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 Jack Smith has asked a judge to reinstate a gag order on Trump or punish him with jail time.
We have such an interesting show today.
Political scientists and og nor Morenstein joins us to talk about the growing radicalization of the House GOP with the elevation of Mega Mike Johnson to Speaker of the House. Then we'll talk to Eurasia Group President Ian Bremmer about the world on fire. But first we have the host of the Origin Story podcast, the one British person we have on here, Ian dunt Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Ian wor third you very much.
Thanks.
I'm we're like best friends now, so.
I agady to take that's pushing Its really the quinstances.
Fuck you.
So anyway, well, I'm not going to be quite as nicy and as I was before. Let me tell you so let's talk about your very fucked up country again. I do want to say at least you don't have There was a number of congress who tweeted at a picture.
It was from January.
I guess which I guess makes that better or less fake Newsy or whatever.
A picture of January of the Speaker of the House praying.
On the floor on his knees on the floor of Congress with a bunch of other lunatics. So I don't know, we may have eclipsed you again as Worst Country discuss.
All you've done is been foolish enough to allow them to take photaes and film this stuff, because they do this every single day. You know, they start every single session in the Commons with a prayer, which, for some inexplicable reason, they would turn around and face the wall and pray to God before they start legislation, which actually, given the way the British legislation is actually probably not
a particularly foolish way of looking at it. But for that period they cut the cameras so you can't actually watch them engage in this completely deranged spectacle. So really the only improvement is that we just made sure and no one gets.
To see us like that. Munity.
When you were last on this podcast, which was either yesterday or four months ago, you said to me that Richie Sudact was I don't want to say you were positive because that is a misnomer. But you were not as negative as I've heard you.
No, because he remains better than any recent prime minister or for the last sort of let's say.
Seven maybe you're talking about Liz. Let us talk of Liz.
I'm talking about Liz Trusts.
It was easily like the most catastrophic prime minister that this country has ever had. Really, I mean, you don't usually have prime ministers that last for forty seven days and result in, you know, the death of the queen and the complete collapse of the British economy.
I want to fact check here, Liz lightest task did not kill the queen. Please add that to the rack the Queen the Queen Yes. Continue. However, can it really.
Be a complete coincidence that, in the short period of time that this monstrously inect figure was in charge.
The queen just thought about it.
I'm done, after nearly a century undone with this.
Can't now now it's true?
Let the fact check reflect that we do actually think that Liz did murder the Queen.
Continue to excellent edge. I don't think I can get done for Libel as long as I'm saying this in the US.
So that should be fine.
Now we are very loose over here, so should be fine.
And then you know there was Boris Johnson, whose ego was passed only by his complete indifference towards the truth or any kind of basic moral standard. Theresa May, you know, one of the most blisteringly reactionary, anti immigrant, authoritarian prom minises as countries ever had. And before that you've got David Cameron, who was like a human void in an expensive way. So you know, when these are the comparisons, he's probably better than all of them. However, that does
not make him good. He is just appallingly bad at government. And you look at him and you think, in any sensible country, this guy would have been a kind of anonymous junior minister, like lost in the bows of the treasury somewhere, and no one would have had to know what his actual name was. Because this country doesn't work at all. He somehow has found himself right at the peak of the political system, and he's starting to do proper damage, like really quite venal, right wing, mean spirited,
self interested political damage. And it's a real spectacle to think of that, just the extent of the damage and the tininess of the mind and of the political vision, which is.
Creat Yeah, so let's talk about that.
We have a complicated political crisis going on right now, which is mushrooming into more and more. But he did, Richie Sidak, did go to Israel in that chain of leaders to go there to try to prevent what hopefully will not happen.
So that was something you're very.
Generous, I think, to think that he's trying to prevent something, I think he's it's more a.
Kind of look at me, conka.
So explain, well, I think realistically, certainly, when I've been in Israel, the impression that I got was that there's no country that had influence over Israel apart from the US, and even then necessarily all the time, but certainly any other country that decides to go over there, I mean, you don't really realistically think you're going to result in the change, of course, not necessarily should you.
So really, when other.
Leaders go over there, they're really doing it for the domestic audience at home, so that they look like they're a you know, great striding international leader. Except the thing is that when is Rashi's Sunak, he looks like a head boy.
A prefect at a school.
Has been given like a special prize to go hang out with world lead. He just looks completely embarrassingly like backbreaking, cringingly out of his debt. And of course, I mean he has no proper evaluation of any of the issues that he's discussing. So I don't think he really went out there to achieve anything. I think he just went out there to look like he's a proper world leader, which he is.
Let's talk about what is happening sort of the larger issues. You have an economy that continues to struggle with its own self sanctioning.
Yes, right, I mean, inflation is everywhere.
It's problematic in the States, but you guys really have it bad.
We have it bad in almost every economic way there is to have it bad. And it's not even resulting in a recession. It's worse than that. It's just like over ten years of just complete stagnation, like there's just no growth, there's no and most damagingly, there's no productivity in the economy, and the people.
Can't really get to the heart of the puzzle.
But we do have an impression of why this stuff happens, and it happens because we make a series of short term interested political decisions that completely undermined the investment environment and the kind of skills that you need to build in a country and the kind of regional economic performance you would want in a country. So one of those
examples just obviously Brexit. You know where you spend years of one year it's gibbering away like a lunatic and an assign about you're taking back control and you know the great British destiny in the Land of Unicorns, And in fact all you're reading matual accomplished is putting up trade barriers with your largest trading partner. So then once the dreams all vade away, you just look at it and they so the some total of order that is
we're just pouring and that's the summer complishing. But then secondarily, look at what we've just done with trains. Right, this seems like a small example, get really indicative of the way we're governed. Yeah, so there's a by election, an election in just one local area, one constituency where there was a local debate about charges for environmentally inefficient cards and the Tories, the Conservatives, managed to scrape a win.
It's like the first when they've had an ages. It's basically because of about five hundred voters on a local issue that quickly passed away. But on the basis of that that one solitary wing rischie Sona decided he was going to tear up our entire environmental policy. Now Britain is not either US. There is no culture war on the environment. There is no political division rate on the environment.
Right and left, Conservatives and labor are both signed up to the same plans at both internationally and national on climate change. There's belief in manual climate change.
So you don't have Fox News, that's what you're saying.
Well, remember we have GB News, which is this desperate attempt. It's an absolute hit show of.
The high instrum.
Can I tell you about how I was on TV news recently.
Oh, I remember you went on GV.
It was a gutting moment.
No.
I went back on and I said, you've sanctioned yourself. Your inflation is at deatata percent and America's is a third or fourth and it's because of all of your terrible financial policies.
And he was like, we have to go now.
I bet they did.
So we've actually managed to build consensus on that and just because of that by election, because of five hundred voters, as Richie Sunat just decides to detonate it, to kill the consensus, and basically comes out as this big kind of like anti environmentalist, anti climate change action, anti net zero figure. He starts inventing these extraordinary, sort of just
imaginary policies. He does a speech in Downing Street. It's the Prime Minister of the country saying there is a war on meat and I'm going to stop it from happening. So originally, just what on earth have you gone completely mad? And like, what is the war on meat? What are the policies that are constitute a war on meat? Which he is unable to make. He starts saying local councils are forcing people to have seven rubbish bids, would you guys call them trash cans?
Whatever?
Completely made up? I mean, none of it exists in the actual world. You start saying that local councils are trying to ban people from leaving their homes in order to create fifteen minute cities. It's basically as if he had gone that. And as part of this, he cancels HS two High Speed two. Now this is the big rail project, again consensus on with both parties.
It's been being.
Built for about thirteen years. He cancels the project as part of his I'm going to defend motorists and pull us back from this green lunacy, starts selling off the land that was bought, start sabotaging thirteen years of work, actively undermining it, including by trying to make sure that no future government can undo the decision that he is making.
Him as an unelected prime minister, he didn't even win the election within the Conservative Party to become leader, and with zero mandate, he decides, I'm going to cancel the project now that obviously is environmentally catastrophic and morally and
democratically deeply unsound. But what it also is indicative of why our economy struggles, because you have businesses investing, and they invest on the basis of stability and some kind of good judgment about the economics, and then one moment, after five hundred voters in one by election, we decide, no,
you know what, We're going to trash it. And all that money you invested, all the plans you made, whether it's been to set up in HQ in a particular era, on the basis of the connectivity that you were entitled to expect, on the basis of what government told you we're going to get rid of all of that. And in that kind of thinking, I think you get an idea of why our economy as well as our political system is so comitate.
Yeah, that doesn't sound good. I mean it isn't.
No, it isn't.
It isn't.
It's national decay, kind of moral and intellectual torpa.
Those those are the headlines.
Of you guys have any kind of way to push back on this.
Well, there's the election, right, Yeah, let's talk about the election, and it's coming up.
It's coming up.
He can decide when to hold it, but he has to hold it by late January twenty twenty five. If he was sensible, he would do it in May, because it's good, whether it's easier to get your volunteers out, and because he's basically destroyed the National Health Service, so you don't really want to run an election in the middle of winter when you're seeing lots of old people waiting in always not being seen on journeys, dying away because of a lack of the investments.
I'm laughing to keep from crying. I want to point that out.
Yes I do.
I do an awful lot of that as well. Also drinking. That's drinking, I find order it was quite a.
Bit as someone who's been cell person she was nineteen. No drinking, but laugh.
And then how you get through politics without it?
It just seems inconceivable to me.
So he should really try and avoid any kind of election in the winter time, But he's just cowardly to hold it in spring the summer, because the truth is he can by himself a bit more time. And right now he is consistently twenty points behind in the polls, like that man is heading for extinction and the Conservative Party is heading for a water being on a scale that we really haven't seen in this country for about thirty years. That are kind of like generational event. People
are utterly fed up. So he's light need to hold the election as late as he can, could be in the autumn of next year, or really in the winter, or really, if he's speaking particularly cowardly, he might just go ahead and hold it in January. I just ruin everyone's Christmas as one final act of constitutional and cultural vandalism before the Conservatives trist from all.
But it does seem to me.
And you tell me if I'm right, because I'm looking at this from quite far away that here Stormer has I'm mispronouncing it.
You're making him.
Sound so much more exciting than heure Stormtrooper.
For so long I've heard people say that labor is just.
And again, John Decaucus, if you're listening to this, I don't mean any offense towards your father, but that you were sort of run by a mic decaucasy kind of crew that nobody could ever kind of get the bazeal. I feel like there's been sort of an evolution a little bit.
Now.
This isn't happening because Keir Starmer is a particularly inspiring or charismatic figure.
Right, Why would just because he's the head of a political party. I mean, you should never put one of those people as ahead of your party.
Yes, go on.
It's like in the Victorian period, Thomas Carlyle was talking about the husband of Harriet Taylor, who ended up marrying the philosopher John Stuart Mill, and he was trying to sort of justify where they might not want to hurt the man's feelings, and they said he's an innocent dull good man. And that's the kind of what Kiir Star. It's he's just an innocent, dull good man, like he has genuine decency to it.
He is competent, he.
Wants good things for the country, he wants the country to work. He comes basically from the civil service.
He's a form of prosecutor.
You know, he's going to be one of those kind of slightly technocratic kind of guys thinking right, what are the kind of benchmark tests we'd want to assess for the health of the health service?
What kind of steps would.
We need to get there, what's the evidence based for it, what are the kind of competent, unremarkable, unflashy people and need to put in place to implement it. And you know, normally speaking, people would not really be into that. They usually want them more kind of Tony Blair, Boris Johnson or look at you look at the charisma or on this one. Actually, after the just the utter ramshackle chaos over the last few years and the commensurate decrease in Britain's standing.
In the world and it's.
Material circumstances in people's day to day quality of life, people are really in the position where they just want someone who just seems basically like they're decent and quite competent.
And Keir Starmer is both of those things.
Could Labor actually win an election now?
Right?
Yeah? Yeah?
No, they're going to win, yeah yeah, And the chances are they're going to win really really big.
How is that possible?
I suppose.
The thing that's really happened is it's sort of the double rammy of Boris Johnson and Partygate, that moment where he had those big parties in Downing Street while telling everyone that they had to stay at home for COVID. As political scandals go, the thing that was really striking about that scandal was that the people who were most upset about it were the children. You know, your friend's children, if they would be like four years old, five years old.
They understood the new story. You know, there was no complexity to it at all. It was as if someone had written a story and more powerable for children. You know, shit, the man who tells you to stay at home not be staying at home and party.
The answer to that is known.
So it was this huge Primary Colors kind of political scandal, and from that moment the Tories never recovered. But of course they followed that moment with Liz Trust with just this kind of spectacle of inadequacy and chaos. So on the basis of that, their polling just bottomed out and it never came back. So, I mean, sure, Keirstearmer had to detoxify the Labor Party. He had to get rid of the anti semitism that was there under Jeremy Corbyn.
He's had to cover himself in the National flag to get rid of the fact, you know, that image that Jeremy Corbyn had of like I want to run the country, I don't actually really like it, and you all seem like kind of you know, ignorant reactionaries, right, So he's had to do all the b'sic you know, not and bolts two plus two equals for political activity to show that you're fit to govern, including demonstrating economic competence.
But apart from that, he has.
Mostly cleaned up on the bat that people have looked at the Conservatives and particularly those two crucial moments and just thought, you know what, mate, fuck that, We'll try something else, thank you very much.
So that's what is looking like over there is just there'll be a radical shift.
Will it be a radical shift.
I mean, you have a coalition government, so it's not quite the same as it is in the States, right.
No, it probably won't be coalition. I mean, we've had coalitions before, but it's quite rare. We have the same electoral system as you the first pass of both systems, so generally speaking, you're getting one party in charge. I mean, look the way the things are right now, you would be looking at a very very large majority for the Labor Party unless the polling changes significantly. And by very large, I mean I'm kind of talking an existential crisis for
the Conservative Party. I mean that holding is it's on the floor. The really interesting.
Thing now is what I suppose. It's two fold.
The first is, you know what's Labor doing power and Labour's economic program is quite heavily based on Biden's program. There's there's some examples that they're taking from the European mainland, from Germany, from Sweden, but primarily they're inspired by what Biden's doing, So it's surprisingly left wi. You know, this is not like the Tony Blair, Bill Clinton era. This
is a much more left wing program. It's much more Painsian program in envisagors using a fiscal stimulus and form of public works to try and stimulate the economy, in this case by creating a million new jobs and decombondizing the energy grid and trying to bring back some of that climate change action that we've seen get lost on the Sunak. The flip side of that is what happens to the Conservatives out of office is usually political parties
use power and then they go insane. But the Conservative Party has gone insane while inpowt and so the only way for it to go is even further into the sort of conspiracy theory, right, and you see that happening now, like just the babbling gibberish that they are coming up with about, you know, conspiracies against conservative thoughts.
I mean Nadine.
Dorin's the former media sectually, she was the actual genuine secutary of State and media has just written a book on a shadowy conspiracy to unsee several prime ministers and which she says she went to a meeting with Google where she was told that there is a big dial that is dialed down to make sure that her own news stories about her are less prominent than they would otherwise be because she's a conservative, and you just think like, this isn't even a complicated it's sort of it's the
kind of thing that makes QAnon look like a PhD. It's just this unbelievably childlike conspiracy theory Babbel. And they are firmly, firmly entrenched that, and we can expect to the Conservatives become more extreme in that respect when they leave Pown.
It's funny because that's what our House of Representatives is up to.
Ian.
I appreciate you so much.
I wish you lived in a country that was more relevant to our discussion. Well, oh, I had to get it in there, but please tell, please, always keep us a breath.
Of the backwater.
It's the unbelievable and increasingly inevitable sting in the tile of a conversation.
Begin Norm Jay Ornstein is a political scientist and author of It's Even Worse than it looks How the American constitutional system collided with the new politics of extremism.
Welcome to fast politics, Norm.
It is so good to be with you, Molly, and this horribly crazy time in America.
And the world.
This is not your first rodeo? Is that fair?
I think it's fair to say it's not my first or by second, enter my third.
But yeah, Producer Jesse and I were talking about you and we were like, he seems like angry Norm Ornstein. I think of you as like a serious guy, but I feel like you're a little more irritated than usual.
Will you talk to us about that?
Sure?
I can try and psychoanalyze myself, yes, please. A part of it, Molly, is that a large portion of my career has been spent trying to build up, improve and make function our institutions of government, and recognizing that a lot of this stuff doesn't happen quickly even when lots of people agree that we're doing the right thing. Just as one example, I started to push for an independent ethics operation in Congress more than thirty years ago, actually
even longer than that. It met a lot of resistance, kept pushing, and eventually, at least in the House, got the Office of Congressional Ethics. It is imperfect, but the fact is it exists. Yeah, it exists. And no institution, whether it is in government or or medicine or the law, as we've seen with the inability to sanction criminals who happen to be lawyers, as we've seen with cosmetology, people
just can't easily police their own. But we finally got something done, and I felt good about that, and I
felt good about other things to improve institutions. When you see them falling apart, and when you see the norms that are supposed to keep the institutions and the system together failing, when you see two political parties that I used to work with, both of them pretty intently and intensely, turn into one traditional political party and one radical fundamentalist cult, it makes me frustrated and angry, and so I you know, some of it is I need a catharsis when things
that should be going differently are not.
Yeah.
One of the things that I've been really struck by with these Republicans is, for example, they seem to have taken a sharp turn against ethics of any kind. An example that I would like to bring up is Senator Bob Menendez, a Democrat who they refuse to condemn because if they get on that wagon, they'll lose too many people.
Well, we know that's true with Menendez, although I have to also say that I find Chuck Schumer's unwillingness to call for Menendez to resign a little frustrating as well, but most Democrats in the Senate and many others have
taken off after Menendez. Let's use another example here, though, that we find day after day after day, and that Ms. Clarence Thomas, who got a quote unquote loan from a wealthy friend of something like two hundred and seventy plus thousand dollars to buy his fancy RV that he's bragged about, and of course in the hagiographic documentary about how wonderful he is, he was there with the RV talking about how he's more comfortable in the parking lot of a
Walmart with real people. And of course we know that he's far more comfortable on private jets, eating caviare and drinking thousand dollars bottles of wine. But he got this load never repaid. We know that Clarence Thomas got one hundred and fifty thousand dollars from Harlan Crow to pay for the schooling for his nephew, whom he has treated like a son. We also know that Clarence Thomas got a five thousand dollars contribution for that purpose from somebody else.
He declared the five thousand dollars and never declared the one hundred and fifty grand, which makes it clear he knew that it was wrong, in a violation very likely of the law, but certainly of any ethical standard. And every day Ted Cruz, joined by many many others, praises Clarence Thomas as one of the greatest people on earth, not a word of criticism. The same with Sam Alito,
who maybe even more corrupt than Clarence Thomas. So what we've seen is a party that's become a cult that also believes that their end justifies any means, illegal means, undemocratic means, unethical means, and no one steps up, maybe every once in a while, with the possible exception of Mitt Romney, but other than those who have left in horror, the Liz Cheney's and Bill Crystals of the world. If we look at elected representatives, they're all culpable in this criminal scheme.
When you think about this Maga, Mike, this snooze speaker of the House, he's quite smart. He reminds me of a kind of if Sidney Powell look like Paul Ryan discuss.
Yeah.
So Matt Gates, of course is smiling and laughing because the fact is having engineered this scheme to begin with, to get Kevin McCarthy and bring in somebody who was as extreme as him. What he knew was that if he and his mega mob basically objected to every nominee coming forward that didn't fit entirely their purest pattern of a radical extremist, that eventually the less lunatic members of the Republican Conference would cave and let them get the
person they wanted, and that worked. What we know about Mike Johnson other than the fact that he's singularly unqualified to be Speaker of the House because he has no clue what it means to be Speaker of the House. He's hardly been in the House at all, much less in any kind of position where he's close to the responsibility are decisions that have to be made by a speaker.
But far more.
Significant is that he is a fundamentalist, Christian nationalist extremist. And the idea that every single Republican in the House would vote for this guy is mind boggling, and it tells me two things, Molly.
I mean.
The first is that it's not just Donald Trump. Obviously, Donald Trump had a lot to do with killing Tom Emmer, who all the bad choices was the least worst, and he killed them not just because Emmer had voted to certify the twenty twenty election, but also because he knew that I'm sure from conversations with others in the House, Emmer would go down and that he could look like the kingmaker here again. But we also hope that Emmer's support for same sex marriage was another nail in his
speakership coffin, which is insane. Yeah, you know, you have somebody coming up to you saying you don't have to answer to me, you have to answer to Jesus because you're for these horrible things. So instead they got somebody who wants to criminalize same sex sex and have a national don't say gay law, who has come out with hatred towards trans people, and that fits their bill right now.
But the other part of this that really needs to be emphasized is that we not only have these extremists, but everybody else who doesn't fit that descriptor none of them are moderates. And it still drives me up a wall. Another part of what me unhappy is and I saw this yesterday over and over on CNN and even on MSNBC referring to some of the House Republicans as moderates. There isn't a sick moderate, but there are some who are not crazy, and they're all moral cowards. They go
on with this. And I saw this morning that there was a No Layle's phone call with some of these problems solver, and I use that term very very looselyeth Republicans going on the no Labels call, which was simply to try to mollify their billionaire Republican funders who are trying to make sure that Joe Biden will lose even
if he wins some more votes and more states. And so you've got some of these so called moderates saying, oh, you know, he's a really good guy, he's not going to behave that way, he doesn't really mean that stuff, which is all a bunch of crap. They're going along with it. So they're no better than the Matt gateses or Marjorie Taylor Green's or Lauren Bobert's or Virginia Fox's. And that list is a very very long one.
Were you struck by though, those backbenchers going not I mean that group. What you know, there's a clip that went viral of a journal as saying, you know, did you believe that the twenty twenty election was stolen? And they started screaming at her, and Virginia Fox was like, shut up. I mean, it's been three weeks of these backbenchers really taking the spotlight and it's not an impressive group.
You know.
I often will say that the lunatic fringe is now the vast majority. And one of the things that's so depressing, Molly is that you look at this collection of people, and then you look at the farm team, you look at who's coming up, the next generation, the people who are in state legislatures, on city councils now increasingly on school boards, and they make this group look like Abraham Lincoln. We're not going to get better anytime soon. And the only thing that may help is if they suffer a
withering defeat in the twenty twenty four elections. But with that, given that, they have allies, to say the least on the Supreme Court, and we now see that North Carolina is about to implement an absolutely outrageous, hyperpartisan jerrymander that could cost Democrats three seats there that may be balanced a little bit by gaining a seat in Louisiana and
perhaps one in Alabama. But you know, so many of these districts are rigged, and the system is so tribal now in the country that while I think the Democrats will recapture the House, it's no sure thing. Well, let me say that if we somehow skate through the presidential contest and there are no labels Cornell West worrying me
a good deal. If Democrats don't recapture the House, and if Mike Johnson is able to hold on and not suffer the fate of all these other Republican leaders because he isn't purest enough, in the end, we're going to have a leader in the election denying group that tried to overturn the election in twenty twenty running the House and very possibly overturning the results of the twenty twenty four election. So the stakes in the House could not be higher right now, not just for the immediate term.
Whether we have an extended government shut down, cut out the legs from under Selenski and Ukraine and benefit Vladimir Putin, or begin to move towards truly destructive policies that would undermine almost everything that we do in government and protecting our democracy, but we could lose it all if we're not vigilant and work hard.
Next year, we just keep coming to this precipice of democracy. The thing that I worry about a lot is that these Republicans really are so hot to hold on to power. And we talked about this so the Supreme Court. It feels like they just aren't bound by the same stuff the rest of us are.
Oh, I think that's absolutely the case. The rules don't matter. And you know, the way I will often frame this is that the Constitution, the laws, the rules are kind of the exoskeleton of our political system. But the norms are like the tendons and the ligaments, and if they wither, the whole thing falls apart, and we now have a group of people for whom none of these other principles matters.
It is truly the ends justify the means, and the fact that they have allies in the courts, that they are able to exploit the seams in the political system, and a political system that is heavily tilted towards the minority, but that they've used crowbars to make even more of that tilt work is a very frightening thing. It's true that Donald Trump was an accelerant of this process, he didn't start. It started a long time before he came on the scene. Some of these elements, I should say,
go back before any of us were born. One of the things that I'm trying to do now is get injected, at least into the mainstream the idea of enlarging the House of Representatives. I mention this because effectively the size, which grew every ten years as the population group, was fixed at four hundred and thirty five in nineteen ten,
informally formally in nineteen twenty nine. But if you go back and look at why they wouldn't keep enlarging the House, the fundamental reason is that we had all of these immigrants coming from Eastern Europe into through Ellis Island and occupying the northeast end the midwest, and we had former slave families who left the south and moved up to
the north. And the Conservatives, then Democrats now they are all Republicans figured that they could limit the power of these people coming in by capping the size of the House and not letting them get more districts and more political power. And you go back even further. We had a Dakota territory, it became a North Dakota, in a South Dakota. You had a Virginia that became a Virginia and a West Virginia. Why so that conservative areas could
have more representation in the Senate and more leverage. So, you know, the manipulation of the process often with what are you know, on the surface legitimate means, but for illegitimate ends goes way back. But when I look at it now, you know we're almost at a point, for example, where seventy percent of Americans will live in just fifteen of our fifty states. It's because people congregate to those
states where the economic dynamism gives them opportunities. Two thirds of our GDP comes from those fifteen states.
But if you flip that.
Around, not only does it mean more distortion in the electoral college, but it means that thirty percent of Americans will elect seventy US Senators enough to veto anything to block action if they don't like it. And it's not that you know, the small states are all Republican and the big states are all controlled by Democrats, but that thirty percent don't reflect at all the diversity of the country,
or its economic dynamism, or its larger political views. So our elections are on the road to becoming illegitimate for most people, even if Donald Trump disappears from the scene very very soon. And these people who are now running things are going to be able to manipulate the system even more to get their way, including having stacked the deck with judges who they've deliberately picked to be young enough that they can be there for decades even if
they lose political power. So how do I put this?
We're fucked nor Morenstein, Thank you.
Have a nice thing.
Wally Ian Bramer is the president of the Eurasia Group. Welcome back to vast politics.
Thank you, MOLLI good to be with you.
So it feels like a moment to have you to talk about. You know, I feel like Americans are so or at least this is my experience America centric, and then all of a sudden we remember that there's like a whole world out there and what happens and.
It actually affects us.
I feel like this was a moment where it was like a shift back to foreign policy, if that makes any sense.
First, of all, you know, I love you, Molli, So I don't want to start.
I don't want to start by disagreeing with you, but I have to tell me because for the last almost twenty months, the United States has focused an enormous amount on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, right right, right, And I will tell you that for the last two weeks, no one's asked me about it, not at all. Yeah,
I've been thrown completely off the headlines. But it's enormously relevant, and we do care about it in the sense that we've been thinking about and talking about it, and it went from being a pretty bipartisan issue to becoming a partisan issue. I will say that it certainly when we talk about Israel, pallace Stein. Not only do Americans have strong views about it, but they are incredibly divided views. And there are also views that are very different from
almost everybody else in the rest of the world. And both of those things are important here. How are they different from everyone else in the world. So I believe that it is almost inevitable that the Israelis are going to engage in a ground war against Hamas that will be long and brutal, with the effort of destroying that terrorist organization, and the United States, while privately the US has been saying, we'd really rather if you didn't do this,
please delay humanitarian support. I strongly believe that when the Israelis engage in a ground war, the Americans will provide full throated support for that ground war, and indeed the US may well also be fighting in the region. There will be attacks, more attacks against American troops in the region that will happen, that will expand, and it's reasonably likely that the United States will be directly involved in the fighting. That will absolutely not be the position of
almost anyone else in the world. The vast majority of countries will oppose a ground war, even the vast majority of democracy will oppose a ground war. So that's one way the Americans are very different. And then inside the United States, of course, it is true that Israel is America's strongest ally in the Middle East, and that's been
true for a long time. But young people Generation Z in the US are actually much more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause, while the rest of the Americans are far more aligned with Israel, and that, of course we're seeing play out on campuses and on social media and everything else is going to be a lot more of that.
So I want to stop here for a minute and just and to ask you why you think this is inevitable.
There are many reasons, and the reason I think it's inevitable is.
Because I believe that the Israeli war cabinet has already made the decision to go, and they have been delaying under a lot of pressure, particularly from the US. The most important reason they have delayed is because the Americans want to get more defensive capacity in the region, securing US bases, ships and the like, because the Americans know that attacks against Americans going to go way up once you have tanks streaming into Gaza. That's the main reason
why they're delaying. They're also trying to get more hostages freed through indirect negotiations involving the Cuttery government and the Tamas political leadership that is based in Doha. And then also there is efforts to get more humanitarian aid. And I wish that was a principal reason that was driving the delay. It is not, but it is a reason. But I think the decision has been made.
Now.
If you're asking me, why has the decision been made. I think they are. It's the fact that Israel has been so traumatized by what happened on October seventh. Non Yahoo is responsible for the failures of Israeli national security. He's still in charge, ultimately calling the shots, and he needs to prove himself, wants to prove himself.
But it's not just that, it's the fact that.
Everyone in Israel knows someone personally who's been killed or is a hostage. Said, three hundred and sixty thousand Israelis have been called up and mobilized to fight in the war. That's four percent of the population. When I'm talking to Israeli leaders, they are constantly being interrupted by air sirens and having to go into their safe rooms, and their sleep is being interrupted, and they're being all these demands are being made by the families of.
Those that have been killed and those that are held hostage.
I mean, I think that this is a level of emotional trucks that is really inconceivable for you and me. But that I'm trying to understand as the American government is working with these folks and saying, look, they're just not thinking strategically. This is about retribution. It's an emotional response.
I mean, I think that makes a lot of sense, the thinking and what's happened. And this reminds us all of what it was like in New York after nine to eleven, certainly, where there was a sense that they're just it was sort of incalculatable. But what I'm curious about is the hostages. I mean, do we have any more of a sense of four hostages? There are two hundred plus plus maybe two fourteen I've read. Do we have any sense of like, will more be released? Do
you get a sense of that. We think there are over two hundred and twenty hostages. We also believe a fair number of them are already dead. Because they're being held in a tunnel network inside northern Gaza. The ability to free them through a search and rest mission is negligible, so the only way they're getting out is through diplomacy. I absolutely believe.
That more will be freed, But I mean, we're not talking about all of them. We're probably not talking about most of them. Keep in mind, I mean there's different types of hostages. You've got civilians and you have active members of the Israeli military. The latter very hard to see going anywhere unless there were massive numbers of Palestinians that were freed. And I have a hard time seeing
the Israelis doing that. But I also know that there is a willingness on the part of the war cabinet to put those lives at risk through a ground war. This is not the same calculus as was experienced by Israel before October seventh.
And how could it be? I want to pull.
Back and talk about the region because it's such a complicated, interconnected region that will have enormous economic consequences for all of us. And also this war, I think there's a lot of anxiety, certainly that it could mushroom.
So what does it look like in the Arab world?
Like where do you see potential support coming from for the Palestinians? Where do you see the potential support coming to the Israelis?
And do you think that some of this.
Happened because of the normalization of relationships between Israel and Saudi Arabia?
It absolutely came from the broader normalization of Israel with everybody while the Palestinians were being forgotten. The number of people that are complicit and responsible for the Palestinians being screwed is so substantial. It's the corrupt local Palestinian governments, both Hamas and the Palestinian authority. I mean, look how much military equipment Hamas has and just how little has been spent on the development of the Palestinian people.
It is Israel taking.
More of their land illegally in the West Bank and promoting Hamas as a counter balance to Fatah. It is the Gulf States and others happy to work with the Israelis for trade and investment and tourism while the Palestinian situation gets worse and worse and not doing anything about it. It's the Americans and the Europeans focusing zero on this issue.
Everyone's complicit.
Everyone's complicit, and so clearly, you know, when my friend Antonio Guchetz, the Secretary General of the UN, who was out there immediately condemning Hamas for terrorist activity, but when he says, let's talk about the context, that's the context he's talking about. Will remind me immediately of JFK saying that, you know, if people don't have a means for peaceful revolution,
they will engage in violent revolution. And literally everyone in the region and the world was complicit in giving the Palestinians no outlet for peaceful revolution.
So let's talk about what the larger landscape looks like. This is not the way it was during the Young pepop War war. This is not Israel versus the world, you know, versus the Arab world is a different posture. And can you talk to me about what it looks like there? Like, where does everyone stand on this?
With the neighbor nations, the neighbor states that have normalized relations with Israel, both formally and informally in the case of Saudi, want to maintain that relationship. It ain't gonna get any better. It will get a little worse because there'll be a lot of pressure from the Arab street. But I mean, the Saudis came out and condemned both Israel and Hamas, which is right, which is unusual literary
from the MBS perspective. Right, that's a big deal. And Israel is in as you mentioned, you're so right to say this, Molly. Their geopolitical position is so much better than it was in nineteen seventy three. Israel faced an existential war literally for its survival. There might be no state of Israel. There's no such concern here not YAHUO failed the Israeli people. He should be removed. They have the capacity to defend their border.
And the polling says that the Israeli people blame him for this as well they should they blame him.
In fact, far more Jews in Israel blame not Yahoo then want a ground war, and I think that is a message that should be delivered loudly, like how do the Israelis feel about all of this? And the same way that you want to know, how do the Palestinians feel about Hamas? And they're not all terrorists, but not all Israeli support what's been happening on the ground in Israel.
That's why you've had these massive demonstrations inside the country, almost all peaceful over the last months and months and months. But the problem here is that this war is going to expand. It's not just a ground war in Gaza. There will be fighting in the West Bank. Dozens and dozens of Palestinians have already lost their lives in the last couple of weeks in the West Bank. That will expand. There will be more fighting with Hesbellah that could become
a new front in the war. There will be more attacks against Americans in the region from Iranian proxiesis in Yemen, and like the Shia militants in Iraq and the United States is very likely to be directly involved in that fighting. So this is very different from Russia Ukraine in that in two critical ways. First that the Americans are going to be supporting the Israeli's militarily kind of by themselves, and secondly, that the Americans are going to be involved
in the fighting. And neither of those things have been true in the last twenty months of Russia Ukraine.
So that's a really good point. Now what does that look like for Russia and Ukraine? I mean, how do the Ukrainian sort of go from here? Because they seem worried, they should be worried. This has been a great a great two weeks for putin. The United States just put a new speaker, Mike Johnson in place. He's overwhelmingly interested in supporting Israel. He's absolutely not interested in providing support for Ukraine. At best, the US might be able to do a small fraction of what Biden asked for the
Ukrainians for the coming year. That means they can still fight a defensive war, but they can't do another counter offensive and the last one hasn't gone so well. I have a hard time seeing the Ukrainians taking more of their territory back than the eighty two percent which they presently occupy. And I think the Europeans are going to be very worried, especially as we now enter the twenty twenty four election season with Trump wanting to cut the
Ukrainians off completely. The Europeans are going to feel much more like they need to hedge away from the United States on a bunch of these issues. They aren't as aligned on Israel, They're becoming less.
Aligned on Ukraine. This will affect them on China too, and especially because all of this is so much more of a direct security concern for the Europeans than it.
Is for the Right, because it's so much closer to them. It's so much closer.
They get the refugees, they get the potential for asymmetric attacks. I mean, all day, They've got to pay higher input costs, infrastructure, energy, all this stuff.
And it does feel like netnya who is not interested in decruing business with the President of Ukraine.
Oh god, yeah, you've got to remember that Natnya, who has not supported US and European sanctions, has refused to join them against Prussia. He has not provided Ukraine with any military support, unlike the Europeans and the Americans. Zelenski, of course, is himself Jewish, and after the October seventh
attacks he immediately denounced Thamas express solidarity with Israel. Saw this as an opportunity and offered to come down to Israel in solidarity Natnya, who said no, it was not the time, and hours later took a phone call from Putin, who has been supporting Kamas. So I mean clearly, the Israelis are not remotely aligned with the Americans on the Ukraine issue, so Putin.
Will not be involved in being anti Israel.
I do think that the Israel Russia relationship has been signed magnificantly damaged. There are members of the Non Yahoo government that have actively denounced Putin because of his support for Hamas, not mil ferry or financial support, but his rhetorical support. But Non Yahoo will be very careful on this issue going forward, and I expect Putin will as well.
Putin will be aligned with.
China and the Gulf States in terms of what they're doing at the Security Council and broadly diplomatically. I don't see the Russians as being directly involved in the fighting on the ground.
I don't see that.
I see them taking advantage of the chaos and the vacuum that comes from this, and certainly it being an advantage for them as they continue this illegal war in Ukraine.
Unbelievable. Thank you so much, Ian Suremali, good to talk to you.
No moment.
Jesse Cannon, my Jung fast, Maga, Mike Johnson. I think I texted this to you. I feel like we got Santos. No one knew what was coming, and now we're seeing a lot of horrors. What are you seeing with this guy?
Do we get Santost? Is that like sandbag? Do you got Santost?
When the OPO doesn't come as fast as the candidacy.
I'm going to say, when the OPO doesn't drop, right, When the OPO doesn't drop, you get Maga, mic So, Maga, Mike.
Everyone's favorite is a I don't know.
He gave an insane speech where he said his wife was busy on her knees, which I think he meant prayer, but the implication is so dicey he's a Christian talk show host. He's like dollar store Mike Pence. And for that, my man is our moment of fuck Ray. 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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