Stuart Stevens, Carole Cadwalladr & Deja Foxx

The Lincoln Project’s Stuart Stevens examines how things are going in Trump’s America.
Congressional candidate Deja Foxx details her run for Congress and why we need Gen Z energy in Washington.
Plus, we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel where we talk to investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr about how to navigate AI disinformation.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

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

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Over a woke Marxist American pope from Chicago. We have
such a great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's
own Stuart Steven stops by to talk about how it's
going in Trump's America not very well. Then we'll talk
to congressional candidate Dajia Fox about her run for Congress
and why we need gen Z energy in Congress. Plus,

(00:35):
we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel where
we talk to investigative journalist Carol Kyle Dwalder about how
AI is taking over all our lives. But first the news.

Speaker 3 (00:48):
So, Molly, I'm going to shock you here. The guy
who wrote the book on deals, he only makes the
best deals. He's hedging again because he's not very good
at deals. That's the thing that happens all the time.
It's really not shocking at all.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
You know, It's funny because it's like we've been covering
this fucking guy for almost a decade of our lives,
and during that time we've all gotten a lot older.
My youth. I've seen my youth squandered by covering Donald Trumps.
So here's the deal. We're in a trade war with China.
The problem is we cannot onshore manufacturing by making things

(01:22):
more expensive. We need to onshore manufacturing by building manufacturing
plants in America. I mean, the whole thing is just
completely dumb and poorly thought out, like so many things
in Trump world. Now Trump is starting to see you'll
remember Peter Navarro ninety deals in ninety days. So we
have one deal so far, and it's with Britain, which

(01:45):
is like our seventh or eighth biggest trading partner, which
is very nice, but it is also a country where
we actually buy more from them than they from us.
So whatever. Anyway, the point of this whole thing is
that he's starting to feel the walls close in, and
as the walls close in, he realizes that, in fact,

(02:07):
he really does need to deal with China. Ergo, he
is suggesting cutting the tariffs already, which is, by the way,
a sign of weakness. And I don't know if you
know this about Xijingping, but I think he's going to
end up winning the trade war. I think like signs
of weakness before negotiating. Makes me think that one hundred

(02:30):
and forty five percent levy, which is going to go
to eighty percent, will ultimately go down to a lot less.
So we're in a trade war and we're already losing
and it hasn't even really started. This is a pretty
good sign that Trump is rethinking the what's going on
and good except the only thing is that, as we've

(02:52):
seen from port traffic, there's going to be a shock
here and it's going to be inflationary, and just coming
back from it is probably going to put us in
a recession. So stagflation for everyone.

Speaker 3 (03:06):
Great. So, Molly, we have a reoccurring character on this show,
particularly our old show. We'd have to talk about this
one all the time. We've named we've nicknamed her Judge
Box of Wine now that.

Speaker 2 (03:20):
Is from season one.

Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yes, the wine, you know, can be spelled two different ways.
We're gonna go out record and say it's w h
I an E because we don't want to cast any
aspersions on our Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
Yes, as a sober alcoholic, it's a self diagnosed disease.
And far be it from me to diagnose almost every
person in this administration with a drinking problem. We would
never do that. It's not every person, it's just a
few prominent.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, yeah, there's just just a few who display strong,
strong signs. Anyway, So miss Piro to say that the
people who have worked with her in the past have
bad things to say about her whole leadership style is
a rastic, drastic understatement. But mister Trump's like, now she
should be the interim DC attorney.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah, judge, box of wine going to US attorney in
Washington is great for any number of reasons. One the
Ed Martin pushback worked, Okay, all that had to happen
was vulnerable North Carolina Republican Tom Tillis had to say,
I'm not sure about this. And by the way, RFK

(04:29):
is right now fucking up every kind of thing he
possibly can with the health stuff. It's a complete and
utter disaster. And so I want to point out how
easy it would have been just to torpedo that nomination
had Republicans just had a tiny bit of a spine. Instead,

(04:50):
we have children dying of measles. Okay, So just want
to point this out when we look at this story,
which is these incredibly cowardly Republicans could have punted on
the RFK junior nomination and children who have died of
measles would be alive today. Okay, So I want you

(05:10):
to put that in your PA. That's you know that
there are a number of Republican senators, maybe all of them,
with the exception of Cindy Hyde Smith who know and
Tommy Tuberville, who know better than having RFK in that job.
And they did it anyway because they didn't want a headache,
and because they took this job because they're lazy and
not good in anything. So the point of this story

(05:32):
is we're going to have Judge box of Wine as
the interim US Attorney in Washington. It's going to be
destructive and fucked up, but also, as with so many
things in the Trump administration, inadvertently hilarious. So we will
try to grab the humor from this situation. Well, you know,
we will laugh to keep from crying. We will delight

(05:53):
in the stupidity, but we will also know that this
is not how any of this is supposed to happen,
and that this is degrading our great democracy. You know,
he puts in these very loud and competent people and
thank God for that.

Speaker 3 (06:07):
Speaking of incompetence, we are seeing one of the most
major blowbacks this administration has seen so far, with Trump
picking Casey means for Surgeon General. Casey means for those
who don't know, is an RFK Junior. Lackey, particularly known
for as Laura Lumer, leaked this week publishing a newsletter
on how she manifested her husband.

Speaker 2 (06:25):
Yes, who among us has not manifested their spouse? I
manifest all the time For Matt Greenfield, We've gone down
the fucking rabbit hole here of serious fucking craziness. You
open the door to RFK Junior, you put him in
charge of your healthcare, and you're going to have things

(06:48):
like this. So she's a best selling author. Everybody likes that.
She's a wellness influencer. Who doesn't like that she has
written a book called This Surprising Connection between Metabolism and
Lemonless Health. Oh, we're definitely all going to die. So
work with our wonderful Secretary of Health and Human Services,
Robert F. Kennedy Junior, to ensure successful implification of ore.

(07:11):
We are so incredibly fucked. The good news is that
they don't like pharmaceuticals. They don't like food industry, they
don't like vaccines. They think the FDA is corrupt. We
are so incredibly fucked up.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
I think there is good news though, that this is
really seeming like this is putting up the hackles of
a lot of people. Even rfk's old running mate is
really disappointed about this pick.

Speaker 2 (07:37):
Yes, but also I want to point out my favorite
part of this whole story is involved in this is
ronan On Johnson. Of course he's involved because he's a
fucking incredible lunatic. We should not be suppressed. Stuart Steve

(08:00):
There's a legendary campaign manager and the author of the
conspiracy to end America five ways my old party is
to driving our democracy to autocracy. Welcome to fast Politics,
Stewart Stevens.

Speaker 4 (08:14):
Thanks for asking me to the party.

Speaker 2 (08:16):
So another day in Trump's America.

Speaker 4 (08:18):
This is doing great.

Speaker 2 (08:20):
It's going great. It's like every time we make this
guy president, it's a fucking disaster.

Speaker 4 (08:26):
You know he's going to get to It's just it's
a bit of personally. If I stay away from Newark, it's.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Not we laugh to keep from crying. But talk to me,
they'll be around.

Speaker 4 (08:38):
Anybody that has measles. Look, you know, I think it's
the sort of most disheartening thing about all this Trump
stuff is it's not just the Republican Party that collapsed
in Bennett's snee back in sixteen. The way we've seen
these other institutions, like so much of the legal because
some of the legal community do it, some of the

(09:00):
great universities like one up the street from U Columbia.
And I think it's just a little parable or lesson
in how fragile this thing we call democracy is and
how much it's based upon goodwill. Now there's the flip
side of that is you do have people fighting back.
I think that the twenty four election was greatly misunderstood.
You know, it was an election that any non incumbent

(09:24):
had a great chance to win. The approval rating of
Biden was at forty No candidates ever gotten two points
higher than incumbent party's president. The right Track was at
twenty seven, which is just a saggering number. No incumbent
parties ever won when it was below forty five, which
is why we see Nikki Haley. She was doing a
lot better than Trump. And I think that that's been

(09:46):
confused with the idea that there was some reordering of
our politics. No, there wasn't that there was some great
breakthrough the Republican Party and that it was an endorsement
of Trump is And I think that you know what
we're seeing is they knew and campaign that's Project twenty
twenty five was poised, and then now they're making people
drink it and they gotten any better. So I look

(10:07):
at the Democratic Party like this incredibly valuable company that's
just under bad management. It's like they were Apple and
they fired Steve Jobs and Rovin Scully, but the value
is still there, and you know, hopefully they'll be able
to get it together.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
So let's let's go down that rabbit hole for a minute. First,
let's talk about kind of what Trump is trying to enact.
I feel like we're not getting a lot of intel
on this. People aren't talking about it because nobody gives
a shit about Congress because they made themselves so incredibly
irrelevant by rubbers camping everything that Trump wants to do.

(10:46):
But they are trying to pass a budget and it
is a fucking disaster, and they believe they're going to
pass it in fifteen days or something, and FYI, they
have not agreed on anything. The only way to pay
for these tax cuts is to basically close every rural
hospital and nursing home and politically just commit supuku discuss.

Speaker 4 (11:11):
It's a great way to put it. Yeah, you can't
get there unless you were committed to deep cuts in
the military. They're not. That's the dirty little secret of
the budget. This is why we have a deficit. People
like the stuff that they get from the government. And
you know, I think the greatest irony here and this
is then true for a long time, but it sort
of gets highlighted in these moments. The states that most

(11:33):
depend upon the federal government are these poor red states
like my home state of Mississippi. About forty percent of
Mississippi state budget forty percent comes from the federal government,
which I really don't understand why we don't call it socialism,
and you make these cuts and these are the people
that are going to be hurt. I mean, I was
looking at a map that talking about closing some social
security offices in Misissippi. Well they aren't closing them. They're

(11:56):
not talking about it now. They are because of the
date when one closed first of May. I was doing
like a little Google Maps thing you know, you're going
to have to drive a lot of people one hundred
plus miles to get their such security office will at
the same time, they're cutting the backstaff that would answer
the phone and do all these helplines. And that's not
going to affect anybody who's not dependent upon Social Security.

(12:16):
And that's just it. Scott Galloway made this point, I thought,
really precisely as he is a way of doing this
is the fundamental definition of a cryptocracy. You know, you
have a group of people around Trump who are making
a lot of money and who are using the government
to make themselves richer while others are going to be poorer.

(12:38):
And that's it. I mean, there really is a blueprint.
If we sat down, as sort of a social science experiment,
said how do you make them America poorer? Well, we've
lost thrillions of dollars of wealth since Trump took office.
These terror servants saying, how do you make America less healthy?
Will you put some lunatic like RFK in charge of
national health? How would you make America less competitive in

(13:01):
the world and have a darker than brighter future. You
would cut research, You would make our educational institutions, which
really are the great driver or certainly one of them
of wealth in America. Why is there so much money
in Boston? Why why is Massachusetts so rich? And you

(13:23):
know what, it was a great driver in California. And
you're going to cut these research budgets. It's really what
would you do if you're trying to make the world
more unstable and more dangerous? You would cut the greatest,
most successful alliance in history, NATO. And you know, Republicans
have just gone along with it. I don't think it's

(13:45):
complicated or hard to understand, because I think it's just
sheer cowardice and we should just accept that cowardice is
probably a norm that all of us who are human
reset too, and we should be surprised by courage.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
Yeah. Another person who said it was a cryptocracy was
Ken Griffin. He is the biggest Republican donor, not a
Trump donor, but the biggest Republican donor there is. Said
it's a cryptocracy. So clearly things are not going great,
right because for things, you know the fact that you
have people like this saying what the fuck are you
doing is probably a bad sign. I mean, and honestly, again,

(14:18):
I think you and I can agree, thank god, right,
because if it were going great, we'd be they'd be
just disappearing grad students left and right, and we'd be
really on our way to orbone it's hungary, whereas right
now we're sort of in a weird period where my
man is doing anti democratic things but also destroying the economy.

(14:39):
So let's talk through. I thought the incredible hail Mary
passed yesterday, Donald Trump said he would like to tax
people who make over five million dollars. This is the
only reason he got elected, as far as I can tell,
was to protect these people's money.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
Yeah. You know, I've never seen a poll in all
my life, and we used to put this on polls
where taxing people who make over even a million dollars
didn't test to the good and the higher you put
that number, I mean, if you ask people, should billionaires
pay more in taxes, it's like a ninety five to five,

(15:17):
you know, I mean everybody, of course they take that,
of course. And I think this is Trump, in this
jumbled mess of a mind, in this jumble collection of
weirdos and freaks that he has around him. You know,
it's always the last person in the room. Somebody sticks
a poll in front of him and says, look, you're

(15:38):
the first president well except the previous Trump administration that
is less popular one hundred days after you took office
than you were an election day, which is really interesting
to think about. You know, it's a very American thing
to say after I didn't vote for this person, but
I'll give them a chance. So you know, at this point,
Biden was near sixty, Obama was in the mid sixties.
Even Bush in after the two and four election was

(16:01):
higher than the he was an election day. Trump is lower.
So what does that mean? That means people who voted
for Trump are having a lot of doubts about it.
And that's that's difficult to do this quickly. It's always
difficult to get any of us to admit that we
made a mistake. So you've got this problem. You have
these congressional candidates out there who are beginning to panic.

(16:22):
I mean, they know what happened in twenty ten to Democrats,
they know what happened in nineteen ninety four, and they're
looking at this and seeing this could be a blood bat.
You know, we can move thirty to forty seats. What
is it that we're supposed to campaign own, how is
anyone's life better that's been accomplished here? So he says, oh, look,

(16:45):
you know, I'm going to go out and say this,
maybe it'll help. At the heart of it is that
there's no governing philosophy to the Republican Party anymore. Knowing
can and good faith articulate this is a theory of
government and say what you will. He used to be
able to do that. You could say, well that those
are the worst ideas I've ever heard in my life. Right,

(17:05):
A lot of people said that, you know, but you
can have a debate between some conservative and Elizabeth Warren
and it could be an interesting debate and she could
defend one another. But there's not now there's not a
center right party in America. And I think that that
lack of any sort of coherent theory of government, a
purpose of government, is at the root of all this,
because if you don't believe in anything, if you don't

(17:28):
have any idea that government should work this way, it's
just a series of these chaotic missteps, and it's just
you end up with this mess that we have now,
a government that is failing it its basic purposes.

Speaker 2 (17:43):
So you don't think Trump is going to increase taxes
for people who make over five million dollars a year.

Speaker 4 (17:49):
No.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
I mean, it's such a great thing for him to say,
because it's like, yeah, but of course he's not going
to do it. No. Look, so then we get to
the question of is it malpractice that Democrats aren't pulling
better when they're running against someone who is literally doing
all the most unpopular things. So I'm going to ask you.
I know you're a Republican. Jesse and I both pretty lefty.

(18:12):
I'm right, I'm less lefty than Jesse is because I
come from a lot of privilege, but I'm still lefty.
I want you to sort of explain to us why
you think democrats can't like it's clear there's a populism.
It is not so different than what Democrats want to do,

(18:33):
and yet somehow it's not working.

Speaker 4 (18:36):
So discuss Yeah, you know, I've been thinking about this
a lot, and I think it's a really interesting question.
Argument can be made, a case can be made that
the Democrats are still trapped in this mindset that we
have news cycles. When we had news cycles, you could
at least attempt to push a message that was unified.
I mean, all these campaigns we said around, we'd let's
have an education week now, right. I never really could

(18:57):
do it, but we could at least pretend that we
could do it. I mean, I can't remember. In two thousand,
when I was working on the Bush campaign, then the
New York Times went online at midnight East Coast time.
You could sit there, so that was eleven o'clock in Austin.
You could sit there and you could look at your watch,
and by eleven fifteen you would be getting calls from
reporters that were basically using the New York Times as

(19:17):
assignment editors for what they were going to work on.
So we don't have that anymore. That's been shattered. They're
no gatekeepers all of that. So what does that mean
to me? I think it means you shouldn't If you're
asking yourself, is that the right thing to do to
go out was like a Bernie an AOC campaign Or
should you be talking about just gas prices? That's the
wrong question, because you should be doing everything, because different

(19:41):
things are going to be heard by different people, because
our entire media is so fragmented. Smart you should just
flood the zone with all of these messages and I
think the one thing, if there's one lesson out of
the last year in politics, it's the power of passion.
And you know, there still is this really unfortunate assumption

(20:05):
inside a lot of consulting community. I think it's worse
on the Democratic side because consulting community on the Republican
side has kind of been reduced to just following Trump.
You can focus group your way out of this, you
can test it your way out of this. And the
super Pac Future Forward that was started to support Biden
and then went to Harris is a perfect example. I mean,

(20:25):
I think they're really smart. I think they made some
good ads, but they had almost a billion dollars to
spend and they were testing everything. They had this system,
We're going to test every ad three times. So it's
like it was just so clear that these transgender attacks
were hurting Democrats across the board because it was a
perfect example to sort of use as a hyperbole of

(20:47):
Wochism or whatever, and it was the easiest thing in
the world to push back on. This was a policy
that was adopted under Trump by his handpicked head of
prison and as far as anybody can figure out, only
happened once, right, So you know, we made an ass
and take very long the Lincoln Project to put back
on it. Gave it to the folks at Future four

(21:08):
because super pacn coordinated. They said that we love this.
Like a week later it wasn't running. I was like, hey, guys,
what's going on? They got well, he didn't test well,
and you know, I just want to say to him,
do you think Willie Horton tested well? Like people were like,
you know, I really liked that bit about the guy
that shot somebody in the face. No, people are never
going to say that, but it does work. And you
can use a kind of social science experiment. Every Democratic

(21:30):
Senate candidate who was attacked with this who responded on
camera pushing back on it one and everyone who was
attacking didn't lost. So that's a lesson in this.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
That's how you get to a Reuben Diego Trump voter. Right.
What I think is so sort of lightning in a
bottle about what Trump did was that he went everywhere
he promised every time he did that politics is downstream
of culture. He became part of the culture. He influenced
the politics, and it just worked. It worked so well
that people came out, they filled out for him, They

(22:03):
voted for him, and then they left the bottom of
the ticket blank in a lot of states. So that
is really the thesis, right A Brightbarn.

Speaker 4 (22:12):
Yeah, Look, I think this has been true and really
obvious since the Clinton Bush election. You know, I can
remember as a Republican when Clinton went on our senior
hall played the saxophone and we said, well, this race
is over. No one wants to president in the United States.
Who's going to put on sunglasses and play a saxophone
on a late night showed.

Speaker 2 (22:30):
Oh you guys thought you'd win on that.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
And well you were smarter. By the end of the campaign,
Bush would have played a banjo in his underwear someplace,
you know, because they realized it was working. So I
think this has been apparent to people. And you know,
in two thousand at the Lincoln Project, when we started
a podcast, we had a lot of friends and support
us going like, Gus, what are you doing starting a podcast?
We started a streaming show because we saw this that

(22:55):
you had to communicate in these different ways, and now
you have twenty four people go it was the podcast
literally wasn't the caest election, but you know, it just
shows the difference that has occurred here. But look, the
thing that frustrates me most about the Democratic Party is
a lack of swagger, a lack of affirmative assertion. We're

(23:17):
right there wrong And I hate this stuff. I read
like we're going to go out and have these listening
tours and try to figure out what we did wrong.
I don't know. I mean, if you do that stuff,
I wouldn't talk about it. And they're talking about it
because they think that they have to do a certain pendance. Bosses,
our donors are mad. But look, we're going to go

(23:38):
through this. You have to. I mean, nobody ever wins
the super Bowl if you walk out and think maybe
we have a chance. I mean you have to believe
in a start that you're going to win and that
you're right. And they need to use a language here
that is accusatory and broad sweeping. Trump is a crook.
It is the most corrupt administration by far in history.

(23:59):
Trump is portraying the greatest generation of what he's doing
in Ukraine and the way he's trying to demand basically
a protection racket with Ukraine. I mean, it's disgusting. You
need to say these things. Don't be afraid of going
too far, and I think that element is inside the
Democratic Party, and I think it really is not so

(24:22):
much ideological. I mean, Fetterman's not bad at it, and
he's sort of a different place than Bernie and AOC
on all of these issues. So it's not a time
for timidity. It's a time for boldness, and it's a
time to if you really believe that democracy is a threat,
which you should to act like it to respond. It's
still this confusion that the Democratic Party has, which is

(24:45):
understandable and there's something admirable about this in a way
that their role is to be a governing party. No,
I mean Johnathan last wrote about this brilliantly thought their
role should be to be a dissident movement, and that's
what they should be looking at. How did dissident movements operate?
And they should be trying to stop all of this.
They shouldn't be worried that they're going to be seen

(25:06):
as uncompromising or they're not getting anything doing. You know,
they should do what used to be Buckley said of conservatism,
that stand in the wake of history and say no,
that's what they should be doing, and doing it loudly.

Speaker 2 (25:20):
Stuart Stevens. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,
thank you.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Molly.

Speaker 2 (25:28):
Dija Fox is a congressional candidate in Arizona seventh District.
Welcome to Fast Politics. Oh my god, I'm so excited, Dija.

Speaker 5 (25:37):
Hello, thank you for having me.

Speaker 2 (25:40):
We just did the math and we have known each
other very rufually. I mean, we don't know each other well,
but for eight years. I'm going to embarrass you and
tell the story of when I met you. Can I
do that for a minute, go for it. So we
were at an event and Women's magazine honoring you. You
have incredible story of your upbringing and how you grew up,

(26:06):
and again you can tell I'm sure I'm making mistakes
here because it was like almost a decade ago, but
you grew up very modest circumstances, sometimes doing your homework
in your car where you were living.

Speaker 5 (26:19):
Yeah. Yeah, we didn't have Wi Fi at my home,
so I would often have to take you know, go
to the library and sometimes even sit outside to use that.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
But you did end up getting a scholarship to.

Speaker 5 (26:32):
Barnard, actually to Columbia. But yes, Tywambia moving to New
York on a full ride. At Columbia in twenty eighteen
and became the first of my family to go to college.
It could not have been more of a one to
eighty from where I was at. Right. I wrote my
college essays on my phone while working at the gas
station after school, and I've since graduated and moved back

(26:58):
to Arizona, where I'm now running for office.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
Let's talk about what it looks like in Arizona right now.
Arizona is such an interesting state. The really one of
the very few states where you had Trump Reuben Diego voters.
What does it take to win in Arizona and what
does Arizona look like? And also, you're running in a primary,
I want you to talk us through what your race

(27:22):
looks like.

Speaker 5 (27:23):
Yeah, I mean, Arizona is an interesting place, right and
it's one of the things I love most about it
is that people here think really critically. But also, you know,
we have a real group of independence out here. And
so you're right to say that this last election showed
us some interesting numbers, right that Trump ended up winning

(27:46):
out here in Arizona. But we also saw Reuben Diego,
a Democrat, pull through in the Senate. And you know
what I think is maybe most interesting of all is
that we saw our abortion initiative, our citizens ballot initiative
pass and with a historic number of signatures to qualify,
they gathered something like eight hundred thousand, and so I

(28:09):
think it's safe to say that here in Arizona, people
are with us on the issues. And when we look
at a race like mine, I'm running for congress in
Congressional Districts seven here in Arizona that includes parts of
South and West Tucson, my hometown, two neighborhoods up in Phoenix,

(28:30):
and hundreds of miles of the US Mexico border. And
my district is one of the safer and bluer congressional
districts in Arizona. And so what's really on the line
in this race and in this primary is an opportunity
to one make history by electing one of the youngest members,

(28:51):
the youngest member, and the first woman of my generation.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Right.

Speaker 5 (28:56):
And then you know, the other piece that I'll point
out here is that in this primary I'm running against
two other folks, and I think what makes me stand
out is I'm the break from the status quo. I'm
not a career politician. I got my start as an
activist a decade ago, and so I know power from

(29:16):
the other side of the diis.

Speaker 4 (29:19):
You know.

Speaker 5 (29:19):
And I think in this moment where Trump has really
thrown us into a sense of lawlessness, right where it
feels like rules suddenly don't matter, we need someone with
an advocacy lens right, with an activist's experience, to be
an obstructionist to his agenda and to make people at
home feel like somebody is fighting for them.

Speaker 2 (29:40):
Yeah, I would love you to talk about that, because
as a member of Congress, you have power, but you
also don't have that much power. So how do you
feel like you could use this congressional seat to really
push against this?

Speaker 5 (29:55):
I mean, I think first things first, Right, just by
the nature of me being in this seat, the dynamics
of power in Washington would look different. As it stands,
something like one in five Americans are of my generation
Gen Z, and yet we have a single representative in Congress,
Like that is a true representation problem, right, And by

(30:16):
the nature of having someone not just a young person
for whom the climate crisis is not theoretical, right, for
whom I am a part of the first generation of
women to have less rights than our mothers, right, Like,
I bring a different perspective to this work by the
nature of my age. The other thing I'll say, as
it relates to age and how I would do this

(30:36):
job differently, is that Donald Trump has been running for
president since I was fifteen years old. The entirety of
my sort of political consciousness has been affected by this
man and the circus he is running up in DC.
And so when we ask how would I do things differently,
I think you're right to say that under a Trump trifecta,

(30:59):
it feels like even people holding some of the offices
with the most power seem to have their hands tied
on what they can do. My commitment is that I
would learn the ins and outs of Capitol Hill, right,
things like parliamentary maneuvers, to be a true obstructionist to
his agenda, especially when it comes to tax cuts for

(31:21):
the billionaires and most wealthy among us.

Speaker 4 (31:24):
Right.

Speaker 5 (31:25):
And then the next thing I'll say, and I think
this can't be understated, is that we need more effective messengers.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Right. I was actually about to bring that up.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
Yeah, go on, I mean I have interviewed these electeds, right,
I've gone up to DC with my mini mic and
questions in hand, even you know, most recently at the
joint address the State of the Union, if you will,
and I left disappointed these folks are not keeping up
in our own party with the changing media landscape. Right,

(31:58):
something like thirty nine of adults under thirty get their
news on TikTok, And so if we're going to stay
competitive with the right, we need to build a more
effective media ecosystem and have the kind of representation and electeds,
especially in these safe blue seats, who can meet the moment,

(32:20):
who can translate a message into digital spaces, and our
campaign is doing that already. We have over four million
organic views in the last month on Instagram and TikTok
and a special election primary in Arizona, right, Like, imagine
what we could do with the power of that seat.
And at a time where Democrats have an approval rating

(32:42):
in the twenties, we should be looking to say, who
are our new voices, what does new leadership look like,
and who can we send into these these safer and
bluer seats to make people at home feel fought for
so we don't lose them.

Speaker 2 (32:56):
Yeah, I also think that some of the problem that
we're seeing is just that there's just not enough explaining
that goes on, and you can't necessarily explain the stuff
if you are using traditional platforms. So I'm thinking about

(33:16):
AOC as ranking member of Oversight. One of the really
big enforced errors I think that Democrats did was they
refuse to make AOC ranking on Oversight, and the thinking
was it wasn't her turn because Jerry Connolly had been
on oversight for a long time and a lot of
people felt they owed him discussed.

Speaker 5 (33:36):
Yeah, I mean that resonates with me. That kind of
thinking out in DC is exactly what I'm going up
against right now in my primary. Right this idea that
we need to wait our turn, that the Republican Party
is going to go back to normal if we just
give it some time, which young people like me know
is not true. Right, that politics has forever changed in

(33:58):
this country, and we needeople who are willing to meet
that moment, who are willing to be the messengers who
are going to do that explaining to help people understand
what is happening in DC and not just the awful
things that are being done on the right in real
time and at a frequency that is impossible to keep
up with but on our side, right, how are we

(34:21):
fighting for them? And I think one of the I
liked this phrase used unforced errors, right, sort of. One
of the things I think Democrats are leaving on the
table is they're failing to even explain what they're doing well. Right,
But you know, you're right to say that our party
has a deficit of leadership in this moment, and we
see it in moments where folks like AOC are denied

(34:45):
leadership positions despite coming in at the top when asked.
You know, there was a CNN poll I believe that
asked who in the Democratic Party which elected best represents
our core values? And AOC rose to the top right.
And so instead of listening to the people right and
mirroring that in our leadership structures, DC has constantly and

(35:11):
consistently tried the top down approach that they know better
than people, right, And we're seeing that been in elections
like mine, where there's pushback on having a true primary.
Right would rather have selections than elections because it feels safer,
more predictable people who are really entrenched in this establishment.

(35:34):
But for folks like me, right, I am at the
doors listening to constituents and online right reading the TikTok comments,
taking a pulse for where our party and where young people,
in particular the future of our party are at. And
we know that we need newer and younger voices if
we're going to have a party for my generation to inherit.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
Yeah, so I'm wondering if you could explain to us
one of the things that I think that traditional Democrats
don't feel comfortable with is doing the kind of media
that they probably need to explain to us what that
looks like and how they should do it.

Speaker 5 (36:14):
The media landscape has changed so much, even in the
last ten years. I had my first viral video in
twenty seventeen going toe to toe with my former senator,
a Republican, Jeff Flake, over his attempts to defund planned parenthood. Right,
I shouldn't fit his town hall, which Republicans do not
seem to be hosting anymore.

Speaker 2 (36:35):
When they used to do town hall right in the.

Speaker 5 (36:38):
Era in which Republicans had town halls and like would
go and be face to face with their constituents, a
bygone era of democracy. I fear, and I asked him
why he is a middle aged white man was making
decisions about me and my body, right, And he says
this thing about how he supports policies that support the
American Dream, and I ask him why he would deny
me the American Dream. And millions of people overnight on

(37:01):
Twitter and Facebook saw that video, and I share that
story to say that in the last what is that
eight years since we've known each other, the landscape on
which we are meeting people, in which they are developing
their political understanding has shifted. And for someone like me, right,
who has been ear to the ground, following each platform

(37:24):
as it develops and really working in digital strategy, right
for candidates even like Kamala Harris, I've been able to
keep up with that shift. But for a lot of
these legacy folks, establishment Dems on our side, they're failing
to see the movement of attention and political understanding. There's

(37:44):
a bit of even an elitism, if you will, around
who builds political understanding right that there's no way that
someone like me, with hundreds of thousands of followers on
TikTok and Instagram, there's no way that I could be
the one building people's political understandings over something like you know,

(38:06):
a more traditional CNN or MSNBC, which is behind a
paywall for most people of my generation and inaccessible, and
so you know, I think it will take candidates like
me who are taking a new media approach right, who
are hopping on the podcasts and doing the substack live
streams and consistently pumping out viral content with organic views

(38:28):
all across the country and in district to change their minds.
We still have to prove concept to some of these
more traditional folks. But I think what is scarier is
that we may not have time that if we don't
start being competitive in these digital spaces. We already saw
an indicator of this in twenty twenty four, but the

(38:50):
other side already has a head start. And if we
don't start closing the gap now by electing people who
are strong messagers in new media and digital spaces, if
we don't start investing in the creators who have strong
podcasts and interview series and live streams right by giving
them access to our electeds and letting them ask real questions,

(39:13):
and if we don't start investing in that media ecosystem overall,
like we are going to be in a really bad
spot in twenty twenty eight.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
You know, it's funny because I actually don't think it
necessarily matters what the questions you ask people are. Has
someone who has been doing interviewing for a long time.
I actually think people just say what they want to
say and you want to sort of direct them. But
there are certain people who will tell you more on
a staff than other people. And I think one of

(39:43):
the things that I have been really struggling with is
this sort of mckinseying of democratic speak, so where you
interview someone but they really refuse to tell you anything
that is particularly relevant. And look, sometimes that's been used
to great effect, but at this point, I think it's
losing more elections than it's winning for Democrats.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
Yeah, I couldn't agree with you.

Speaker 4 (40:06):
More.

Speaker 5 (40:06):
People's bs radar is up right and what they expect
not only from politicians but from celebrities right influencers. Even
because of the nature of social media, where anyone can
leave a comment for the entire world to see, or
send a DM in real time to anyone they want

(40:29):
anywhere in the world. Right, there is a new expectation
of transparency and accountability in our culture because of the
structures of these social media platforms and the ways they
have affected our social relationships. And one thing I'm really
proud of on our campaign is the level of transparency

(40:49):
we're bringing to this process. I once again will stress
that this is a special election primary in the middle
of summer in Arizona, with like one hundred days in it.
There is absolutely no expectation from like an establishment point
of view of bringing new people into this process. This
is the kind of election where they're like, focus on
the high efficacy voters and leave everybody else behind. And

(41:12):
that is absolutely not what we are doing over here.
We are doing what you said earlier, which is explaining
the process.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
Right.

Speaker 5 (41:19):
We took people along as we gathered signatures. We showed
them the process of literally submitting those signatures to the
Secretary of State's office, and then showed them the receipts
of how many we had, right, like the actual receipt
from his office. We've taken them behind the scenes on
things like fundraising. You know, there is probably hundreds of
thousands of more people that know now what rolodexing and

(41:42):
call time are because of our videos, and so, you know,
I think pulling back a little bit of that rather
one of the benefits of our campaign, and the way
we are doing things differently by the nature of being
a candidate who is transparent and available online, is that
we are making this process more transparent as we go.

(42:03):
And I think the effects of that are still yet
to be seen, but we know that it's one of
the issues that democrats and our democracy at large are facing.
Right There is an issue of transparency, of people feeling
like they're included in the process. And the other thing
that is still left to be seen but will will
know shortly, is how it will affect other young people

(42:25):
who are considering a run for office. I get, I'm
not kidding you, hundreds of dms of young people who
are interested in running for office because of the content
they are seeing on my platform around this election, right,
who want to know more about the process, who are
frustrated and fed up, and who want to take action.

(42:46):
And I think it can't be understated that after losing
so many young people in this last election to apathy
or to the other side, that we need leaders who
are inspiring young people to get involved, right, who make
it feel possible, not more folks who you know, through
the means of legacy and establishment, make this feel even

(43:07):
further away and affirm what people already believe, which is
that this political process isn't for them.

Speaker 2 (43:12):
Yeah, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining.

Speaker 5 (43:16):
Us, thank you for having me, and thank you for
your thoughtful questions. Nobody said it was going to be easy.
It's hard work and it's good work. And I hope
that people will join in to support our work and
our campaign because we really have a shot to make
history over here in Arizona. But we only got a
few weeks left.

Speaker 2 (43:32):
Who are you running a hand?

Speaker 5 (43:34):
There are two other folks in this Democratic primary of note.
One is a former state legislator and the other came
off the board of supervisors and is the former congressman's daughter.

Speaker 2 (43:46):
Oh wow, yeah. And is she young?

Speaker 5 (43:49):
No, she's in her fifties. And I think what you
need to know about the difference between me and them
is that when it comes to experience, mine is in
an act advocacy realm right, you know. The experience that
I bring is advocacy.

Speaker 2 (44:06):
Carol Cadwalder is an investigative journalist and the author of
The Family Tree. Welcome to Fast Politics.

Speaker 6 (44:16):
So nice to be here, great fan, great fans.

Speaker 2 (44:19):
Well, it's very mutual so your atjourney started with the
journey of Braxit.

Speaker 6 (44:26):
Which journey are we talking? Well?

Speaker 2 (44:28):
I feel like I want you to give us your
for those who are not as dialed in as Jesse
and I are.

Speaker 6 (44:35):
The hell is this British chick of what you're doing
on your podcast?

Speaker 2 (44:39):
Is that all right? Yeah? You can do this with Yeah.

Speaker 6 (44:44):
So basically who am I? I am an investigative journalist.
I was until three weeks ago a Guardian journalist, but
I have been expelled now from mainstream media. I've been
clinging on but anyway, they the Guardians, sold my bit
of the organization and so anyway, long story, but I'm out.

(45:08):
But I'm enjoying my liberty and freedom I have to
tell you, which enables me to be quite punchy. Which
is I mean, I've been pretty punchy, but I feel
that I don't know something about age is becoming more so.
But to answer the question, I essentially my beat became
in twenty sixteen. My beat really became this thing which

(45:28):
was the intersection of technology and politics, and of course
that means technology and democracy. And I was kind of
just terrified. I'd been reporting on tech for quite a
long time. By that stage, but very much from as generalist,
like I'm a feature writer, that's my background. It's very
much about like explaining to the world how this stuff worked,

(45:50):
rather than doing the sort of like my new who
is a great new product. Anyway, in that sort of
I sort of became terrified about what I discovered in
the twenty sixteen. It was really actually the thing which
really sent me down the rabbit hole was the election
of Trump. And then that I started pulling on a
string and I discovered this really shady data company called

(46:14):
Cambridge Analytica.

Speaker 2 (46:16):
And little by little I pulled that.

Speaker 6 (46:19):
String and sort of discovered this huge scandal, the Facebook
Cambridge Analytica scandal, which was this massive data breach in
which eighty seven million people's Facebook profiles were harvested and
then used essentially to help elect Trump and the same
company and the same people. It was very much there

(46:39):
was this totally kind of twin operation you could see
between Brexit and Trump and just it was the same people,
it was the same companies, it was the same data.
We had the same kinds of bad actors, the same
foreign interference, and so that sort of question of how
these tech plans platforms essentially facilitated a complete revolution in

(47:05):
the way that we do campaigning and politic completely opaque,
completely unaccountable and uh and have you know, caused a
convulsion in what we think of as democracy. And I
would argue doesn't really, you know, it's a very big
question about whether that still exists in that in this
online world. Was that did that work?

Speaker 2 (47:27):
It did work? But it's pretty heavy. I mean it's
very it's quite heavy.

Speaker 6 (47:32):
Yeah, it's quite heavy. I mean it it's this this,
I mean, it's it's amazing. Actually, weirdly, as I have
this thing of that, I actually weirdly feel more cheerful
right now than I did for really long periods of
this time. And it's because the threat is now visible,
right that the at least done us all a favor

(47:53):
in like oh okay, Silicon Valley, these tech companies, what
they're doing. What the aar like, the centralized power, the
totally unaccountable power. We now get it in a way. Yes,
we're sparing on the journey. I feel like we're now
starting on the journey of at least getting it.

Speaker 2 (48:12):
So you had an incredible TED talk that where you
talked about techno authoritarianism, right, that's what it really is,
getting your data, using it to control you meet, you know,
sort of the worst of authoritarianism and the worst of
data mining coming together. You know, that's the Elon Musk

(48:34):
part and the Heritage Foundation part coming together to rule
the world. Talk us through kind of how you got
to this thesis.

Speaker 6 (48:42):
I don't think it's a thesis. I think it is reality.

Speaker 2 (48:44):
I mean, no, no, but it is reality. But it's yeah, yeah, yeah.
To sum it up, sort of, you know, to sum
it up is that we live in a surveillance society.

Speaker 6 (48:56):
Right. Every single thing, our entire econ, the entire online
economy is predicated on knowing what we're up to online
and tracking that and monetizing that, and that underpins these
you know, trillion dollar tech companies. That's their model, that's

(49:17):
what they're based on. They're based on knowing who we are,
and they know who we are by gathering this data
about us, and you can everybody was sort of like
had different. Oh I don't care anyway, Like I don't
care about my privacy. It doesn't manter to me. Oh,
I've got nothing to hide like That was the sort
of mentality which built Silicon Valley, but now Silicon Valley

(49:43):
is it's you know, we've seen this merger take place
between Silicon Valley and the most powerful superpower in the world,
and those two things have now come together. And so
that power that all see being all knowing power coming
together with a superpower with nuclear weapons, which is reshaping

(50:07):
the world order. This is if you're not terrified, it
is because you are not paying attention. And I actually
I feel really bad saying that because I am based
here in London and I am one degree removed from
what is happening in America. But it's only one degree removed.

(50:29):
You don't have to apologize for things not being as
bad where you are than where we are. And I
think we talked when we were talking offline before you
were saying, you actually feel a little better. And I
actually feel a little better too because some of the
stuff we saw. And I had a similar experience with
Project Toy twenty five, which is I was like, holy shit,

(50:52):
this is going to gut the entire federal government, Like
if they enact this, it is going to be the
end of rural hospitals and we're all nursing homes and
this and that, and I was like, and the you know,
administrative state, I mean, the goal is to dismantle everything
you get from the federal government. And now that it's happening,

(51:13):
I'm like, oh, I'm not crazy, Like this was actually
what it was. And I feel like you have that
same thought. So I've been Britain's premier conspiracy theorist for
a decade. I mean I sort of hold that title.
I've been a cultural hate figure because I investigated Brexit,
which you know, it was an it was a totally
evidence based journalistic investigation. However, because it was into a

(51:37):
political matter with such divisiveness in Britain, I got tird
and smeared and feathered, trd and smothed and feathered. I
was like hung out to dry and multiply harassed and
all the rest of it. Because the way of undermining
my reporting was to undermine me, and the way of
undermining me was to go after me in this very personal,

(51:58):
misogynistic way. And yeah, the conspiracy theory of around this
stuffs has been you know, it's kind of interesting. I
actually haven't had that for a little while. I mean,
I'm sure it will come back to another footwear but
it turned out it turned out it wasn't a conspiracy theory,
it was a conspiracy.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Yeah. Well, and I mean I think that's like Brexit
is a great example because it's over and it's clearly
was a disaster. Right. They didn't want Polish plumbers coming
into the country, so they sanctioned themselves and it's been
a complete disaster, right.

Speaker 6 (52:32):
I wish I could say that's the thing is is
that we haven't because of the sort of nobody has
any consensus of reality anymore, because of the way that
the tech platforms, the way that we consume information. So
there is no consensus of reality in Britain that Brexit
was a disaster to such to such a degree that

(52:54):
our left, supposedly left wing labor government can't even talk
about this. Right, that's still is of a boaten subject
which they just don't want to go near. Because also
in Britain, our media landscape is totally dominated by still
powerful less powerful than it was, but it's still powerful

(53:15):
right wing, corporate and sort of oligarchic media and they
you know, they've made the political agenda for years, for decades,
and they still have this sort of huge amount of
power that way, So yeah, so sadly, sadly, although by
every demonstrable, demonstrable and measurable index, yes, it has been

(53:37):
a disaster, but we still can't get people to own that.

Speaker 2 (53:41):
That is so incredibly sharking way, But okay, I want
you to talk about the data and what it looks
like to you. So in twenty sixteen it was Facebook.
I think of Mark Zackerberg as like significantly more evil
than Elon Musk, despite the fact that Elon Musk reads
us more evil than Mark Zuckerberok, because Elon Musk and

(54:03):
again this is this idea, So Elon Musk is out
about what he's doing, so talk to us about that.

Speaker 6 (54:10):
Why So I'm really curious, why do you think Zuckerbog's
more evil? Go and give me we.

Speaker 2 (54:14):
All because he pretends to not be evil. Whereas Elon
is like full on, you know, we want you know,
for you know, it's like, why do these four people
get food when we could just be giving tax cuts
to huge corporations, Whereas I feel like Mark Zuckerberg is like,
we're here to connect everyone. We are here for connection,

(54:37):
and then it's like and the Rahingan genocide.

Speaker 4 (54:40):
Yeah, yeah, ye know.

Speaker 6 (54:42):
Also as well, it's got. The thing about Zuckerberg is
that there's a slight of hand with him in you know,
they keep renaming shits, so it's refused to call it meta.
I'm still calling it Facebook. They renamed it meta to
sort of like wipe the stink off all the Facebook scandals.
But I'm sorry that I'm not flying with And the
slides of hand is that Facebook is Facebook, it's Instagram,

(55:05):
it's WhatsApp, it's and those people always forget that.

Speaker 2 (55:09):
You always have.

Speaker 6 (55:09):
These youngsters saying, oh, I'm not on Facebook, I don't
having things to do meta, and it's like, yeah, do us.
Of course they use Instagram, so it's and then of course,
you know and like I am I have of boten
policy on you know too, And now i am I'm
on WhatsApp and actually I've just joined Instagram. He in
terms of the world's population and use of product his products, yeah,

(55:31):
he does win. And that's there is actually global domination there.
And you know, there is a really interesting case happening
at the moment, which is they are looking to break
up anti trust.

Speaker 2 (55:41):
Yeah, the anti trust thing.

Speaker 6 (55:43):
And of course it's not a coincidence that he's cozying
up to Trump, right, I mean, it's he's got a
lot to lose. He's got a lot to lose. I
think the difference is is that back in twenty sixteen,
the reason why that was such a moment and why
he was so culpable is because it was Facebook, which
was where politics, where campaigning was being conducted. That we

(56:05):
had much more centralized sort of social media landscape at
that time. Now it's much more scattered. There's so many
other it's you know, there's there's the guy, yeah, the
TikTok of it in the YouTube and all the rest
of it. Like that's where a lot of the sort
of money is being spent. Now, what's interesting about this Cambridgealytics.
It's a good thing in a way. It's a model.

(56:25):
It's a parable for what Musk has been doing inside
the government, which is that you know, Cambra Reganalystic. It
was hoovering up this Facebook data to then to then
build algorithms to to really understand who these people were
to then target them politically. So why is Musk hoovering

(56:47):
up all of this data from inside government? What's he doing?

Speaker 4 (56:52):
It?

Speaker 6 (56:52):
The most valuable resource in the world for you know,
the competition the game now is all AI. You want
to build the best AI, you know, that's where the
race is on. And to build the best AI, you
need the best sources of data. And here he you know,
has been inside the US government with absolutely kidd in
a candy shop with you know, the entire population's highly

(57:16):
highly sensitive different pieces of data, including financial and social
security and all the rest of it. That's the thing
I find the most terrifying in the sense like you
capture that, you capture the future in a way.

Speaker 2 (57:31):
On Twitter already we're seeing like fake tweet by fake people.
So what's the But just explain to me the goal here.
Fake people create fake tweets that real people read and
think that more people believe something than really do.

Speaker 6 (57:46):
I mean, just explain to me. It's basically it's because
it's a very complex landscape. And it was really funny.
There was this quite senior political journalist during the Brexit years.
He was just he went was on some political program
and he said, a Russian bot didn't tell my granny
to vote for Brexits, and that was his why this
is all a load of rubbish and it just like

(58:08):
it the way that the different ways that there's sort
of these mechanized forms work and now so much more
sophisticated because of AI. Is a lot of what they're
doing is manipulating reality. So the cast on Twitter would
be those nameless people and things they would like, you know,
they'd glom onto different hashtags. You get the hashtags to

(58:31):
trend and then and then real people look to see
what's happening. It's ways, you know, there's lots of different
ways of manipulating people's sentiments and we don't realize it's invisible,
but they do really impact things like the news agenda.

Speaker 2 (58:47):
So here's a question for you, because I definitely have
you know, I come from internet circa nay, I come
from the nineties, right, and and what has happened with
me is I've just stopped trusting doing things I see online.
So if I see a picture of Donald Trump as
the pulp, I don't assume Donald Trump is the new
pulp because I know that there's and you know, AI

(59:10):
looks a little different. You can tell what it is.
But is that isn't that what everyone is just going
to not trust anything because there's no fact checking.

Speaker 6 (59:22):
Yeah, that's and that's what we're seeing happening. I mean,
that's where and this loss of trust which goes along
with that is a loss of trust in everything, isn't
It's a loss of trust in institutions, It's a lot
of trust in news organizations with it, It's a lot
of trust in you know, government bodies. This is across

(59:43):
the board. And you know that's that in itself is terrifying,
isn't it? And you know, this is where I sort
of say, it's that we these terms which we started
learning in twenty and sixteen, misinformation and disinformation, like that's
gone like forget that now like this is you know,

(01:00:04):
I sort of talk about sort of total information collapse
like this now we are in total information chaos and
that's you know, it's it's it's it's why it's so
hard for any of us to like process and navigate
what on earth is going on, because we just face
this chaotic cacophony of voices and noise and you know,

(01:00:28):
funny memes and cat video and but you know, weirdly, Molly,
I actually do feel like there is something here which
gives me. It's bizarre, how like more optimistic I am
at the moment than I will meet because now that
we can see the problem, and now we can see

(01:00:49):
the crisis, we can actually now start thinking about solutions.
That's the thing. And so it is this like out
of crisis comes opportunities. So for me, and it's kind
of what I've a particular skin in this game. But
for me, what's now so important is that we have
to build proper independent media that people trust. Right, And

(01:01:11):
we've seen the way that these big corporates, you know
in America bowing down to Trump. They you know, they
can't stand up things They've got, you know, their theme
park to worry about.

Speaker 7 (01:01:21):
Right, and their space stuffing Molly is to you, aren't
they like this is the kind of this is where
the you know, actually you've got to be out there,
like being popular than Joe Rogan Molly.

Speaker 6 (01:01:35):
That is now your job.

Speaker 2 (01:01:38):
I have to tell you. The funniest part though, just
on this information idea is I started putting on Instagram
like tweets that I thought were important for people because
I knew that there were a lot of people who
couldn't stay on Twitter anymore and that there were things
that were relevant and important that they might never see.
I mean, this is the fundamental problem. So I started
putting them on Instagram. And I was at White House

(01:02:00):
Correspondence weekend like two weeks ago, and a number of
like real television people like anchors and you know whatever
intellect We're like, I find your Instagram very useful. But
that's because like the problem is, we don't have a
great aggregation entering anymore. Yes, so it is like we

(01:02:24):
are like it's and unless you spend twelve hours a
day online, which luckily I do, you don't have like
a pastisee yeah, of everything that is happening. So you
miss like, you know, you miss Elon Musk melting down
about his you know, possible child with the possible influencer,

(01:02:44):
you know what I mean. You miss all of that,
and then you'll see something else and it won't make
sense because you won't have the entire story.

Speaker 6 (01:02:52):
Yeah, that's so funny because my first Instagram post was
like a screenshot of my tweet. Okay, Yeah, it was
very funny because a friend saw it and she was like,
she was like no, she was like, no, you need
to be like you need to be showing your eyebrows
and like doing a selfie with like and I was like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:08):
No, anyway, is culture is downstream of politics. Politics culture discussed.

Speaker 6 (01:03:18):
So this was yeah. So I used this line in
my Ted talk, which is Steve, I say, Steve Bannon's.

Speaker 2 (01:03:24):
Bannon, but it's really from bray Bar. It's from me.

Speaker 6 (01:03:28):
It's I think this thing which is that most people
honestly don't care about politics, and but yet you know
they're not watching the political news, they're not watching the
political pundits. This isn't where the important stuff is being discussed,
but where the thing which ahead of the you know,

(01:03:48):
the election, the us that it's the podcast bros, like
it's the YouTube bros. And at the moment those bros
who are on browie platforms with algorithms built by bros
to which prioritizes bro content, that is where the sort
of conversation is. That's where the dial is shifting, and

(01:04:12):
that is culture, and that for me is the sort
of key thing about it. To go back to the
tech of it, right, which is the YouTube algorithm, kind
of terrifies me in that way. YouTube is the round
zero of the manosphere, and misogyny is wrapped up in
everything that we're seeing now. But I feel that like
in order to reclaim that space, we need people like

(01:04:35):
you out talking to and for as many people listening
to you as possible. And yeah, we have to in
order to reclaim the politics, we need to kind of
first regain the culture. And part of the way that
we have to reclaim the culture, the long view is
we need to build better platforms which are not owned

(01:04:55):
by these terrible Silicon Valley tech companies. That's a long yep.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
I'm so excited, thank you, thank you, thank you. This
was amazing. I really appreciate you just exactly what I
want to talk about. So thank you, thank you for having.

Speaker 6 (01:05:10):
Me on and I really forward to seeing you in
London and talking about your.

Speaker 2 (01:05:15):
Book now perfectly, Jesse Cannon.

Speaker 3 (01:05:23):
PI judged fast. Who would have thought that the Supreme
Court repealing the Voting Rights Act back in the day
would not go so well and things would be bad.

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
I would not have thought that. I actually would have
thought that. I am not surprised if Federal court ruled
Thursday that Alabama engaged in intentional discrimination when it refused
to draw a congressional plan with a second black majority district.
After courts, including the Supreme Court, repeatedly rejected maps with
one such district when the finding the courts that it

(01:05:56):
would consider whether to put by the way Alabama is
this is they are fuck it. I mean, let's just
look at the Alabama senators for a minute. Okay, Tommy Tuberville, Right,
that guy he didn't even live in Alabama, Right, he
lives somewhere else. Tommy Tubervel, Katie britt Right, Alabama is

(01:06:18):
a super diverse state. These Republicans are just trying to
hold onto power here. Of course, they're jerrymandering, they're trying
to hold onto power. They're doing all of the tricks
that we know so well, and it's just, you know,
there we go. So the Voting Rights Act opened, you know,
this is Roberts. Roberts is how we got here, right,

(01:06:40):
cutting away at the Voting Rights Act, this is how
we got here. So if Democrats win back the political zeitgeist,
we're going to need desperately to enact anti corruption laws.
We're going to need desperately to end partisan jerrymandering. It
is the moment for them. That's it for this episode
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday

(01:07:07):
to hear the best minds and politics make sense of
all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks
for listening.