May 15, 2024 • 56 mins
Ron Brownstein of The Atlantic reads the tea leaves on the latest Biden vs. Trump polls. Anne Applebaum details her new book "Autocracy Inc.: The Dictators Who Want to Run the World." Nikki Fried, the chair of the Florida Democratic Party, examines how Democrats can win in Florida again.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Greg Abbott says he's not responsible
for public education budget shortfalls.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Why would he be? We have such an interesting show
for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
And Applebaum stops by to talk to us abutter new
book Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators who want to run the world.
Then we'll talk to Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki fried
about how Democrats can win in Florida again.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
But first we have.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Senior editor at The Atlantic and author of Rock Me
on the Water, Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome back to Fast.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Politics, my friend and really one of the smartest people
I know.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, MOLLI thanks you the nice intro. It's true we
had had been gotta being true as think shak exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I mean, you're smart, but you also have been doing
this for a long time.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, month is my fortieth anniversary of covering national politics
again this month in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
You started covering national politics when you were nine.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, you really do have the benefit of hindsight, and
I always think that one of the things that we
really struggle with in pundit land is that we don't
love to draw from recent history for whatever reason, and
so we often deal with things as aberrations and not
(01:28):
as you know, part of a larger pattern or tapestry,
which I think is useful absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I mean, you know, almost everything that happens in politics
is an extension of something that has already happened. Now
you do get swerves, and we are getting a few
swerves in this election that are kind of creating. You know,
it's a funny thing. You know, this may have been
a matchup that very few people wanted, but it is
certainly a matchup that a lot of people anticipated and
(01:55):
kind of even if they felt resigned to it, thought
we were going to get. And yet in how it
is dividing the electorate, it is not unfolding exactly the
way that you would have predicted their signs. But you know,
a lot of the dynamics are somewhat surprising and counterintuitive
(02:17):
and really kind of added to the uncertainty about where
we're going.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, we are going to be cross tabs truthers right now.
So cross tabs are the parts where they break down
the poles and they look at who pulled what there
were some very dicey polls released on Monday, and they
said a lot of different things, and when you looked
(02:40):
at the cross tabs, they didn't entirely track with each other.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I at least think that if you look at the
bulk of polls, both nationally and in the Swing States,
there are a few things that are consistently appearing, some
dynamics and as I say, dynamics that you would not
necessarily expect. And just I think the two two biggest
ones the two actually three, there are three kind of
(03:04):
big inversions that are underway, and they are and when
you add them all up together, they're these demographic inversions
are kind of producing an unexpected geographic dynamic or map,
you know. I think you can say in polling pretty consistently,
I think, almost universally in fact, that Biden is holding
(03:26):
a higher share of his twenty twenty support among whites
than non whites.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And older whites too, which is a strange.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
That's the second one, right, So the first one is
that if you look at the change from twenty twenty
to now, Biden has lost more ground with non whites
than with whites. I think that is a pretty consistent pattern,
whether we're talking about black voters or Hispanic voters. And
I'm not surprised that Biden is often running a little
better with college whites than he did last time, because
people forget, it's easy to forget the dobbs only happened
(03:57):
after the twenty twenty election, and very sixth only happened
after the twenty twenty election. But what's surprising to me
is that Biden really, in most polls, I mean, there
are some, there are outlaws, he's not really losing that
much ground with non college whites. So point one, Biden
holding his twenty twenty support better among whites than nonm walites.
You got to point two, which is that Biden is
(04:18):
holding his twenty twenty support better among older voters than
younger voters or even middle aged seniors have been a
Republican leaning constituency, you know roughly. Yeah, well, I mean,
at least the last twenty five years, pretty consistently, you
got from the New Deal seniors to like, you know,
different cohorts of seniors, and eating twenty twenty, Biden and
(04:39):
Trump roughly split seniors, with most of the big data
sources giving Trump a slide advantage. Biden usually has its
slight advantage now among seniors.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Which is, by the way, completely crazy if you think
about it, that elderly people now like the Democrat.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I mean, that is wild stuff about that.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But let's just close the circle by singing by comparison.
You know, Biden's vote among young people eighteen to twenty
nine or eighteen to thirty four, depending on the ball
is down significantly.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that is why he's losing in these polls.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And that plus I think black and Hispanic men up
into their forties, not only young people will come back
to like why why he's holding a better receives. As
an outgrowth of these first two inversions, there's a third
in version, which is that Trump is running best among
the people who are least likely to vote. I mean,
what we're Democrats thinking they have to expand the electorate
(05:36):
in order to win. That may not be the case
this year. I mean, Biden is running well with college
whites and seniors, who are two of the most reliable
voting groups in the country, and he's struggling with non
college non men, who are not one of the most
reliable voting groups in the country. And if you look
at for example, the New York Times, you know, Santopolis
(05:58):
can like yesterday, not the individual states, their accumulation of
the whole thing. Trump was leading by twenty points among
people who said they didn't vote in twenty twenty, which
is not unusual. Definitely the polling like that. But those
people who didn't vote in twenty twenty said they were
less likely to vote, far less motivate than people who
did so. In the end, I think it's going to
(06:18):
be really I think there are a lot of younger,
non white men who are going to be really hard
for Biden to win back, and the kind of the
hard triage question in the fall, maybe can you at
least get them off voting for Trump, either by voting
for Kennedy or Cornell West or by not voting, kind
of alienating them from Trump so much and they kind
(06:40):
of say, well, both of these guys stink. I'm staying home.
That is not something the Democrats have had to think
about much in my lifetime, but that may case. So
if you add all of this up, it gives you,
again what is a pretty clear pattern, which is that
Biden is much more competitive in the three rust Belt
swing states, which are older and whiter than he is
(07:00):
in the four sun Belt swing states, which are younger.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Which you're younger, and more Hispanic.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Ben Eltin said to me it was Bernie's Polster like,
you know, I can't even wrap my head around. We're
doing better in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania relative to Arizona, Nevada,
and North Carolina and Georgia because they're less diverse, you know,
and thus less change from last time. If you look
at these demographic forces that were describing, these demographic trends
(07:25):
that were describing, it creates clear tiering in the geography.
It may change, but right now Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
plus Omaha the one CD in Nebraska would get Biden
to two seventy And as Carville said to me, if
you win all three of them, you win. If you'll
(07:46):
lose any one of the three, you are scrambling because
Arizona and Nevada look much harder than those three, though
I think still doable, and the other two, the southeastern ones,
Georgia and North Carolina, looking and harder than them. So
that's kind of where we are. Can Trump hold that
level of non white support all the way to the
(08:07):
finish line. No, I doubt it. Yeah, I doubt it,
but it doesn't necessarily mean it goes back to Biden.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
No, exactly two things I want to bring up here.
I also wonder how much of this is polling error. Right,
there are two things I think going on. Younger voters
are mad at Biden for any number of reasons, and
he's definitely Hispanic voters also. But I just wonder if
there's also some polling inaccuracies here, because.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
These are harder groups to poll.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
True, the polls are internally consistent in the sense that,
like with Hispanic voters, they are expressing overwhelming discontent with
Biden's economy and the belief that the economy was better
under Trump. And people who do focus groups with Hispanic
and for that matter, Black voters. I cannot tell you
how many Democratic bolsters I have talked to who have
(08:57):
said variations on the same phrase. They sit in the
folk group and somebody says Trump's a racist, He's crude,
you know, he's disrespectful of women. I wouldn't want him
around my kids. But I'm being honest. I had more
money in my pocket when he was president, and things
are more alaudable. So there's that internal consistency. And then
with young people, like the fall of twenty twenty is
like the one time they've ever been excited about Biden.
(09:19):
I mean, you know, they didn't rally to him in
the primary, and they certainly have not given him highpproval
ratings really throughout his presidency. I personally am dubious that
there is a complete polling fail here because we are
getting the same message from so many places. But as
you note, when there are large sample surveys aim just
at this group, these groups like the young people surveys
(09:42):
of these pseudo politics at JFK School of Kennedy, or
large sample Hispanic polls from Univision, generally it is not
as dire as it is for in the in the
media polls which have smaller samples of these groups. But
I think it is real. I mean it's like the
question is kind of where does he land? I do
(10:03):
not think Biden will match his twenty twenty number among
black voters, Hispanic voters, or young voters. That doesn't mean
he will do as badly as he is doing today.
And so you know, the question may be where in
that spectrum from where he was to where he is now,
does he finish? And by the way, if we're talking
about Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin versus as Arizona and Nevada,
(10:28):
I think you also have to kind of have in
your mind, is it possible to win back black voters
more easily than it will be to win back Hispanic voters?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right though, we know that Hispanic voters are not a
monolith because there are different kinds of Hispanic voters.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
The share of Hispanic voters who have expressed conservative views
on all sorts of things was always higher than the
share who voted for Republicans because there was kind of
a barrier and a sense that Republicans are anti Hispanic. Obviously,
Trump has given plenty of ammunition to that argument. But
what you're seeing, what you so on twenty twenty, and
what we're seeing twenty twenty four, is that more Hispanics
(11:04):
who express conservative views are willing to also vote Republican.
But that doesn't mean, like you know, like the New
York Times stuff had Trump winning Hispanics I think.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Right, which is completely crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I don't think Biden can match what he's got in
twenty twenty, but I do not think it is guaranteed
that Trump will hold everything he is poland in fact,
you know, the one thing Trump has to be nervous
about is that, given how little movement there has been
amoung wide voters, is lead largely dependent on doing something
that no Republican has ever run.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And has ever done historically ever.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So that's not necessarily solid ground on which to stand, right.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And this is a guy who's largely run on anti black,
anti Hispanic racism.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
He's getting the better worlds, right, He's azing his base
with these very polarizing messages about race, calling all of
these black prosecutors rasists.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And so how do you rely on those voters when
you're when half of your campaign is maligning.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Them, well, because you're counting on them to vote for
you on other issues. Right, the share of Hispanic and
Black voters who will say the economy was better under Trump,
or will say I trust Trump more than Biden on
the economy is too big for Biden to be comfortable with.
Like if everybody who says that, if every black and
Hispanic voter who says that votes for Trump, he's in
(12:26):
a lot of Trump saying's true, and whites by the
way Biden right now is trailing by what fifteen points
on who can better handle the economy. I don't know
if it will be that bad on election day, but
it's probably not going to be even on election day,
which means that Biden is going to have to convince
a significant number of voter which.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Is insane by the way.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I mean, just to pull back for a second, like
Trump to completely disorganized lunatic who you know, basically believes
in a form of crony capitalism, which is at best
Russia and it works North Korea.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So if Trump believes on the economy, that means Biden
is going to have to convince some people who think
Trump is better for their bottom line to vote against
him anyway, because he's in a front to their rights
and their values and democracy and that is available to him.
I mean, there are people who will make that calculation.
In fact, there are millions of them. We saw it
in twenty twenty two. But the question is are there
(13:21):
There's not an infinite pool of people who will make
that calculation, and Biden just has to improve his own
his own standing. People ask all the time, like why
isn't this hurting, Why isn't that hurting Trump? The answer
is it is hurting Trump. I mean, look at yesterday's
The New York Times Sianna Polos. In the head to
head against Trump, Biden is seven points better than his
(13:42):
approval rating in Arizona, six better in Michigan, six points
better in Pennsylvania, six points better in Wisconsin, five points
better in trigger. That is very unusual. That is the
measure of how many people are resistant, who are saying,
I don't think Biden's doing any a good job, but
I am not going to vote for Trump anyway because
(14:03):
he is so unacceptable to me. The problem is, you know,
as I said, there's not an infinite number of people
who will make that calculation. And the way I phrase
it is that all of Trump's problems are like throwing
this seventeen foot ladder to Biden. The problem is is
that right now Biden is standing in a twenty foot hole,
and he doesn't have to get back to ground level
(14:24):
to win this election, but he does have to get
somewhat closer to it than he is today.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
That makes sense, yes, But talk about the genericity because
that is really interesting. And the other thing I want
you to talk about is in this poll in Nevada,
it has this Senate candidate writing about fifteen points ahead
of Biden, Jackie Rosen.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I'm sorry, but what there's no okay, yeah, right. So
the history so here is I mean, the history is
that it is becoming almost impossible for Senate candidates to
win in states that vote the other way for president.
In the last in twenty sixteen, it was the first
election in American history where every Senate race went the
same way as the presidential race in that state. And
(15:10):
in twenty twenty, it happened again in every race except
meaning where Susan Collins won while Biden on the state.
As you saw on that New York Times poll, there
are Democratic Senate candidates who are winning in states where
Biden is even or losing, but most of them are
under fifty. And in that you know, except for Tammy Baldwin,
who was close to fifty, I think she was a
(15:31):
forty nine. I cannot imagine Joe Biden losing Nevada by
ten points in Jackie Rosen winning.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
By seventeen points. I mean, well, she was up by two,
I think, right, But I mean it just seemed like
a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Well, I remember states like Kentucky and South Carolina and Kansas, Montana.
Democrats spent a fortune in the Senate races in those states,
and I don't believe any of those candidates ran any
more than two points better than Biden. That was the
most and that was just and no one really ran
better than Trump. On the Republican side, I mean, they
(16:04):
ran slightly better than Trump, but it's really hard there
are you know, in the twenty five states that Biden
won last time, Republicans are down to two of the
fifty Senate seats, and in the twenty five states the
Trump won, Democrats are down at three of the fifty
Senate seats. So I do think it is possible that
someone like Tammy Baldwin or Bob Casey or even Ruben
Diego could win if Biden loses their state narrowly, and
(16:27):
maybe even Alyssa Slotkin. That could be harder though against
a solid opponent in Mike Rogers. But by and large
Democrats need Biden to recover or else the Senate I
think could get bad. Now, what you're referring to is
the opposite, right, which is, you know that Democrats in
the Senate races and in the generic House ballot are
(16:47):
doing better than Biden is doing and that is kind
of interesting. I mean, you know, you could you can
look at that a number of ways. Some people have said, well,
you know, it's just a Biden problem. It's it's not
a democratic problem. I think the history is more that
you can't separate the two, and that if there is
a Biden problem, it will become a democratic problem by
(17:08):
the end that you know that ultimately it's a verdict
on his governance and democratic governance, and everyone in the
party is going to face a big undertow if in
fact he can't win some of these states. Now you
know again Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He you know, those
are really tight again, as they have been in each
(17:29):
of the last two elections, Arizona and Nevada. Most polling
it shows Trump with a lead, a significant lead, but
I don't view those as gone for Democrats. Georgia in
North Carolina could be very art although North Carolina is
kind of an intriguing wildcard with abortion, but really after
the Big three, it's kind of a fall off.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
But I want to just pause for a minute and
remind you how much Republicans flood the zone with junkie polls,
and how much polling is really no longer a science.
And also more importantly, I want to just look back
at Wisconsin for a minute, where Ron Johnson basically won
(18:10):
on polls right. Every poll showed Mandela Barnes seven eight
points behind Mandela Barns abandoned by the Democrats lost by
half a percent. So I do think there is an
X factor here, and Republicans have used polls really successfully
to suppress the vote.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
It's something like real good politics really is just as
I said, just an arm of the Republican master's machine.
You're right, and they do include a lot of junk piles.
My focus is less on the absolutes of the ors
race than on the patterns that we were talking about earlier.
We know I think I do think we know from
public and private polling that Biden use holding ist is
(18:49):
vote better older and wider than younger and more diverse,
and he is running better among the most likely voters
than the least likely voters, two.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Which are both two very good you want those voters.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
All of that has clear geographic implications, and they leave
him with a path to winning. But what could be
a narrow path, and that's kind of where he is.
I mean, I could see a world where Biden can
survive losing Wisconsin and replacing it with that. No, I
could see a world where he can buy losing Michigan
and replacing it with Arizona, Nevada. There's no I think
(19:23):
plausible replacement for Pennsylvania, And in all likelihood, it seems
unlikely to me that he would win Arizona and Nevada
unless he's also winning all three of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Given what we are seeing with you know, younger Hispanic voters,
like I said, Dobbs happened after twenty twenty. January sixth
happened after twenty twenty. Biden's vote on boncollege educated white
(19:43):
voters is likely to be higher, I think, in twenty
four than it was in twenty despite concerns about things
like inflation, and if he doesn't decline much among the
blue collar whites that added little boost in the Madison
you know suburbs, and the Detroit suburbs and the Philadelphia
suburbs could allow him to squeeze out all three of
(20:07):
those states, even if turnout and or margins are down
for him in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia. The math works
there there are enough of those college whites that you
can offset even if you underperform a little bit among
black voters, whereas it in the Southwest, I think the
Hispanic vote is just too big a piece of the
Democratic coalition. If in fact, he does lose anywhere near
(20:31):
as much ground as now seems possible, it's going to
be hard to make it up. So what's the answer
for him? I mean, you know, in Arizona, Nevada, it's
recover as much out of that ground on Hispanic voters
as you can get it as close to that roughly
sixty percent that they got in twenty twenty. And then
when that shortfall is down a manageable number, you could
make it up with college white women who are pissed
(20:51):
off about Dobbs and particularly with abortion, you know, referenda
on the ballot in both of those states. But he's
got to I think he's got to improve his own
circumstance with some of these voters. That is more the
key than you know, seeding more doubts about Trump, because,
like I said, Biden is already the doubts about Trump
(21:11):
are evident in the results that Biden is running so
far out of his own approval rating compared to previous presidents,
but pull rating at thirty eight or forty winning a
state that is a big goal. That is a lot
of people who have to say, I don't think you're
doing a good job, but I'll vote for you with
you anyway, because I think the other guy's threat millions
of people will say that ten million people will say
(21:33):
that I guarantee you twelve million people, but well fifteen, well, eighteen,
that I think is less clear. And that's why Biden,
I think, has to improve his own standing, why it's
so essential for him to do that.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Thank you, Ron Brownstein, Thank you Mollie.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
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
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and top bags. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com.
(22:11):
And Applebaum is the author of Photocracy, Inc. The Dictators
who Want to Run the World. Welcome back to Fast
Politics and Applebaum.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I'm so delighted to have you.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So I'm reading this article by you in the Atlantic,
and I'm like, this is just so important, And I
actually was thinking I was reading, I was thinking, this
is so important, this is so important. Oh my god,
how we should just be talking about this all the time.
It's actually part of your new book, Autocracy inc. I
(22:46):
don't know how it's so timely when it's part of
a book, but it is like you've just completely nailed
what we are about to go through and how important
it is to know these things, So talk to us
about that.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
So the article describes authoritarian propaganda, not as we used
to know of it in the twentieth century, when the
Soviet Union used to make posters of tractor drivers with
kind of square jaws and talk about steel production. Authoritary
and propaganda nowadays is mostly not promoting anything, but is
(23:22):
instead aimed at undermining democracy and kind of smearing democracy.
And it's also aimed at creating citicism and nihilism, partly
by doing this kind of non stop lining that we've
all become so familiar with, which eventually leads people to say,
I have no idea what's true. I am not paying
(23:43):
attention to this I'm checking out and I'm going to go,
you know, fishing or whatever. And the argument of the piece,
which is part of a larger argument in the book,
is that although this was a kind of early Russian project,
it's now there are a lot of countries that do it.
China is one, Venezuela is one, but also a part
(24:04):
of the American Republican Party, uses the same tactics, of
the same language, and is in turn amplified by you know,
Russian and Chinese and other actors. And it's not a conspiracy.
This isn't a description of some kind of secret saying
that's happening. It's a open project and you don't have
to know any special you don't have to have access
(24:24):
to secret rooms in order to see it happening. I mean,
you can analyze it with your own eyes.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And Republican members of the House have brought this up.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Michael McCall, Yes, so, I mean one just little mini example.
This is more specifically about Russia and Ukraine. There was
a story kind of bouncing around the internet about the
fres of Ukraine Zelenski, who supposedly owns two vulgar yachts,
and of course he doesn't own the yachts, and other
people owned the yachts, and the yachts aren't for sale,
and he didn't buy them. And it's just a piece
(24:54):
of false propaganda. But it's circulated in the same ecosystem
that other are right and Republican and Russian propaganda circulates.
And several people heard colleagues within the Senate, the Senator
Tom Tillis is another Republican, also talked about this, so
much so that when the House and Senate were debating
sending more weapons to Ukraine, people were saying, why should
(25:16):
we send weapons when Zelenski's just going to use the
money to buy yachts. That there are now members of
Congress who believe this complete garbage and who have trust
in it because it comes from the same world where
they get the rest of their information is just one
little example of how smoothly the system now works.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, I mean just terrifying.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
I feel like the propaganda that these autocrats shopped in
twenty sixteen was a little bit different than what it's now.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
I mean, they just get better at it, they get
more sophisticated. Some of the cruder things have disappeared. I mean,
it felt a few years ago, like the Russians were
just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick.
You know, Oh, let's do anti immigrant groups in Idaho.
You know, let's do something else. And it's just become
more sophisticated and more targeted. They're better now at hiding
tracks so you can, for example, they you know, they'll
(26:07):
create a video, put it online, seed it to several
people so that they retweet it or repost it, and
then the original video will disappear so that it's not
traceable anymore, so that you can't know where it's from,
a lot of the social media companies in twenty twenty
took down and actually some of them, I think Meta
still takes down networks of what they call inorganic material.
(26:30):
You know, so if they see an inorganic which is
foreign propaganda that they recognize as being false online and
they take it down. But if they can't detect it
because it's now being posted in different ways, then of
course it's much harder to take it down. And of
course the other big shift from twenty twenty is that
Twitter doesn't take it down or certainly doesn't make down
all of it or any of it or any of it,
and even Facebook has become somewhat less interested in doing this.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Partly.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Then another piece of the story, and this is also
in my article, is that but of course there's been
a there's been a you know, all of the academic
groups and researchers and think tanks and others who were
set up after twenty sixteen to track this stuff and
trace it and understand it have all in the last
few years become focus of really quite horrible and in
(27:16):
some cases debilitating attacks from the far right. Some of
it is personal there's just sphere campaigns, and some of
it is lawsuits, congressional investigations. Jim Jordan has a committee
in Congress that's investigating some of them, the Weaponization of
Government Committee. Deafly, his Weaponization of Government Committee has looked
at this, and so even some of the rudimentary things,
you know, the kind of occasional phone calls between the
(27:39):
state department or federal government and the social media companies
are now you know, almost re bote. You know, people
don't do it. We've I'm successfully pushed back against anyone
who talks about this, studies it, thinks about it, or
publishes about it. And that's again because it helps them,
it serves their purposes. So we now have a system
where whether it's Russia or it's China, where it's other
(28:00):
autocratic state, it puts out this kind of material, there's
less resistance to it, and there's less willingness or ability
to stop. And even then there was four years ago.
And I just say another piece of the story being
that we're talking now about the United States. But of
course this is an international project. The Chinese have spent
billions of dollars buying and creating television stations and websites
(28:21):
and content sharing agreements in countries all over Africa, all
over Asia, Latin America, and of course they use that
network to put out the same stuff too, So the
stuff that we see is also seen in all over
the world. So it's not just, of course we're mostly
interested in the US piece of it, but there's a
wider project as well.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I mean, it just feels insurmountable, and which I guess
is the point, right.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Yeah, I mean I don't think it's insurmountable. It's just
that it hadn't yet been taken seriously. But I mean,
so funny thing for me is that I've been talking
about this for I'd say a decade. You know, I
started seeing this stuff in twenty fourteen, at the time
the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of people
who are aware of it. I mean, there's almost nothing
in my article that hasn't been published somewhere before, been
(29:06):
talked about by so on before. It's known, but it
somehow hasn't risen to the level of being a proper
focus of anybody's concern, and so far the efforts to
push back against it are pretty minimal. I mean, ultimately,
part of the problem is that you'd have to think
about talenttering, especially the Chinese influence in Africa. You have
to think about changing the way the democratic world, not
(29:27):
just the US, but Europe and others do their messaging,
conduct their communications. You probably have to start thinking about
how you regulate social media, by which I don't mean
censor it. I mean we make the algorithms transparent, give
some people some choice about algorithms and so on. I mean,
you'd have to begin doing very serious things, and so
far it hasn't risen to the level of the thing
(29:49):
that people in Congress are most aware of and speak about.
And when it does, of course, the tech companies lobbied
very hard against it, against any kind of change or
any kind of regulation. There are some pretty easy fixes
for some of this. I don't know that there are
easy fixes, but even just being able to identify it
would help people. I would make social media companies legally
(30:11):
responsible for stuff that appears on their platforms, which would
of course change them completely, you know, but I'm not empress,
and I don't get to decide that that's what I
would do. I think people have correctly identified some of
this in TikTok, and I think that's a part of
the reaction against it. That's the first time I've seen
conversse take seriously both TikTok as a system for collecting
(30:32):
data about Americans but also as a source of algorithmic
amplification of who knows who's messaging? Actually, I mean, one
of the weird things about TikTok, just but which is
not unusual, is that we don't even know that much
about it, and we can't study it, so we don't
really know what people are seeing or reading on it,
or how millions of young people who read it are
reacting to it. And there seems to be a kind
(30:53):
of incoherate recognition, and there's something about that that's wrong.
But of course, you know, TikTok is an easy target
because it's Chinese zone and by the way, not in
Band in China, and band also in India, right, you know.
But of course the bigger problem would be the American owned.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Companies, right.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And there does seem to be an interest in Congress
in shirking all responsibility for any kind of regulation.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Yeah, partly because again I said, there's been a successful
conservative backlash against any regulation on the grounds that any
form of regulation is censorship, even though you know, we've
had regulation of political advertising for decades. We have in
the past regulated broadcasting, you know, we it's not it's
not unheard of most cursive decrovision, that's right. Most most
(31:37):
democracies do regulate some pieces of the public sphere. The
United States is much less regulated than other than than
other countries are. And I mean, ironically, what may eventually
happen is that the Europeans may regulate it, and then
right the social media companies will be forced to conform
to that, and that might change things. The conversation in
Europe is kind of farther along and more death. And
(31:59):
you know, European un is a kind of regulatory superpower.
I mean, that's what they do, that's what they're really.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
You're in Poland right now. This is like the year
of important elections. Many many countries are having elections, some
of them reel, some of them puppet.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Can you talk about what this sort of the rest
of the world looks like.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Well, Poland had an election. It's big election was in October,
and we had a surprising actually change of government. There
was an autocratic populist government here that very much used
the kind of propaganda that I described in my article
about the West being degenerate and raised for stability and
so on. And yet they lost, and they lost thanks
(32:37):
to a really broad grassroots campaign as well as a
reaction of young people against this propaganda and also specifically
against very harsh abortion laws. So there's a lesson for
for the United States. We do, however, have a set
of their European elections coming up here in June, and
those are very important because they shape the European Parliament,
which in turn shapes the European Commission, which is the
(32:59):
thing that like rights, for example, these kinds of regulations
and there is here a fear that the European far right,
which is very much influenced by authoritarian narratives. Some of
the European far right parties are clearly Russian linked and
maybe Russian funded, and there is a fear that they
will have They're not going to win, but they're going
to have more influence after this year than they had before.
(33:21):
So this is certainly not a problem unique to the
United States, and it's not even unique to North American Europe.
And it's kind of international now, right, It is such
an important year in the world. So can you sort
of explain to us what the progression of this authoritarian
world looks like and sort of your thoughts on how.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
To get out of it.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
My book, which is called Autocracy, Inc. Is a book
about the network of modern authoritarians. So it's you know, Russia, China, Iran,
North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and a dozen others specifically the
country that collaborate in various ways, not because they have
anything ideologically in common. In fact, they don't at all.
You know, Chinese communism and Iranian theocracy and Venezuela and
(34:10):
Bolivarian socialism. You know, these are really different things. They
don't have anything in common that they're all or, but
they have some things in common that they're all against.
And they're against us. And by Us, I mean Americans
holds Europeans, and they're against us because we use the
democratic language that is the most threatening to them. All
(34:30):
of them have domestic oppositions. They have you know, Nivaldi's
movement in Russia, or the Hong Kong democracy movement, or
the Iranian women's movement. All of them use language about transparency,
about freedom, about rights, about democracy, and that's a threat
to this group of dictators. And so one of their
efforts is to work in common against that language and
(34:53):
also to continue to undermine US, so undermine European Union,
undermine NATO, any Western alliances or organis that they can
weaken they will try to do.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
The main thing for US, I think, is to reframe
our thinking. So, you know, in the US you have
foreign policy experts in Asia or foreign policy experts you know,
who focus on Eastern Europe or who focus on South America.
That's not how Russia and China see the world, and
they see it as a global system. You know, they're
fighting against democracies and democratic ideas wherever they are, whether
(35:24):
it's in Syria or whether it's in Ukraine, or whether
it's in Taiwan, and they look at it as all
of these things is connected. And I think it's important
for us to begin to look at it that way too.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why I've thought
the war in Ukraine was so important, because Russia it's
a test case. You know, Russia is seeing you know,
can you break every rule in the book about changing
borders by force? Can you put people in concentration camps,
(35:46):
can you kidat s chouldren, which they do in large numbers,
and can you then get away with it? And if
you can, then other people are going to follow. Again,
it's not an alliance. They don't all like each other.
They don't have everything in common all the time, but
they do watch what one another does and then they
make adjustments based on that experience.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Anne Applebaum, thank you so much, really appreciate you.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
How thank you.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Mother.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Nikki Freed is the chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
She is the former of Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Nikki Freed Hello, Mollie, Thanks for having me on today.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I desperately wanted to have you on because I want
to talk to you about Florida. You are the head
of the Democratic Party in Florida. This is a very
complicated time to be the head of the Democratic Party
in Florida.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I don't say, and because we're not on television, I'm
going to say this shit's going down in Florida.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
I want you to walk us through what it is
that's happening in your great state and why I actually
believe that you guys could be the next Kansas. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
Well, first of all, like let me let me also
level set for everybody of like how we got here
and to know that not all is lost. You know,
first of all, it's been Yes, it's been thirty years
since we have elected here in the state of Florida
a Democratic governor. In those thirty years, there's only been
a handful, including myself, that have been able to be
elected statewide.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
You were the third highest state ranking office. You were
the AG chair.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
Yeah, so I was at commissioner.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
I was elected in twenty eighteen as a member of
the Florida cabinets, the only one in twenty eighteen to
get across the finish line. The same year that Andrew
Gillam had lost against Ron DeSantis, and we had lost
Senator Nelson to unfortunately Rick Scott, and so we walked
in in twenty eighteen, where again we had lost that election,
and the party really kind of was in despair, you
(37:49):
know that we lost Enator Nelson, we lost you know,
are the great White hope, you know of Gilam, and
so the party really kind of just you know, took
a lot of beets and really didn't spend the time regrouping,
trying to figure out what went down, what happened. And
so we went into despair. And in twenty twenty was
the pandemic, and everybody stayed home with the Republicans here
(38:11):
in the state, continued to door knock, continued to work,
you know, all of our communities, and unfortunately Democratic Party
wasn't doing voter registration, wasn't doing any things. And then
here comes twenty twenty two and you've got a you know,
an incumbent who we all knew was going to run
for President of the United States, had a war chest
of one hundred and fifty million dollars, which is unheard
of for a governor's race, and you know, the Democrats
(38:33):
stayed home in twenty twenty two. We had over a
million Democrats that did not vote in November twenty twenty two.
And if that's a million Democrats, then that's the least
five hundred thousand left leaning and Independence Independence now are
about a third of the state and so the party
collapsed in twenty twenty two. But that is not who
we are. You know, every single election cycle, we're losing
or winning by by margins. I won by sixty seven
(38:57):
hundred Dissant is only won by thirty threeenty twenty.
Speaker 5 (39:00):
So I walked in as now chair.
Speaker 6 (39:02):
Everybody kept saying and laughing at me, like you jumped
onto the Titanic after it hit the iceberg?
Speaker 5 (39:07):
What are you thinking?
Speaker 6 (39:09):
And the reality is I was thinking that I love
my state and that we've got to get us back
on track. And I know that November twenty twenty two
is an outlier. We've got a lot of work to do.
But there's a lot of people that are just really
frustrated with the direction that DeSantis has taken the state.
The extremism between the book banning and now we're living
under a six week abortion ban. I never in a
(39:29):
million years would have thought that the state of Florida
would be a six week abortion band state. And here
we are, and yes, that is how we're going to
get ourselves out of this mess is by recognizing the
extremism and this.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Is not who the people of Florida are.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
So there really was a state party structure problem in Florida,
and I had heard that for years and years at
the state party in Florida was really decimated. Why you
to talk about what this state abortion ban looks like
for Florida because you were sort of the last of
(40:02):
the free states in the South where women could get abortions.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
And this is really a sea change, all in.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
The service of Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
You know that seventy seven percent of Flordians did not
want a six week abortion ban that was pulled during
legislative session in twenty three and twenty two. We had
just gotten the fifteen week which people were already unhappy with,
and that to your point, Molly, it was all for
DeSantis to run for president and after the fall of Road,
they just they went crazy and they went to session
extreme and the impacts is going to be drastic. We
(40:42):
were already hearing the stories out of the South. We
were already hearing the stories of the fifteen week abortion ban,
and unfortunately now I did a big press conference earlier
part of this week. A majority of Floridians don't know
that a six week abortion ban.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Is on the books.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
So what's going to happen?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
What does that mean?
Speaker 6 (40:59):
That means means that, you know, a nineteen year old
girl who just found out that she was pregnant, missed
her first period and was like, Okay, I'm pregnant.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Oh no, what am I going to do?
Speaker 6 (41:09):
Because at that point she isn't going to get assistance
as she wants to terminate the pregnancy. And if she
is in college and doesn't have any financial means to
travel to Virginia, which is so close at state right
now in the South, you know, she's going to be
making some impossible decisions.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And we know that.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
And that is just you know, one small, small example,
but that there are so many women that need access
to this healthcare, that have miscarriages, that are going to
be put into healthcare risks or complications in the pregnancy
that need to terminate the pregnancy, and now aren't going
to get access to this healthcare. And it's not going
to stop abortions, as we all know and we've heard
(41:45):
from the generations before us, it's going to stop safe
in legal abortions. And so women are going to go
to back alleys again, They're going to have to go
to other countries where there might not be safety measures
and the right health care providers, or there have to
save up dollars to travel to other parts of this
country that are going to not have accessibility either, because
(42:05):
now those clinics are going to be inundated with now
everybody else from the South, and it's just going to
be a really horrendous situation here. And again most women
don't even know that this is happening, and when they
find out, it may be too late for them.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Why I brought up Kansas was that in Kansas there
was a governor called Governor Sam brown Back, and he
enacted a ton of really restrictive laws and he's stripped
the federal government of you know, he's a real libertarian asshole.
We can say that here. And what happened is now
(42:41):
Kansas has a democratic governor who just got re elected
Laura Kelly. And that's Kansas, not even Florida. That's not
a purple state, that's a red state. So and we've
actually seen this in other states where we sent it
right Democrat. I mean, I feel like North Carolina is
tracks closer to Florida then, but yes, yes, North Carolina,
(43:01):
and there have been other states in the South where
you have found a revolt of bad policy and Republican
governor overreach. So I would and you know, DeSantis's term
momented out. He'll be out in twenty six if we
make it that far right. So talk to us about like,
(43:22):
I mean, do you see a ground swell? We had
this woman who did the Florida ballot and who's working
on the Florida ballot initiative.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
I mean, are you seeing that kind of revolt in
the state.
Speaker 6 (43:35):
Yeah, I'm seeing it a multifacets, you know, first and
foremostly you know, when I walked in here, I knew
that the first priority I had to build was bringing
faith and hope back to the party, into the base
of the party because there was a lot of despair.
You know, there's a lot of despair the last couple
of years of feeling like everybody's just hitting their head
against the wall that there was no way through that.
(43:56):
So that was one of the really big obstacles that
we had for the first year, was showing life you
know that there's a heartbeat back here in the Democratic
Party to give that hope and that we're going to fight,
and we're going to fight back, and we're going to
fight smarter. You know that so many times that we've
been fighting, we fight stupid and it doesn't make an impact.
So now that the party is back up and back
on track, is winning elections, is building that faith based
(44:20):
back up in the party apparatus. Now we can have
real constructive conversations with the now almost one third independents
that are in our state and the moderate Republicans who
legitimately don't like this mag extremism.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
That's not who they are. There are people that go to.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
Margaritaville, you know, that go to Key West that just
want to be left alone, very libertarian and a lot
of respects here and are not happy. But we had
to go to and build that faith and trust that
we are the solution to what they're experiencing. In the
Republican Party under DeSantis, and I think that we've done
that now that we can go into these conversations. Say, look,
(44:55):
property insurance number one issue here in the state of
Florida as we're about to get into hurricane season, that
it has increased four hundred percent since DeSantis took over
as governor. That is an impossible number for most Filaridians
to be able to to financially plan on to see
almost fifty percent increases, five hundred percent increases in their
(45:16):
property insurance. That inflation is number one in the country.
That people can't afford to live in Miami, they can't
afford to work in the state. And so now it's like, okay, well,
now we have a Democratic party that has a plan,
that we have a plan of how to get out
of this that we are taking all their Republican talking points.
We want less government, less spending, but smart spending, making
(45:36):
sure that we're back to free market, which is again
the Republicans have played winter losers.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Florida has been hit by wild inflation way more than
is normal, and part of that is because of this
problem with the inflation and the insurance. Can you explain
to our listeners why insurance has gotten so crazy there
in Florida because it's a lack of free markets, right.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:05):
So it's a couple of things that that's happened.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
You know.
Speaker 6 (46:08):
First off, they have come in and tried to in
some ways deregulate the industry and get the industry blank
checks and have basically not allowed consumers to go in
there and sue when they haven't been able to get
their reimbursement for any of their lost property. And so
with that, the insurance company has just continued to increase
(46:30):
their rates and there's no accountability whatsoever. There was a
hearing that happened last week or two weeks ago where
one of our property insurers had the largest fine for
not paying off decks from Hurricane Ian a couple of
years ago. But that is a million dollars that isn't
going to it's not going to homeowners. The homeowners have
already been lost of all of their damage and haven't
(46:50):
been able to get the money back. So one is
just the fact that they've given a free check to
the insurance industry. But the other thing is what has
happened in our state for the last of ability for
the legislature to come in and work on mitigating our risk.
And I say this as far as climate crisis, Florida
is the most susceptible state in the nation to climate change,
(47:13):
whether to sea level rising, our coastal communities, that our
reliance on agriculture, our springs, our wetlands, and so we
as a state have not invested in how to harden
our buildings, how to make sure we're building proper drain
news systems, how the sea level rising situation. And so
insurance company is like, wait a second, you all are
(47:34):
willing to mitigate your own risk, but you're expecting us to.
So they're leaving the state. They're dropping policies because they're
seeing these Cat four's, Cat fives every single year threatening
and hitting the state. And so the insurance companies are leaving.
So unfortunately, we've got our own state insurance company called Citizens,
which is supposed to be the insurer of last resort,
(47:55):
but right now in some places is ensured for the
only resort. And that is a life my ability right now.
Of I believe it's somewhere close to six billion dollars.
Maybe I'm totally off on that number, but I think
it's a lot higher. But some insane number that if
in fact a CAT five comes and like hits the stay,
I think it's one.
Speaker 5 (48:13):
Hundred and thirty seven billion.
Speaker 6 (48:14):
Now then I'm like way off, but some extraordinary number
that if a CAT five hits a very populated area,
it will in fact bankrupt the state. And Desand has
been playing games and not trying to resolve the situation
and trying to figure out how to do this. Instead
has just given a blank check to the insurance industry.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
That's such a totally insane thing.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
But there's also other inflationary aspects in Florida right there's
a real housing crisis in the state too.
Speaker 6 (48:43):
There's a tremendous housing crisis, and part of that is
because we've had thirty years of Republicans have a trust
fund called the Sadowski Fund. That money is supposed to
be every single year, it's from you, certain parts of
our taxes that come in it is supposed to go
to this trust fund. The trust fund is solely to
build affordable homes across the state. Since Governor Jeb Bush
(49:03):
and now we've gone through Jeb, we went through Charlie
cris now we've gone through on DeSantis has gutted that
Trust Fund and a tune of like almost two billion
dollars of affordable homes that have not been built over
the last few decades. And so it's really put a
crunch and the bottom of the market, and so the
top of the market is very expensive, and it is
pushing down homeowners to the point what used to have
(49:27):
been you know, average houses used to know, one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. Now it's three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Well, your middle class family can't afford those
higher costs, and certainly, you know, our families that are
working two three jobs certainly can't. And so people can't
afford to live here. And the other problem is that
DeSantis has refused all of the incredible things that have
(49:50):
come from the Biden Harris administration to redo inflation, you know,
whether it is you know, through the IRA or it's
from the Infrastructure Bill, all these things that are supposed
to have been brought down to the States for more
job growth, for more infrastructural building, for a reduction of inflation.
DeSantis has refused to take down those dollars. So Floridians
(50:10):
are not getting the benefit that other parts of the
country are receiving from the things that has happened from
the federal government to alleviate some of this inflation.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah, I mean that is such a destructive thing that
these Republican governors are doing, where they're turning down you know,
free school breakfasts for kids. Yeah, I mean that stuff
is like crazy. So what are you guys doing on
the ground in Florida to register voters.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
And what does that look like?
Speaker 5 (50:36):
Everything?
Speaker 6 (50:37):
As I said in the beginning of the show, is
we as a party had relegated that responsibility to third parties,
and third parties can't do partisan voter registration. They can't
go into a conversation and persuade some many to regislars
of Democrats. So we have seen a tremendous uptick to
the point that it's almost one third of our voter
registration in Florida are independents. But they're our voters, like
(50:57):
they're clearly like they should be with us, but they
haven't had those conversations. So what we have done and
had to do is bring everything back in house. We
completely have revamped our internal structure. We have a statewide
voter registration director, and of course the Republicans have made
it much more difficult to register voters.
Speaker 5 (51:15):
They've changed the laws.
Speaker 6 (51:16):
They every two years now everybody on vote by mail
has to re enlist, So everybody at December thirty first
of twenty twenty two, the entire vote by mail list
was wiped out. So we are now having to spend
time and resources getting everybody back on to those lists.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
The other thing that they've done is they've changed the
way that.
Speaker 6 (51:34):
The Supervisor of Elections have to go through the roles
every single year and clean out and purpurge voters and
have redefined what an active and inactive member looks like.
Last year, Democrats lost eight hundred and eighty thousand active
voters onto an inactive list, and they've said either it's
a cycle, and so a lot of people who didn't
vote in twenty twenty two got kicked out. As we
(51:57):
just talked about the housing crisis, people are renting and
rents going up, so they're moving. People are our CouchSurfing.
We have a much more transient population. And if you
got one postcard from the SOE and it came back undelivered,
you automatically are going on the inactive list. And so
we are sitting with like kind of a three prong approach.
One to get people back on the vote by mail lists.
(52:18):
Two because there's a three to one ratio of advantage
for Democrats on vote by mail to get people off
the inactive list, to get them back onto you active
and define new voters. And so we are going into
the communities. We're doing canvassing, and we have some paid
programming that is happening in Miami Dad. Certainly for any
of your listeners, go to Florida Dems dot org. We
can certainly use every penny now that's going to vote
(52:40):
a registration to increase that gap.
Speaker 5 (52:42):
So it is all hands on deck. We are doing
everything we can.
Speaker 6 (52:45):
We're prioritizing those areas where we have to flip seats
where right now in a super minority in both the
Florida House and the Florida Senate, and so we're prioritizing
those areas on seats that we know are flippable to
make sure that all three of those categories are increased
so that way we're very competitive. And those seats that
are ours, they are our seats. They are D plus eleven,
(53:07):
D plus twelve, DE plus five that we lost in
November twenty twenty two, but we're going to take them
back this year.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
What I think is really interesting about Florida is some
of the most exciting young congress people come from Florida.
I'm thinking about Maxwell Frost, I'm thinking about Anna eft Money. Yes,
and it really is true, Like you guys have an
incredible group of young politicians coming out of that state.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Tell me about the faces that are going to the
young faces. Jesus, I've become that person.
Speaker 3 (53:45):
You know.
Speaker 5 (53:45):
It's actually kind of exciting to your point.
Speaker 6 (53:47):
We have the second largest college population first of all,
outside of California, and what I did when I first
came in is recognize that in order for us to
truly take back Florida, we had to turn over the
key to that younger generation. We've built a youth Council
that has thirty five and unders. Congressman Frost is the
advisor to it. We have, you know, really brought them
(54:09):
into the party. We have them in leadership circles, we
have them on committees. Myself, our college Dems, and our
Youth council chair opened up our General Assembly last weekend
on our weekend conference and really giving them the keys
to make sure that they've got us set at the
table now, not you know, in ten, fifteen, twenty years,
(54:30):
because unfortunately we've seen an older generation older than us
haven't turned over the keys. And so it's really important
that those faces and that we're building a broad coalition,
a big tent. We have a very big tent of
very different political views and ideologies inside the Democratic Party
and want to make sure that everybody feels seen. And
then everybody understands that in order to build a big tent,
(54:51):
everybody's got to respect each other's views, but understand that
the mission ahead is to bring a united Democratic Party
for November.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Thank you so much, thank you, Thank you Nikki Freed.
Speaker 6 (55:02):
Of course, I thanks Molly for all that you do
and defending democracy across the country. Your voice is so
valuable to there we are today.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
A moment.
Speaker 4 (55:15):
Jesse Cannon, Malei john fasts, what were you seeing at
the Trump trial?
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Today? Trump Trial?
Speaker 1 (55:22):
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, MAGA, Mike Johnson
comes down to lend his guys support and also to
get around the gag order by trashing the prosecutor and
the DA in his speech. He then immediately starts fundraising
off of it, sending texts and emails.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
This is the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
He's number two in line of secessions the presidency.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
This man is out there with his party's.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Presumptive nominee, fundraising and trying to perform a workaround for
the gag order during his criminal trial to assess whether
his payments to an adult film star constitute an illegal
election contribution, and then covered up with fake business filings. Congratulations,
(56:17):
Republican Party, You've really done it this time. Mike Johnson
and his fundraising appeal at the criminal trial 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.
(56:39):
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
for listening.
Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds. And Greg Abbott says he's not responsible
for public education budget shortfalls.
Speaker 2 (00:14):
Why would he be? We have such an interesting show
for you today.
Speaker 1 (00:18):
And Applebaum stops by to talk to us abutter new
book Autocracy, Inc. The Dictators who want to run the world.
Then we'll talk to Florida Democratic Party Chair Nikki fried
about how Democrats can win in Florida again.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
But first we have.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Senior editor at The Atlantic and author of Rock Me
on the Water, Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Welcome back to Fast.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
Politics, my friend and really one of the smartest people
I know.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Ron Brownstein.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
Hey, MOLLI thanks you the nice intro. It's true we
had had been gotta being true as think shak exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:53):
I mean, you're smart, but you also have been doing
this for a long time.
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Well, month is my fortieth anniversary of covering national politics
again this month in nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
You started covering national politics when you were nine.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Yeah, you really do have the benefit of hindsight, and
I always think that one of the things that we
really struggle with in pundit land is that we don't
love to draw from recent history for whatever reason, and
so we often deal with things as aberrations and not
(01:28):
as you know, part of a larger pattern or tapestry,
which I think is useful absolutely.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
I mean, you know, almost everything that happens in politics
is an extension of something that has already happened. Now
you do get swerves, and we are getting a few
swerves in this election that are kind of creating. You know,
it's a funny thing. You know, this may have been
a matchup that very few people wanted, but it is
certainly a matchup that a lot of people anticipated and
(01:55):
kind of even if they felt resigned to it, thought
we were going to get. And yet in how it
is dividing the electorate, it is not unfolding exactly the
way that you would have predicted their signs. But you know,
a lot of the dynamics are somewhat surprising and counterintuitive
(02:17):
and really kind of added to the uncertainty about where
we're going.
Speaker 1 (02:19):
Yes, we are going to be cross tabs truthers right now.
So cross tabs are the parts where they break down
the poles and they look at who pulled what there
were some very dicey polls released on Monday, and they
said a lot of different things, and when you looked
(02:40):
at the cross tabs, they didn't entirely track with each other.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
I at least think that if you look at the
bulk of polls, both nationally and in the Swing States,
there are a few things that are consistently appearing, some
dynamics and as I say, dynamics that you would not
necessarily expect. And just I think the two two biggest
ones the two actually three, there are three kind of
(03:04):
big inversions that are underway, and they are and when
you add them all up together, they're these demographic inversions
are kind of producing an unexpected geographic dynamic or map,
you know. I think you can say in polling pretty consistently,
I think, almost universally in fact, that Biden is holding
(03:26):
a higher share of his twenty twenty support among whites
than non whites.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
And older whites too, which is a strange.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
That's the second one, right, So the first one is
that if you look at the change from twenty twenty
to now, Biden has lost more ground with non whites
than with whites. I think that is a pretty consistent pattern,
whether we're talking about black voters or Hispanic voters. And
I'm not surprised that Biden is often running a little
better with college whites than he did last time, because
people forget, it's easy to forget the dobbs only happened
(03:57):
after the twenty twenty election, and very sixth only happened
after the twenty twenty election. But what's surprising to me
is that Biden really, in most polls, I mean, there
are some, there are outlaws, he's not really losing that
much ground with non college whites. So point one, Biden
holding his twenty twenty support better among whites than nonm walites.
You got to point two, which is that Biden is
(04:18):
holding his twenty twenty support better among older voters than
younger voters or even middle aged seniors have been a
Republican leaning constituency, you know roughly. Yeah, well, I mean,
at least the last twenty five years, pretty consistently, you
got from the New Deal seniors to like, you know,
different cohorts of seniors, and eating twenty twenty, Biden and
(04:39):
Trump roughly split seniors, with most of the big data
sources giving Trump a slide advantage. Biden usually has its
slight advantage now among seniors.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Which is, by the way, completely crazy if you think
about it, that elderly people now like the Democrat.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
I mean, that is wild stuff about that.
Speaker 3 (05:00):
But let's just close the circle by singing by comparison.
You know, Biden's vote among young people eighteen to twenty
nine or eighteen to thirty four, depending on the ball
is down significantly.
Speaker 2 (05:12):
And that is why he's losing in these polls.
Speaker 3 (05:15):
And that plus I think black and Hispanic men up
into their forties, not only young people will come back
to like why why he's holding a better receives. As
an outgrowth of these first two inversions, there's a third
in version, which is that Trump is running best among
the people who are least likely to vote. I mean,
what we're Democrats thinking they have to expand the electorate
(05:36):
in order to win. That may not be the case
this year. I mean, Biden is running well with college
whites and seniors, who are two of the most reliable
voting groups in the country, and he's struggling with non
college non men, who are not one of the most
reliable voting groups in the country. And if you look
at for example, the New York Times, you know, Santopolis
(05:58):
can like yesterday, not the individual states, their accumulation of
the whole thing. Trump was leading by twenty points among
people who said they didn't vote in twenty twenty, which
is not unusual. Definitely the polling like that. But those
people who didn't vote in twenty twenty said they were
less likely to vote, far less motivate than people who
did so. In the end, I think it's going to
(06:18):
be really I think there are a lot of younger,
non white men who are going to be really hard
for Biden to win back, and the kind of the
hard triage question in the fall, maybe can you at
least get them off voting for Trump, either by voting
for Kennedy or Cornell West or by not voting, kind
of alienating them from Trump so much and they kind
(06:40):
of say, well, both of these guys stink. I'm staying home.
That is not something the Democrats have had to think
about much in my lifetime, but that may case. So
if you add all of this up, it gives you,
again what is a pretty clear pattern, which is that
Biden is much more competitive in the three rust Belt
swing states, which are older and whiter than he is
(07:00):
in the four sun Belt swing states, which are younger.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Which you're younger, and more Hispanic.
Speaker 3 (07:04):
Ben Eltin said to me it was Bernie's Polster like,
you know, I can't even wrap my head around. We're
doing better in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania relative to Arizona, Nevada,
and North Carolina and Georgia because they're less diverse, you know,
and thus less change from last time. If you look
at these demographic forces that were describing, these demographic trends
(07:25):
that were describing, it creates clear tiering in the geography.
It may change, but right now Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin
plus Omaha the one CD in Nebraska would get Biden
to two seventy And as Carville said to me, if
you win all three of them, you win. If you'll
(07:46):
lose any one of the three, you are scrambling because
Arizona and Nevada look much harder than those three, though
I think still doable, and the other two, the southeastern ones,
Georgia and North Carolina, looking and harder than them. So
that's kind of where we are. Can Trump hold that
level of non white support all the way to the
(08:07):
finish line. No, I doubt it. Yeah, I doubt it,
but it doesn't necessarily mean it goes back to Biden.
Speaker 1 (08:13):
No, exactly two things I want to bring up here.
I also wonder how much of this is polling error. Right,
there are two things I think going on. Younger voters
are mad at Biden for any number of reasons, and
he's definitely Hispanic voters also. But I just wonder if
there's also some polling inaccuracies here, because.
Speaker 2 (08:34):
These are harder groups to poll.
Speaker 3 (08:36):
True, the polls are internally consistent in the sense that,
like with Hispanic voters, they are expressing overwhelming discontent with
Biden's economy and the belief that the economy was better
under Trump. And people who do focus groups with Hispanic
and for that matter, Black voters. I cannot tell you
how many Democratic bolsters I have talked to who have
(08:57):
said variations on the same phrase. They sit in the
folk group and somebody says Trump's a racist, He's crude,
you know, he's disrespectful of women. I wouldn't want him
around my kids. But I'm being honest. I had more
money in my pocket when he was president, and things
are more alaudable. So there's that internal consistency. And then
with young people, like the fall of twenty twenty is
like the one time they've ever been excited about Biden.
(09:19):
I mean, you know, they didn't rally to him in
the primary, and they certainly have not given him highpproval
ratings really throughout his presidency. I personally am dubious that
there is a complete polling fail here because we are
getting the same message from so many places. But as
you note, when there are large sample surveys aim just
at this group, these groups like the young people surveys
(09:42):
of these pseudo politics at JFK School of Kennedy, or
large sample Hispanic polls from Univision, generally it is not
as dire as it is for in the in the
media polls which have smaller samples of these groups. But
I think it is real. I mean it's like the
question is kind of where does he land? I do
(10:03):
not think Biden will match his twenty twenty number among
black voters, Hispanic voters, or young voters. That doesn't mean
he will do as badly as he is doing today.
And so you know, the question may be where in
that spectrum from where he was to where he is now,
does he finish? And by the way, if we're talking
about Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin versus as Arizona and Nevada,
(10:28):
I think you also have to kind of have in
your mind, is it possible to win back black voters
more easily than it will be to win back Hispanic voters?
Speaker 1 (10:36):
Right though, we know that Hispanic voters are not a
monolith because there are different kinds of Hispanic voters.
Speaker 3 (10:43):
The share of Hispanic voters who have expressed conservative views
on all sorts of things was always higher than the
share who voted for Republicans because there was kind of
a barrier and a sense that Republicans are anti Hispanic. Obviously,
Trump has given plenty of ammunition to that argument. But
what you're seeing, what you so on twenty twenty, and
what we're seeing twenty twenty four, is that more Hispanics
(11:04):
who express conservative views are willing to also vote Republican.
But that doesn't mean, like you know, like the New
York Times stuff had Trump winning Hispanics I think.
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Right, which is completely crazy.
Speaker 3 (11:15):
I don't think Biden can match what he's got in
twenty twenty, but I do not think it is guaranteed
that Trump will hold everything he is poland in fact,
you know, the one thing Trump has to be nervous
about is that, given how little movement there has been
amoung wide voters, is lead largely dependent on doing something
that no Republican has ever run.
Speaker 2 (11:36):
And has ever done historically ever.
Speaker 3 (11:38):
So that's not necessarily solid ground on which to stand, right.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
And this is a guy who's largely run on anti black,
anti Hispanic racism.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
He's getting the better worlds, right, He's azing his base
with these very polarizing messages about race, calling all of
these black prosecutors rasists.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And so how do you rely on those voters when
you're when half of your campaign is maligning.
Speaker 3 (12:03):
Them, well, because you're counting on them to vote for
you on other issues. Right, the share of Hispanic and
Black voters who will say the economy was better under Trump,
or will say I trust Trump more than Biden on
the economy is too big for Biden to be comfortable with.
Like if everybody who says that, if every black and
Hispanic voter who says that votes for Trump, he's in
(12:26):
a lot of Trump saying's true, and whites by the
way Biden right now is trailing by what fifteen points
on who can better handle the economy. I don't know
if it will be that bad on election day, but
it's probably not going to be even on election day,
which means that Biden is going to have to convince
a significant number of voter which.
Speaker 2 (12:44):
Is insane by the way.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
I mean, just to pull back for a second, like
Trump to completely disorganized lunatic who you know, basically believes
in a form of crony capitalism, which is at best
Russia and it works North Korea.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
So if Trump believes on the economy, that means Biden
is going to have to convince some people who think
Trump is better for their bottom line to vote against
him anyway, because he's in a front to their rights
and their values and democracy and that is available to him.
I mean, there are people who will make that calculation.
In fact, there are millions of them. We saw it
in twenty twenty two. But the question is are there
(13:21):
There's not an infinite pool of people who will make
that calculation, and Biden just has to improve his own
his own standing. People ask all the time, like why
isn't this hurting, Why isn't that hurting Trump? The answer
is it is hurting Trump. I mean, look at yesterday's
The New York Times Sianna Polos. In the head to
head against Trump, Biden is seven points better than his
(13:42):
approval rating in Arizona, six better in Michigan, six points
better in Pennsylvania, six points better in Wisconsin, five points
better in trigger. That is very unusual. That is the
measure of how many people are resistant, who are saying,
I don't think Biden's doing any a good job, but
I am not going to vote for Trump anyway because
(14:03):
he is so unacceptable to me. The problem is, you know,
as I said, there's not an infinite number of people
who will make that calculation. And the way I phrase
it is that all of Trump's problems are like throwing
this seventeen foot ladder to Biden. The problem is is
that right now Biden is standing in a twenty foot hole,
and he doesn't have to get back to ground level
(14:24):
to win this election, but he does have to get
somewhat closer to it than he is today.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
That makes sense, yes, But talk about the genericity because
that is really interesting. And the other thing I want
you to talk about is in this poll in Nevada,
it has this Senate candidate writing about fifteen points ahead
of Biden, Jackie Rosen.
Speaker 3 (14:47):
I'm sorry, but what there's no okay, yeah, right. So
the history so here is I mean, the history is
that it is becoming almost impossible for Senate candidates to
win in states that vote the other way for president.
In the last in twenty sixteen, it was the first
election in American history where every Senate race went the
same way as the presidential race in that state. And
(15:10):
in twenty twenty, it happened again in every race except
meaning where Susan Collins won while Biden on the state.
As you saw on that New York Times poll, there
are Democratic Senate candidates who are winning in states where
Biden is even or losing, but most of them are
under fifty. And in that you know, except for Tammy Baldwin,
who was close to fifty, I think she was a
(15:31):
forty nine. I cannot imagine Joe Biden losing Nevada by
ten points in Jackie Rosen winning.
Speaker 2 (15:36):
By seventeen points. I mean, well, she was up by two,
I think, right, But I mean it just seemed like
a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:43):
Well, I remember states like Kentucky and South Carolina and Kansas, Montana.
Democrats spent a fortune in the Senate races in those states,
and I don't believe any of those candidates ran any
more than two points better than Biden. That was the
most and that was just and no one really ran
better than Trump. On the Republican side, I mean, they
(16:04):
ran slightly better than Trump, but it's really hard there
are you know, in the twenty five states that Biden
won last time, Republicans are down to two of the
fifty Senate seats, and in the twenty five states the
Trump won, Democrats are down at three of the fifty
Senate seats. So I do think it is possible that
someone like Tammy Baldwin or Bob Casey or even Ruben
Diego could win if Biden loses their state narrowly, and
(16:27):
maybe even Alyssa Slotkin. That could be harder though against
a solid opponent in Mike Rogers. But by and large
Democrats need Biden to recover or else the Senate I
think could get bad. Now, what you're referring to is
the opposite, right, which is, you know that Democrats in
the Senate races and in the generic House ballot are
(16:47):
doing better than Biden is doing and that is kind
of interesting. I mean, you know, you could you can
look at that a number of ways. Some people have said, well,
you know, it's just a Biden problem. It's it's not
a democratic problem. I think the history is more that
you can't separate the two, and that if there is
a Biden problem, it will become a democratic problem by
(17:08):
the end that you know that ultimately it's a verdict
on his governance and democratic governance, and everyone in the
party is going to face a big undertow if in
fact he can't win some of these states. Now you
know again Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He you know, those
are really tight again, as they have been in each
(17:29):
of the last two elections, Arizona and Nevada. Most polling
it shows Trump with a lead, a significant lead, but
I don't view those as gone for Democrats. Georgia in
North Carolina could be very art although North Carolina is
kind of an intriguing wildcard with abortion, but really after
the Big three, it's kind of a fall off.
Speaker 1 (17:48):
But I want to just pause for a minute and
remind you how much Republicans flood the zone with junkie polls,
and how much polling is really no longer a science.
And also more importantly, I want to just look back
at Wisconsin for a minute, where Ron Johnson basically won
(18:10):
on polls right. Every poll showed Mandela Barnes seven eight
points behind Mandela Barns abandoned by the Democrats lost by
half a percent. So I do think there is an
X factor here, and Republicans have used polls really successfully
to suppress the vote.
Speaker 3 (18:28):
It's something like real good politics really is just as
I said, just an arm of the Republican master's machine.
You're right, and they do include a lot of junk piles.
My focus is less on the absolutes of the ors
race than on the patterns that we were talking about earlier.
We know I think I do think we know from
public and private polling that Biden use holding ist is
(18:49):
vote better older and wider than younger and more diverse,
and he is running better among the most likely voters
than the least likely voters, two.
Speaker 2 (18:58):
Which are both two very good you want those voters.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
All of that has clear geographic implications, and they leave
him with a path to winning. But what could be
a narrow path, and that's kind of where he is.
I mean, I could see a world where Biden can
survive losing Wisconsin and replacing it with that. No, I
could see a world where he can buy losing Michigan
and replacing it with Arizona, Nevada. There's no I think
(19:23):
plausible replacement for Pennsylvania, And in all likelihood, it seems
unlikely to me that he would win Arizona and Nevada
unless he's also winning all three of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Given what we are seeing with you know, younger Hispanic voters,
like I said, Dobbs happened after twenty twenty. January sixth
happened after twenty twenty. Biden's vote on boncollege educated white
(19:43):
voters is likely to be higher, I think, in twenty
four than it was in twenty despite concerns about things
like inflation, and if he doesn't decline much among the
blue collar whites that added little boost in the Madison
you know suburbs, and the Detroit suburbs and the Philadelphia
suburbs could allow him to squeeze out all three of
(20:07):
those states, even if turnout and or margins are down
for him in Milwaukee, Detroit, and Philadelphia. The math works
there there are enough of those college whites that you
can offset even if you underperform a little bit among
black voters, whereas it in the Southwest, I think the
Hispanic vote is just too big a piece of the
Democratic coalition. If in fact, he does lose anywhere near
(20:31):
as much ground as now seems possible, it's going to
be hard to make it up. So what's the answer
for him? I mean, you know, in Arizona, Nevada, it's
recover as much out of that ground on Hispanic voters
as you can get it as close to that roughly
sixty percent that they got in twenty twenty. And then
when that shortfall is down a manageable number, you could
make it up with college white women who are pissed
(20:51):
off about Dobbs and particularly with abortion, you know, referenda
on the ballot in both of those states. But he's
got to I think he's got to improve his own
circumstance with some of these voters. That is more the
key than you know, seeding more doubts about Trump, because,
like I said, Biden is already the doubts about Trump
(21:11):
are evident in the results that Biden is running so
far out of his own approval rating compared to previous presidents,
but pull rating at thirty eight or forty winning a
state that is a big goal. That is a lot
of people who have to say, I don't think you're
doing a good job, but I'll vote for you with
you anyway, because I think the other guy's threat millions
of people will say that ten million people will say
(21:33):
that I guarantee you twelve million people, but well fifteen, well, eighteen,
that I think is less clear. And that's why Biden,
I think, has to improve his own standing, why it's
so essential for him to do that.
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Thank you, Ron Brownstein, Thank you Mollie.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
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.
(22:11):
And Applebaum is the author of Photocracy, Inc. The Dictators
who Want to Run the World. Welcome back to Fast
Politics and Applebaum.
Speaker 4 (22:20):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
I'm so delighted to have you.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
So I'm reading this article by you in the Atlantic,
and I'm like, this is just so important, And I
actually was thinking I was reading, I was thinking, this
is so important, this is so important. Oh my god,
how we should just be talking about this all the time.
It's actually part of your new book, Autocracy inc. I
(22:46):
don't know how it's so timely when it's part of
a book, but it is like you've just completely nailed
what we are about to go through and how important
it is to know these things, So talk to us
about that.
Speaker 4 (22:59):
So the article describes authoritarian propaganda, not as we used
to know of it in the twentieth century, when the
Soviet Union used to make posters of tractor drivers with
kind of square jaws and talk about steel production. Authoritary
and propaganda nowadays is mostly not promoting anything, but is
(23:22):
instead aimed at undermining democracy and kind of smearing democracy.
And it's also aimed at creating citicism and nihilism, partly
by doing this kind of non stop lining that we've
all become so familiar with, which eventually leads people to say,
I have no idea what's true. I am not paying
(23:43):
attention to this I'm checking out and I'm going to go,
you know, fishing or whatever. And the argument of the piece,
which is part of a larger argument in the book,
is that although this was a kind of early Russian project,
it's now there are a lot of countries that do it.
China is one, Venezuela is one, but also a part
(24:04):
of the American Republican Party, uses the same tactics, of
the same language, and is in turn amplified by you know,
Russian and Chinese and other actors. And it's not a conspiracy.
This isn't a description of some kind of secret saying
that's happening. It's a open project and you don't have
to know any special you don't have to have access
(24:24):
to secret rooms in order to see it happening. I mean,
you can analyze it with your own eyes.
Speaker 2 (24:29):
And Republican members of the House have brought this up.
Speaker 4 (24:33):
Michael McCall, Yes, so, I mean one just little mini example.
This is more specifically about Russia and Ukraine. There was
a story kind of bouncing around the internet about the
fres of Ukraine Zelenski, who supposedly owns two vulgar yachts,
and of course he doesn't own the yachts, and other
people owned the yachts, and the yachts aren't for sale,
and he didn't buy them. And it's just a piece
(24:54):
of false propaganda. But it's circulated in the same ecosystem
that other are right and Republican and Russian propaganda circulates.
And several people heard colleagues within the Senate, the Senator
Tom Tillis is another Republican, also talked about this, so
much so that when the House and Senate were debating
sending more weapons to Ukraine, people were saying, why should
(25:16):
we send weapons when Zelenski's just going to use the
money to buy yachts. That there are now members of
Congress who believe this complete garbage and who have trust
in it because it comes from the same world where
they get the rest of their information is just one
little example of how smoothly the system now works.
Speaker 2 (25:35):
Yeah, I mean just terrifying.
Speaker 1 (25:37):
I feel like the propaganda that these autocrats shopped in
twenty sixteen was a little bit different than what it's now.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
I mean, they just get better at it, they get
more sophisticated. Some of the cruder things have disappeared. I mean,
it felt a few years ago, like the Russians were
just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what would stick.
You know, Oh, let's do anti immigrant groups in Idaho.
You know, let's do something else. And it's just become
more sophisticated and more targeted. They're better now at hiding
tracks so you can, for example, they you know, they'll
(26:07):
create a video, put it online, seed it to several
people so that they retweet it or repost it, and
then the original video will disappear so that it's not
traceable anymore, so that you can't know where it's from,
a lot of the social media companies in twenty twenty
took down and actually some of them, I think Meta
still takes down networks of what they call inorganic material.
(26:30):
You know, so if they see an inorganic which is
foreign propaganda that they recognize as being false online and
they take it down. But if they can't detect it
because it's now being posted in different ways, then of
course it's much harder to take it down. And of
course the other big shift from twenty twenty is that
Twitter doesn't take it down or certainly doesn't make down
all of it or any of it or any of it,
and even Facebook has become somewhat less interested in doing this.
Speaker 2 (26:55):
Partly.
Speaker 4 (26:56):
Then another piece of the story, and this is also
in my article, is that but of course there's been
a there's been a you know, all of the academic
groups and researchers and think tanks and others who were
set up after twenty sixteen to track this stuff and
trace it and understand it have all in the last
few years become focus of really quite horrible and in
(27:16):
some cases debilitating attacks from the far right. Some of
it is personal there's just sphere campaigns, and some of
it is lawsuits, congressional investigations. Jim Jordan has a committee
in Congress that's investigating some of them, the Weaponization of
Government Committee. Deafly, his Weaponization of Government Committee has looked
at this, and so even some of the rudimentary things,
you know, the kind of occasional phone calls between the
(27:39):
state department or federal government and the social media companies
are now you know, almost re bote. You know, people
don't do it. We've I'm successfully pushed back against anyone
who talks about this, studies it, thinks about it, or
publishes about it. And that's again because it helps them,
it serves their purposes. So we now have a system
where whether it's Russia or it's China, where it's other
(28:00):
autocratic state, it puts out this kind of material, there's
less resistance to it, and there's less willingness or ability
to stop. And even then there was four years ago.
And I just say another piece of the story being
that we're talking now about the United States. But of
course this is an international project. The Chinese have spent
billions of dollars buying and creating television stations and websites
(28:21):
and content sharing agreements in countries all over Africa, all
over Asia, Latin America, and of course they use that
network to put out the same stuff too, So the
stuff that we see is also seen in all over
the world. So it's not just, of course we're mostly
interested in the US piece of it, but there's a
wider project as well.
Speaker 1 (28:40):
I mean, it just feels insurmountable, and which I guess
is the point, right.
Speaker 4 (28:45):
Yeah, I mean I don't think it's insurmountable. It's just
that it hadn't yet been taken seriously. But I mean,
so funny thing for me is that I've been talking
about this for I'd say a decade. You know, I
started seeing this stuff in twenty fourteen, at the time
the first Russian invasion of Ukraine. A lot of people
who are aware of it. I mean, there's almost nothing
in my article that hasn't been published somewhere before, been
(29:06):
talked about by so on before. It's known, but it
somehow hasn't risen to the level of being a proper
focus of anybody's concern, and so far the efforts to
push back against it are pretty minimal. I mean, ultimately,
part of the problem is that you'd have to think
about talenttering, especially the Chinese influence in Africa. You have
to think about changing the way the democratic world, not
(29:27):
just the US, but Europe and others do their messaging,
conduct their communications. You probably have to start thinking about
how you regulate social media, by which I don't mean
censor it. I mean we make the algorithms transparent, give
some people some choice about algorithms and so on. I mean,
you'd have to begin doing very serious things, and so
far it hasn't risen to the level of the thing
(29:49):
that people in Congress are most aware of and speak about.
And when it does, of course, the tech companies lobbied
very hard against it, against any kind of change or
any kind of regulation. There are some pretty easy fixes
for some of this. I don't know that there are
easy fixes, but even just being able to identify it
would help people. I would make social media companies legally
(30:11):
responsible for stuff that appears on their platforms, which would
of course change them completely, you know, but I'm not empress,
and I don't get to decide that that's what I
would do. I think people have correctly identified some of
this in TikTok, and I think that's a part of
the reaction against it. That's the first time I've seen
conversse take seriously both TikTok as a system for collecting
(30:32):
data about Americans but also as a source of algorithmic
amplification of who knows who's messaging? Actually, I mean, one
of the weird things about TikTok, just but which is
not unusual, is that we don't even know that much
about it, and we can't study it, so we don't
really know what people are seeing or reading on it,
or how millions of young people who read it are
reacting to it. And there seems to be a kind
(30:53):
of incoherate recognition, and there's something about that that's wrong.
But of course, you know, TikTok is an easy target
because it's Chinese zone and by the way, not in
Band in China, and band also in India, right, you know.
But of course the bigger problem would be the American owned.
Speaker 3 (31:06):
Companies, right.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
And there does seem to be an interest in Congress
in shirking all responsibility for any kind of regulation.
Speaker 4 (31:14):
Yeah, partly because again I said, there's been a successful
conservative backlash against any regulation on the grounds that any
form of regulation is censorship, even though you know, we've
had regulation of political advertising for decades. We have in
the past regulated broadcasting, you know, we it's not it's
not unheard of most cursive decrovision, that's right. Most most
(31:37):
democracies do regulate some pieces of the public sphere. The
United States is much less regulated than other than than
other countries are. And I mean, ironically, what may eventually
happen is that the Europeans may regulate it, and then
right the social media companies will be forced to conform
to that, and that might change things. The conversation in
Europe is kind of farther along and more death. And
(31:59):
you know, European un is a kind of regulatory superpower.
I mean, that's what they do, that's what they're really.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
You're in Poland right now. This is like the year
of important elections. Many many countries are having elections, some
of them reel, some of them puppet.
Speaker 2 (32:14):
Can you talk about what this sort of the rest
of the world looks like.
Speaker 4 (32:17):
Well, Poland had an election. It's big election was in October,
and we had a surprising actually change of government. There
was an autocratic populist government here that very much used
the kind of propaganda that I described in my article
about the West being degenerate and raised for stability and
so on. And yet they lost, and they lost thanks
(32:37):
to a really broad grassroots campaign as well as a
reaction of young people against this propaganda and also specifically
against very harsh abortion laws. So there's a lesson for
for the United States. We do, however, have a set
of their European elections coming up here in June, and
those are very important because they shape the European Parliament,
which in turn shapes the European Commission, which is the
(32:59):
thing that like rights, for example, these kinds of regulations
and there is here a fear that the European far right,
which is very much influenced by authoritarian narratives. Some of
the European far right parties are clearly Russian linked and
maybe Russian funded, and there is a fear that they
will have They're not going to win, but they're going
to have more influence after this year than they had before.
(33:21):
So this is certainly not a problem unique to the
United States, and it's not even unique to North American Europe.
And it's kind of international now, right, It is such
an important year in the world. So can you sort
of explain to us what the progression of this authoritarian
world looks like and sort of your thoughts on how.
Speaker 2 (33:45):
To get out of it.
Speaker 4 (33:46):
My book, which is called Autocracy, Inc. Is a book
about the network of modern authoritarians. So it's you know, Russia, China, Iran,
North Korea, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and a dozen others specifically the
country that collaborate in various ways, not because they have
anything ideologically in common. In fact, they don't at all.
You know, Chinese communism and Iranian theocracy and Venezuela and
(34:10):
Bolivarian socialism. You know, these are really different things. They
don't have anything in common that they're all or, but
they have some things in common that they're all against.
And they're against us. And by Us, I mean Americans
holds Europeans, and they're against us because we use the
democratic language that is the most threatening to them. All
(34:30):
of them have domestic oppositions. They have you know, Nivaldi's
movement in Russia, or the Hong Kong democracy movement, or
the Iranian women's movement. All of them use language about transparency,
about freedom, about rights, about democracy, and that's a threat
to this group of dictators. And so one of their
efforts is to work in common against that language and
(34:53):
also to continue to undermine US, so undermine European Union,
undermine NATO, any Western alliances or organis that they can
weaken they will try to do.
Speaker 1 (35:02):
I mean.
Speaker 4 (35:02):
The main thing for US, I think, is to reframe
our thinking. So, you know, in the US you have
foreign policy experts in Asia or foreign policy experts you know,
who focus on Eastern Europe or who focus on South America.
That's not how Russia and China see the world, and
they see it as a global system. You know, they're
fighting against democracies and democratic ideas wherever they are, whether
(35:24):
it's in Syria or whether it's in Ukraine, or whether
it's in Taiwan, and they look at it as all
of these things is connected. And I think it's important
for us to begin to look at it that way too.
I mean, it's one of the reasons why I've thought
the war in Ukraine was so important, because Russia it's
a test case. You know, Russia is seeing you know,
can you break every rule in the book about changing
borders by force? Can you put people in concentration camps,
(35:46):
can you kidat s chouldren, which they do in large numbers,
and can you then get away with it? And if
you can, then other people are going to follow. Again,
it's not an alliance. They don't all like each other.
They don't have everything in common all the time, but
they do watch what one another does and then they
make adjustments based on that experience.
Speaker 2 (36:05):
Anne Applebaum, thank you so much, really appreciate you.
Speaker 5 (36:09):
How thank you.
Speaker 3 (36:10):
Mother.
Speaker 1 (36:12):
Nikki Freed is the chair of the Florida Democratic Party.
She is the former of Florida Commissioner of Agriculture.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5 (36:26):
Nikki Freed Hello, Mollie, Thanks for having me on today.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
I desperately wanted to have you on because I want
to talk to you about Florida. You are the head
of the Democratic Party in Florida. This is a very
complicated time to be the head of the Democratic Party
in Florida.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
I don't say, and because we're not on television, I'm
going to say this shit's going down in Florida.
Speaker 1 (36:53):
I want you to walk us through what it is
that's happening in your great state and why I actually
believe that you guys could be the next Kansas. Yeah.
Speaker 6 (37:04):
Well, first of all, like let me let me also
level set for everybody of like how we got here
and to know that not all is lost. You know,
first of all, it's been Yes, it's been thirty years
since we have elected here in the state of Florida
a Democratic governor. In those thirty years, there's only been
a handful, including myself, that have been able to be
elected statewide.
Speaker 1 (37:22):
You were the third highest state ranking office. You were
the AG chair.
Speaker 5 (37:27):
Yeah, so I was at commissioner.
Speaker 6 (37:29):
I was elected in twenty eighteen as a member of
the Florida cabinets, the only one in twenty eighteen to
get across the finish line. The same year that Andrew
Gillam had lost against Ron DeSantis, and we had lost
Senator Nelson to unfortunately Rick Scott, and so we walked
in in twenty eighteen, where again we had lost that election,
and the party really kind of was in despair, you
(37:49):
know that we lost Enator Nelson, we lost you know,
are the great White hope, you know of Gilam, and
so the party really kind of just you know, took
a lot of beets and really didn't spend the time regrouping,
trying to figure out what went down, what happened. And
so we went into despair. And in twenty twenty was
the pandemic, and everybody stayed home with the Republicans here
(38:11):
in the state, continued to door knock, continued to work,
you know, all of our communities, and unfortunately Democratic Party
wasn't doing voter registration, wasn't doing any things. And then
here comes twenty twenty two and you've got a you know,
an incumbent who we all knew was going to run
for President of the United States, had a war chest
of one hundred and fifty million dollars, which is unheard
of for a governor's race, and you know, the Democrats
(38:33):
stayed home in twenty twenty two. We had over a
million Democrats that did not vote in November twenty twenty two.
And if that's a million Democrats, then that's the least
five hundred thousand left leaning and Independence Independence now are
about a third of the state and so the party
collapsed in twenty twenty two. But that is not who
we are. You know, every single election cycle, we're losing
or winning by by margins. I won by sixty seven
(38:57):
hundred Dissant is only won by thirty threeenty twenty.
Speaker 5 (39:00):
So I walked in as now chair.
Speaker 6 (39:02):
Everybody kept saying and laughing at me, like you jumped
onto the Titanic after it hit the iceberg?
Speaker 5 (39:07):
What are you thinking?
Speaker 6 (39:09):
And the reality is I was thinking that I love
my state and that we've got to get us back
on track. And I know that November twenty twenty two
is an outlier. We've got a lot of work to do.
But there's a lot of people that are just really
frustrated with the direction that DeSantis has taken the state.
The extremism between the book banning and now we're living
under a six week abortion ban. I never in a
(39:29):
million years would have thought that the state of Florida
would be a six week abortion band state. And here
we are, and yes, that is how we're going to
get ourselves out of this mess is by recognizing the
extremism and this.
Speaker 5 (39:40):
Is not who the people of Florida are.
Speaker 1 (39:42):
So there really was a state party structure problem in Florida,
and I had heard that for years and years at
the state party in Florida was really decimated. Why you
to talk about what this state abortion ban looks like
for Florida because you were sort of the last of
(40:02):
the free states in the South where women could get abortions.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
And this is really a sea change, all in.
Speaker 1 (40:13):
The service of Ron DeSantis's presidential campaign.
Speaker 5 (40:16):
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly what it is.
Speaker 6 (40:18):
You know that seventy seven percent of Flordians did not
want a six week abortion ban that was pulled during
legislative session in twenty three and twenty two. We had
just gotten the fifteen week which people were already unhappy with,
and that to your point, Molly, it was all for
DeSantis to run for president and after the fall of Road,
they just they went crazy and they went to session
extreme and the impacts is going to be drastic. We
(40:42):
were already hearing the stories out of the South. We
were already hearing the stories of the fifteen week abortion ban,
and unfortunately now I did a big press conference earlier
part of this week. A majority of Floridians don't know
that a six week abortion ban.
Speaker 3 (40:56):
Is on the books.
Speaker 5 (40:57):
So what's going to happen?
Speaker 3 (40:58):
What does that mean?
Speaker 6 (40:59):
That means means that, you know, a nineteen year old
girl who just found out that she was pregnant, missed
her first period and was like, Okay, I'm pregnant.
Speaker 3 (41:08):
Oh no, what am I going to do?
Speaker 6 (41:09):
Because at that point she isn't going to get assistance
as she wants to terminate the pregnancy. And if she
is in college and doesn't have any financial means to
travel to Virginia, which is so close at state right
now in the South, you know, she's going to be
making some impossible decisions.
Speaker 1 (41:24):
And we know that.
Speaker 6 (41:25):
And that is just you know, one small, small example,
but that there are so many women that need access
to this healthcare, that have miscarriages, that are going to
be put into healthcare risks or complications in the pregnancy
that need to terminate the pregnancy, and now aren't going
to get access to this healthcare. And it's not going
to stop abortions, as we all know and we've heard
(41:45):
from the generations before us, it's going to stop safe
in legal abortions. And so women are going to go
to back alleys again, They're going to have to go
to other countries where there might not be safety measures
and the right health care providers, or there have to
save up dollars to travel to other parts of this
country that are going to not have accessibility either, because
(42:05):
now those clinics are going to be inundated with now
everybody else from the South, and it's just going to
be a really horrendous situation here. And again most women
don't even know that this is happening, and when they
find out, it may be too late for them.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Why I brought up Kansas was that in Kansas there
was a governor called Governor Sam brown Back, and he
enacted a ton of really restrictive laws and he's stripped
the federal government of you know, he's a real libertarian asshole.
We can say that here. And what happened is now
(42:41):
Kansas has a democratic governor who just got re elected
Laura Kelly. And that's Kansas, not even Florida. That's not
a purple state, that's a red state. So and we've
actually seen this in other states where we sent it
right Democrat. I mean, I feel like North Carolina is
tracks closer to Florida then, but yes, yes, North Carolina,
(43:01):
and there have been other states in the South where
you have found a revolt of bad policy and Republican
governor overreach. So I would and you know, DeSantis's term
momented out. He'll be out in twenty six if we
make it that far right. So talk to us about like,
(43:22):
I mean, do you see a ground swell? We had
this woman who did the Florida ballot and who's working
on the Florida ballot initiative.
Speaker 2 (43:30):
I mean, are you seeing that kind of revolt in
the state.
Speaker 6 (43:35):
Yeah, I'm seeing it a multifacets, you know, first and
foremostly you know, when I walked in here, I knew
that the first priority I had to build was bringing
faith and hope back to the party, into the base
of the party because there was a lot of despair.
You know, there's a lot of despair the last couple
of years of feeling like everybody's just hitting their head
against the wall that there was no way through that.
(43:56):
So that was one of the really big obstacles that
we had for the first year, was showing life you
know that there's a heartbeat back here in the Democratic
Party to give that hope and that we're going to fight,
and we're going to fight back, and we're going to
fight smarter. You know that so many times that we've
been fighting, we fight stupid and it doesn't make an impact.
So now that the party is back up and back
on track, is winning elections, is building that faith based
(44:20):
back up in the party apparatus. Now we can have
real constructive conversations with the now almost one third independents
that are in our state and the moderate Republicans who
legitimately don't like this mag extremism.
Speaker 5 (44:33):
That's not who they are. There are people that go to.
Speaker 6 (44:35):
Margaritaville, you know, that go to Key West that just
want to be left alone, very libertarian and a lot
of respects here and are not happy. But we had
to go to and build that faith and trust that
we are the solution to what they're experiencing. In the
Republican Party under DeSantis, and I think that we've done
that now that we can go into these conversations. Say, look,
(44:55):
property insurance number one issue here in the state of
Florida as we're about to get into hurricane season, that
it has increased four hundred percent since DeSantis took over
as governor. That is an impossible number for most Filaridians
to be able to to financially plan on to see
almost fifty percent increases, five hundred percent increases in their
(45:16):
property insurance. That inflation is number one in the country.
That people can't afford to live in Miami, they can't
afford to work in the state. And so now it's like, okay, well,
now we have a Democratic party that has a plan,
that we have a plan of how to get out
of this that we are taking all their Republican talking points.
We want less government, less spending, but smart spending, making
(45:36):
sure that we're back to free market, which is again
the Republicans have played winter losers.
Speaker 1 (45:42):
Florida has been hit by wild inflation way more than
is normal, and part of that is because of this
problem with the inflation and the insurance. Can you explain
to our listeners why insurance has gotten so crazy there
in Florida because it's a lack of free markets, right.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (46:05):
So it's a couple of things that that's happened.
Speaker 3 (46:07):
You know.
Speaker 6 (46:08):
First off, they have come in and tried to in
some ways deregulate the industry and get the industry blank
checks and have basically not allowed consumers to go in
there and sue when they haven't been able to get
their reimbursement for any of their lost property. And so
with that, the insurance company has just continued to increase
(46:30):
their rates and there's no accountability whatsoever. There was a
hearing that happened last week or two weeks ago where
one of our property insurers had the largest fine for
not paying off decks from Hurricane Ian a couple of
years ago. But that is a million dollars that isn't
going to it's not going to homeowners. The homeowners have
already been lost of all of their damage and haven't
(46:50):
been able to get the money back. So one is
just the fact that they've given a free check to
the insurance industry. But the other thing is what has
happened in our state for the last of ability for
the legislature to come in and work on mitigating our risk.
And I say this as far as climate crisis, Florida
is the most susceptible state in the nation to climate change,
(47:13):
whether to sea level rising, our coastal communities, that our
reliance on agriculture, our springs, our wetlands, and so we
as a state have not invested in how to harden
our buildings, how to make sure we're building proper drain
news systems, how the sea level rising situation. And so
insurance company is like, wait a second, you all are
(47:34):
willing to mitigate your own risk, but you're expecting us to.
So they're leaving the state. They're dropping policies because they're
seeing these Cat four's, Cat fives every single year threatening
and hitting the state. And so the insurance companies are leaving.
So unfortunately, we've got our own state insurance company called Citizens,
which is supposed to be the insurer of last resort,
(47:55):
but right now in some places is ensured for the
only resort. And that is a life my ability right now.
Of I believe it's somewhere close to six billion dollars.
Maybe I'm totally off on that number, but I think
it's a lot higher. But some insane number that if
in fact a CAT five comes and like hits the stay,
I think it's one.
Speaker 5 (48:13):
Hundred and thirty seven billion.
Speaker 6 (48:14):
Now then I'm like way off, but some extraordinary number
that if a CAT five hits a very populated area,
it will in fact bankrupt the state. And Desand has
been playing games and not trying to resolve the situation
and trying to figure out how to do this. Instead
has just given a blank check to the insurance industry.
Speaker 2 (48:33):
That's such a totally insane thing.
Speaker 1 (48:36):
But there's also other inflationary aspects in Florida right there's
a real housing crisis in the state too.
Speaker 6 (48:43):
There's a tremendous housing crisis, and part of that is
because we've had thirty years of Republicans have a trust
fund called the Sadowski Fund. That money is supposed to
be every single year, it's from you, certain parts of
our taxes that come in it is supposed to go
to this trust fund. The trust fund is solely to
build affordable homes across the state. Since Governor Jeb Bush
(49:03):
and now we've gone through Jeb, we went through Charlie
cris now we've gone through on DeSantis has gutted that
Trust Fund and a tune of like almost two billion
dollars of affordable homes that have not been built over
the last few decades. And so it's really put a
crunch and the bottom of the market, and so the
top of the market is very expensive, and it is
pushing down homeowners to the point what used to have
(49:27):
been you know, average houses used to know, one hundred
and fifty thousand dollars. Now it's three hundred and fifty
thousand dollars. Well, your middle class family can't afford those
higher costs, and certainly, you know, our families that are
working two three jobs certainly can't. And so people can't
afford to live here. And the other problem is that
DeSantis has refused all of the incredible things that have
(49:50):
come from the Biden Harris administration to redo inflation, you know,
whether it is you know, through the IRA or it's
from the Infrastructure Bill, all these things that are supposed
to have been brought down to the States for more
job growth, for more infrastructural building, for a reduction of inflation.
DeSantis has refused to take down those dollars. So Floridians
(50:10):
are not getting the benefit that other parts of the
country are receiving from the things that has happened from
the federal government to alleviate some of this inflation.
Speaker 1 (50:19):
Yeah, I mean that is such a destructive thing that
these Republican governors are doing, where they're turning down you know,
free school breakfasts for kids. Yeah, I mean that stuff
is like crazy. So what are you guys doing on
the ground in Florida to register voters.
Speaker 2 (50:35):
And what does that look like?
Speaker 5 (50:36):
Everything?
Speaker 6 (50:37):
As I said in the beginning of the show, is
we as a party had relegated that responsibility to third parties,
and third parties can't do partisan voter registration. They can't
go into a conversation and persuade some many to regislars
of Democrats. So we have seen a tremendous uptick to
the point that it's almost one third of our voter
registration in Florida are independents. But they're our voters, like
(50:57):
they're clearly like they should be with us, but they
haven't had those conversations. So what we have done and
had to do is bring everything back in house. We
completely have revamped our internal structure. We have a statewide
voter registration director, and of course the Republicans have made
it much more difficult to register voters.
Speaker 5 (51:15):
They've changed the laws.
Speaker 6 (51:16):
They every two years now everybody on vote by mail
has to re enlist, So everybody at December thirty first
of twenty twenty two, the entire vote by mail list
was wiped out. So we are now having to spend
time and resources getting everybody back on to those lists.
Speaker 5 (51:31):
The other thing that they've done is they've changed the
way that.
Speaker 6 (51:34):
The Supervisor of Elections have to go through the roles
every single year and clean out and purpurge voters and
have redefined what an active and inactive member looks like.
Last year, Democrats lost eight hundred and eighty thousand active
voters onto an inactive list, and they've said either it's
a cycle, and so a lot of people who didn't
vote in twenty twenty two got kicked out. As we
(51:57):
just talked about the housing crisis, people are renting and
rents going up, so they're moving. People are our CouchSurfing.
We have a much more transient population. And if you
got one postcard from the SOE and it came back undelivered,
you automatically are going on the inactive list. And so
we are sitting with like kind of a three prong approach.
One to get people back on the vote by mail lists.
(52:18):
Two because there's a three to one ratio of advantage
for Democrats on vote by mail to get people off
the inactive list, to get them back onto you active
and define new voters. And so we are going into
the communities. We're doing canvassing, and we have some paid
programming that is happening in Miami Dad. Certainly for any
of your listeners, go to Florida Dems dot org. We
can certainly use every penny now that's going to vote
(52:40):
a registration to increase that gap.
Speaker 5 (52:42):
So it is all hands on deck. We are doing
everything we can.
Speaker 6 (52:45):
We're prioritizing those areas where we have to flip seats
where right now in a super minority in both the
Florida House and the Florida Senate, and so we're prioritizing
those areas on seats that we know are flippable to
make sure that all three of those categories are increased
so that way we're very competitive. And those seats that
are ours, they are our seats. They are D plus eleven,
(53:07):
D plus twelve, DE plus five that we lost in
November twenty twenty two, but we're going to take them
back this year.
Speaker 1 (53:13):
What I think is really interesting about Florida is some
of the most exciting young congress people come from Florida.
I'm thinking about Maxwell Frost, I'm thinking about Anna eft Money. Yes,
and it really is true, Like you guys have an
incredible group of young politicians coming out of that state.
Speaker 2 (53:36):
Tell me about the faces that are going to the
young faces. Jesus, I've become that person.
Speaker 3 (53:45):
You know.
Speaker 5 (53:45):
It's actually kind of exciting to your point.
Speaker 6 (53:47):
We have the second largest college population first of all,
outside of California, and what I did when I first
came in is recognize that in order for us to
truly take back Florida, we had to turn over the
key to that younger generation. We've built a youth Council
that has thirty five and unders. Congressman Frost is the
advisor to it. We have, you know, really brought them
(54:09):
into the party. We have them in leadership circles, we
have them on committees. Myself, our college Dems, and our
Youth council chair opened up our General Assembly last weekend
on our weekend conference and really giving them the keys
to make sure that they've got us set at the
table now, not you know, in ten, fifteen, twenty years,
(54:30):
because unfortunately we've seen an older generation older than us
haven't turned over the keys. And so it's really important
that those faces and that we're building a broad coalition,
a big tent. We have a very big tent of
very different political views and ideologies inside the Democratic Party
and want to make sure that everybody feels seen. And
then everybody understands that in order to build a big tent,
(54:51):
everybody's got to respect each other's views, but understand that
the mission ahead is to bring a united Democratic Party
for November.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
Thank you so much, thank you, Thank you Nikki Freed.
Speaker 6 (55:02):
Of course, I thanks Molly for all that you do
and defending democracy across the country. Your voice is so
valuable to there we are today.
Speaker 3 (55:12):
A moment.
Speaker 4 (55:15):
Jesse Cannon, Malei john fasts, what were you seeing at
the Trump trial?
Speaker 2 (55:19):
Today? Trump Trial?
Speaker 1 (55:22):
The Speaker of the House of Representatives, MAGA, Mike Johnson
comes down to lend his guys support and also to
get around the gag order by trashing the prosecutor and
the DA in his speech. He then immediately starts fundraising
off of it, sending texts and emails.
Speaker 2 (55:43):
This is the Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
He's number two in line of secessions the presidency.
Speaker 2 (55:50):
This man is out there with his party's.
Speaker 1 (55:53):
Presumptive nominee, fundraising and trying to perform a workaround for
the gag order during his criminal trial to assess whether
his payments to an adult film star constitute an illegal
election contribution, and then covered up with fake business filings. Congratulations,
(56:17):
Republican Party, You've really done it this time. Mike Johnson
and his fundraising appeal at the criminal trial 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.
(56:39):
If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to
a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks
for listening.
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