Stuart Stevens, McKay Coppins & Andy Kroll

The Lincoln Project's Stuart Stevens details his new book, 'The Conspiracy to End America: Five Ways My Old Party Is Driving Our Democracy to Autocracy.' The Atlantic's McKay Coppins spills the tea on his new biography of Mitt Romney, entitled 'Romney: A Reckoning.' ProPublica's Andy Kroll delves into the never-ending details of Leonard Leo's corruption of our Supreme Court.

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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 Trump attorney Jenna Allis has blood
guilty in the Georgia election interference case.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
Can I just say she tweeted me and things to me?
You see how this works? Right?

Speaker 1 (00:21):
We have such an interesting show today. The Atlantics McKay
coppins joins us to spill the tea on his new
biography of the One, the Only Mitt Romney entitled Romney
I Reckoning. Then we'll talk to Pro Publica's Andy Krole
and he'll tell us about the never ending saga of

(00:43):
Leonard Leo.

Speaker 2 (00:44):
And his corruption of our Supreme Court.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
But first we have legendary campaign manager and actually he's
quite handsome, the author of The Conspiracy to in America
Five Ways my old party is driving our democracy to
autocracy from the Lincoln Project's Stuart Stevens. Welcome back to
Fast Politics, Stuart Stevens.

Speaker 3 (01:09):
Very smile. I appreciate you asking me to the party.

Speaker 2 (01:11):
Stuart Stevens.

Speaker 1 (01:13):
Tell us what this book is called and give us
the TLDR.

Speaker 3 (01:18):
The book. It's called The Conspiracy in America Five ways
my old party is driving our democracy to autocracy. It's
a book I never thought I would write, and follows
in the category of a book I can imagine not writing. Now.
What really struck me was when you read about how
democracies fall into autocracy, and there's so much great work
that's been done on that by Ruth ben Giat, Jim Mershues.

(01:41):
They always use me five elements that are present, and
we talk about each of these five, but I don't
think that we talk about them collectively enough and how
they interface, sometimes deliberately and sometimes just synergistically. So that's
why I.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
Wrote the book explained to us a little bit about
what the sort of the scariest, most autocratic kind of
things you've observed are.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah. So the five elements are support of a major party,
which certainly the trumpest movement has financiers, they have money
out the wazoo, the Peter Tiels of the world. Whatever
they need, propagandists which they have. We all know about that.
You need shock troops, which they certainly have and which
are on January seventh. And you need and I think

(02:26):
this is really the most troubling, you need a legal
theory to justify what you're doing. So if Georgia passes
a law that says it's okay to overturn the popular vote,
when they do it, it'll be perfectly legal. And there
is a tremendous effort out there to change the legal
structure of our entire electoral system.

Speaker 1 (02:46):
I want you to explain to us a little bit
about where you think we are sort of in this
autocratic there's sort of what happens. And we've talked tor
with Ben Giett about this is there's sort of an
auto not even system, if that makes sense, but there's
sort of stages of autocracy. What stage do you think

(03:06):
we're in and how do you think we can sort
of slow it down or stop it?

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Yeah, it's a great question, you know. I think part
of the problem, Molly when we talk about this is
how to talk about it without sounding alarmists. But to me,
it's like a serious pandemic. Whatever you say at the
beginning is going to sound alarmist, but in the end
is likely to prove inadequate. And I think that's where
we are. I think if Donald Trump is elected or
Trump want to be like DeSantis, it will be the

(03:31):
last election that we can recognize as an American election.
The danger here is the inability to imagine this happening.
The problem with the unimaginable is it's hard to imagine.
Whenever democracy slide into autocracy, there is always an aspect
that those who support democracy can never imagine it happening.
That's where I think we are. And there are these

(03:54):
buffoonish characters out there that we see every day, the
Marjorie Taylor Greenies and Matt Gates Lauren beauparts. But in
a way, I think that serves a purpose because it
makes it easy to dismiss this moment and this movement
as buffoonish, and it's not. These are dead serious people.
They're very patient people, and they think they're going to win,

(04:14):
and they feel that there's an urgency about it. At
the root of this is they believe that democracy now
has become their enemy. Because the way the country is changing.
Trump's coalitions eighty five percent white in a country that's
sixty percent white and rapidly changing. We're headed to minority
majority country. And the way we already are, those who

(04:34):
are sixteen years and under the majority are non white,
and odds are really really good they'll still be non
white when they turn eighteen start voting, and that's what
terrifies them. And they know that they have a short
window here to an essence, curate the vote, change the
way that we vote, and they are about the business
of doing it. It's going to continue if Trump loses,

(04:57):
if Biden is reelected, because they are very patient and
their model for this is really the Federalist Society. You know,
Federalist Society began I think it was nineteen eighty four
a week in conference and even with the sort of
a noign title of the Future of the Conservative Judiciary,
and out of that grew the Federalist Society. And it's
hard to look around today and think the federal Society

(05:19):
didn't win.

Speaker 2 (05:20):
Yeah, No, they definitely won.

Speaker 1 (05:22):
Let's talk about right now kind of where you are,
what you're seeing, what you're thinking.

Speaker 3 (05:28):
Yeah. For me, it's extraordinarily sobering and not a good
feeling to look at all these people I helped to
let and see how they've really collapsed. You know, I
will never ask myself again how nineteen thirties Germany happened.
And you know, there's sort of a trope we can't
talk about thirty Germany or World War two, because I
didn't reduces everything to sort of absurdity. I feel exactly

(05:50):
the opposite. I think we have to talk about. It
doesn't mean it's going to end in a world war.
It's not going to end with a hundred million people.
But this process of good people who know better, who
feel that they can interject an element into politics to
serve their needs of the moment and control it is
completely anallygous to nineteen thirties Germany and the Republican Party

(06:12):
realized that they had lost touch with a low frequency voter,
white voter. When I did from Mitt Romney in twenty twelve,
you could see these voters in a poll and they
could have cared less about what we were talking about. Yeah, idea,
we're going to have, you know, strong on Russia, where
lower taxes, smaller government. They could have cared less about that.

(06:34):
And to reach those voters, you need to do what
Trump did. You needed to go out and have a
racist message, as enophobic message. You need to attack Muslims.
And of course, you know, I think people have a
much better sense of Romney now. I mean if you
had walked into Mitt Romney's office and talked about it.
You know, he would have thrown you out. What's interesting
to me, and while y and sobering, and I think

(06:54):
it's humbling to me, is I would have bet anything
that if you did this as Trump, the voters you gained,
you would have lost more at the upper end of
college educated Republican.

Speaker 1 (07:07):
I want to talk about that a little more because
what you just said is really interesting.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
What you're saying.

Speaker 1 (07:15):
These college educated Republicans are willing to go along with
things they know are wrong, Yes, because they think they'll
get things they want.

Speaker 2 (07:24):
So talk about that more.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
Well, you know, all this talk about Trump being a
working class candidate has always been false. In sixteen, he
didn't carry if you consider working class voters those who
make say fifty thousand under or more thany five thousand
and under. He won white voters category, but he didn't
win the majority of the voters because the majority of
those people are not white. And then in twenty the
only economic group that he carried a majority of is

(07:49):
those who make over one hundred thousand dollars a year.
And I think that it's a combination of factors. I
think that these are people who are troubled more than
they like to admit. By a chain America, I think
that they see this sort of specter of an assumed
power that comes from being white and wealthy as being

(08:10):
endangered and they don't want to be the person who's
standing in the Capitol in a camp all switch sweatshirt.
But that person is voting for the same person that
they are, and that's ultimately what matters. The Lincoln Project.
And I can say this with ad any false modesty
because I wasn't involved in founding a Lincoln Project, that
group of voters that sought Republicans who were the last

(08:30):
to join Trump, mostly after the Comy letter in sixteen.
That was the target of the Lincoln Project. And when
you look at these numbers, bid and carry just enough
of those voters to make a difference so he could
win states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And I think that
there is a greater opportunity to expand that for a
lot of reasons. January seventh is one reason I think

(08:52):
it genuinely terrified a lot of people. I think the
Dobbs decision is a huge factory. But still you look
at poles and Donald Trump is tied or beating Joe Biden,
and if he's doing that in a popular vote, he's
going to win the electoral college easily.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Certainly, we're all very worried about these polls. But do
we think these polls are wrong?

Speaker 4 (09:12):
No.

Speaker 3 (09:13):
I think these polls ultimately don't matter because people aren't voting.

Speaker 1 (09:18):
Right, it's four hundred days away, and it's also a
national poll.

Speaker 3 (09:22):
I've worked at five presidential campaigns, and the one day
I think it's a constant. Whatever you think is going
to happen a year out there happen. We really don't
know what the race is going to be about. I
think that it is a mistake to look at Biden's
numbers and compare them to a pre Trump political world.
So in twenty twelve, on election day, Romney and Ohama

(09:44):
both had favorables of fifty percent, right, I don't think
we're going to see that again for a long time. So,
you know, you look at Biden's numbers, he's at forty three,
forty two, forty four, bouncing around in some trading range there,
and you go, well, wait a second. You can't wait
if you're incumber president unless you're up to like forty
nine or fifty I don't think that's true. It could
be true, but I don't think it has to be true.

Speaker 1 (10:05):
What do you think about this Dean Phillips just to
announce that he is going to I mean, nobody's ever
fucking heard of that guy, but he's going to primary Biden.
And then there's also like other people like Dean Phillips,
for example, RFK Junior is going to run as an independent.
He probably pulls more from Trump, it turns out right,
And then No Labels is fantasizing about, you know, doing

(10:30):
whatever they can to hurt Biden. So I mean, how
worried are you about all of those scenarios?

Speaker 3 (10:35):
On a scale of one to ten, I'm at one hundred.

Speaker 2 (10:37):
Oh good, So relax is what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (10:40):
Listen, I had a going out of business sale for
my Optimism, which her Republican Party. It is critical that
this be a binary choice between Trump and Biden. I
am suspicious even of RFK Junior because pols may show
now that he takes some work from Trump. I think
you know, these people, Molly guess no better or not.

(11:01):
You know, there is a certain suburban voter out there
that is anti vax young and benefited a lot from them.
They thought the lockdowns for too much. I think that
if Rfkjunior cleaned up his act and seemed like a
reasonable person a little bit more that if he got
in debates, if they have debates, he could end up
pulling more from Biden. Because I think that there are

(11:22):
a lot of voters out there. Obviously we know this.
They don't like the choice, but it is the choice.
And it is about the business of the Biden campaign
to hold up a mirror and say, is this who
you are? This is who you are if you vote
for Donald Trump, and it doesn't matter if you find
him distasteful or this stupid thing you don't like to

(11:45):
tweet or what he says. If you vote for Donald Trump,
you are endorsing all of the worst of Donald Trump.
And is this really the country you want to live in?
And I think that's a very powerful message. And Biden
ultimately can win a referendum on democracy, and he can
win a referendum on decency. And you know, I think

(12:06):
one of the things that happened in twenty eighteen that
really benefited Democrats just when Biden went out and started
talking about democracy and sort of put it on the ballot.

Speaker 1 (12:13):
Yeah, that actually turned out to work really well from
even though a lot of the pundon industrial complex said
it wouldn't right.

Speaker 4 (12:20):
You know.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
I mean, the one thing I know about politics is
if you're in a campaign and you want voters to
care about something, you have to prove you care about
You have to go out and talk about it and
make it an issue. And you know that people say, well,
it's going to be about grocery prices or gas prices.
Well it could have been, but it doesn't have to be.
And if it is, that's a race you're going to lose.

(12:42):
So you know, if I was sitting in that room,
I would say, look, we may not win a race
about democracy. We may not be able to make the
race about democracy, but it's our best shot and that's
what we should be doing and it's important. So I
think that they understand this in the Biden campaign. I
actually have a lot of respect for the Biden campaign.
It's incredibly difficult to beat Incumber president. You know, I
tried in twenty twelve but failed, and they I think

(13:04):
are very patient campaign. I don't think they can.

Speaker 5 (13:07):
So it's going to be going to be a race though,
that is unlike any other that in our lifetime or
any we've had in America, because you're going to have
one party that is a normal, traditional American political party
that will be putting forth a center left to gender,
and the other party doesn't believe that the Ucumber president
is legal. Yeah, so they think we live in an

(13:29):
occupied country. No, it's absolutely beyond stupid.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
What do you do with that? I don't know, it's
very troubling.

Speaker 1 (13:38):
I'm listening to you and I'm thinking, actually, this is
really quite bad, even though I think about this every day.

Speaker 3 (13:44):
But for West w Yeah, we live in a country
with four hundred million guns.

Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah, the guns thing is bad.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
As a Southern friend of mine likes to say, what's
the difference between Fort something in January seventh? Well, nobody
died at Fort something. Yeah, you know, I often think,
what is it like to work in White House and
work on congressional as on trying to help Biden pass
something like infrastructure. So you go up on the hills
and you're talking to a lot of people. It's not
that they don't like your boss, so they don't agree
with your boss. They don't think your boss is president. Right,

(14:13):
I mean, how do you begin to do that? And
yet Biden has accomplished tremendous things. I mean, I think
Biden has been a great president.

Speaker 1 (14:20):
It's sort of the unreality of this Republican.

Speaker 3 (14:25):
Party, completely divorced from reality. They live in a different world. Now,
in that world, it all makes sense, right, you have
to just get inside the world. It's like crop circuits.
Once you understand it, then you really know what it's about.
So they live in a world in which obviously Joe
Biden didn't win this election. I mean you even need
to talk about that. I mean, how can vote for

(14:47):
Joe Biden. He can't even have a rally with a
thousand people. So our guy had the election stolen. That's
what they believe. And now because he's they know he's
going to win. The only way they can stop him.
And the only way that they can stop the legally
elected president from taking office again is to put him
in jail. So every time he gets indicted, it's just

(15:09):
one more effort of the deep state to stop Donald Trump.
He's that powerful. And once you start believing that, and
your friends believe that, and you can say this aloud
at a tailgating party or a football game and people
don't think that you're a lunatic. It becomes self reinforcing.

(15:30):
And the failure of the Republican Party is that all
of the people that you and I know, the same
people who are elected officials who think this is just
that shit crazy, they're not saying, for the most part
that it's bat shit crazy. They're just remaining silent.

Speaker 2 (15:43):
Stuart Stevens, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
Moe McKay cobbins is a writer at the Atlantic and
author of Romney Reckoning Welcome Too Fast Politics.

Speaker 2 (16:01):
McKay coppins, thanks for having me. I'm delighted to have you.

Speaker 1 (16:05):
I want you to talk to us as much as
you feel comfortable, but give us more because you like me.
Let's be honest about how you got to write this book,
because I feel like there's an interesting backstory here.

Speaker 6 (16:18):
Yeah, it is kind of interesting. I mean, I had
covered mid Romney for ten years, and when I covered
his presidential campaign, you know, he was known as this
highly cautious, highly controlled, highly calculating candidate, right, and that
does not make for a very compelling subject for a biography.

(16:39):
So you know, if I had had the opportunity to
do this book ten years ago. I don't think I
would have done it. But I had been talking to
him since he arrived in Washington as a senator. I'd
profiled him for The Atlantic, and I could tell after
January sixth that something was going on with him, like
something had been knocked loose by watching the leaders of

(16:59):
his party attempt to overthrow a presidential election, and like
he just seemed like he was in this soul searching mode.
He was asking difficult questions about what his party had become,
what was happening to the country. He genuinely believed that
American democracy is more fragile than we realize, and could
see the seeds of its kind of demise, and he

(17:22):
was sort of ready to unburden himself. So I basically
just went to him and said, look, I think you're
in an interesting moment right now. I think you're in
a kind of unusual headspace for a sitting politician. I
want to write this book. I want to write your biography,
but I only want to do it if you're ready
to be totally candid, right like right, tell all the stories.
And if you're not ready to do that, that's fine,

(17:42):
maybe we revisited down the line, but to my pleasant surprise,
he decided to just go all in. He gave me
his journals, he gave me very sensitive emails with high
profile Republicans, and from the very beginning I could tell
that he was ready to kind of take this seriously.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
You had enough of a sense that if he said
he was a man of his word, and that if
he said he was really going to go all because
I think so much about as someone who has written
about my entire life by my mother, which made me
a psychopath.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
We love you for it, Molly, at.

Speaker 1 (18:13):
Least someone does. But people are never happy with what's
written about them. And I was thinking about this because
I I've been reading the book, and I've been reading
the pieces about the book, and this is like one
of the very, very very few political books where it
actually tells the real stuff. So did you like sit
around freaking out, thinking like, he's going to hate this.

Speaker 6 (18:37):
The deal that we had was this was not going
to be an authorized biography in the sense that he
had any editorial control of the final products, Like, but
I would let him read it before it was published
and right, and that I would have kind of a
good faith conversation with him if he thought there was
anything that was you know, lacking context or inaccurate or whatever.
I will say, like as a journalist, as a writer

(18:59):
author like I, I tried to keep that out of
my head while I was writing the draft, right, Like,
I wanted to just tell the story as clearly and
accurately and as fair mindedly as possible, knowing that there
were going to be things in this book he didn't like.
And I don't think I'm you know, betraying any confidences
by saying that he definitely didn't like some things in

(19:19):
the book, tell me.

Speaker 1 (19:22):
Kind of broadly or not so broadly. Where he sort
of pushed back.

Speaker 6 (19:26):
Yeah, I think there were two things. I think the
first reaction was just that I worked on this with
him for two years. I interviewed him a course of
two years. I had all these journals, A lot of
our meetings were you know, he's a lonely guy in Washington.
He doesn't have a lot of friends in his own party.
His family doesn't visit him.

Speaker 1 (19:40):
So any's seating those fish filets with the barbecue.

Speaker 6 (19:44):
Salmon ketch up sandwiches every night. But read the book
if you if the listeners don't know the reference to that.
But he would spend a lot of time with me
just kind of venting, and I think sometimes he just
enjoyed the company and kind of forgot who he was
talking to. And so when the book, I think he
was taken aback by how much he had told me.
He started to worry a little about, like, Wow, people

(20:06):
are really gonna hate me when this book comes in.

Speaker 2 (20:10):
But those people already hated him.

Speaker 6 (20:12):
And that's what I tried to remind him, and interestingly,
I think that's what Anne, his wife is also reminded him, Like,
you don't really care what Josh Holly thinks of you,
You don't care what ad Vance thinks of you.

Speaker 3 (20:23):
Like that.

Speaker 6 (20:23):
Ultimately, I think that argument won the day. The other
side of it that I think is more interesting is
a lot of this book deals with the rationalizations he made,
especially in the kind of first you know period of
his career when he was trying to become president, how
he would talk himself into doing things, crossing lines that
he maybe wouldn't have otherwise crossed, or take positions that

(20:44):
he wasn't sure he totally agreed with, and he after
reading the book felt like I gave disproportionate weight to
those episodes, and that, you know, it made it seem
like his entire life and career was kind of relativistic
and you know, unprincipled, And I don't think think that's true.
I think he's actually an uncommonly diligent, conscientious guy for somebody, right.

(21:05):
But the reason that I paid attention to that stuff
so much is because I think it kind of infects
all of our politics. I think that the reason our
kind of democracy is in the sorry shape that it's
in right now is in large part because all these
elected leaders have, you know, found ways to rationalize doing
things that they know are wrong. And so having a

(21:27):
subject like Romney who is willing to reflect honestly and
kind of grapple with that reality and those episodes I
thought was a really telling insight into the psychology of
the American political class, and so I focused on it
a lot.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
Were you disappointed when he announced he wasn't going to
run again and did you try to convince him to stay.

Speaker 6 (21:50):
I steadfastly was neutral on the question of whether he
should run again, because it's one of those things whereas
a biographer journalist like you don't want to have too
much influence over what decisions they ma. But we talked
about it a lot. I knew he was leaning this
way for a year before he announced it.

Speaker 2 (22:05):
Because he's sort of unreplaceable.

Speaker 6 (22:07):
Yeah, well and that and that's the thing. But the
problem is the handful of senators on both the right
and the left that he does get along with, and
he does feel like or at least trying to pass legislation,
do you know, trying to do the work that they
were sent to Washington to do. They're either gone or
on their way out. So he's increasingly isolated. He feels like,

(22:28):
as long as Republicans are in control of any branch
of government, the likelihood of getting any laws passed is
pretty minuscule. And you know, the more human side of
this is he's he's getting older. He is I write
about this in the book. He's kind of haunted by this,
this the like premonitions of his own death. And this
goes all the way back to his you know, youth.

Speaker 2 (22:49):
But he's always had this weird haunting, right.

Speaker 6 (22:52):
Yes, he had a you know, went through a traumatic
car accident when he was a Mormon missionary in France.
Where one of the passengers in the car died, and
has kind of ever since then had these premonitions that
he would die of a sudden and violent death. And
you know, as you can imagine, on January sixth, that
that thought was going through his mind when he narrowly
escaped them up. But you know, he's now getting older

(23:12):
and he doesn't know when he's going to die. His
wife has multiple sclerosis. She's in good health now, but
he wants to spend the last few years he has
that are good years, not sitting in the Senate caucus
lunches with Josh Holly and Ted Cruz, but with his
family and grandkids.

Speaker 1 (23:29):
And I understand, but he did sounds like he has
post traumatic stress from the car accident. I don't want
to pooh pooh premonitions.

Speaker 6 (23:36):
But he thinks about it a lot. He thinks about
what his death might look like. I think that it
is interestingly, though, has informed this last stage of his
career in a really helpful way, because or he's been
thinking about his own mortality. The more he's kind of
has the possibility of his death kind of front of mind,

(23:56):
it makes him think less about how he gets along
with his car in the Senate or the next re election,
and more about like how his obituary will be written,
what is legacy? And the more that he thinks about
those things, the more he's able to kind of do
the hard, brave things like be the only Republican to
vote to convict the president from his own party, rather

(24:17):
than worrying about the day to day politics.

Speaker 2 (24:19):
Right, you're both Mormons.

Speaker 1 (24:22):
How much do you think that informs some of his
decisions around politics?

Speaker 2 (24:29):
And how much was that a bond for both of you?

Speaker 6 (24:32):
Oh, there's no question. I mean I would be silly
to deny that that wasn't part of how we kind
of got to know each other and understood each other.

Speaker 3 (24:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (24:41):
I mean I say this as a Jew.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I'm not a religious Jew, but lately I had a
friend who is a fancy British Jew and she was
weeping to me about how lonely she felt, and I
just wonder how much religion and connection are relevant.

Speaker 6 (24:55):
No, we understood things about each other, not just being Mormon,
but we both grew up in places where there were
very few Mormons. He grew up in Michigan. I grew
up in Massachusetts. And one thing he said to me was,
you know, when you grow up Mormon in a place
where there aren't a lot of people of our faith,
and this is probably true of other faiths as well,
is that you learn how to be different in ways
that are important to you. And that resonated with me

(25:18):
a lot. I felt like I certainly felt that way,
you know, drinking diet coke while my friends were drinking
beer at parties in high school. You know, like that
all those little moments like pile up over a lifetime
and help you and can prepare you to take difficult
positions that are you know, politically inconvenient or make other
people dislike you, but you believe are important. And Ronny

(25:39):
hasn't always followed that instinct, but I think he is
in this last age of his career, and I think
that are talking about he felt free to talk about
those things and not have to explain all of it.
We could use a shorthand with each other, and I
do think that helped make our interviews and our conversations
more fruitful.

Speaker 1 (25:57):
There's so much staff in this book that people are like,
oh my, you know, it's jaw drop after jaw drop,
and I don't want to leave any of them out
so and I'm sure I will, but I just want
you to talk about the Romney warning McConnell of the
dangers of January sixth.

Speaker 2 (26:11):
That must have been something.

Speaker 6 (26:14):
Yeah, Well, Romney has gotten a call from Senator Angus
King a few days before January sixth, who said, I
just talked to a senior defense official who told me
they're monitoring online chatter from extremists on the right who
are saying that they're going to do some very bad
stuff on January sixth, and mid Romney's name had been
popping up, like you know, as Ael target.

Speaker 1 (26:35):
And everybody's gotten some degree of that call in this
Trump world. I mean, like I got a call from
I'm sure you've gotten calls from the security people at
the Atlantic that are like you're on a four Chan thread.

Speaker 2 (26:47):
But yeah, yeah, so, I mean that's pretty chilling.

Speaker 6 (26:51):
I think it was that it was pegged to the
specific date when the president, you know, was going to
come and rally his supporters about stopping the steal. When
I write about in the book, though, is that Mitt
after hanging up from that call, immediately texted Mitch McConnell
and said, you know, I just got off the phone
with Angus King. Here's what he told me. I'm concerned
that people are going to storm the Capitol on January sixth,

(27:13):
among other things, and that were not prepared. I want
to make sure that we're prepared for this. Mitch McConnell
never responded to that text.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Right, did he feel like Mitch McConnell never got it?
I mean, he did he have any thoughts?

Speaker 6 (27:26):
You knows the Mitch mcconald got it. Look, I think
that this was a moment, you know, it was kind
of the final stage of this idea that, like that
famous quote from the Washington Post was from a Republican strategist, right,
let him play gone. I think it was like, it's
a harm in humoring him, Right, Yeah, what's the harmon
humoring him? That's what was happening, Like, Yeah, we know
Trump lost, but you know, we can let him say

(27:47):
whatever he wants to say. There's no point in making
him mad at us now. And I think Mitch mcconnald
was playing that same game, and he didn't want to
make a stir, rock the boat whatever in the final
days of Trump's presidency. And what we got was what
happened on January sixth, and Romney, I mean, one of
the things is even still when you ask him about
January sixth, he gets so viscerally angry describing what happened,

(28:09):
and not just the lies that were told and people
like Josh Holly and Ted Cruz amplifying those lives, but
just the fact that they weren't ready and they knew
this was happening. But like you know, when the senators
were evacuated from the chamber, the police didn't know where
to take them, They didn't have any directions for them.
There literally just had been no planning for this scenario,
even though Mitt Romney had been warned and subsequently warned

(28:33):
McConnell about it, you know, this exact scenario. They just
they weren't ready. And Romney still gets mad about that
when he talks about.

Speaker 2 (28:39):
And Liz Cheney too. Speaking of things that many people.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Agree on, Mitt Romney believes that Sarah Palin is a moron.

Speaker 2 (28:47):
Discuss so he was vetted.

Speaker 6 (28:51):
Mitt Romney was one of several Republicans vetted by John
McCain to be the vice president.

Speaker 2 (28:55):
Jesus losing out to Sarah Palin.

Speaker 6 (28:58):
That's not good, right, So, but it's funny because he
tells me about OLW When McCain called him to tell him,
you know, you didn't get it, we went a different direction.
He said, okay, that's fine. Who did you choose? And
McCain said, Sarah Palin from Alaska. Romney immediately was just like,
are you kidding me? Because of Romby and at gotten
to know Palin a little bit when he was head

(29:18):
of the National Governors Association and recalled plan as the
least impressive Republican governor. He knew she had no grasp
of policy, no grasp of how campaigning worked, and like
he was kind of stunned that that's who McCain would pick.
But it's interesting. He told me that watching her on
the campaign trail and the way that she pushed the

(29:39):
boundaries of acceptable political rhetoric and whipped up these crowds
into a frenzy, it was kind of his first illustration
of what the base of his party actually wanted, and
it was it was sort of eye opening for him
in a sad way.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
Yeah, And I think that's right, and I think that
that's how the road to Donald Trump is paved with her.
So he's so candid and he's actually quite funny about people.

Speaker 6 (30:06):
He is well. I mean, his journals are actually like
often very funny and withering takes on various prominent Republicans.
I mean, there's a quote in his journal I can't
remember it exactly, but about Nuke Gingrich where he says
an thinks he's a megalomaniac and needs a psychologist. He
calls Rick Perry a low iq prima Donna. Yeah, he,

(30:29):
you know, certainly has a lot of stories about Donald
Trump with me where you know, he said, you know,
for a while, I tried to kind of indulge this
idea that Donald Trump, you know, maybe he didn't read,
and maybe he wasn't capable of like complex analysis, but
he was a savant with certain things. That's the thing
that Trump allies would always tell me is that after time,
I just came to the conclusion that he's just really
not smart.

Speaker 1 (30:51):
There's a Trump writer who writes about Trump all the time,
and he always tells me that he's just very limited.
That's the phrase I love that Romney says, Lou.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Is a moron. Fox isn't enabler to Stuart Stevens.

Speaker 3 (31:06):
Speaking of Leujobs.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Yeah, yeah, Lou Dobbs, one of the absolutely dumbest people
on television, which you know, one of the big Again,
Oprah tries to get Mit to run with her as
his running mate, discuss is that really true?

Speaker 2 (31:22):
I heard that.

Speaker 6 (31:23):
I was like, what, well, so there's now been there's
been a little controversy around this place. So this was
in Mitt Romney's journal in November of twenty nineteen. He writes,
the journal entry literally begins Oprah call today. As you
can imagine going through his journals, I.

Speaker 2 (31:39):
Was like, huh, what appen? So Oprah?

Speaker 6 (31:43):
According to his journal from that time his contemporaneous notes
from that time, she called to urge him to run
as an independent in twenty twenty because she wasn't feeling
great about the Democratic options. This is during the Democratic primaries.
She wasn't sure if any of them could beat Trump,
and she had been approached by Michael Bloomberg about running
with him as an independent god and so she said, actually,

(32:05):
let me go ask Mitt Romney instead. I would if
you like more than Michael Bloomberg. According to his journal,
the idea was that they would run on a unity
ticket together Midd and Oprah. After this claim came out,
and Oprah didn't engage when I asked her about it
when I was reporting the book. But after this weaked
out in the news. Oprah put out a statement saying

(32:26):
that she did call him that day and urge him
to run as an independent, but that she wasn't planning
to be on the ticket. And Romney says that she
had suggested Oprah be on the ticket, but mid apparently
thought that it was serious enough that he wrote about
it in his journal, but he demurred because he didn't
think that it would actually work. He thought that its
independent ticket. And I still think this is true today,

(32:47):
that an independent ticket would probably help Donald Trump or
the you know, the Democrat.

Speaker 2 (32:52):
Yes, agreed.

Speaker 6 (32:53):
Here's the question, Molly, would you vote for a Romney
Winfrey ticket or a Winfrey Romney ticket.

Speaker 2 (32:59):
I can't even get involved in this.

Speaker 1 (33:01):
I'm so freaked out by the entire conversation. I do
want to add my little bit of I don't know
what this is. When I was a kid, I was
once in my mom's house in Connecticut, which she no
longer has, and I picked with the phone, the landline,
which no one has anymore, and it was Oprah and
she was like this, is Oprah And I was like, no,

(33:23):
it's not. And she was like, no, no it is.
And I was like no, and so there you go.
She was like no, it really isn't.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
I was like, now, wow.

Speaker 1 (33:32):
So by McKay coppin's book, and also Oprah makes her
own phone calls.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Thanks okay.

Speaker 1 (33:42):
Andy Krall is a reporter at pro PUBLICA. Welcome too
Fast Politics.

Speaker 4 (33:47):
Andy, great to be back.

Speaker 1 (33:49):
I want you to explain the providence of this project first,
and then what this project is.

Speaker 2 (33:56):
Second.

Speaker 4 (33:57):
The providence has one point six billion reasons. And I'm
only partially joking here, right. You know, I'd followed Leonard
Leo during the Trump years. He was this strange, fascinating
guy who wore these, you know, incredibly fancy suits and
he had like the trained conductor pocket watch chain thing.

(34:19):
He was just a curious character who was behind the
scenes running like the only organized strategic thing of the
whole Trump administration, which was their strategy on.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Judges, right, which really worked out for them.

Speaker 4 (34:34):
Really worked out for them. I mean Trump will go down,
as you know, one of the most prolific judge appointers
in history, given what he did in just four years.
Really what Leonard Leo did in four years, So he
was on my radar for that reason, like who is
this guy exactly and how did he sort of manage
to pull all this off in the hurricane shit storm
of the Trump administration. And then last year in August,

(34:58):
me and some colleagues here at Pro Publica sort of
helped break the story a mysterious businessman in Chicago who
made a donation to a Leonard Leo controlled group worth
one point six billion with a B one point six
billion dollars, essentially cementing Leonard Leo's status as like the
new kingmaker of the right. And it was at that

(35:18):
point that I just so we have to understand why
this guy is so influential and important that he would
get one point six billion dollars. So it's been a
labor of love of sorts for the last year, but
I'm happy to say that we got these stories out
into the world.

Speaker 1 (35:33):
That billion dollar donation just for a macstory for my
own edification here, what does make a person a so
rich that they give a person a billion dollars?

Speaker 2 (35:45):
And b what is that? And how did he get
so rich?

Speaker 4 (35:49):
Yeah, you know, in the House of Cards version of
this story, the donor would be you know, like a
weapons contractor, or like a secret oil barren with like
a glass eye and a cool scar or something. But
in the world that we actually live in, the donor
is a guy named Barry Side, and he's basically the

(36:12):
power strip magnate of the United States, like the most
boring utilitarian product you can think of. If anyone is listening,
look at your power strip and if it says trip
light on it with two.

Speaker 2 (36:26):
Piece, that's not how you spell trip In case you're wondering,
it is not.

Speaker 4 (36:30):
It is not a touch trip light does, but it
is not how the rest of the English speaking world does.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
Poor j You know, a joke is bad when Jesse
is like making sounds all right.

Speaker 3 (36:40):
Go on, ye.

Speaker 4 (36:42):
This guy is Barryside is in Chicago. He's a cipher
in so many ways. He is not a sort of,
you know, a big public figure. He's not the guy
who goes to state dinners at the White House. He's
given tons of money to different causes on the conservative
slash libertarian side of things over the years, but he's

(37:02):
very secretive. He often gave his money through this thing
called donors Trust, just basically.

Speaker 2 (37:07):
Like isn't that the Koch brothers.

Speaker 4 (37:09):
It's affiliated with them. Yeah. You basically you would give
your money to donors trust and they sort of wipe
the fingerprints off of the money and then they give
it out to like Coke staff or Leonard Leo's stuff
or that sort of thing.

Speaker 3 (37:23):
You know.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
And the reporting that we did basically pointed us to
this conclusion about Barry Side, which is he's really really
old in mid late eighties.

Speaker 2 (37:32):
His kids are really mad at him.

Speaker 4 (37:34):
No kids, that's the key.

Speaker 1 (37:37):
Yeah, well, I on behalf of his children are really
mad at him.

Speaker 4 (37:43):
His biography was so thin. When we started reporting that
story about the one point six billion, we had the
same thought. We're like, has he no errors? Are they
not totally ticked off? Yeah? It turns out no. Wow,
So Leonard Leo is a effectively the air here. Yeah.
And you know, the way it was described to us

(38:04):
was essentially, you know, look at what Leonard Leo has built.
He built the Federalist Society into a juggernaut. He basically
architected the six ' three Supreme Court majority. And a
guy like Barry Sides he's then and says, well, you know,
I bet he could take my money and deploy it
in a way to make conservatives and libertarians everywhere quite pleased.

Speaker 2 (38:23):
And that is what happened. So explain to us a
little bit about the story here.

Speaker 4 (38:28):
Yeah, this donation happens. Obviously, it happens over sort of
a year long span because it's a lot of money.
And also the donation happened in a way that allowed
the barryside to basically avoid paying taxes, as.

Speaker 1 (38:41):
I would hope as anyone.

Speaker 2 (38:44):
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I hate for them to have
to play pay taxes like the rest of us.

Speaker 4 (38:49):
Yeah. And so when we uncovered this donation, which was
the single largest known donation of its kind in American history,
at Pro Publica, you know, we decide it's time to
do the full treatment on Leonard Leo. And you know
what we found, I think is a really fascinating story

(39:09):
in that the guy is the architect of the Supreme
Court conservative majority. But that's just like one part of
what he did, which is incredible to say because it's
it's the freaking Supreme Court of the United States, But
it's really just one part of what he did. What
he also did was build this huge machine that could
influence who the Supreme Court justices are in Key state,

(39:33):
so Wisconsin, in North Carolina and Florida, you name it.
He built this sort of typeline conveyor belt of like
Junior Scalia's and Thomas's.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
I'm excited for those guys to come down the pie.

Speaker 4 (39:47):
Oh they're coming. Yeah. Yeah. He's helping put people in
as attorneys general. He's helping put people in a solicitors
general who are the sort of the robin to the
batman of the age. He's really got his influence spread
across like the whole legal landscape, which I don't think
people understood, at least I did not understand until we

(40:07):
sort of started down this path.

Speaker 1 (40:09):
Tell me some of the sort of top lines here,
the things that will keep.

Speaker 2 (40:13):
Me up at night.

Speaker 4 (40:14):
Yeah. He has these relationships with Supreme Court justices that
are both totally unique, kind of troubling in some ways,
and so essential to understanding how he's kind of built
this thing, this machine that he's built. He's the one
who's like helping bring justice Alito on the fishing trip

(40:35):
to Alaska that my colleagues that Pro Public are reported
on every year when the Federal Society would have its
big annual conference, the sort of nerd prom of the
conservative legal world. Leo would have this like very small
invite only VIP dinner at some fancy restaurant in DC.
It would be him, it would be one or two
of the justices.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
And these justices. Let's take a minute here.

Speaker 1 (40:58):
These justices are not Briar, you know, they're not I mean,
Brier's not there anymore. But they're not Caggan, They're not Sonia.
So to my heir, they are Alito and Thomas.

Speaker 4 (41:11):
And Scalia when he was alive.

Speaker 1 (41:13):
So I mean, these are the ones who are the
most sort of bottom paid for continue.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
So at these dinners the other sort of you know,
there would be the Leo, some justices, some like kind
of muckety MUCKs in the political world, like Scott Pruett
when he was still a thing.

Speaker 1 (41:32):
Just for those of us who are keeping drag at home,
he was the head of the Environmental Protection Agency, but
he did not do much protecting. He also was one
of the very few people in Trump world to have
to resign because of corruption. So imagine how corrupt you
must be to have to do that.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
Yeah, like using your security detail to fly down the
streets of Washington, d C. To go to dinner. Yeah,
levels of correction. Yeah, and that's actually pretty same compared
to the actual things he did. But yes, yes, so
people like that. And then the other sort of bucket
of people at these dinners were donors to the Federal Society.
Now you and your listeners will love this, but you

(42:12):
know one of the donors who would go to these
dinners was George Conway.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yes, now, yes, now, King of the Resistance. I think,
and I've said this to George when he's been on
this podcast, and I say this to him when we
hang out alone.

Speaker 2 (42:27):
He is one of.

Speaker 1 (42:28):
The people who is the architect of all of this,
so he has to repent.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
I'm sure he loves them.

Speaker 2 (42:35):
I think he has.

Speaker 1 (42:36):
Very mixed feelings about but you know, but I mean
it's true. I mean that that you know that the
road to this is paved with dollars from George Conway.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
Credit to George at least that when I called him
up and talked to him, he both acknowledged all of
those things that you just said, but also he had
an understanding of the sort of psychological components of this,
which I thought was, you know, in some levels, it's
crazy at some levels, but also totally revealing. I mean,
the thing that George said that I thought was so fascinating.

(43:07):
It and it's something he said that applies to not
only Leo, but also all this Thomas Alito stuff, even
the Scalia stuff we've also reported on Republica. As he said, look,
you know, even though these guys are Supreme Court justices,
like in Washington, they feel that they're maligning, they feel
that they're ostracized, they feel that the people are unfair

(43:32):
in their criticism of them.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
My heartbreaks for them, yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:36):
Right right, usually a response, but that, according to George So,
there was a real concern that a Scalio or a
Thomas or Alito might one day just say, to literally
quote George, fuck it, I'm quitting, if only I'm going
to go make a ton of money at Jones Day
the Conservative law firm or some other law firm. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (43:57):
And so part of what Leonard Leo is doing was
like finding ways to make these justices feel, you know,
happy and supported.

Speaker 1 (44:06):
Or something into my heart fuck those motherfuckers, yes, continue.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
Yes, sorry.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
Your reaction is what I think a lot of people's
reaction is when a conservative Supreme court justice, someone with
an incredible amount of power, right is like, you know,
people are rude to me at restaurants. Man, this is terrible,
but it is what it is. And who would know
better than chors I mean that was a milieu.

Speaker 1 (44:29):
Yeah, no, no, And I think that's a really good point.
And you know, I constantly criticize him for that, and
by the way, well deserved. But yeah, I think that's
a really good point. And it is certainly they did
believe they had a certain kind of religious like mandid.

Speaker 4 (44:45):
Oh yeah, And it's important to understand it that way.
I mean, Leo has been doing what he's doing for
thirty years, building what he's been building, recruiting, having these dinners,
et cetera.

Speaker 1 (44:56):
Explain to me why isn't more hands on with those
three justices he helped pick out?

Speaker 4 (45:02):
More hands on in what way?

Speaker 2 (45:03):
Like they don't hang out with him, they don't do dinners.

Speaker 4 (45:06):
With him that crew, I think that they do.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Okay, So talk to us about that.

Speaker 4 (45:11):
These three justices are the current most current ones. Gorsic, Kavanaugh,
cony Bertt. I mean, they're really interesting because in a
lot of ways they represent the sort of full operation
of the full flowering, if you will, of what LEO
has accomplished. I mean someone like Kavanaugh, someone like Cony Barrett.

(45:32):
I mean they came up and Conny Barrett especially, you know,
came up through sort of Catholic institutions, Catholic legal institutions
like Notre Dame. Taught at those Catholic legal institutions, involved
in the Federalist Society, obviously involved in all of these
other sort of religious right legal efforts, you know, like
the Alliance Defending Freedom, and you know, then got to

(45:56):
judge Ship, took that judge Ship to the next level,
got to point it to the Supreme Court in some ways,
like Amy Coney, Barrett to a degree, Gorsitch to a degree,
and Kavanaugh. They are what LEO had envisioned thirty years
ago and have come to now. And look, these judges.
They attend the big Federal Society events every year. They
sit next to the biggest donors to the Federal Society

(46:18):
at these galas. They hire clerks, which obviously one of
the most coveted positions as a junior lawyer. They hire
clerks who've come up through the LEO system, and then
those clerks go on to become lawyers and judges and
maybe justices someday.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
So I don't know.

Speaker 4 (46:35):
It kind of feels like the three most recent Trump
pointed Supreme Court judges are not so much like pals
of Leonard Leo's in a way that Scalia or Thomas
or an Alito where you know, closer to peers in
some ways, or even with Scalia, you know, Leo sort
of consider themselves sort of a mentee. I think that
some ways they are kind of, you know, a product

(46:57):
of what Leo has done. So the relationship is different.
They're still very much close, but the dynamic has changed,
if that makes sense, right the first three to the
second three.

Speaker 2 (47:07):
So what is his sort of grand plan?

Speaker 4 (47:09):
His grand plan is to take all this money he's
got and too, among other things, use the federalist society model,
the thing that he's done for the last thirty years,
and expand it to a whole bunch of other parts
of American society for the next thirty years or twenty years.
So we're talking media, we're talking education, talking religion, talking

(47:34):
sort of more specifically like you know, electoral politics. We're
talking the climate fight, which they would sort to be
on the other.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
Side of yeah, I think so.

Speaker 4 (47:44):
Yeah, yeah, I mean there's this there's this group that
we wrote about earlier this year called the Teneo Network.
Leo is now the chairman of the Teneo Network and
the TOAIO Network again. Wants to be the Federalist Society,
not for the law, but the federalist society for everything.
They want to have venture capitalists, they want to have CEOs,
they want to have US senators. They want to elect

(48:05):
a future president who is a TENAO member, you know.
So it's pretty intense and it's very ambitious. Just because
Leo's done it before, it doesn't mean he can do
it again. But obviously you don't want to sleep on
this bigger vision of his.

Speaker 1 (48:17):
Oh Jesus Christ, tell me something that makes me slightly
less depressed or more depressed.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
Just give us something to come out on.

Speaker 4 (48:25):
Well, yeah, I mean, I think the really interesting political
trend we're seeing in this ties directly to Leo is
the backlash to the Dobbs decision. Yeah, that overturned Roby Wade,
and the way that direct democracy has been used to
push back on the agenda of people like Letard Leo.

(48:47):
You know, overturning Row was the North Star for people
like Leo for thirty years. They got their judges there,
and then they got what they wanted with the Dobbs decision.
Alito wrote it, you know guy that Leo put on
the bench. But then you see ballot measures in Kansas,
and you see ballot measures in a bunch of other states,
and we're going to have a big one in Ohio

(49:08):
in a couple of weeks where voters, including in states
that are not you know, bastions of Blue Democratic Party
support people, voted to protect or expand reproductive rights. People
who've read our coverage and have come a waste feeling
that they can't do anything, feeling sort of impotent in
the face of Leonard Leo and his operation. I was

(49:29):
telling them, And look the people of Kansas after Dobbs
put the issue on the ballot and voted overwhelmingly to
protect reproductive rights. No, no one man with all his
money on the left or the right can just dictate
how democracy works, especially when something's on the ballot like
reproductive rights. Is I think this Ohio abortion rights vote,
this in a couple of weeks is going to be

(49:50):
something to watch for sure. And then next year, seeing
how the candidates talk about row in abortion rights. It
galvanized people in twenty twenty two, it could very We'll
do it again in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 2 (50:01):
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (50:03):
Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (50:07):
No more.

Speaker 2 (50:10):
Jesse Cannon by junk Fest.

Speaker 7 (50:13):
I'm going to fess up. I think that there's like backbenchers,
nosebleed benchers. I know Tom Emmer was the majority whip
for the Republicans, but I'm gonna admit he's got that
charisma that makes me forget who he is every other week.
Where do you see it here as he tries to
become speaker again?

Speaker 1 (50:29):
Charisma? We're not at charisma here. The Bernard Dan Caucus
continues its self immolation. Incredible stuff here. Tom Emmer, who
is the one person in this speakership race who has
any kind of experience doing what.

Speaker 2 (50:50):
The speaker needs to do. That guy is on the
verge of.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Collapse, Multiple Republicans telling CNN twenty six Republicans opposing a
closed door vote, citing concerns over his record on fiscal
and social issues, he was too responsible. Another one representative, Luna,
who is a complete put munatic.

Speaker 2 (51:11):
Yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 (51:12):
She came out against him, and Trump is now publicly
attacking him as a rhino. I was told everything Trump
touches dies, and we're seeing that firsthand here, and so
that is our moment of fuck right. And right after
we recorded this, Tom Emmer dropped out, perhaps because Donald
Trump texted everyone in the Republican caucus a lean, quote

(51:36):
unquote truth about him. That's it for this episode of
Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to
hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all
this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send
it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again,
thanks for listening.