a Giving Circles

(38:23):
program at the States Project to help other people organize
their friends and their families and their neighbors to do
this strategic political giving, because I think that sometimes we
get really focused on the races at the top of
the ticket, the things that are on the news, the
people who are on MSNBC at night and on the
front page of the newspapers, But the state legislators that

(38:44):
we are supporting in these tipping point seats in states
where the balance of power can be shifted are folks
that most people won't have heard of, They won't know
their names, they won't know anything about them. But these
are the people who are deciding whether a state abortion access,
who are deciding the voting rights in the state, who
are deciding on climate policy and healthcare and civil rights

(39:06):
and education funding. One big, shining example of this is
in twenty twenty two, the State's Product was in Michigan
to help whip the State House and the States Senate.
We won both of those chambers by fewer than four
hundred votes to make one seat majorities in Michigan. Now,
last year in Congress, they passed about thirty bills right
in Washington d C. Michigan passed three hundred and twenty

(39:29):
one with those new majorities, and they were able to
codify the right to abortion in the state constitution and
end those right to work laws so the unions can
be strong again, and free breakfast and lunch for all
school children, and the strongest climate bill in the country,
stronger than New York's or California's. In Michigan. So these
are the types of foundational changes we can see when
we focus here, and groups of everyday people who are

(39:51):
coming together can really really move the needle.

Speaker 1 (39:55):
So I wanted to have you on because I heard
you speak and I've known about your project. I think
we've actually had Daniel on this podcast. But what I
wanted you to talk about was so the other day
I was at the doctor's office and I ran into
a woman who recognized me, and she said, I feel
so powerless. I don't know what I can do. I

(40:16):
am so worried about democracy. Please tell me what I
can do. So tell her what she can do.

Speaker 5 (40:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (40:25):
Absolutely, I mean I certainly felt that way for a
little while until I found this. And what I have
seen happen from the inside is these power shifts make immense,
handible change, and gathering people together in community is part
of that change. So the Giving circles model for political
giving is a really strong one because not only does

(40:47):
it kind of help raise electoral dollars for the state's
project to kind of focus and target this strategic way
to shift power, but also because it brings communities of
people together in connection, people with shared values coming together
and gaping in backyards like we were in the other night,
or living rooms or zoom rooms, and feeling the energy
of a community is an incredibly powerful way to walk

(41:09):
through the world. I didn't know that I could organize
that first year, our giving circle organized one hundred thousand dollars.
I had no idea that I could do that. But
little by little, from donations from twenty five dollars to
one thousand dollars at a time, we brought in enough
people to make that math problem more And now I

(41:31):
know that that is something that I can do, and
it makes me walk through the world with more power,
not only for this political venture, but also for my neighborhood,
for my local school, for anything that I care about.
Developing those skills of bringing attention to resources to something
that I care about has been a piece of me
figuring out that I am powerful and I do not
have to be a witness to what is happening in

(41:52):
our country. I can be a part of fighting for
our democracy. And the thing about plugging in at this
level is I can really see the impact of your work.
I just mentioned Michigan in those slim margins, but they
weren't the slimmest of twenty twenty two. We were also
in Minnesota to try to flip the state Senate and
we did that by one hundred and ninety one votes.
So the trifecta meaning the governor's mansion and both chambers

(42:16):
being in Democratic hands in Minnesota happened because of one
seat in the state Senate one hundred and ninety one
votes in Pennsylvania in an even slimmer margin, which in
twenty twenty two, the state's project was there to target
twelve seats. We got all twelve, but the final one
was won by sixty three votes. So what I said
to every giving circle leader that had chosen Pennsylvania that

(42:38):
year was that was you, because if every backyard end,
zoom room and gathering hadn't happened, I don't know if
we would have been able to win that majority. And
shifting power in Harrisburg means we've elected the first black
woman Speaker of the House in Pennsylvania and Billy has
the gabble on policy and it has been incredible to
watch that happen. And it is because of people organizing

(43:01):
their communities, and we all have that power when we
bring our people.

Speaker 1 (43:04):
Together, tell me what you guys are looking at in
the fall.

Speaker 7 (43:08):
Every year we do a ninety nine state chamber analysis,
and it's ninety nine because Nebraska is unfameral, so we
take a look at where power shifts are possible.

Speaker 5 (43:16):
Wait, say more on Nebraska.

Speaker 7 (43:19):
So Nebraska doesn't have a state House and a state Senate,
they just have one body. So that's why it becomes
ninety nine chambers. Why it's just the way they like
to do it, and it's a great piece of nerdy
trivia for.

Speaker 6 (43:32):
A dinner party.

Speaker 7 (43:33):
But we are focused on the nine states where we
think we see a path to the power shift.

Speaker 6 (43:39):
That we want.

Speaker 7 (43:39):
We're always looking for a power threshold. So our state
focuses in twenty twenty four include, of course defending those
new majorities in Michigan, Minnesota, and Pennsylvania, also trying to
flip state chambers in Arizona, where we're just two seats
away in the state House and the state Senate from
a flip, and also in New Hampshire, where we will

(44:02):
be working in both the House and the Senate, the
House to work on a flip and the Senate to
work on a tie. We see a path to a
tie there and we're also going to be in Nevada
to try to build a supermajority against a right wing
governor who vetos everything. So if we can build a
super majority, we can override some of those vetos and
get some good policies passed. And we're also in Kansas

(44:23):
and North Carolina, both places to break a right wing supermajority.
Kansas has the Democratic governor, Laura Kelly, whose veto has
been overridden on a bunch of things, including limits on abortion,
which the voters, as we saw, did not agree with,
but the legislature passed them anyway. In North Carolina, where
we just need to break that supermajority because there's an

(44:45):
important governor's race, but even if Josh Stein, the Democrat,
wins the governor's mansion, he will not have power unless
we break the super majority. So we're working in the
state House there and the final state for the first time,
we're going to be in Wisconsin because they have new
fairer map thanks to Supreme Court race that was one
last year with the help of a lot of activism.
And in Wisconsin, those FARA maps mean that we see

(45:07):
a path to potentially flipping the Assembly and certainly gaining
ground there. So those are our targets for twenty twenty four.

Speaker 1 (45:14):
The thing I'm struck by when we talk about these
maps is that in Minnesota, the governor there has been
able to do incredible things with free breakfast, free lunch,
is you know, feeding hungry children, which for me, I
feel like in a country this rich, we shouldn't have
any hungry children. Now this, by the way, is it controversial,

(45:37):
very controversial. You know, you could get there are Republicans
who say, like, what if we feed a middle class child,
like that's a tragedy. But Wisconsin has not been able
to do those same things because of their state legislature.

Speaker 7 (45:50):
Right, that's correct, that's right, And Minnesota wasn't able to
do that until we got the majority by one hundred
and ninety one vote margin.

Speaker 1 (45:57):
Tell the person who came and stopped me at the
doctor's office what you should do now.

Speaker 7 (46:05):
So I think there's a couple of options. If that
person is someone who does like to gather people and
organize a little bit, So maybe someone who has a
book club or who always organizes the potlic or who
hosts dinner parties, that is a giving circle leader, and
there are a bunch of them in every community, and.

Speaker 1 (46:21):
One of them is quite a famous actress. I mean,
there are people here who are doing this because they
are worried, right.

Speaker 7 (46:30):
Absolutely, absolutely, And you know there's going to be so
much wild emotional political giving that happens this year when
people get panicked, when people get scared, and it's not
going to be strategic. And I think anyone who's putting
any dollars into political stuff this year needs to be
strategic about where their dollars will have an impact. And

(46:52):
that's really what giving circles are for. I tell every
giving circle leader that starts one that they are turning
on the porch light for strategic political gear, and that
when they approach friends and family with the story of
this effort, they are really giving people an opportunity to
have an impact that they didn't know was possible. You know,
when I started working at the State's Project, a friend
of mine said, oh, how's the fundraising gig going? And

(47:14):
I was like, I'm not fundraising, I'm flipping state legislatures.
And she said through fundraising, right, And I was like,
oh my gosh, I guess I'm fundraising. But really, what
I think I'm doing is walking into a room and
saying to people, you can have a political impact that
you didn't know was possible. At the foundations of our country.
It's where the right wing's been building power for decades.
And I'll take my word for it. Ask the Kochs

(47:35):
and the Melons and Escapes and the devoces like this
is where the rubber meets the road on policy and
on congressional elections and on the bills that are rising
up to the Supreme Court. Right, it was a Mississippi
law that took down Row. And if that one hadn't
done it, there were sixteen other states that had keued
up abortion vans. Yeah, and they queued up those bands
specifically to rest of the Supreme Court to challenge Row.

(47:57):
And that was state legislatures that did that. And there
is also a lever over the presidential here because not
only does state legislators decide who can vote and when
and how in their states, but also because the pack
to steal the presidency in twenty twenty ran directly through
state legislatures. It wasn't senators and congress people who Trump

(48:17):
called into the Oval office in December of twenty twenty,
it was state lawmakers from Michigan, from Minnesota, from Pennsylvania
and Arizona. He was asking them to change their electors
and hand him their elect for or college votes, because
state governments handle their elections. So it's this ultimate power
center that can really be changed with a fraction of

(48:40):
the investment that you would spend on a federal race.
But it's hard for people to figure out, Okay, which
are the potential tipping point seats in which states is
a power shift possible? So that's what the State's Project
has done with a research team and a ton of data.
But what giving circles do is they sign up at
Statesproject dot org. They start their own pay which our

(49:01):
team sets up, and then they've got a place to
bring their friends and family and say, we are doing
a strategic political movement here where we are helping the
State's Project target these tipping point seats to shift power.
It's all been figured out. We choose our target state together,
and then we march in there to these strategically chosen
races where we will not have heard of these candidates,

(49:22):
but they are the folks who are deciding these issues.
I would say to her, think about starting a giving circle,
Think about joining a giving circle. Checkout statesproject dot org
and try to figure out if there's a way to
plug in, because there really is, especially if you're someone
who wants to do this with friends and family. And
I promise folks that when you start inviting people in,

(49:43):
they will thank you. Because everyone is looking for a
place to have political impact right now and it's not
easy to find.

Speaker 1 (49:49):
I think that's really important. You know, this is cheaper
than a congressional race. It's cheaper than a mayoral race.
It's cheaper than I mean, this is like the These
are the races that no one is talking about. I
know because on this podcast Jesse and I had We
didn't have every but we had many, many, many members

(50:10):
of the Virginia House of Delegates and Virginia State Senators
on this podcast because it is so incredibly important.

Speaker 5 (50:22):
And these are such small marginal elections.

Speaker 7 (50:25):
That's exactly right, and I'm so glad you put a
spotlight on that. I mean, Virginia was a state we
were in twenty twenty three with the giving circles and
able to help hold the state Senate and flip the
House of Delegates to put a wall in front of
Governor Youngkin's right wing agenda, and it's been incredibly important.
I mean, Virginia is the last southern state that doesn't
have restrictions further restrictions on abortion post obs and we

(50:48):
see that, you know, after this Florida ban, Virginia is
the spot people are coming to like, this is really important,
and not just for the state itself, but for our country.
You know, this is our country. There aren't country borders
between our states. We are in the United States, and
we have to care about what happens in each of
these places. So I absolutely think it is a place.

(51:09):
We stu a sign on our office store that said,
not where the glamor is, just where the power is.
And I really believe.

Speaker 1 (51:15):
That such a great line, and I agree, and I
was convinced that Youngkin, with his fake moderate stuff, would
be able to flip the state houses and ban abortion,
and in fact he did not, and probably in.

Speaker 5 (51:29):
Some part due to you guys.

Speaker 7 (51:31):
We were the biggest national investor in Virginia with the
help of giving circles. Really who put more resources on
the ground in Virginia for this than the DNZ did.
I mean, it was an incredible thing. To watch and
it's you know, it's not three dimensional chess, right, it's
connected four. These candidates need time to go meet their
voters and knock on doors. They need digital ads that
have been tested locally, they need TV ads, they need

(51:55):
some mailers. Now this is not some complicated thing, but
when we ignore state legislative races, we just leave the field.
And that's really where the right wing's been building and
we've been letting it go. So we're fighting back.

Speaker 1 (52:07):
As Amanda Littman says, you got to run for every seat.
Thank you so so much, Melissa Walker. It's called the
State Project. Just tell us one more time, absolutely, the
State's Project at statesproject dot org.

Speaker 7 (52:20):
Check us out.

Speaker 3 (52:23):
No, no moment.

Speaker 5 (52:26):
Rick Wilson, do you have a moment of fuckery?

Speaker 4 (52:30):
I always have a moment of fuckery, Polly, And look,
I know that this has been the story of stories,
but can we just for a moment stop pretending that
Sam Alito and Clarence Thomas are not completely political apparatics
and not actual Supreme Court justices.

Speaker 3 (52:47):
Can we just for a moment the whole story with
his multiple flags.

Speaker 4 (52:51):
It just strikes me that John Roberts, who people keep
hoping and praying will stand up and take control of
things and tell them that they have to stop with
the appearance of partisan intentionality. I had hoped myself that
John Roberts would stand up, But until he does, we're
going to have a Supreme Court that Americans are increasingly
divided about, increasingly frightened of, and increasingly in a situation

(53:13):
where they have no credibility with the vast majority of
the American people.

Speaker 1 (53:18):
So my moment of fuckery is that I think we
should all just take a step back from this poll
of palooza and just focus on what's happening on the
ground in Biden world. And the reason why this is
my moment of fuckery and it's not my moment of
fackery every day, is because read this piece by Nate
Cohen of the New York Times, who talked about how

(53:41):
I no, No, this is smart, talked about how when
they're doing these polls, they're trying to account for these
hidden Trump voters who may or.

Speaker 5 (53:50):
May not vote.

Speaker 1 (53:51):
So maybe these people will vote, and maybe it will
rain and they won't.

Speaker 5 (53:56):
So every single thing that is going to happen between
now and November is what matters, not what happens in
a poll of possible voters who might come out but
have never voted.

Speaker 1 (54:11):
You know, those kind of quantifications and that kind of pulling.

Speaker 5 (54:16):
That is my moment of fuck break.

Speaker 4 (54:19):
May I offer a sub moment of fuckery on that
there is a species of polster right now who believe
so much in the polling averages. They truly believe that
there could never be anything wrong with the polling averages,
and that their weights that they've applied to the different
polls in terms of their quality are universally a correct
and be accepted. This is a flawed system that the Republicans,

(54:41):
and believe me, I'm a former Republican, guys, I can
tell you if we want to figure out how to
game a system, we'll game the damn system.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
Thank you, Rick, that was so good. You're so smart anytime.
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

(55:08):
and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.