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 Donald Trump has been booted off Bloomberg's Billionaire's list. We have such a great show for you today. The Washington Post Caroline Kitchener tells us about the disinformation around women's reproductive health. Then we'll talk to Maracoba County, Arizona reporter and Republican Stephen Richer about his
defamation suit with not Arizona Governor Carrie Lake. But first we have the New Republics Greg Sergeant. Welcome back to Fast Politics. New Republics, Greg Sergeant.
Great to be here, as always, Molly, such.
A weird time in American life. Right now? Should we start by talking about the Republicans in the House. Yeah, I mean yesterday what they kept failing at rules vote. What happened here is that Kevin McCarthy put Maga on the rules and turns out that Maga is not so good on the rules committee.
Huh, Yeah, they're really not. Here's what I keep wondering though, And tell me if you agree with me. I don't find a lot of takers for this right and I get trolled whenever.
I say it even better.
Yeah, right, It seems to me that Mike Johnson wants to hold a vote on the Ukraine eight.
Yes, I think so you do.
Okay, great, I'm not entirely alone on this then, Okay, a number of things right. One, there are significant powerful Republicans in the House who want it, like these committee chairs Mike Turner, people like that, right, And these are major players. They're not maga noisemakers. So we don't talk about them ever. We only talk about Marjorie Taylor Green and Matt Gates. And I don't know why that's the
only thing we'd ever talk about. But so, like these committee chairs want this vote, Mike Johnson is talking to world leaders seemingly pretty regularly, and they're telling him all all of them are telling the same story, which is that if we don't do this, we're in much more trouble later. Right, Mike Johnson has a bit of a Reagan night past as opposed to a mega kind of the inclination. Seems to me he is a Christian nationalist
and he's willing to endorse great replacement theory. But like on national security and foreign policy, he's much more in the Reagan nite mold. And then right, he's got the good intelligence too, so he's got the top intel people telling him what the real deal is there, and you got to think the stuff weighs on him. And it looks to me like it is.
It's reauthorizing a rule that allows the American government to wiretap calls of non citizens without a warrant, basically, right, I mean, that's what it is. And this was a Republican idea, right as part of the Patriot Act, or at least it came about during that period when America wanted to have more of a you know, in arsenal when it comes to prosecute and collecting information on our foreign adversary. So it's a republican idea like the idea
that Mike Johnson is for. This would make more sense. I mean, it's just recently that MAGA has decided that they don't, you know whatever, they're not so interested in foreign intervention maybe though who even knows what they really believe in. But what I think is interesting is like when Johnson, he was remembering, he was like a low ranking Republican, but once he was sort of given the information, and once he went into leadership, he sort of understood why it was so important.
Right. I want to pick up on something you said there, which is whether they're really opposed to foreign intervention, because I feel like it's an important subject. You've probably noticed that, like a lot of news accounts call mega isolations, they called Trump isolationist, right, and I just I don't think that's what they are.
No. I just don't take them at their word for anything. I just want to fact check for one second. It's called the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and it's not part of the Patriot Act. I was wrong. It was enacted in the year of my birth, nineteen seventy eight, and the legislation was a congressional response to exposure during multiple committee hearings of previous abuses of US persons privacy rights. Okay, so it actually is not part of the Patriot Act. I was wrong, continues right.
No, No, absolutely right. We shouldn't take them at their word. I think what's going on. I actually did a podcast with Julia Yaffi about this, and she was just so eloquent about it. They support the idea of Putin style government, right,
They oppose Ukrainian democracy. They want Putin to win. I wouldn't attribute that sentiment to all of them, right, I think it's complicated, and it's a little shifty and it's a little murky, but right, someone like Marjorie Taylor Green I think has a genuine ideological affinity with Putin style governance, White Christian nationalist strong man rule, all about crushing the woke, the secular liberals, right, all about kind of crushing Western
liberal democracy wherever possible they want. They see a Putin victory as a victory for their kind of access of autocracy. That it really dovetails very directly with their sense of what they'd like to do here domestically. Right, So Trump admires Putin. We all know that. What's funny to me, though, is like Trump isn't exactly where Marjorie Taylor Green is on Putin or JD. Vans, who's also in the Marjorie Taylor Green camp. I think for Trump, what he admires
is the strongman dictator part of Putin. He probably doesn't care so much about the crushing of the LGBTQ and woke and all that, Whereas Marjorie Taylor Green and Jade Events probably wants something like theocratic rule here and see strongman rule as the way to get it. Trump doesn't really care about that. But they kind of are in alliance on this, right, they're all kind of weirdly vaguely pro putin. And that's not isolationism, it's side with an access of autocrats out there.
Well, Juliaffi had this incredible scoop right where Michael McCall, you know, high ranking chair in Congress Republican. He comes out and says, Republicans are absolutely repeating Russian propaganda. I mean, this is wild.
It absolutely is. It's absolutely crazy. And what he means, I think, is he means to rebut this idea that there are kind of these isolationists who just simply don't want to spend our blood and treasure abroad, right, which makes it sound so tame and so admirable. Right, they're just isolationists. They're anti war, they're not right, they're not Yeah,
you know what I mean, that's what he means. He's essentially saying what Julia Yaffi said on the podcast and what we're saying now, which is that in some very basic sense, a sizable swath of the Republican Conference is at best and indifferent to the fate of Ukraine and just fine with Putin crushing the Ukraine out of existence, and at worst tacitly or maybe even overtly wants Putin to win.
Yeah. But I think what's interesting to me is here we are. Republicans have the House, they have a one bowl majority. They have a speaker who was number five in leadership. She came into this job and he's getting crushed.
I mean, it's a really hard job. I Mean one of the things I think is, like when you think about people didn't like Nancy Pelosi, they had complaints about Nancy Pelosi, whatever, whatever, But like you really see, after we had Nancy Pelosi and then Republicans won the House, we had Kevin McCarthy and now we have Mike Johnson, and both of them show it's actually a pretty hard job.
It really is. And Nancy Pelosi is really good at the job too. I mean I always come back to this, but she essentially presided over two impeachments of Trump, right, which has never happened. Yeah, And I think if I'm right, she lost a grand total of three votes among Democrats on two impeachments. That's some pretty impressive party unity right there. And right, like on social people always black Pelosi as neoliberal or democratic establishment. She focuses too much on kitchen
table issues. But like, winning House seats in some of these swing districts is hard, right, Yeah, And under her, they took the House in two thousand and six and again in twenty eighteen. Now they lost it, but by a far smaller margin than we expected. I think Mike Johnson maywell just kind of lose the House in his first crack at this if he's even there at the end of this year.
Right, I mean, he could lose the House before the actual election, which is not you know, it's unlikely, but not impossible.
It's basically gone, right. I think one interesting way to think about this is that they don't really have a garning majority, right yeah, So what is the Martian now too?
One?
It's down to one, right, it's down to one now, And so right there just simply is not a group of Republicans who are united in any sense and who also constitute a majority of the House.
Now and one of the things like I'm struck by when we talk about Nancy Pelosi is you know, she knew that the House is about getting re elected. So if you were a Democrat in a swing state, in a swingy district, she would really make sure that you didn't have to vote against your interests, right, you didn't
have to do something that would mess you up. In two years now we have these Republicans, these House Republicans in New York, Mike Lawler, Nick Lloda, and in California who are in Biden districts desperately trying to hold onto their seats. As someone like Mike Lawler has had to vote and Nick Kloda too, voted for two impeachments, one the first impeachment of a member of the in one hundred and sixty years, right.
And they didn't want to vote for that. They really didn't know.
This week we saw Mike Lawler on CNN talking to Kayln Collins and she said, well did you vote? She said, who'd you vote for in the primary? And he said, I voted for Trump? Right, So you have a party nominee who, by voting for him, you can no longer make the case that you are a moderate.
Yeah, I mean it's not allowed right in this party. It really goes back to the basic theory of politics that Mega and Trump follow, right, which is that you can win only with mega, Right. When it really comes down to that, that's what they actually believe. Right. And so even though we have had a test of this in two national elections, right in twenty twenty and twenty twenty two, they actually did surprisingly well in the House
in twenty twenty, right, we all know that story. But then in twenty twenty two, they dramatically underperform and a bunch of the Mega candidates for statewide office squandered a whole swath of winnable races. These were really winnable races, right, Like we kind of forget that. But like Arizona Senate,
Arizona Governor Blake Masters. Yeah, I mean, like everyone made fun of Blake Masters, but like he looked to me like a pretty good candidate in a lot of ways, right, But he really ran on this insane maga message about immigration. I don't know if you saw any of his ads.
Oh my god, yes, talk about it, talk about it.
Yeah, there's one one of his ads literally has machine gun fire at the border. It looked like a video game, right, call of duty or something. Yeah, Right, like there's this sort of weird maga space where all this stuff is real to them. Right, the border is a combat video game, right, or you know, there was a I think his opening introductory ad, like a two minute spot had him kind of running through the desert in some way, like he
was kind of patrolling it. So they made immigration absolutely central to his campaign in a border state in Arizona, which is the state where some of the most ridiculously hardline anti immigrant policy has been hatched.
Right.
Trump went to Arizona in twenty sixteen to deliver his big introductory speech round immigration. It's got a whole history, right, and they couldn't win. He lost by what five points? Yeah, And so that it doesn't tell you that you can't win with just maga. I don't know what does.
Yeah. What I'm struck by is this maga like they can't scale. You know, they win these primers, but then they can't win the generals.
Yeah, I mean, look, the funny thing about some of these mega can that it says they actually they lack what Trump has, right, And this is a dynamic. I feel like I don't understand well enough. Maybe you can help me on this, right, So there's nobody, presumably who's more magan than Trump. He's Trump, right, He's very maga, right, but he does really, really pretty well in Pennsylvania, whereas Doug Mastriano does terribly and gets blown out right, And
so what's the difference there. I think it's that on some level, Trump has this kind of charisma and he has this capacity to communicate to voters that it's all kind of a joke, right when he dabbles in Christian nationalism, it's all sort of a little bit of a joke. I mean, Trump, he's not a Christian, right look at him.
And whereas Doug Mastriano looks like a crazy extremist. So in a weird way, these guys are more maga than Trump without the positives, right, without the charisma, without the kind of wink wink, nudge nudge sense that it's all a big show. And that's just a weird dynamic to me.
So what I think it is is two things. One of the reasons why Trump won in twenty sixteen, which we don't talk about, but is I think really important, or is at least very relevant, right, is that Trump won because he made a case that you didn't really know what he believed in. He had no voting record,
he had been a Democrat. One of the reasons why we see all of these sort of last gasp attempts at trying desperately at Republicans trying desperately to pass all this weird religious stuff is because they sort of know right that their demographic is dead right, like that America is not a white Christian nation anymore, and you know, people aren't going to church the same way. There is much more, you know, diversity, it's not you know, they're worried.
I mean, this is the last gasp against a multi racial democracy. So what I think worked for Trump was he was very famous. A lot of people knew who he was, but nobody really knew what he was going to do. It was sort of a normalcy bias. He can't possibly be that crazy. He's saying all this crazy stuff, but you know, he's a rich guy, so he's not
going to do anything crazy. And he obviously he knows about the economy, and he's had all these wives, so he's you know, and who even knows, you know, he had this mistress, you know, so obviously he's not going to do all this crazy stuff. So there were people who held their nose and voted for him because they were like, we want the tax cuts, and besides, it's more business as usual. And I think after twenty sixteen, you could never make that case again.
It's really interesting. We had Sarah Longwell on the podcast too, and folks check out our podcast, man, it's called The Daily Blast that's in the New Republic, and she said, he still codes as moderate on abortion and on a bunch of the stuff. And here's the supreme irony of it that really kind of confirms what you're talking about. He codes as moderate because he's a sleazy, nasty, philandering, you know, amoral piece of you know what, right, right,
That's why he codes moderate. People think, oh, he probably paid for ten abortions himself, so he can't possibly be anti abortion.
Right.
Meanwhile, he's saying to evangelical voters, boasting of creating the Supreme Court that overturned a fifty year right.
And I mean, I think he thinks that those evangelical voters won't abandon him, and so now he's trying to pivot to the center. You know, that abortion answer was him trying to pivot to the center.
So good and really like for Arizona Republicans to kill an effort to repeal the eighteen sixty four law. I mean, by the way, right, there was so much predulous puntry and journalism saying that Trump has managed to you know, pick the law pieces again right when you're staying Rix, when he put out that video saying I forget exactly the phrase, but right the video essentially said he believed it should be left to the states and all that like a lot of I think everybody pounced on the
New York Times for taking that at face value. And now immediately after that, right immediately after journalists and pundits said Trump has shown that there's a moderate position, what actually got confirmed is that Trump is going to have to answer for every extremist lurch that happens in the States.
Now, now, Greg, thank you so much, really appreciate you always fun.
Thank you.
Mollie Spring is here and I bet you are trying to look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags to grab some head to Fastpolitics dot com. Caroline Kitchener is a national reporter covering abortion at the Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Power Politics, Caroline.
Thank you so much, Molly, thanks for having me.
You write about abortion for the Washington Post. I think of you as like the go to, quietly doing the reporting that the rest of us need to understand what the landscape looks like and to base our little opinion pieces on. Today, you have a new story which I feel like it's like the marriage of the two biggest crisises of right now right, which are disinformation and abortion. So talk to us about that story.
Yeah, those are the story that I've wanted to do for over a year. I just kept talking to women in states with abortion bands. They were ordering pills online or kind of getting them in other ways, figuring out however they could ways to navigate around the bands, but they were having really difficult experiences just you know, not obviously we know that abortion pills are safe, but it can be scary when you're alone, you're in a state where it's illegal, you feel like you're breaking the law.
Even though I think it's important to say, you know, under these bands, the women taking the pills themselves can't be prosecuted. They don't know what to expect, and they don't know who to call. That, I would say was the thing that I heard from every single person that I talked to, just I didn't know who to call.
I didn't know who to talk to, because you know, they were afraid that if they tried to reach out to a doctor or you know, even went to the er just to make sure that everything was okay, that they would be arrested.
Right. What I think is interesting about the story is there is a real concerted effort on the right from these anti choice groups to undermine the information that these women are getting. So absolutely explained to us what that looks like.
Yeah, I mean I spoke with a lot of people that described frantically googling trying to figure out what was safe and what was okay, because you know, they would often run into, you know, anti abortion information that would say that the pills were highly dangerous or even deadly,
and that you know, obviously understandably is extremely scary. You know, we know that those are false claims, but they're very widespread, and some of these women too, in these states with bands now the only place you know, many of them said, I just wanted to go and talk to somebody in person, Like I just wanted to like, you know, before I took these pills, I just wanted to talk to somebody.
And often the only place to go in these states now is crisis pregnancy centers, which are you know, anti abortion centers that really are designed to dissuade women from having abortions. You know, in the first place, let's.
Do two seconds on what a crisis pregnancy center is. Because they're often funded by relig groups, right, they tend.
They very often are have some sort of religious affiliation.
They advertise themselves though, as a place to get a pregnancy test and talk about your options. So talk about sort of how they advertise themselves versus what they are.
Yeah, I mean, I think that it's sort of hard to paint them all with a broad brush because oftentimes there are sort of these much more institutionalized ones, but then there's also sort of lots of kind of mom and pops, smaller ministry kind of things.
Right, yet another thing the federal government does not regulate.
Right, many of these ones that are more i would say, more sophisticated and more sort of professionalized, they have recognized that the sort of message of free ultrasounds, free pregnancy tests is very appealing to people, so they'll often put that on a big sign. They definitely do a lot of.
Google Search algorithm. Exactly what Carolyn's talking about is this idea that they do a Google SEO, so they come up in these searches in the Google search.
Yeah, I can explain that a little bit. So oftentimes these places like work with you know, somebody that can manipulate search and make sure that for example, if somebody in Texas types in, you know, need abortion Texas now something like that, then you know, the first thing that would come up would be the Crisis Pregnancy Center with you know, information about you know, get your abortion consultation.
That's typically a word that they use, or you know, your free ultrasound or something like that.
A lot of what I know about this is from Robin Marty ran an abortion clinic in the state of Alabama, and she talked about how, you know, now she does STIs treatment and you know that kind of thing, but that these centers really just are trying to get you to not have an abortion. Yeah, so what happens to these women they want to take the pill, the abortion pill. They get it, and then they can't get good information about it, or or they can't get it.
The people that I talked to for the story, they were able to get it. But the word that I heard all the time was like, is this legit? Like how do I know if this is legit?
Right?
Because if you're in a state with a band, you know, you're you know that there's this law, and so you know, even if you go online and you can find these places that say that they're going to send it to you, it feels a little sketchy, right, Like, even if we know, we know that certain of these organizations they're very you know, they are very legitimate, and they are doing this in
like really big numbers. But if you are that young woman somewhere on your own googling around, you know, you can see how it would feel scary.
One of the things that I'm struck by as we talk about this is this idea that these pills are much safer than the right wants us to believe. And they've been working really hard to work the rafts. Mattha pristone has been available in this country since two thousand. It was available in France since nineteen eighty five.
Right, this is not new, it's you know, over two decades now that this has been approved by the FDA, And you know, there is just no question from any leading medical association or any you know, major study that these pills are extremely safe. And I think it's important to say too that they are safe even when taken somewhat independently. And there have been a lot of really good recent studies that show that even if you're not having a face to face with a doctor to get them,
they're still extremely safe. The safety numbers don't really change there. So what these women are doing, you know, when they order the pills online, it is safe, but they don't necessarily know that or feel that.
One of the points in the article is that if you are in a state where abortion is illegal, which means which more than a third of all American women are, if you take the pills, there's some anxiety about going into a hospital. So talk to us about that.
One thing that studies have shown is that, you know, the serious adverse events numbers are just tiny, tiny, tiny for abortion pills. It's like less than one percent a larger abortion, not a huge number, but typically between the studies range from one point three percent to eight percent of people that take abortion pills.
Go to the er.
And you know, that is a number. Those are numbers that have been really co opted by the anti abortion groups to say, look, look, how many people are going to the er. But the really important context for those visits is that women are often going for a gut.
Check because it's scary.
Like you're bleeding a lot, right, You're cramping a lot, and it's really painful, and you don't know what's normal, and so you want to go somewhere and just make sure that everything is okay. I think that's like a very sort of natural human instinct. But when you're in a state with a ban, even though these laws are not written to allow prosecutors to go after the women that are taking the pills, that's the sort of a very weird thing to understand, and it's a very that's
like really an intricacy of the law. And you know, I'm only of all the women that I talked to for this story, only one of them understood that under the band sheep personally could not be prosecuted. Everybody just assumes that they can be, and so they are terrified to go to the er.
And Trump has said that he believes there should be some form of prosecution for women who have abortion. I mean, then he walked it back, but you know, I was on with Chris Matthews and we were talking about that, so I mean he did say it, so you understand why this does not exist in a vacuum, right.
And I think it's also important to note that like women who have taken pills and self managed their own abortions, they have been charged under other laws in the past other than abortion bands, like laws around disposed little feel remains and things like that, especially when they're later in pregnancy. So it's not like there's no legal risk at all. Their right to worry obviously a very difficult situation to be in well.
And I also think when you talk about abortion, this issue really just collide with the with the misinformation and disinformation ecosystem that we're living in right now. And it is also like a personal thing, you know, it's not like something you want a crowdsource on Facebook exactly.
It's such a good point.
And it's like just not that easy to bring it up.
One of the women that I talked about, like she said, man, I just wish I had a group chat, Like I just wish I could talk to people about this in a group chat with friend, but I can't if nobody can know.
One of the things in the article that you talk about is that if you go to a hospital and you've self managed an abortion, doctors cannot tell if you are having a miscarriage or self managed abortion. Will you talk about that?
Yeah, that is something that all of the hotlines and different abortion rights groups are telling women because that's not I think something that isn't too to know. But you know, if you present with the bleeding and cramping of a medication abortion, unless you took the pills vaginally, which is sort of a more rare way to take them, there is no way for a doctor to know whether you
miscarried or whether you had a medication abortion. So folks are telling women to say, you know, just say I had a miscarriage, I just started bleeding, I don't really know what's going on, and then not say anything else.
So this is not in the article, but since you are really in it, I'm wondering if you could talk about this Rise Louisiana Report. I'm sure you read it. Too. I Mean, what's so interesting is women's health. You know, we don't get so much research like men's health. Right. Imagine if men had to take a pill it caused bleeding and is sometimes painful, like, they would never.
You know, there would be a better way.
Right exactly, they'd be like, no, no, just come into this ATM and we'll you know. So I'm wondering. Like one of the things a Rise Louisiana report talked about and a thing I've heard on totally from obgyns is the incredible anxiety about treating in the first trimester from doctors. Are you hearing that on the ground that there's just like the doctors have really changed the way they treat
pregnant women in these stays. If you're seeing that or you're hearing that, or maybe you're not, but I'm just curious.
Absolutely, they're terrified. It just remains really unclear. I mean, just look at the changing laws, like you know, we are, you know, two years out from this Dobbs ruling almost and things are not settled like we you know, we have Arizona, we have Florida. We have these big new laws taking effect and changing and the landscape is not settled,
and doctors feel that for sure. I mean, it was a couple of months ago I did a story about a woman in Texas who was turned away with an ectopic pregnancy, which really, I mean, even as much as I write about this and talk to people, that really shocked me. Because a topic pregnancy.
Is not going to ever be a baby. You cannot physically carry a baby in the fallopian tubes of your womb, Like it cannot happen. So there's only one thing that happens, which is you not.
Like that particular word. I feel like it's such a has become such a buzzword after the decision, like people, you know, that really was sort of the big thing that people talked about, like people with ectopic pregnancies, and and you saw the conservatives and the anti abortion folks say like, oh no, at topics, that's totally fine, that's totally fine. And I really thought that, you know, a year and a half since the decision, we were in a place where like topics would be treated kind of
no question, Like people just sort of understood that. And a lot of doctors have said that to me, like oh yeah, like the topics you know, of course, like, we know, we know we can treat them, but then you do hear these stories still of women getting turned away. So it's just not settled yet. And I'm sure that it also depends on what the feelings of the doctor are on this issue. Right.
It is so insane to me, like, there is no baby in an atopic pregnancy, right, And I mean, what happened to that woman in that case?
What the doctor said is that there is a chance that this is not an atopic pregnancy, because it's not always so easy so cut and dry to tell when it is and when it isn't. But I mean hers was I think fairly obvious. So she was turned away from the hospital. Later that day, her best friend was at an obiqui en appointment. She called her best friend and her best friend was like, Hey, do you want me to like show the doctor here the picture of
your pregnancy, and she did. The best friend did, and the doctor was like, oh my god, can your friendly come in right now? So she did, and that doctor was like, I'm going to take you in for emergency surgery right.
Now, yeah, because you can die from this.
Right, And I just think that shows, like, I mean, how scary is it though that it's just kind of luck of the draw of who you get, who you see.
You know, I heard this story anecdotally, so I don't want to pass it on because who knows. But you know, friend of mine was telling me about a girl in a red state where she was having a miscarriage, like her numbers were going down, the pregnancy was not holding, and the doctor didn't want to tell her because she didn't want to perform a DNC, which is so insane, right, Like the these aren't even babies. These are people where they're not going to have a baby, and they can't
get the care they need. These unforeseen consequences of the inability to legislate on the part of Republicans is shocking to me. But it shouldn't be right, It shouldn't be calin what are you watching right now?
I'm watching that Florida and Arizona. I mean Florida. I think in particular, I don't know that people have fully registered how many women live in Florida and how many abortions appeased in Florida. Yeah, last year there were eighty four thousand abortions in Florida. And if you look at sort of the bands that are currently in effect. The sort of largest state bans Texas, And before that took a fact, fifty thousand happened in Texas.
Wait, what's the number in Florida.
In Florida, it's eighty four thousand.
Wow. Yeah, and it's and historically it's always been a safe haven for abortion in the South right.
It has because of the constitutional protections that they had for so long. And I also think like that just the geography geography of Florida makes it extremely difficult. Like somebody that's coming from Key West to go to the nearest clinic at there after six weeks, once this law takes it back, they're going to have to drive fourteen hours.
Thank you, Carolyn, thanks for having me on. Stephen Richer is the Maracoba County, Arizona Recorder. Welcome Steven, too fast politics, Tell us what you do.
I am the elected Maykope County Recorder. I ran in twenty twenty in the Republican primary one that won the general election in November.
I am statutorially responsible for early voting, voter registration and document recording in Mericle County, which is the fourth largest county in the United States, and second largest voting jurisdiction in the United States and makes up about sixty two percent of Arizona's voting population.
It's an elected job, but you are a Republican.
Yes, elected job, and I'm a Republican. That's correct.
And one of the things that you've been doing, which I think is probably one of the more important things, is trying to correct the record when it comes to the twenty twenty election and its integrity. Talk to us about sort of if you could set the stage of how you became this celebrity. Sorry, I apologize for the use of the word celebrity.
No no, no, I guess it's just my quasi looking at local in there. No, no, no, you'll come on board on for it. On well, one, the election administration is sort of new to the business of communicating regarding the process. There weren't too many people prior to say, twenty eighteen that were terribly interested in the nuts and bolts of election administration. And so this is still an ecosystem that is being built out, and so is new landscape.
And then obviously since twenty twenty, there have been a countless number of false allegations about both the twenty twenty election, the twenty twenty two election, and there haven't been too many people who have been consistently and with technical specificity pushing back against the falsehoods. And there have been even
fewer who are elected Republicans. And so I think that has made me a bit of an anomaly and maybe the celebrity I've earned has just been the product of my being a bit of a anomalist freak.
Yes, anomalist freak. Well, welcome, because that's something we love. One of the problems with elections is that every state is different, certain counties are different. There's very little uniformity in it, which actually protects our election. Zah, Will you explain a little bit about that.
Yeah, it is a feature in a flaw, as you have correctly identified. We have over eight thousand voting jurisdictions in the United States. We have fifteen in Arizona. The fifteen different counties. Elections are administered at the county level in Arizona. That is a feature in that no two systems are exactly alike. It's not the same people, it's not the same software. Necessarily, it's not the same machinery.
And so the notion that you could flip a switch or install a program into some mothership computer that would then disseminate out to all election jurisdictions throughout the United States. Is just a fundamental misunderstanding of how elections work in the United States. That's why some of the more outlandish theories of the twenty twenty election, as far as dominion being able to control everything, or one software patch or something like that, where for anyone who knew about elections
pretty silly. It's a bug in that a lot of our politics has become nationalized, and people on election night, especially in November of even years, look to the MSNBC, CNN's Fox News is of the world and they will see something being said and being done in one state that won't necessarily be done or said in another state,
and that can create confusion, that can create concern. Why does Pennsylvania have so few of its ballots reported immediately but Washington was just able to immediately provide fifty percent of its expected returns. Well, Washington could pre process Pennsylvania couldn't. In Florida, more people have show up in person and
they drop off their early ballots earlier. So that is something that we have had to remind viewers members of the media that this is federalizomat it's core in how our election administration is designed.
Someone like you isn't necessarily a public facing individual in most states, so you can't just call up. I mean, on this podcast, we have interviewed so many state level politicians, like during the Virginia we interviewed, you know, during that Virginia election, we interviewed like a lot of delegates, right, a lot of state senators. So I know that not and I mean this with all the love in the world, not all state officials are ready to handle the media spotlight.
I think that's a very fair statement, and it is not unduly disrespectful.
Okay, good, and nor should they, right, I mean, that's not you. You know, your job is very technical too. I mean, I want you to talk about your lawsuit because it seems to be the only way to stop this disinformation. Carry Lake decided that she was governor and that this would somehow even though you're a Republican, even though you do this very technical job, but somehow you were involved in us.
Right.
So Carry Lake was somebody who is new to Republican Party politics. In about twenty twenty went on the scene, really built her character around the idea that the twenty twenty election was stolen. Made her fame in politics in that vein Ran became the gubernatorial nominee for the Republican Party in the twenty twenty two election, narrowly lost to the Democratic candidate, alleged a whole bunch of crazy things that were a continuation of all the things that she
was saying about twenty twenty. Filed numerous election complaints in which she would air these very specific allegations regarding actions that I purportedly took two in particular, that I had injected three hundred thousand early ballots that were fraudulent into the voting system, and that I had manipulated machinery so as to swing the election in favor of her opponent. She files those lawsuits, court says there's no evidence for this,
no foundation for this. It pretty much kicks the snot out of her on all of her claims, including others. She appeals to the Court of Appeals, loses the Court of Appeals, she loses at the Arizona Supreme Court. There's another trial, she loses on that, and so she has a very intense awareness that all these things have been measured and they have been found wanting on evidence and
facts and law. Nonetheless, she persists in making these very serious accusations that I stole the twenty twenty two election from her. She would go to events, she would write on Twitter, she would write in her fundraising emails. She would name me. She would show pictures of me at events where she would try to stir up the crowd. This man, this Stephen Richer. He injected three hundred thousand fraudulent bouts, and she would say it time after time.
Did you find it scary or now?
Some people would report back to me, including a writer for the Washington Post, and he said, make sure you're taking precautions because people are being whipped up into a frenzy. Here. I'm imagining sort of the scene and Beauty and the Beast, where Gastan says, you know, grab your pitch fork, grab your hoe, and we're going to go kill the beast. Yeah, he continues, and we're thinking, Ah, she'll get over it. Most people do. Maybe not in this new age. She'll
get a new job. But this became the cornerstone of her continued political relevance. Her political fundraising. She even wrote a book in which I appear in a really creepy, weird dream sequence that she supposedly has, And we were at our wits end and so filed this defamation lawsuit. My legal team and I we thought we had a very strong case because obviously it's very false. She'd been told it was false, she knew from court rulings it was false. It did real damage to my family and me,
and we've been successful so far. She filed motions to dismiss she lost on those multiple times, and then when it came time to really get going on discovery and fact investigation, she defaulted, meaning that a judgment is going to be entered into the court of law saying that yes, Carrie Lake defamed Stephen Richer. She could not prove the truth of her allegations. She is not defending their falsity,
she is not defending malice. And now the only thing that we have left to work on is how many zeros are in the damages award and how much did she destroy my character among certain people?
Can you tell us about the dream sequence?
Yeah?
I couldn't believe it.
Wait, she wrote a book, Yeah, she.
Wrote a book published in the summer of twenty three. In her dream sequence, I and one of my colleagues from the county. We kidnap her. We tie her up in duct tape. We throw her into the back of a pickup truck. We drive her out into the desert. But then, because she drops a footnote that she was a high school gymnast, she was able to contort herself out of her duct tape bindings. And then because she ran track in high school, she was able to sprint
off while we as bumbling fools. Though we fired shots after her, we weren't able to get her. And I'll say that in a foot race, I'm guessing I destroy this lady.
Well, I mean, the whole thing is so just deeply, deeply disturbing and also quite strange.
If you read this in a different context, you would say this person is a lunatic.
Right, let's keep going with this for a minute. She continued to defame you when you won this case, because this is like the Rudy Giuliani problem, right, Like you had the two election workers who sued Judy Giuliani, and you had Egene Carroll Sewing Trump Boyd. When you sue these people for defamation. They tend not to stop defaming. Did she actually stop defaming?
This is all pretty new, so we'll see. But certainly in the immediate aftermath of her defaulting, it was bizarre because at the same time she's resting her defense in a court of law, she's going on to Twitter and saying I stand by everything I said, and so you better believe that we're watching those statements, and if she continues, then we will take appropriate legal action because now we have a judgment that these are defamatory remarks that she cannot defend. She cannot prove our troop.
The central tenant of our democracy is that we have free and fair elections. Why do we think that these trumpy I don't even want to say Republicans, because there are good Republicans who they really that's sort of Trump in, you know, these lies about the election, these Trump he lies about the election.
The incentive structure right now, the most powerful endorsement in politics right now is a Republican primary endorsement from President Trump. And this is a necessary and sometimes sufficient qualification for getting his endorsement is telling him very fervently that he won the twenty twenty election.
If he wins. Obviously we all have figger problems. But in a world where the Republican Party loses an all and finally becomes sane again, some part of this base has descended in trump Ism, But it seems as if there are people who can come back and be quote unquote more normal.
I think so, and it's why I'm still part of the Republican Party because I believe in the twenty sixteen party platform. I believe in the twenty twelve party platform, and the philosophy of a limited government and small, lower taxes, lower regulation. We can quibble about those things of whether the party, you know, consistently implements those but that's not
really the purpose of today's conversation, I don't think. But a party will always have a percentage of its voting members that you know, maybe aren't you are a little bit your weird uncle. Just the difference is that the weird uncle has taken over the steering wheel for in some instances eight years. But the Democratic Party, I would say,
flirted with this a little bit. And I'm not going to draw one to one comparisons, but elevating Bernie Sanders into the leadership role would have been giving over control to not where the median member of the party used
to be. And so just it's an interesting phenomenon that I think has its roots in intense partisanship, intense polarization, intense distrust in society, intense media ecosystems that are silos, and trace it back to I don't know whether it's the two thousand and eight financial crisis or the Tea Party movement, but just trust in anything institutionally has suffered immensely over the last twenty years, and elections is simply
one manifestation of it. But I think that you're going to find that, if, for instance, one of these courts rules against President Trump in the criminal context, that you're going to have a lot of people who do not believe in the criminal justice system anymore so insane.
Do you think there's a way like using more clarity will help Republicans see that these elections were fair, you know, because clearly you think about this a lot. Give me your hot take for the solve here.
I think we have to accept that there's a percentage of the party that will never be convinced even moving forward. I think we have to accept that there's even a larger percentage that is never going to change their opinion
about twenty twenty election. Why we try to provide more and more information and combat false information online is because we believe that there are people, especially forward looking people, who can be convinced with more information, that this is a system that they can have confidence in even if they don't like the outcome. And so we're not look at we're not shooting for one hundred percent here, And truthfully, that's never happened in American politics. There's always been a
distrust from the losing party. It's just we've seen it on steroids these last few years. But I hope that we can bring back people. A central core belief of mine is that man is still a rational reacher and if you hit him with facts and logics, then that's going to have an impact to at least a good number of people.
Well, let's hope. Thank you so much. This is really interesting, So thanks.
Great.
Moment. Oh fuck on, Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast.
The juice is loose in the afterlife.
Sometimes mainstream media. Look, it's very hard. Writing straight down the middle is very hard. But OJ Simpson's obituary has proven to be a sticky wicket that many a mainstream news outlet has failed. O J. Simpson, athlete whose trial riveted the nation, dies at seventy six. He ran to football fame on the field and made fortunes in movies, but his world was ruined after he was charged with killing his former wife and her friend. Hmmm, the passive voice,
this is a choice. And then we had breaking news football great orenthal James Simpson, known as Ojay has died. Perhaps, but I think the height of fuckery will be the La Times accidentally using the name Trump in place of Simpson near the end of their oh bit. And I'm just going to read you the sentence because it's amazing. Long before the city woke up on a fall morning in twenty seventeen, Trump walked out of the Lovelock County Correction Center outside of Reno a freeman for the first
time in nine years. And that, my friends, is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going, and again thanks for listening.
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