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 now in Kentucky there's a new law that says you can't say puber day. We have such an interesting show today, Media Matters CEO Angelo Karrasona stops by to talk about the implications of this Fox News settlement with Dominion. Then we'll talk to Jeff Charlotte about his latest book, The Undertow, Scenes from a Slow Civil War, about the real threats of creeping fascism. But first we have the host of the Time of Monsters, the nation's g tire.
Welcome back to Fast Politics, fand favorite git here.
I'm here ready to serve.
So here we are.
We are at the end of the Desanta's news cycle, or perhaps we are at the beginning. I want to talk to you since you are in can A where life continue is still sort of sane, right.
A little bit, Yeah, yeah, I want to talk to.
You about DeSantis quickly, because I think the top one on this is if you come for the mouse, you best not miss.
Yeah, I mean for me, like you know, Disney versus Disantas is let them fight bit of business. One interesting thing I saw was that a lot of Florida Republicans are kind of mad at Dissantas because he's kind of like turning the entire state into a launching pad and making all state politics about stuff that will get him national prominence.
Right.
I don't think the Florida Republicans like that's high on their agenda, like getting into a fight with Disney, you know, which is a major employer.
Yeah, their largest employer. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
The whole thing seems like very bizarre, except that, I mean, I think the real story here is the sort of poverty of Republican politics that like a friend of mine who had been reading The Sentences campaign autobiography, which apparently has this line like, you know, like make America Florida, which is that's like a month less good version of makeup record great, make America greatest you know you did with great again is a catchy slogan. This is just
makes no sense. But having said that, there is apparently like no economics in the book or hardly any you know, except for woke corporations so called and so like, I think it does sort of speak to a sort of poverty of agenda, which we see in other areas as well. I mean a lot of it, you know, the focus on social issues, but like what what social issues? Like all this stuff about like trans athletes, you know, like you're talking about in the Kansas school system where they
recently passed a law against us. You know, you apparently had like three trans kids that would have been in programs except to them are like seniors. So even though the lot is a them, you know, it applied to like one student out of a school system that has
more than one hundred thousand people. So it just like this desire to have like politics that like you know, gets you media attention, riles up the base, but actually, like it's so far removed from reality and from daily life of ordinary people, even of ordinary conservative people, Like I can't imagine the number of people that like wake up every morning like I freakin hate Disney. Yeah, I really don't want that trans girl to be like competing in my school races. To me, it seems it speaks
to poverty of politics. I mean, I think this is like Trump's kind of advantage over Dysantis, that Trump is more willing, especially in twenty sixteen. But even now to actually like throw in like meat and potato issues to like try to reach a broader base. I mean, like, you know, I think a lot of liberals underestimate the fact that in twenty sixteen, Trump was the only Republican who's gone on stage says I'm not going to touch Medicare and Social Security. Now he's lying, right.
Right, of course, I would hope.
He said that. And he talked about you know, like redoing NAF done, and you know, he was offering something that someone who's not not a totally Fox News poisoned brain can like think is important. And this is true this year as well. Like if you look at Trump's ad against the Santas, which is a great ad, I gotta you know, you got to give the devil his due. Putting figures is very memorable. It's like Linda Johnson's ad against Fairy Goldwater with the girl counting off and the
nuclear explosion and then the atomic bomb. It's like something, you know, you remember that ad and you're gonna remember, you know, the the nasty pudding figures. But what's also interesting is what is actually the voiceover where Trump says, you know, like he can't keep his hand off not
just putting, but also Medicare and Social Security. And again this is something like if you're like, you know a lot of Republicans see the voter base exkews elderly, if you're gonna have a choice between some guy who's like going after Disney and some guy who's saying I won't touch your Medicare and Social Security, well, you know, like one is speaking to real stuff and one isn't right.
The line you just said was the poverty of the Republican agenda.
I mean, they do have an agenda, but they can't talk about it. Like they actually do want to cut Medicare and so security, but.
It's wildly unpopular. Yeah.
I think that's what is the fuel for this focus on Disney and really evil, vicious attacks on trans people.
I think that's a really good point about this idea that they really do have an agenda, it's not popular and it's it's what no one wants. I mean, that's like I think about Rick Scott in Florida and that one time he was like, no, we really do want to cut Medicare and Medicaid and you know, put poor people on the street.
No, that's our plan, and everyone's like.
Shh, yeah, that's exactly right. Yeah, And you know, I don't know. I mean I don't want to get into the prediction game, like you know, like Trump is very old.
Yeah, maybe he'll die, that's what all the Republicans want him to die.
I mean, you read these pieces. We're hoping for the actual aerial tables. I mean, how do you become this kind of coward?
Honestly, I think that's a fool's hope as well as we're thinking about, you know, the biggest predicator of long life, it was wealth and the how long your parents live? Right, Trump's parents like they had long lost their mind, but they're living in their nineties.
Yeah.
Trump's father, I believe, died in ninety three. I think Trump losing his marbles would not unfortunately.
Right, I have anything, it would help.
There was a reporter for NBC News who was talking about, there's no guarantee that this doesn't just keep going.
That's why I believe you can correct me if I'm wrong. Was that Benji sa Sarlin?
Yeah, I think so, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
I think he made the very good point which I had also thought, like like forget about Trump twenty twenty four.
Right, start worrying about twenty twenty eight.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, from twenty thirty two, like you know, like if you actually do the math of how long people and his family live, this could be like we're just in the beginning of Trump's political career, right, and Trump is playing a little bit of the actuurial thing as well. He's basically he I needs a recent message to the Santas. He says. You know, you're a young man, you know, like you can right, yeah, it doesn't have to be twenty twenty eight, even you can run in
twenty thirty two, you know, like the Santists. Even though he looks as old as Trump, he's actually in his forties.
Right, he is our age. Yeah, yeah, I mean it is incredible. I wanted to talk to you about the Fox settlement, the sound of a thousand journalists, the sighing that they want to spend six weeks in Delaware where everything is closed on both Sundays and Mondays discuss No, I want to ask you in my mind and again I'm coming to you, But in my mind, the top line here is that things like lawsuits will not save democracy from disinformation.
Yeah, no, I think that's right. I know. I'm glad that the lawsuit happened. I'm glad that they're getting their money. I'm glad we haven't seen I guess the apology or there is probably some sort of agreement as to what Fox will have to say. But defamation suits are for a particular purpose, and their particular purpose is not necessarily to establish the total truth of a situation. It's to
give people of an injured redress. And yeah, I mean it's a proader thing which I sort of have rittened about and tweeting about a little bit, which is I do think liberals would need to understand that you can't use prosecutors in the courts to do the work of politics. Now, am I glad that Trump was arrested, Yes, I am.
I'm very glad. But actually, if you look at all the polling, his support in the Republican Party went up, and then maybe in the general it'll hurt him, but it's no substitute for politics, lastly, having to create a coalition that can defeat Trump again. And I think the same thing applies to Fox. And what I'm a bit sad about is that there's no policy discussions, because everything that Fox is is a creation of specific political choices
that were made. And it could be that we're too far gone that you know, like you know, like hell
is Truth seemed too late. But back in the seventies and eighties, when Rupert Warnock first came to the United States, there was actually a lot of controversy should we allow this Australian maniac has a long history of like publishing dishonestabloids like a foothold in American politics, and there was like if you go back, there's actually like you know, like at every stage, you know, when he brought the New York Post later, you know, when he bought tried
to start a cable news network, there were people saying, like, you know, like do we want to allow this? And unfortunately they allowed it, right Like there was his a year of deregulation. But there has any kind of political answer or political response to this. And I don't think we're gonna get the fairness doctrine back or any of the things that like prevented Fox from existing in the you know, sixties and seventies. But I think that one could delegitimize Fox much more than has been done and
not treat it as a news thing. And I think you're seeing it only exists in the form of jokes, like you see people on CNN chortling like Fox is like complaining about their reputation or whatever. But I actually think, you know, it should be a top line thing, like this is a dishonest propaganda network. This is something that
democrats should be saying, but not just democrats. I think, like you know, even media people consist themselves non parties, and like I would like to see it treated as a normal thing on the New York Times and on CNN that you know, this is reported from Fox, which we know is a dishonest propaganda network, And anytime anyone mentions or discusses Fox, that should be like how it's characterized, that should be its epithet. And I think we see some of that in how the Press Secretary has been
treating Fox at press conferences. And unfortunately a lot of journalists like they tend to stick up for Boxing, like, well, no, we're part of a they're part of the journalistic community. I have to say, like we have to say, like, no, they are not part of the journalistic community. There's no reason to take them any more seriously than to say, you know, the National Inquirer, you know, which is also
in bed with TROUBM. I honestly think the political work that needs to be done is to like really hammer in that this is a dishonest network and a propaganda outlet.
Yeah no, I mean again, this is the fundamental problem here, right, which is you have a problem with the company. You hope that a capitalist thing like and I'm not anti capitalist by any search. The imagination, but the idea of a defamation suit is ultimately, these people defamed my business and so I'm going to get them for the money they owe me, which is exactly what it's supposed to be.
But the I think the wish casting on all of our parts, or at least on mind too, was that from this there would be you know, a reckoning on Fox News. And that's not how any of this is going to work.
That's house that's going to work. Although I do think that the discovery process and all the things that have come out have given valuable ammunition R that you know, should be used against Fox and like people you know are talking about it. But I honestly like want this to be like the kind of constant refrain whenever Fox has mentioned that, you know, like they it should not be seen as a journalistic entity. It is something else.
It is a propaganda network. There's other work to be done in terms of creating alternative networks and like, but I mean, like we have to think of this as a political project and not see like the courts as a solution to this. I just I don't think the courts can can satisfy that that's not what they set up for do. And in some ways, like I think it hurts you politically, like if that's where your hope is, right, because like if it prevents you from thinking about like organizing.
Right and the larger issues now, I want to get back to sort of what we're doing on this earth here and Democrats trying desperately to write the judiciary as much as possible. One of the largest issues now for Democrats is a Democratic senator. Yes, there's no plans on returning. Let's game this out for a minute here we have Diane Feinstein wrote a piece about this this week, eighty nine years old. Case of shingles. Not sure when she's
going to return. Talk to me about what you see happening here?
Well, unfortunately, I don't think that there's any good kind of scenarios. Like obviously the move to like, you know, just get her temporarily out of the judiciary and appoint someone else. The Republican is not going to allow.
That, right Smartly, there's a lot.
Of people calling for her to resign.
Right.
I also would kind of join just but not for the Judiciary comuraitty because but just because I think California, you know, is a state at you know, the biggest state, forty million people. They deserve representation. Yeah, there are people on her staff apparently who are telling reporters they don't
know if she can ever return to DC. Right on the judiciary stuff, Like here's what can happen, Like, Okay, she resigns, a news senator is appointed, goes to d C, and then Schumer can try to put them on the Judiciary Committee. But again, you need Republican approval, which normally you would get. But I don't know if the Republicans might actually just say no, like because the judges are so important. This is like, unfortunately, because we got a
situation where Congress can't do anything. Judges are where power lies in America, and if they do that, then you're gonna have a tit for tap. Because the one reason you can think you have some leverage is that Republicans also have old senators, you know senators, and you know, like in the next two years or next four years,
easy to imagine them in the same seat. But they might just think, like, you know, no, no judges are so important, we don't care if they don't like return the favor for us, Like, and so you're gonna actually have not just the Judiciary Committee, but the Senate as a whole is going to be paralyzed, right, Like this is actually going to lead to further dysfunction. It's a
kind of grim scenario. And that's why, you know, like I think the people there are people who been calling for Diane Feinstein to resign for a long time, and I think, you know, they're kind of been vindicated. Like I think this is something that was kind of foreseeable unfortunately, and I think we're in a kind of very grim situation.
The only thing I can maybe say is maybe it's good to have that clarity, like once you get a situation where the Senate is wholly paralyzed, and then you can take that to the next selection and tell people that you know, Republicans care about judges. They care about judges because they want to end abortion and this is like where they have the power, and like, you know, like make that an issue in like every state because I think this hurts them. And again, this is the
political solution. If one could have a time machine, the better political solution would have been to the Democrats to think, like, are we a political party that's interested in power and in like doing things, or are we a job agency for the super annuated.
The thing that I have been struck by, which I've really been disappointed by, is some of the Democrats, like people like Pierceton Jilibran from the state of New York, my senator who was very vocal about al Frankin resigning, has been very vocal that it's not fair to ask eighty nine year old Diane Feinstein to resign even though she has no plans of coming back and she's retiring at the end of her term, because it's sexism and we're in a very fucking sexist country. Our bodily rights
are being stripped away from us. It's a terrible, very fucked up time to be a woman. To raise a daughter. Asking an eighty nine year old for whom there have been whispers of cognitive ability questions for the last five to ten years to resign is not sexist.
You're welcome.
Yeah, no, no, no, I would just add to that, like, like you know, like if we think about you know, there's a way with gerontocracy and feminism, we are also at odds with each other because like if she goes, you know, like she's going to be replaced by you know, someone like Barbara Lee or for her. Yeah, exactly. And it's always like you know, like younger women are not going to be able, not fartily able to you know,
make their way up as one season. In other countries, you know, like you have like thirty year old women who are like leaders of big countries. Because in America you have this crazy gerontocracy. Now, I mean, you know, all fairness, that gerontocracy is not just DYNINGE. Feinstein issue.
It's a larger issue, and it's a structural issue because you have seniority, like you actually like have a system of rewards keeping senators in as long as power as you know, I just think, you know, it's just uh, I mean, I think these are like bigger issues. But right now, I actually I'm a lot more pressimistic than
a lot of people are. Just I do actually think that if she does resign, which she should, and California gets a proper you know, senator who can serve, you could still have the Judiciary Committee not functioning or functioning in a way that serves Democrats. I just actually Republicans are so dependent on the judges they might actually, you know, like do something that is otherwise completely nuts and completely like an escalation of polarization and dysfunction.
Gtier, we are out of time. Thank you for joining us.
A great talk.
Angelo Kerasone is the CEO of Media Matters.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Angelo, Thank you for having me.
It is the.
Settlement that launched a thousand uh.
Talk to me about the dominion case and Fox naws.
I mean they won, right Fox one, Yeah, I guess.
I mean they benefited from not having a trial. I mean having to pay seven eighty seven million dollars is not a good thing and it is going to hurt them in other ways, I think. And this is where it isn't satisfying because it's not over and these things
have a long tail. But like they filed documents SEC documents SEC filings the eight individual times where they separately said that this was nothing, that there was no risk to shareholders, there was no risk to investors, there is no risk to the company, And they made those material representations knowing full well that there was evidence that specifically could actually create a risk, Like they have an obligation to at least tell people that, like they are going
to get busted for what's come out and having to pay seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars, like the size of that it will affect those other lawsuits. But yes, I mean, I think to your point, they very much won because having Fox on trial and having Murdoch take the stand and Tucker and others would have been a level of scrutiny not just from the general public, but it would have hit their own audience in a way
that would have would have weakened them substantially. And now they're not gonna be weakened substantially, at least initially, right.
But it does open the door to shareholder lawsuits, right, can you talk about that?
So basically share shareholders are suing right now, there's one lawsuit that's already underway. There's another group of shareholders that are basically operating together that have requested a bunch of sort of like pre trial materials.
But they can get access and that information.
As a result of the fact that they are significant shareholders, they are almost certainly to sue. And then there's another group of shareholders that in the process have put it together some kind of like a class action and they are basically suing for reachchre forduce shary duty and saying look, you messed up here and you cost us money. That will ultimately settle as well. The Murdochs will have to pay out more money there and it could be very substantial.
I mean, the last time the Murdoch faced the shareholder lawsuit, it was because he overpaid to buy his daughter's company so that he could put her back into the company put her on the board. This was in the wake of the phone hacking sceddle. He needed another vote on the board and so what he did is he bought his daughter's company, overpaid for it so that she could join the board. Shareholders sued and he settled with them for a couple hundred million dollars just to make it
go away, right, so he'll almost certainly settle here. The real problem here, and this is the thing that I think would have been amazing for the trial is that, yeah, it would have been great for the Fox people to see all this, and that's one whole important thing. But also as the trial would have been happening right now, Fox is currently renegotiating carriage face yes, and like uugh, First.
I think you should do a two second explainer on what the carriage fees are, just for for anyone who's not completely read in on this.
A carriage fee is what a cable company pays to have a TV channel available to its customers. So if you have a TV channel, I give you like a couple cents and then I get to offer it to my customers, and it's usually a nominal fee. Fox News is actually the second most expensive channel everybody's cable bill.
What's the first?
ESPN?
Oh?
Yeah, because that makes it which it makes sense right exactly.
Everyone I say that too, like, oh that makes sense of course, Well yeah, but Fox News being number two, that does not make sense because that's not how it's supposed to work. But doesn't matter how they got here, but they really leveraged this as a revenue driver. And the part about it that's that's sort of wild is they are in the process of the negotiations right now and just to put a number on it, So there's
three contracts that are up. If they were to get just the increases that they're looking for, it would be from the only these three, not even all of them. It would be an extra nine hundred and sixty million dollars in annual profit about two point nine billion dollars over the course of the contract.
So which is and that's just that settlement plus plus.
Exactly when you take out the fact that they're going to write off two hundred plus million dollars in you know, as a tax deduction, it really cost them five hundred million dollars and you know, it's basically twice what they ended up having to pay here. So if you're the murdock and you're sitting in court, the thing to keep in mind is like, yeah, we need to we have to be successful at our cable negotiations, and this having a trial unfold while we're in right taking a boardroom,
it would have been really hard. And the one thing I'll say too that is I feel like it's just gotten totally buried. But I really think is a big deal is obviously they had gone back and forth and given each other some offers, but the very last offer, the final offer, came a few minutes after the judge appointed a Special Master to investigate Rubert Murdoch for withholding documents. You have to wonder what they didn't want everyone to see.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's a really good point, the special Master documents. I want to ask you, so, what are the three cable companies that they're negotiating with right now.
Comcast, Charter, and Spectrum. And to put a number on it, there's a about ninety million cable customers in the country. Comcast, Charter, and Spectrum combined have about thirty six million customers.
Wow, so this is about a third of all their people.
Yeah, it's a big deal for them. So the thing to also keep in mind is this is actually the first in a series of renegotiations, because they're actually going to renegotiate all of their contracts this year.
Oh so this will set the bar for everything else too.
Yeah, bingo, this sets the price, and so right now they get about two So everybody that has cable right now pays two dollars and eighteen cents a month to Fox News at least.
Wow.
Yes, And Fox News is opening requests a little more than three dollars wow right now. It would be the single largest increase in cable history. Nobody's ever gotten a dollar increase. It's just wild.
And there's no way to opt out.
So all of us who pay for a cable are paying two nineteen in to Rupert Murdoch.
That's it every month, all of us, everybody. There's no way out of it. And you know, my point with the cable companies is, you know, they could drop the channel, which is incredible. They could offer a package that's Fox free. That's another possibility, the easiest thing to do. And I think this is the part that's that's sort of incredible, is that the cable companies are overpaying for Fox. Fox. The Fox's price is inflated, and even generously, I say,
it's probably two times market rate right now. It should be about a dollar and change if we're being if we're being really generous.
To Fox right because you could make a case that ESPN is offering things you couldn't get somewhere else whereas Fox as is similar programming to OAN and Newsmax.
That's it. And like so you know, and like if you compare it to other similar situated news channels, and yeah, like you know, they should be probably more than CNN and MSNBC because they have a bigger audience and their
audience is more passionate. But it's a really small audience compared to so for example, like basically, if you look at the totality of the universe of cable, only fourteen percent of cable customers like ever across the board of the ninety million ever actually even turn on Fox News like once in a blue mood. Obviously Fox's audience is
only like three million. But like if you're saying, how many people ever touch Fox News at a given year, even just like stop on for five minutes, it's like fourteen percent, which if you compare that to like TBS and other channels, usually those are like fifty sixty seventy percent.
Right, it's a very specific audience that it's popular with, exactly.
And this is where the rubber beats the road. This is where real accountability starts, by the way, because like if the cable companies just give Fox a straight renewal, Fox basically becomes unprofitable in a couple of years because unless they could figure out a way to get their advertisers back. If cable companies actually reset Fox's rate and said, hey, we're not going to pay you two times their value anymore.
We're just going to pay you market rate. We're going to give you a buck, Fox News all of a sudden goes from being profitable to not profitable overnight.
I mean, is there any chance that this happens?
Yes, So here's the good news. And you know, yah, I'm pretty realistic about this stuff, Like I always try to figure out, like what's the nuts and balls hat? Does it actually move? So every cable company has this thing called the demand score, right, and this absolute helps us explain why Fox is able to get their rates so high. So this thing called the demand score is
like it's a formula that they figure out. Okay, how much do people really want this cable company of this case, this channel, So let's make sure we get in our package. Fox during their renegotiations, has all of their viewers call and basically they say, hey, you know your cable company is about to take Fox News away and you better
call right now. So but just think about that, they have three million viewers at most, there's eighty seven million people that never watch Fox or want it, or certainly don't want to pay for it. So basically, if people call their cable companies and just say, don't pay for Fox, I don't want to pay for Fox, don't put over payer box, don't make me pay per Fox, that all
gets factored into the demand score. And so when the cable companies are sitting at the table, they actually have some ability to negotiate and say, no, we know what we don't. We have the math here, we have, weait eclips to you, and I'll give you one bit of good news.
So when does this happen?
Right now? It's happening right now. We are calling and I'll give you a bit of good news to prove it. Right before Christmas, the Murdocks were renegotiating with one cable provider. Everything butt Fox, and we ran a test campaign to get cable to call their cable company. In this case it was DirecTV and we said, look, I know it's Fox Sports, I know it's the other one, but like it still all goes to Fox. So just don't increase
the rate we generated. There were like about thirteen thousand phone calls to the company that was more than Fox was able to generate. DirecTV did not agree to Fox Sports increases. Even conservatively, Fox lost anywhere between two and three hundred million dollars in anticipated revenue simply because the math was the math. People customers called and said, I don't want my cable bill to be raised, and so these are very winnable fights. It's just no one's actually
done this ever except for Fox. Fox has actually done this every single renewal for the past ten years. That's why their rate is so high. This is one of those moments where if we want to actually have some accountability for Fox, the only way to really do that.
Is to cut off their profit engine.
And this is it.
Wow.
So basically, if you're listening this podcast, you should call Fox News.
Yes and iban you need one more incentive. Let me tell you this Fox. If you for the Fox was bad before, you ain't say nothing. Yet they are going to get worse than ever.
After they negotiate their cable care.
Right even during it. Because the cable companies don't really care about the content. All they care about is the math the phone calls to people, and so right now Fox just bought a license to lie. The settlement is behind them, and they need to resecure their footing with their audience because it's a little whoppoly. They need to get them to be fully passionate again. So they need
to rebuild that relationship. They need to activate their audience ahead of the primaries, ahead of these negotiations, like they need to sort of stir the pot. And that means that anything that may have held them back because of how it could play in trial, they don't have to worry about that anymore. They don't have to worry about a jewelry, they don't have to worry about the uncertainty.
What about the smart mat Fox's plan there.
Is to draw that out until at least twenty twenty five, which is conceivable because they haven't started discovery yep, right and they only need and really truly they Fox only needs to draw this out until you know, the end of of this year in order to get through all these contracts. Because the thing to keep in mind about the contracts is that it's guaranteed revenue. Once the contract is signed, there's no changing it. Until the next renewal.
When is the next renewal.
The next renewals won't start until at least twenty twenty six, but Fox is trying to get another year in, so maybe twenty six, twenty twenty seven, twenty twenty eight, So by then Cable will be so small, and Cable's hemorrhaging three four five five million customers a year, it just won't be a significant of a revenue driver for Fox in the next round. Like this is really their last run at this, well at least.
Right right, right right, and Fox is the second most expensive cable channel, which I think is just shocking to me.
I know, it's just nuts. This is how they operate. The part about this that's so in upsetting and bothersome is that this is the result of actual accountability and then Fox adapting. So when Glenn Bett got fired, he got fired because he lost all of his advertisements and Fox couldn't keep him anymore. Right after that happened, Roger Als was like, you know what, We're done. This is
never happening again. We are never going to be susceptible to like these little like like like these like you know, these people in the marketing industry. We are gonna our audience is rabid. We're going to turn our audience against the cable companies and and raise their bills with out. They're picking our pockets, and let's think there's their own audience too, like they're ripping everybody off. It's just the same way they shape politics, the same way they can
turn CRT into like a thing. That's what they did with these cable fights, is they came up each time and they leverage their audience and some other properties to basically just keep jacking up these rates.
So wild, I mean, it's not wild, it's just fucking crazy. So I want to ask you now, so if you're listening to this podcast, you probably should call your cable company and tell them you.
Don't want Fox.
You don't want to pay two dollars and eighteen cents for Fox News.
That right, That's it.
That's the easiest way to do it. And if you don't know what to do, you can go to this website no foxfeed dot com. We know when the good and the negotiations are happening. We give you the contact information. It's not one of those like annoying things. We're not going to send you emails for three dollars. I just want to give you.
A telephone number to call.
I want to save you three dollars. I don't want you to give me three dollars. That's basically it. I know it's like it's annoying to do it, but it's it's actually worth it. It's like the one thing where we have the numbers on our side and if we generate more calls, we went. It's it's very simple.
So you feel like, right now Fox is they are going to drag out the smartmatic. What about this other case with this woman who was fired Abby Grosberg.
It's a little bit unclear. If they can get to some kind of discovery, then they'll probably settle quickly, right, But it's you know, Fox usually tries to win these things before discovery, or to limit discovery. I mean, they didn't even start talking about a settlement with Dominion until af after the court ruled that Rupert Murdoch was suceptible
to discovery. Prior to that, they were like, nah, you were not even going to bother because as long as you can't get access to the real stuff, we don't care. So I think it'll depend on how they handle how Discovery handles, and if if Grosberg is able to get through, then they'll probably settle quickly.
The Murdoch's typically settle.
Obviously most places settle, but they usually wait until they think it could have an effect on them. And so that's my hunch, and I think they'll do the same thing with the shareholder lawsuits once they consolidate. They're going to wait until everybody plays their hand first. They're not going to do anything too early. They're going to wait until all the shareholders that are going to sue come forward,
and they're letting that organizing happen behind the scenes. But if you notice, the thing they're very focused on right now is making sure their stock price doesn't decline. And that's why. That is why, by the way, Fox News went immediately to a right wing outlet, it was like, Hey, don't worry, we're going to write this off in our taxes last night, you know, like they made sure that. And that's also why that information about the carriage increase came out.
It's so much money, it won't it doesn't make sense.
Right, That's right, it doesn't make any sense. And getting getting that out there for them is like it's all about making sure that they don't wopple the markets, because that's how you keep shareholders on the side, Right, is that shareholders what they think they can probably get most of these shareholder lawsuits to drop before they even start by basically saying, but do you really want to hurt yourself? You know, do you really want to knock bound the
value of the stock by suing? Like that's sort of their strategy. And they run this strategy in the past and it works with mixed results, and then if it gets serious, they'll settle. But all those things will happen in a way so far removes from the spotlight that we've seen with Dominion that even if it does get a little further along, it will pay in comparison to what we we've experienced the last couple of months.
Right, there's no way the Abbey grows for lawsuit is as big as the Dominion lawsuit.
That's right.
Even with the tape the tapes, look there, there's a couple of tapes that are significant clear how much more she has. I think that's where the special Master stuff would have came in, because what that basically provided was access to a real investigation of what material Fox held back during the discovery process, and it seemed like that really freaked them out, you know, they they were very
engaged on that, even before a special Master was appointed. Fox, because I'd been tracking this, Fox sent a bunch of letters to the judge over the weekend. Like it's sort of like a bat, like when you're like having like a breakup or something kind of serious and you're being
over dramatic. Like the amount of letters they sent to the judge over the weekend was kind of hilarious, Like they kept like some motions, but mostly letters like just Wiling's like please, we promised we weren't lying, like don't do this with the special Master. And then they added five attorneys the day of and it was all about this specific angle, which was we didn't mess up discovery,
like don't do this special Master thing. And you really only respond that way if you actually did sort of withhold stuff in discovery, and right, that's the only way I think the Abby Grossberg stuff could have really really penetrated. Yeah, because it needed with the murdouts, it's always about can you start a cascade?
So obviously we know it's rutten to the core.
But the question is can you actually expose it enough that you actually get a full ish picture. And I just don't think anything else on the horizon has the potential to do that. Maybe Smarmatic, but I think once Smarmatic gets serious, they will settle. But it's so.
Far right right, because it's too much money to turn down. And if you're a public company, you're not interested in justice, you're just interested in MANI ultimatelya right because.
Again even from Dominion's perspective, and I totally understand this, you know, I never they've done a lot. I mean, what the discovery and getting you know, that motion for summary judgment basically laid out all the facts. Like the only thing that would have happened at trial is that they would have had to talk about these things. But there was no new information anymore. It's all out there
between the stuff that's been exposed. It's available now, and so it's kind of on us to deliver the accountability even if they want. Let's even say they got a three billion dollar jewelry settlement, right, the headlines would have been here's why it doesn't matter for Fox because they're not gonna have to pay and they're gonna and it's true. Degree it's true. They would have bogged it down in
appeals for years, right. I mean Alex Jones had as a billion dollar settlement a guide ward against him, and he's still in appeals and he's on an air every day. So it is. It's annoying and it's grating, but I understand why they took it, and I think obviously smarmatic would do the same thing.
So thank you so much, thank you, thank you, Angelo, thank you. Jeff Charlotte is the author of The Undertow Scenes from a Slow Civil War.
Welcome Too Fast Politics. Jeff Charlotte, I'm Mollie.
Good to be with you.
So we're talking about The Undertow, which is a book. Explain to us a little bit about what this book is about and why you decided to write it.
Yeah. The subtitle is Scenes from the Slow Civil War, which is is what I believe that we are in. I've been reporting on right wing movements for twenty years or across the United States and around the globe, and this book is in some ways, I don't want to say it's a summary. I mean its scenes, there's stories, but it's sort of coming from this moment of seeing changes that even given the sort of the depth of exposure I had to write wing movements, I recognized this
is something new. I recognized it in twenty fifteen when Trump came down the Golden Escalator and I said, that is the fascist aesthetic. Will he find the movement which before that I had actually written, for a variety of reasons, probably wouldn't happen in the United States on a grand scale.
I was wrong. This book is about being wrong. It's about chasing the kind of the formation of the fascist movement out of the fascist aesthetic around the country, looking at the martyr myths of Ashley Babbitt.
So explain to us where you went and who you talk to.
So the book cover is sort of ten years. The undertow is what I think of as the currents that some of us saw. I think you saw and some of us didn't, pulling us out to see. So it talks about we talk about the men's rights movement, the guys who brought to us that delightful metaphor of the red pill, and some of the churches, if we'd been paying attention, would have helped us understand why there would be an evangelical embrace of Trump, then through the Trump scene.
The big part of the book begins January sixth, twenty twenty one, when I watched thirty five year old white woman Ashley Babbit air Force veteran, climb up through a window in the Capitol and get shot. And the officer shotter was a black man, and being a student of American mythology and American history, I knew what they would do with that, because that is the old lynching story. And sure enough she has become a martyr of the movement.
So I flew out to Sacramento, California for a rally for Ashley Babbitt that turned into a brawl between Proud Boys and Antifa, and then drove east very slowly, just talking to people who dreamed they saw Ashley Babbitt, or believe they had met Ashley Babbitt, or thought she was a hero or an angel, or a leader in a spiritual sense of their movement. Who were the kind of people you talked to, every kind of person. And I
think this is especially to you. Know. I live in Verona, very blue state, but I can drive ten miles in any direction I can find a Confederate flag, a Trump flag, or worst of all, the all black flag. If you've seen this flag out there, it's an American flag, but all in shades of black. It stands for no prisoners in the civil war that those who fly I believe has started or is coming. That means kill everyone on the other side. It's a genocide flag. These folks are everywhere.
This is not a blue state, red state thing. And the people that I met rained from Rob Brumm, a leader of a militia and Marinette, Wisconsin, about six thousand strong, invited me into his arsenal with his little kids, to a delightful grandmotherly couple. I remember the guy said, oh, I can't wait to get my hands on a protest. I'm going to beat them up and get on CNN. His wife looked at him and sort of frowned and said, ojeene,
and then she cracks a smile. These are not the folks you would expect to hear this pleasure in violence from suburban folks. People of color too, I should say, and I write about that in the book The Ways in which Fascism has a gravity that can pull even people of color into its white supremacist vision what my friend Anthea Butler, in her book White Evangelical Racism, calls promise of whiteness.
That's really interesting. Talk to us a little bit about David French, because that's pretty interesting. I read this interview, so you talked about no, but it's a you know, explain.
To us a little bit about this, well, David Friends, the former National Review writer who has been sort of normalized by the New York Times, a man who not too many years ago was writing with the most venomous bile about the student pitity of feminism.
A man it would have fit at that point right in with my chapter on the men's rights activists, who are not the most powerful movement I've ever written about, but are actually.
The worst interesting Why every right.
Wing movement is always more interesting than its caricature. Except them. They're dumber. They're just dumbered. They really are sitting around talking about their ex girlfriend's ex wives or the girlfriends they never had, but believe that they were entitled to you.
Right.
So, David French, there's that veneer. And I think this is a way that so many, so many sort of our peers in the media can't see. Well, David French is educating everything else. But there he is coming out of that now it is New York Times.
Now.
The one thing I'll say that I think is interesting is that when I began the big piece of appointing for this book right after January six twenty one, that language of civil war, which I would have dismissed at one point, but I was noticing scholarly historians speak it, and I know that they are cautious and rightly so, and I was paying attention, but even my colleagues in the prey dismissed it. Now here we are with David French writing in the New York Times, like we've got
to take this idea of the national divorce seriously. So there's a bunch of things going on there. There's that recognition. But yeah, implicit in this book is media criticism throughout. The subtitle has seen from a slow civil war, but it might be how to tell stories about fascism because I'll be the first to say that I don't think any of us have fully figured it out. If we had, we wouldn't be where we are.
Oh yeah, no question.
I want to ask you about this global fascist movement because it's so interesting. So can you explain to us a little bit you did sort of infiltrate the ranks of Republican leaders leadership for C Street. Explain to us what those people think about the black flag people.
Yeah, this was some earlier books of mine, the Family in C Street, and you can see a Netflix documentary about the family. These are the folks that bring us to National Prayer Breakfast every year, and they're the oldest and arguably most influential Christian nationalist organization. Back to nineteen
thirty five. They thought the New Deal was of Satan, it was socialism, it was communism, and so they organized businessmen and they were interesting, partly because they don't fit the caricature of the Southern preacher and the two tight soup pounding as Paul Thump and his Bible. These were members of Congress, military leaders, business leaders, educated internationalists, and
scope and they build up this international movement. And to be honest, I thought, despite all their problems they had, when Trump came down that gold Escalator, I said, oh, there he is the man that groups like the Fellowship have been supporting overseas, where they have embraced the worst dictators by their own admission, They're like, but this is part of God's plan here He is come home to roost. Would they actually accept that in the United States? They would?
They did. And I think we know enough about the history of fascism. I don't use the F word lightly at all, and I and you know it's in fact, in my book about the Family, I wrote a chapter called BF word fascism back in the post war period when they were recruiting actual Nazi war criminals to advise congressmen, guys so bad that they weren't allowed in the United States. So this group, the Family had to fly the congressmen to Germany to take counsel with these figures. And even
then I said, this isn't fascism. There's more than one kind of bad under the sun. This is horrible, but it is a different sort. Now Here we are with the real F word in action, which is the convergence of elite and popular movements. That's what we have when we have there's always right wing movements. But when groups that normally wouldn't talk to each other are aligned, then we're in trouble.
So I want to push on this a little bit. So we're talking about fascism. My friend Tom Nichols, who I really like as a friend, did a whole thread about how we're over using fascism. That's not how you know how you do it. You don't say it like that. It's not accurate. It's this explained to us why he's wrong.
Actually, Tom and I got into a very friendly and good discussion, and I like Tom Nichols's work too, And I should say the important point that Tom and I both recognized is I think we're both all hands on deck guys. We both recognize it. Whether you called authoritarianism or fascism, it is here. It is serious and a means making common cause with those whom you might not agree on other issues. On this one, I would argue
with Tom. I think that the mistake that he and some others are making are there's some kind of ahistorical mistakes. And first we really need to look to understand fascism. We can't just look at the history of World War two. We need to go back to French nineteenth century fascism. We need to look at the scholarship on how the Nazis is a great book called Hitler's American Model. When I say history, and I do not mean popular writers.
I mean kind of dense, hardgoing, scholarly writers. But what Tom is doing some who resisted their conflating fascist regime act government that is in place with a fascist movement. And Tom is right, we do not have and Trump was not able to achieve a Hitlarian or a Mussulinian government, although Tom was restricting himself to the European model.
Well, I feel a lot better, right, I.
Mean, let's talk about Saharto in Indonesia and ongoing fascism there. Let's talk about Deterurt and Marcos and Philippines. These are fascist regimes, some of them by name. Let's talk about Franco in Spain, which was a softer, very brutal fascism.
Right.
So there's these models, and so the question, and I think Tom and I are in the same footing. But I do say, look, mostly we shouldn't be quibbling over this fascism authoritarianism as long as you recognize that what so much of the media is doing now, which is replicating the horse race politics of twenty sixteen b to Santus, who the hell cares?
But don't you think that the sort of road to hell is paved with that.
Well, not fascism in the European definition, but fascism in the you know us definition. I mean, don't you think that's sort of how we got here is by this kind of very you know, specific, slightly over intellectual. I mean, isn't it sort of the road to fascism is filled with people telling you you're overreacting.
Yes, yes, those of us who've long been on the right wing beat story in my life. I remember when two thousand and eight the Family came out and interviewers would say, why are you talking about the Christian right now that Obama's been elected and the Christian right has gone forever? I'm not kidding you. Even now, even now, some unnamed producers are saying, oh, we're going to pass. We think Trump is over and Trump may be over right. I don't think he is, but trump Ism isn't. And
that's the failure to understand social movements. I got into it with a senior New York Times political reporter, so we don't need to call this racist, and not only that, he went further, and if you do, you're not really doing journalism. I find this kind of normalization where we see. You know, I think a New York Times op ed Frank Luntz writing, how do we further the agenda of Trump without Trump himself? The agenda is fascism, So how do we find a more polite manifestation of that? I
think Lunz is in the weeds. He doesn't understand that the appeal of fascism is not so much a set of policies. It's always been historically anesthetic, right.
It always has been an aesthetic. That's a good point. But isn't Lunz ultimately he wants fascism. I mean, you may not. I mean, I was on a panel with him last week. He's a lovely guy. But like trump Ism to them is just a sort of a bunch of you know. I mean, what I think is incredible about about this sort of quote unquote good Republicans is they still believe in all of the quote unquote and again I don't think is a ton of policies, But
I mean they believe in all of trump Ism. There are certain aspects of it they find slightly distasteful.
They find it distasteful, which is a failure to understand the nature of the movement. It's because those guys don't go to Trump rally, so if they do, they sit in the VIP seats or with the press for the book. In my reporting, Molly, I've been a reporter for thirty years. I have used a press pass. I think exactly once. I'm not interested. Look, I've moved amongst the rich and the powerful for the family, but I'm not interested in
that kind of access journalism. And when I go to a Trump rally, I need to stand in line for six hours like everybody else and listen to the playlist repeat over and over and feel the transgressive joy, feel people who would never have taken delight and what was again and again and again and here we are again, It's happening again, not reported on. You go to Trump rallies. He is a great performer. He is one of the
two best orders I've ever heard live. But the reporters are even now still trying to talk about policy instead of say the twenty minute aria that he'll sing of decapitation's disembowelments, rapes and describing in detail and people who would have shivered at such things. It's corny, but really there is a sort of orgasmic element to it. Right down to when Trump imitates orgasms, which he does.
I always think of this as like the bizarro grateful Dad. These people go to follow Trump wherever he goes.
Oh yeah, I've met people who've been to sixty seventy rallies. You can hear grateful Dead in the parking pack dog good heads.
Yeah.
The middle section of the book. Each section of the book is named after the song. The middle section is named dream On, after the Aerosmith song, which I love. I was raised on classic rock. But to hear in rotation at Trump rallies and people spin and circles.
Why why do you hear that song?
Why? Why do you hear Lionel Richie? Why do you hear I mean you're hearing Trump's nineteen eighties playlist? Is why do you hear Pavaratti right?
Just because he likes it or because it speaks to them in a certain way.
Yes, so many of these things are. Yes, it's a little bit like right down to you. I can't believe we're still having the debate is this fascism? Is it about racism or is it about class? Or is it about gender? Yes, it is the intersectionality of the right.
It strikes me though, that they just don't have the numbers.
Ultimately, Oh oh oh no, no, Molly, you can tell me why I'm wrong. All right. So there's a couple of things here, and I hear this all the time, way doll, These militia guys get a load of an F sixteen, right, and that is correct. And I have I look, I mean, in for this book, I got more guns pointed at me than I had many. I mean, I've been on the wrong side of a gun, but never in a church before. This was something new for me, or never by the manager of Louren Bobert's diner, Shooters
Hooters with guns. He didn't draw. He just sort of hovered like in the Old West and said I could not finish my walk nine that's what they call the all named after guns West and Wess. And so you say, oh, these guys, yeah, they don't have the numbers, and that is correct. What those guys are are they are sparks. We're in the slow civil war now, and their casualties
already all around the country. What happens is and I've done a lot of reporting from the military too, and we saw in the Washington Post three generals and the most overlooked piece of the year. I think one like the military is not secure. And if we have a real chain of command crisis as in who's president, if we have one rogue based commander one, if we have a governor like DeSantis who wants to play chicken, then
suddenly this can escalate into something much worse. But even before that, there's the Irish troubles, you know.
I mean that seems like a more likely slow rolling, which is what you write about civil.
War slow rolling. Look, my kid, I have a queer, non binary kid. They're criminalized in twenty States. People pregnant, people are dying for lack of reproductive rights. And we as reporters know that every one of those stories that you see is stands in for a hundred that we done right. There are casualties. Now, it's not enough for us to say, well, we'll never never get violent. The violence is here, So what are we going to do about it? Right?
No, I mean that's completely right. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you will come back.
Thanks Molly, I appreciate it. No moment.
Jesse Cannon, Molly junk Fast down in Florida. They are making horrible laws at a speed that I never imagine was even possible with all the bureaucracy I hear about.
Florida had passed a don't Say Gay law. It was for younger children. They defended it by saying that it was really just to protect little kids from over sexualized content.
And that this was obviously we're all being hysterical.
That is not true, and we learned that today, or we learned that a couple of days ago when Florida passed a Don't Say Gay law K to twelve, So high school games, it can't be taught about sex, they can't be taught about LGBTQ lifestyles. So imagine the world where you're in high school. You're trying to read Aristotle and you can't say that he's gay, or maybe you just don't read Aristotle.
Yet again, another time.
Where Florida is putting religion before science, and for that they are our moment of fuckering. 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.