Brian Stelter, Anne Alvergue & Debra McClutchy

made and why Martha Mitchell's story matters. But first we have the recounts Slade Sommer to talk about what we just saw during Biden's State of the Union address. Welcome to Fast Politics for a special post State of the Union, Fast Politics with my friend and yours Slade. Hey, what's going on. Well, we just watched the Biden speech. It was about an hour and a half. Yeah, well you know by the time, yeah, probably about an hour fifteen. Definitely, he read it very fast, which was a long speech.

Before he started, we heard a television pendence saying it was going to be a long speech, but he sort of tried to catch up. I don't know. I thought that was a very good speech. And again, you know, I'm a partisan, I'm on the opinion side. So I you know, I am predisposed to want to like a Biden's speech, but it was a really well crafted speech. I thought. Yeah, I mean, the best thing I will say about it is that he baited Republicans incredibly well tonight.

Incredibly he got them on the record saying social Security and Medicare is a great thing and they will never touch it. Right. That was amazing, you know, he got them on the record on that that ceiling he got that. You know, he literally went there and said, I'm going to start by saying I am the king of bipartisan and ship and then and then he took that turn with the I'll see you at the groundbreaking talking about the infrastructure, and then it was all bets are off.

He was like, check your facts, Come at me, bitch. He really went hard into bating them, and by the end you had Marjorie Taylor Green, you know, at the sideline over of the kids soccer game, like screaming at the referee, you know, in some outrageous evil layer coat. It was incredible. Yeah, no, I mean, and and the stuff that he was bringing up was you know, watching McCarthy refused to clap for giving teachers a raise. I mean, these are hardly controversial ideas, right raises for teachers. I

mean that's the kind of thing that you know. I mean, it's like should we kill puppies or not kill puppies? Let's not kill puppies. I mean, so I do think ultimately it did make McCarthy. I mean, when he's sitting there, you know, he's saying that he's not against monopoly. He got Republicans even to boo non competes where a burger flipper can go across the street to a different burger restaurant,

and that got booed. I like, just genuinely like you could sit some out, you know, that's the thing about politics, and three just like sit them out. Let let some of these lines go over like a lead balloon. And not to bring balloons into this. Republicans would be better served by just ignoring the guy every once in a while, you know, I will say just one quick thing though.

My favorite part of the speech was when he went into like Joe Biden's travel tips and he was like, resorts that are resorts, and I like to that for a second, then two back in and I was like, is this guy talking about like sandals, What's what's going on there? I wasn't following that they were. I mean, it was a long speech. Let's let's call a spade

a spade here, But yes, there were. I mean, he definitely there was a lot of non controversial stuff that he got Republicans to be completely against, which I thought was interesting. You heard Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Boebert at various points screaming about the border. When he brought

up fent and all, I don't know. I mean, again, this is this whole idea that all this fent and all is coming through the border, which you know, there's certainly is fent and all coming into this country, but a lot of it is coming from China. I definitely think Republicans ended up kind of being caught flat footed because we're used to these very I mean, Biden's speeches have been good, but I'm not sure that I think this was one of Biden's best speeches. Yeah, I think

it was good. I think the fact that he kind of blew through the applauses with just continuing the speech was very smart, especially in the first half hour or so.

You know, he set the tone that he wanted to, like tell you what's going on on I'm going to get through it, especially at a time when a lot of people in the media business are saying, like, can we get back to the days where you just send an email and like, you know, you don't need any of this propit circumstances, you know, but look, there were a couple of significant things there that you know, we we are focusing on at the recount with Like, you know,

I thought the the reiteration for a tax on billionaires was was really important, you know. I thought the you know, reiteration of assault weapons band was really important. Did you see McCarthy's face when Biden brought up the billionaire attacks? Oh yeah, just pained, like I'm gonna get some calls tomorrow. Yes, I think, you know, speaking of McCarthy, Look, I'm not a guy who you know, if anyone's listening to this podcast and you're like, well, these guys are talking a

lot about optics. Look, I'm not at all an optics guy. But at the same time, optics matter. And like Kevin McCarthy sitting behind Biden's falling asleep for half of it, rolling his eyes for a quarter of it and being a you know, perturbed, I don't know rich guy for the other quarter of it, like, I think he underestimated how tough it is to sit in a chair behind the President of the United States for an hour and a half talking about the State of the Union. I

think he's gonna get some pretty negative reviews tomorrow. Well. I also think that you could see him sort of not quite knowing what to do. And if we've seen one thing and McCarthy since his fifteen tries at the speakership, it's that he doesn't really know what to do, and so you find him a lot of times like I mean, I actually, I mean, I think McCarthy is is not a great human but I appreciate the fact that he is like I'll just wing it and then everything turns

out to be a disaster. Like that I appreciate because I'm like, I get that, man, I get being someone who's like I can just figure this out on the fly and then having everything fall apart. But I think that's what happened tonight. Yeah, it's just funny, like McCarthy just gets hung out to dry I from his caucus like an hour before the State of the Union told Monty Raju on CNN, like we're gonna act with decorum, We're gonna act with you know, like everything he says

is just undercut by the clowns of it all. I saw a ton of people on Twitter calling Marjorie Taylor Green Corurella Deville, Like, what an insult to Corrella Deville? Well, that whole that by that, like, you know, not even just the amazing Cruella movie, which I really stand pretty hard, but you know, just in general, like when Close said, you know, Emma Stone, these are these are women of character. These are real evil villains. I don't want to hear

that shit about Marjorie Taylor Great. Well, Marjorie Taylor Green, I mean, continues to be sort of just out of her depth. I'm just sort of impressed that she doesn't seem to be embarrassed by any of this behavior. You know, she tried today to bring a balloon. I don't know what she was doing with that balloon. It was tatroll Biden for not having shot down the balloon sooner, even though the military told him that this was the time

to shoot down the balloon. I don't know. I mean that, you know, there's so many of these things we're seeing in this modern day partisanship where Republicans just will not you know, it doesn't matter how Biden does it, it's wrong to them. Yeah, And you know, that brings up a good question. We actually had this debate during the speech, you know, in the recount newsroom tonight we're all in

the office. One of my producers, Steve said like, you know, they hate this guy, and I was like, I don't know. I find a little bit of it, like w W E performative kind of stuff. I don't know the answer to that, Like, I don't know if he's right or IM writer's somewhere in the middle. Is this specific Republican party who was in that room tonight, the people who were heckling, the people who were you know, Joe Wilson NG channeling their inner Joe Wilson, you know, did they

mean it or they trying to get airtime here. I don't know the answer to that question, but it just I don't know, it's either silly or crazy or whatever. When I think it depends on who it is Biden comes from, and I think I think he did a pretty good job of articulating this. You know, he said, I'm like the old I've been in this institution longer

than all of you, which is true. And one of the things that I think, you know, he had, there's a folksiness to like being a member of Congress and the Senate that has been there for a long time, and I think like he is much more he hearkens back to those days of like, you know, the days of conservative justices being friends with liberal justices, and I think that actually, ultimately, right now is is actually really good. Yeah, speaking of juicy, they left Bryan and Ken Anthony Kennedy

back in. All of a sudden, they walked in, you know, the just I think five of them, the justices were there, and then Brier and Anthony Kennedy were right behind him, and I was like, what you're wait, this is live right? Uh, you know, I thought I was going crazy there for a second. I mean, the Supreme Court is just such a like fraud institution right now. I spend so much time talking to people on this podcast about the many ways in which the Supreme Court is really failing this country.

So in some ways, having these older guys back there, you know, who were who were part of the Supreme Court when it was less terrible is kind of a nice recall. Absolutely, I don't know, you know, overall, I can't tell whether or not I love this or I hate this. With like a live a live room, not the Supreme Court, I think I think I hate that altogether. But you know, in terms of in terms of what happened tonight, you know, a live room where you know it's like one part deaf comedy jam and one part

Prime Minister's Questions or whatever. Right, you know, part of me likes it. Part of me thinks that if you're gonna go pomp and circumstance, if you're going to go spectacle, you might as well go all in. You know. I think it's different when when the Joe Wilson you Lie Obama joint session moment happened in that I feel like that was one guy being a jackass. This I feel like modern politics are ridiculous. We are in an absurd

period of politics. I don't think it's a game. I don't think it's ESPN, I don't think it's Sports Center that kind of stuff. But at the same time, like I look at what happens in the UK and while they're also a dumpster fire, like I don't know, I kind of respect it, like you got something to say, you say it. Who's the fucking president? Who cares? You know? Like, what's what's mix it up a little bit? I don't know, controversial.

They're looking pretty bad right now. I want to talk to you about this idea, which I think is really something we should be talking about, which is Jamal Bowman, who's been on this podcast and know who I know pretty I mean, I don't know him that one, but I know him a little. Was yelling at Bernie Sanders. You wrote the speech, You wrote the whole thing somewhat smart, tweeted. Being a progressive former's hard work. You often end up

isolated and ostracized. Your candidates often lose, But what matters is that your ideas and policies win the long fight. This is a very different, more progressive Democratic Party than it was ten years ago. Go, well, I agree with most of that. You know, I think there were some lines from Biden that were thrown in that we're definitely Biden, you know, all the bipartisanship for the first that's not getting everybody to stand up and applaud the police. I

don't necessarily matter that Bernie have done. You know, there were a couple of moments there that I think, you know, we're we're vintage Biden, you know, the old guy. I will say. You know, Bernie is the exact type of guy who I think doesn't mind that ostrazation, ostracization and doesn't mind that solitude. And you know, if it could be anybody who had a hand in moving this party to the left, I think I think Bernie's the guy to like take the you know, first they ignore you,

then they laugh at you. Then all of a sudden, the president gives the State of the Union that has all your ideas. You know, if that were the updated version of that that cliche, you know, I think Bernie's the right guy to do it, you know, much more so than Elizabeth Warren, who you know is much more of a folksy. But if you looked at Warren during that speech, she was delighted. Oh absolutely. I'm not saying

anything negative about Elizabeth Warren. What I'm saying is like, yeah, no, no, but I mean it does seem like that both of them had a lot of their ideas reflected there in a way that you wouldn't think yeah, and it's tough tough to know Bernie's expressions because he was wearing the mask tonight, which was nice. Yeah. I mean I also think like it's always sort of tough to read Bernie.

But from what little I know of him, which is that I did interview him for this podcast, he I think he cares more about his ideas being adapted than he does about the personal glory, though I don't know him well in any strate of the imagination. But you know, a lot of these progressive guys, and then I think my grandfather was, like, you know, he was older than Bernie, but he was that same Jewish, Jewish Brooklyn guy who you know, really believed in these value you know, in

the sort of more socialist values. And I do think those guys are like on a on a real mission in a way. Yeah. I mean, look, everything you need to know about Bernie's impact on the Democratic Party is just look at Obama's first cabinet. You know, Obama, this great reformer who every Republican called the biggest socialists to ever exist in the United States, you know, those City Group and you know, like his entire cabinet was like recycled politicians and Wall Street guys. I'm not saying this

isn't a knock on Barack Obama. It's a sign of the times. Look at Obama's first you know, even with the makeup of the House and the Senate, like, look at his first four years in office, was a very very conservative brand of liberalism. And fast forward six seven years whatever it was when Bernie started to run. Even then it was still like wow, Bernie saying some stuff

that just is not going over well in America. You know, now, all of a sudden, we have ideas that are being put out in the Democratic Party that are almost to the left of Bernie Sanders. I think it's incredible that that you bring this up and that you you know, want to discuss this, because I think it's an incredible point. I just think it, like, look at the Obama administration,

look at what Hillary was running on. The Democratic Party is a fundamentally different party because of people like Bernie Sanders. Not just Bernie Sanders, but people like Bernie Sanders. And I think you see it reflected in in Joe Biden tonight. So that's a good point by Jamal Bowman. Yeah, but I do think ultimately it is this, we needed an old white guy deliver a more progressive message. And that's why, you know, and and that's why I think we're more likely.

And I hate to say this, and I'm very tired, so maybe I'll regret this in the morning, but I think that Republicans are more likely to have a female president before Democrats. And it's like the Margaret Thatcher thing. You know, Conservatives are able to deliver, you know, are able to use to have diverse messengers to deliver the conservative message because people are less scared. Absolutely, I agree with that completely, and I know we're out of time.

Do just want to say one more thing, which is, as much as we focus on the state of the Union, as much as we focus on national politics, there's a lot of stuff going on at the state level that one of these days you and I should discuss Florida's bringing out the permanent carry gun bill in their Senate. You know, Nebraska is talking about this abortion bill that rapists can become the sole guardian of a baby if

like rape is not proven. You know, there's just like there's a lot of ship going on around the country in various states. And if I can just leave any of your viewers with anything today. It's like, yes, the national stuff is so important. The state of the Union is important to discuss and to get into those issues and Medicare and social Security. But you know, let's let's also, you know, keep focused on that local and state level.

Cops city down in Atlanta, look that up Google that, you know, all these things that are going on around the country. Let's keep our eye on that as well. Slade. Thank you, please come back absolutely anytime. Love you guys. Brian Stelter is a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy Center. Welcome to you, Fast Politics. Bryan Stelter, all right, thank you, happy to be here. I'm really excited to have you.

I really really wanted to talk to you about. First of all, what has your transition been like and what are you doing now. I've been in hibernation for a while. I guess you could tell because I was hiding for a while. I was just you know, I was and I am just like loving stay at home dad life. Does that sound corny? That's true. I mean I think like in my mind there's something about being able to just sort of take a break that is like very luxurious.

I'm assuming it will never happen to me again in my life. And and that's the advice I was given by everybody who came out of the woodwork in August and and told me, hey, this happened to me once, and you should just enjoy the time as long as you possibly can. The timing was spectacular, you know. Look, I was sad to see reliable sources canceled, but it

happened in the middle of August. My kids were about to go to school, you know, going to like my my daughter's in kindergarten now, So like all of a sudden, I had this whole new life based around their school schedules and all of that. And it's really been a blast. So I want to ask you, like you were so out there are in the way that all of us in the you know, in the punditry industrial complex are out there? Does it? I mean, do you do you miss it? Do you still consume news the same way?

Has it changed the way you are? You less depressed? I mean, tell us everything, I less depressed. I don't miss waking up to a Google News alert my name full of trash lies and filth. You can't ever have the Google News a learned I mean well here, I mean here, I am admitting to to not only having it,

but checking it. You know, when I came in. I don't miss having Fox on in the background and then randomly seeing my face while I'm while I'm disparaged and lied about, like, you know, I don't miss that, you know what, you know what I do miss his booking guests. That's what you do. The delicate dance of booking and getting folks to talk and then trying to get answers out of them. That's an art and that's that's something

that was really fun. And I've started writing for various outlets like The Atlantic, and I wrote a piece of Boston Globes because I want to I want to start to u use those writing muscles because I want them to atrophy, you know. Yeah, But it's been so fun to experience the news differently. And I don't mean this to say that like the news doesn't matter, that you shouldn't, you know, soak in it every day, because I still

do consume a lot of news. But it's different when I don't feel the need to be a part of it, if that makes any sense. No, it does, and that's that actually is sort of the point of this question is like, now you have this relationship where you're not part of the news, you're not making the news. You know,

you're writing. But you know, one of the other things you did besides the television show was you had this newsletter that was basically every single day, and that must that must have been a huge, I mean just a huge burden, because if you miss anything, you must feel just terrible. Well, I I loved doing the newsletter because I felt like I thus knew everything that was going on on my beat. It was almost like a it was motivation to make sure I comprehensively knew what was

happening everywhere, from from Netflix to Fox, you know. But now now I actually I have more appreciation for people to do it, and I find myself thinking there should be more of those curators in the world. What what I mean by that is, you know, Oliver Darcy now does the Reliable Sources newsletter. I learned something from it every night, and I wish there were more products like it,

and maybe they don't all have to be newsletters. That's the kind of thing I've been thinking a lot about is in this environment where we are overwhelmed by information, information saturation, kinds of disinformation, and just garbagees out there.

Great editors, great curators, should be more valuable than ever. Yeah, I mean I also I love a newsletter, and I read Oliver's newsletter, but I also read you know, I was a regular reader if you're a newsletter, and I read playbook and I read them before, and and I do think there's actually a place for more newsletters, Believe it or not. It's not so much that I want more hot takes, though I'm okay with that, but more

just that I want more curation. And again, like that is the thing we see that Ellen Musk struggles with and all, I mean, the rise of Twitter was because it provided and curated forum, right, I mean, at least for readers like us. Yes, I always thought in the best days of Twitter, I was able to tune my antenna, you know, left and right and in always different ways in order to hear the most interesting people in the world.

And it took some work to you know, you put some work into your Twitter feed, but you would get out this great output. And that's become harder now in the Elon Musk era. Although I do think It's important to note that, you know, the the great dire predictions of the site collapsing into itself have not only not

come to pass, they don't even come close. There's definitely glitches on Twitter these days, but we used to have the air of the fail whale, but other than Twitter, so to the extent that Twitter is not quite as useful as it used to be. And to these there should be more options like Twitter, there should be more ways to get that curation. That's something I definitely noticed more now that I'm not maybe I'm sitting outside the

lazy river. Before I was in the lazy river. But that's a bad metaphor because it sounds lazy and slow. That's like, I'll have to work on that one. Do you think, though, I mean, Drudge is another method of curation. It's kind of right leaning though anti Trump that is another curation site. I mean, right, ultimately, that's true. That's

that's a good point. That's that's an interesting model. And one of the great gifts of the last few months has been, you know, talking to folks, having lunches and meetings and hearing how other people consume the news, and you know, thinking about this and that's what I've heard come up again again and again. Is you know that the feeling that, oh yeah, there's there's there's not a

lot of places or sites like Drudge. You might imagine that like CEOs and big wigs and you know, all those folks have you know, access to a better version of this social or antisocial world. They don't. They're they're reading the same stories we are. They're relying on the same ountlets were the rest of us are. It was a good reminder for me to have my kind of reset in that way. For me, I'm the most interested in what people are reading and then what they're saying

about it. The thing I spend a lot of time thinking about is like all of our biases, right. So this was one of the things you talked a lot about on your television show, was this idea of like, I'm on the opinion side, right, and there's a lot of criticism about straight news. I mean there's a criticism about opinion, but opinion obviously is opinion. But straight news what you put in there, what you don't put in there,

how you cite things, how you don't cite them. I mean it just you know, there really is a lot of room for opinion and straight news. When you say room for opinion in straight news, you mean no one has no bias. And even the way an outlet covered

straight news ends up showing a bias. On days when I would decide to lead the hour with a story about TikTok and not a story about Trump or Biden, then there are inherent choices in all of that, right, I do think you see a certain biases in newscover sometimes come through on topics, on coverage of topics like abortion as when I think there's undeniable examples like that.

By and large, I have to say as someone now you know, sitting back and not necessarily run into the TV when when news is breaking, although I sometimes still do and I love watching. I am amazed by the quality of the kind of the day to day raw news product that's out there. I guess what I'm feeling this winter is I'm seeing that the difference between you know, the good and the bad, Like the bad is really bad.

There's some stuff out there that's just atrocious, but then but then the great is really great, and we and we I think we take it for granted. I think we take for granted that there's the A P and the Post and the Ruters and the Times and the CNN's out there gathering the raw material that the rest of us then dissect talk about, take apart, analyze, make fun of. You know what I mean. It's that raw material, that raw news gathering that gets taken for granted too often.

But what's bad, Well, it's in the eye of the beholder. I'll give an example. The grind something. The grinds my garse these days. I don't know. This is a billion dollar business, you know, you need a billion dollars and fixes. I don't know. But here here's the well for you. There will be a news story that will happen, let's say on a Let's say on a Monday afternoon, and on Tuesday morning, I'll still see shows, TV shows, website still leading with the same story. And it's not it's

not involved, it hasn't hasn't changed. They're they're just they're just recapping the news from twenty hours ago. My big thought, my kind of fantasy business thing here is give me a product that once I've heard that news once, you will not repeat it again. Give me a way to like, Okay, yes, I know that the stock market dropped yesterday. You don't need to tell me again in the morning. I'm noticing sometimes kind of all that kind of base level repetition

that happens. You'll notice that a lot in television news as well. Every ten minutes they'll summarize that there was a spy balloon. I'm like, you know, I'm aware, I know where it came from. Like, you don't need to give me the two sentences about how this or originated. There's just a lot of that kind of repetition for

repetition's sake that happens. I do have to say, the spy balloon got so much coverage, and it was really kind of a raw shack right like right wing media had a certain sort of feeling about that it was too late and that Biden had done it wrong and weren't too open to any other possibilities. Overall, in the right with media, and there are some exceptions, the anti Biden frame did win out, and in some ways they

didn't have any other ways to go. It is depressing that we are in an an information environment where nuggets information are used as warfare by partisans in order to to to love their side, but to the something that is the reality. What other narrative could they have gone with? Right? I don't know, right right right? I also think, like, you know, there are people who really do kill it at Fox News, a man who are straight journalists who

have been there forever. I was thinking about Jennifer, Jennifer Griffin. Yeah, she's incredible. I mean, so there are some really great reporters there that are I mean, so I do think, like you don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater, But I thought the most interesting media story last weekend was that Fox News was the only network to have a live shot of the balloon as it was down. The major networks did not have a live show and it's and it's because of the local stations.

So it's because the local stations affiliated with the other networks were not there at the beach with a camera point at the sky in the right place. So it was a big win for Fox News. And I found it to be an interesting contrast to the other right wing channels. So news Max has been out there making a lot of noise recently, and there are other conservative channels as well. Only Fox had the resources to actually

own the spy balloon story. In fact, news Max was running some repeat episode of some talk show when it all happened on Saturday afternoon, so that is a notable difference. And then, of course we could spend an hour with the critiques of Fox and they're all accurate. I mean, my god, that they ran on the air Friday night and screamed about a possible explosion in the sky over Montana outrageously that might have come from wuhan unethical behavior by Fox News in primetime. I mean that, my goodness,

we all knew the balloon had moved past Montana. Some person posted a video that was clearly it must must have been fake. Fox ran with it like it was actually real news. I mean, that's that's embarrassing by Fox's primetime shows. But my points, the network deserve credit for for having that liveshot on Saturday, and in contrast to its conservative rivals like Newsmax, which which did not have anything. I think it's interesting in those moments when you can

see the difference between these outlets. Yeah, well, I guess this is bad. Molly. Now you've got me like talking like an old school TV news or blogger, like like I'm back in my dorm room blogging about TV. You have for so long covered the media in this very like methodical way. I mean, are you worried you're gonna miss something? Or now are you just delighted? Tell me if you think this this is crazy? I think right

now we're in a period of repeat episodes. And so what I mean by that is Donald Trump's running for resident again, but kind of low energy, in a low energy way, right, And there's more investigations into Trump and for that for years, and it feels to me like a series of repeat episodes. Oh yeah. And I don't mean that to say, oh, you know, it's it's it's I listen. I still I still tune in, I still love watching CNN, I still listen to all my podcasts,

like I'm still in it as a consumer. But it doesn't feel to me like we're in an environment where there's something other than chat, GPD O course in the rise of AI. It doesn't feel to me like we're in a moment where there's something profoundly new happening in our news environment. So maybe that's why I've just been enjoying playing Mario with my kids so much. I mean, I do think that's a really good an important point that you're talking about just now, which is I think

everyone feels like it is, you know, this Trump. It's funny. There was this polling that like spun a whole news cycle, this Washington Post ABC poll that was a thousand people that said nobody is looking forward to a rematch. I'm sorry, like I thought the methodology on that was like a little bit cookie. I'm not like completely on board with that. And also like if you see the statistics like they are, you know, the previous poll had a totally different spin.

So I'm just not like totally on board with that. But my reaction to that poll is it's so funny about the pull up. My reaction to that poll was it's a repeat episode because we had the same polling last year that said that Americans did not want to rematch and did not want Trump him by So I was like, even the poll about the rep repeat as

a repeat. I mean, clearly, if we've learned anything from the mid terms, you know, like I had all these folsters on the podcast and I was like, you know, you guys, like your polls were wrong, and they were like, no, the way you interpreted them were wrong. We were still you know, there's a ten point margin of error. Whatever. The polls are meant to give you a sense or but the reality is people don't use polls that way. They still use them, and and they do encourage horse

race journalism. They do. They do encourage horse race journalism. And I think for the rest of our lives, that will always be too much horse race journalism for that for the taste of some. And then then it becomes about how you point your antenna and if you if you can adjust your tennor or your creation or your own news feed to to to block some of that out and to focus on other things. And I think

letting people are better off. I think about polling like I think about my classes, Like I put on my glasses to watching to see far away, and like you know, otherwise things are a little blurry, Like when I look at poles, I don't want to how my glasses on. I don't want to see them perfectly. I want them to be a little blurry, because that is the reality.

You know, that's the reality. You should you know know that it's not a perfect exact answer, but it's instead, you know, a ballpark estimate that's probably right most of the time. The problem happens when we put our when I put the glasses on, we cover the poles as if they are exact right, right, No, No, I think that's right, And I mean I think ultimately what we're seeing is For example, we had this Colorado congressman on

the podcast, Adam Fresh. He ran against Lauren Boubert. Everyone was saying, your easy to have man, he doesn't have a prayer. He lost by like five votes. So, like I mean, poles do ultimately dictate money, and that money does ultimately dictate in a lot of these races. Who wins as much as like someone who's more sophisticated, like you might theoretically look at them as a nearer or far kind of thing. A lot of people are looking at them as like gospel. I think that is true.

But I think at the same time, we haven't ever more well two things at the same time, right, I was gonna say, doesn't ever more sophisticated audience and political consumers who are much much savvier about this world than they were, you know, a couple of decades two ago. However, yes, there's there's also people who clearly still still reply to those ridiculous emails from from the r n C in the DNA and not d n C, but you know the Democrats and emails and the Trump emails that are

like obviously outright lies. They lately like live to me. Every day I get the emails for fun. Clearly people are still donating, and I'm clearly some people still fall for those emails. Yeah, that's absolutely true. Thank you, Brian. I hope you'll come back. Thank you. I know you, Our dear listeners are very busy and you don't have time to sort through the hundreds of pieces of pundentry tweak. This is why every week I put together a newsletter

of my five favorite articles on politics. If you enjoy the podcast, you will love having this in your inbox every Friday. So sign up at Fast Politics pod dot com and click the tab to join our mailing list. That's Fast politics pod dot com. And al verg and Deborah mcclutchy are the directors of The Martha Mitchell Effect, which is streaming now on Netflix. Welcome to Bath Politics, Deborah,

Thank you and Anne, thanks for having us. Okay, so you guys are here to talk about the Martha Mitchell Effect explained to us what that is and how you decided to make this short movie. So the Martha Mitchell effect is actually a medical diagnosis um that was coined in the nineteen eighties bred Brendan Mayer, and it essentially posits that a medical professional deems a patient story delusional

when in fact they're telling the truth. And it was named after Martha Mitchell because that, in fact, is what happened to her. Martha Mitchell was a a Republican cabinet wife under Nixon's administration, and she essentially was a very outspoken, telegenic woman. She was someone who didn't want to hang with the political wives of the time who were very traditional and quiet. She want to hang with the boys.

And she was incredibly popular. In fact, there was an article that was written at the time of survey actually that she was just as famous as Jackie. So she was essentially a household thing and the only one who would really talk to the press in the sort of buttoned up mix and administration, you know, and the nixt administration loved it because they could sort of harness her popularity to sort of push through different policies or talking points that they would slip to her, sort of slide

into her. Yes, she had a sort of interesting transition from cheerleader to Cassandra. Yeah, absolutely, I mean she you know, pre Watergate, they loved her and they thought she was amusing and they harnessed her popularity. But then after the Watergate burglary, they realized they we're going to have a hard time controlling her. And she was talking out and they were worried about what she knew. They were really more worried that she was going to shine a spotlight

on this sort of brewing scandal. And as a result, um she was contained against her will in the hotel in Newport Beach and tranquilized against her will and silenced. So the Lesson Years never to Newport Beach. Yes, yeah, bro, will you explain to us why Martha Mitchell matters now? Sure, Martha Mitchell matters now? Because the film really is a case study in gaslighting. So gaslighting was the Merriam Webster Word of the Year last year. Gasling has happened to

many prominent people. Although it can happen in everyday life. It could happen to women, it can happen to men, It can happen to a country. You know, we would argue that our country was gaslightd in the previous administration

very often. So she matters now, and her story matters now because it can really be a way for people to understand the mechanisms of gaslighting through her story and through this case study, and really understand what it is, how they can fight against it, especially women, and just see the gas lighting that had happened. And also abuse of power. You know, that's what happened in Watergate, is that it was an dream abuse of power. You know, democracy was on the line, and that's all too common

in our current political climate right now. Unfortunately. The thing that I think is interesting about this phenomenon is that she went from sort of the kind of the toast of the town to having a pretty grim ending. Will you guys talk a little bit about that. In a lot of ways, this is sort of the richest to drag story. And yeah, it's unfortunate, it is kind It

is ultimately a tragedy. I mean, she did, you know, sort of a honeymoon period we call it right before Nixon resigned, where she sort of did a press to her and people were starting to recognize oh, she was right, like we should listen to her originally, but then unfortunately she got very sick and died prema. Clearly I never really saw, you know, sort of what she could have become.

I also relate to this story in a certain way, which is, like so many women of that time, they sort were able to only be one thing, you know, a socialite, a mother. You know, there wasn't a lot of availability for women to be other things than just one thing. If that makes any sound, Yeah, that's very true. I mean Sally Quinn says in the film that, you know, women at the time were meant to be hostesses, so

they dealt with the social aspect of life. And you know, Martha Mitchell was the wife of John Mitchell, the Attorney General, and was getting a lot of attention, really enjoyed it, and her husband actually really enjoyed it too, So she was unusual in that sense. You know, she was a cabinet wife and a celebrity. But I can't think of any cabinet wives right now actually that our celebrities, right yeah.

I mean I also think that ultimately, you know, she was sort of and also ultimately she wasn't really she he sort of took her kid too. Yeah, yeah, I mean the story of Martha, little Martha Mitchell is quite sad to me. It does seem like John Mitchell had a great influence on his the daughter, and and yeah, Martha died alone and she was estranged from her daughter. It's pretty grim. When you guys were making this movie,

what did you learn? We had just been a lot of time digging into the White House tapes, which is yeah, it's a tough tough road because it's just so hard to hear and it's so voluminous um. But what I found the most fascinating was how much Nixon talked about Martha. I mean it was constant. He was you know, I think at first he was like amused by her, and you know, him and his wife spent a lot of time with John and Martha. And then I think he

was jealous of her popularity. And then I think he was really scared of her because he wasn't used to women like Martha, you know, he just wasn't. And so there were lots of feelings, lots of really awful things that he said about her, about her appearance, I mean, typical things that you would imagine gendered you know, sort of discrimination and such. That was my biggest take away.

What about you, Deborah? I would add to that, not even in terms of this particular story, but that just that these stories exist in the archive, like and and I realized as we were digging, like, wow, this story is actually here, but no one really done deep enough to tell it. And so we were really excited about exhuming the story, um and bringing it out, you know, in terms of not all the president's men via a different lens, you know, via a lens of a woman

who experienced her Watergate story. So I learned actually that there's a lot of stories like this. They're just hidden, but if you look, you can find them. Ultimately, she's sort of become a celebrity posthumously. Is there sort of regret from John Mitchell or from the daughter or is there any sort of sense is there any sense that they have looked back on her story differently now well John Mitchell has passed, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. We tried to reach out to Martha Mitchell and she would

I've talked to us or does it? Talked to many people in the press. We did reach out to Clyde Jennings, who was Martha's son from a previous marriage, and he very much agreed that his mother was maligned. And unfortunately he couldn't talk to us either, but he did agree with us, and I think I think was pleased, you know, that that her story was finally being told, her side of the story. It is interesting to me that she sort of became a celebrity in light of the similarity

between Trump and Nixon. Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, we haven't really talked about this, but it just came to mind. I mean, you know, the similarities are so uncanny, but I feel like a couple of months ago, we saw Trump was having a rally and and he was throwing out red hats that said Trump was right. And I was like, oh, my lord, that comes from Martha was right, from the funeral bouquet that was left anonymously

at her funeral. That this sort of like tagline has sort of, you know, sort of transformed itself and like, fifty years later is sort of coming into the ether. I mean, that's just one example. There are many. It's such a story of the ages. Do you guys think that there is an equivalent today or do you think that just because we've sort of moved on as a society, there is no equivalent today of of what happened to Martha Mitchell. That's a question that, yeah, that we often

get asked. Bad It's hard. It's hard to say, I mean in terms of a Republican sort of turning on the party in some ways, like Liz Chaney comes to mind, but that's not a perfect example. It's kind of tricky today to say. Yeah, I mean, you couldn't have someone like Martha Mitchell today, or you probably wouldn't because her life was so limited in a way that was very much a women of the time. But right, I mean, you definitely saw the Republican Party turned on Liz Cheney

in a in a similar ashon. Yeah, yeah, but I mean Liz Cheney is definitely, you know, a comparison. But this Chaney is an elected official, like Martha had soft the power, and you really don't see that today. You don't see Karen Pitt's coming out, you know and testified Nay six committee. I mean in a weird way the club. I mean, he's going to be mad at me for saying this. But the closest in a way is George Conway. I agree, yes, because he's the spouse who just like

couldn't who like couldn't look pretty and shut up? Absolutely and it and it also affected his family. I mean, so much of Martha's story is is sort of you know, the personal side of water Kate, but it really is about a marriage, right, It's about a dissolution of a marriage. And it's also we you know, we term it like a love triangle between Nixon and Martha vying for the attention of John Mitchell, and in the end, John Mitchell

betrays his wife for his boss. Yeah. I mean that is so incredibly Republican Party that, Yes, it's just a sort of interesting, very historic moment in a way that Martha Mitchell was. Did you guys feel that it led you to something else? I mean, are there are the stories you want to tell now that have come from this experience? I would say there should be a I'm not sure if I want to tell this or I don't want to speak for Deborah, but but but I do feel like there should be a film about Dorothy

Huts tell us who that is. Dorothy Hunt was Howard Hunt's wife, and Howard Hunt was one of the he wasn't a burglar, but he was involved with Gordon Lyddy and sort of coming up with this Jim Stone being and Jimstone is what ultimately led to the Watergate breaking into the Democratic National Convention by the Nixon minions. And you know, at one point Dorothy Hunt was involved. She mysteriously died in a plane crash with ten dollars of

cash that was meant or of the Cuban pay. So I just feel like she was so involved there and maybe the HBO plumbers will get into it, but I don't know. I feel like that she deserves a documentary on her own, right, Yeah. I mean, if I'm going to get killed in a plane crash with all that cash, I would want a doc I mean, that's the least they can fucking do. You know, absolutely, So what's next for you guys. We're very excited about the Academy or nomination.

That's what's coming up next. You're exciting, So that's yeah, that's the next thing immediate. Well, that is very exciting. I hope you guys win and it changes your whole lives and then you come back some day when your guys are moved on. This was great. Thank you guys so much. Thank you Molly. This was so great to talk to you. Thank you, Molly. Yeah, this was really fun. Thank you, Jesse Cannon. Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House,

because the try gets you. Speaker of the House. Kevin McCarthy is pregaming Biden's State of the Union speech, doing all off the record talks with journalists, and Pundon's getting ready to try and push back against Biden's good economic numbers and his bipartisan message. How's that going for him? Well, it's hard to know because it's all off the record, but I would just say, as someone who who sort of knows how the sausage gets made, Republicans are better.

I think at doing more off the record talks with journalists, and I wonder if some of these Democrats could be helped by doing more off the record talks with journalists. I think that it's good to talk to people, even if it's off the record. And so my moment of fun Garay today is the incredible annoyance of Mr Kevin McCarthy and his obstructionist government trying to pregame the State of the Union before it's even happened, and for that, Kevin McCarthy gets our moment of gray. That's it for

this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to your the best minds and 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.