Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Sidney Powell has pled guilty for her efforts to overturn the twenty twenty election, but not her leopard print card. Again, I'm sorry. Trying to overturn elections as serious business, having bad taste is just a little levity. We have a really interesting show today. Israeli journalist Noga Tarnoposki joins us on the ground reporting from Jerusalem.
Then we'll talk to former Louisiana State University Chair of Journalism Robert Mann about his classes with the newly elected governor Jeff Landry. But first we have the author of Lucky How Joe Biden barely won the presidency, NBC's John Allen. Welcome to Fast Politics. My close personal friend who hopefully going to see next week.
John Allen, Molly, John Guss. I hope that we see each other next week. I hope that we see each other every day. But for now, talking on I guess we'll have to do.
Oh so sweet. This is Thursday, this episode where Friday. It was Wednesday for a year. But I'm happy to report that it is no longer Wednesday. I was actually reading this on the site formerly known as Twitter. There's so much pushback about Biden being old. You know, he's old.
He's old. He's old.
This is his second war zone visit. I mean, he's zipping around a lot for an old guy.
It's a very different war zone than some of the other war zones the presidents have visited in the recent past.
Right, he also went to Kiev, correct, And like.
So Kiev when he went to Kiev was like, you know, it's pretty distant from the front line at that point. I mean, pretty much everywhere in Israel is close to the front lines. Compared to or say, like you know, when presidents have visited troops in Afghanistan over the course of that twenty year war. There's considerably more physical certainty of safety.
Right in Israel than there is in well.
I mean in Israel, there's everything's close to the front lines, and you know there obviously hasn't been enough time to establish certainty about security. I mean obviously enough to be able to get him in there.
But I mean, I want you to give Biden credit here for a minute.
I love you on your straight reporter, and that was a good straight reporter answer.
But it is true. I mean, he went to Israel. Again.
We can discuss the merits of that, but he went and he went to Kiev. Those are not such easy trips. If you compare him to his predecessor, Donald J. Trump, perhaps you remember him, Trump went to nowhere and then finally they got him to visit the troops once.
But he did do that.
And you know, that's not a huge validation of Donald Trump's desire to go into war zones. I don't think he had his desire to go in the war zones. I'm not sure that any president has any big desire to go into war zones. Maybe some have. But I think what's really remarkable about the trip. One of the things is really remarkable about it is.
How fast it happened, right right.
It's announced on Monday, and then Biden's on a plane on Tuesday, and then he's in Israel speaking on Wednesday. Presidential schedules are usually worked out and you know, long, long in advance, and it's remarkable for a variety of reasons that he jumped on a plane and went to
go meet with then Yahoo. That's not normal, and I think it's to America's desire or the you know, the administration's desire, the administration representing the country to keep a lid on the Middle East right now and to get Israel to show more restraint in its counter offensive than Israeli leaders might like.
What that did was buy.
Some time, right, It slowed everything down.
Right Now, we're a country that is evolved in Ukraine, right, and then we're also you know, we sent these three tankers to be outside the Middle East. I mean, is the goal here just to sort of throw anything America can at the wall to prevent war?
So first of all, there is a war right going on.
But to try to keep it from getting worse.
Yes, it appears that the American goal. I mean, it's it's sort of it's multi tiered. But basically the goal is to try to give Israel the room to destroy Hamas, but without working a larger conflict in the Middle East, without drawing in the governments or populations of surrounding countries.
And in order to do that, the US has to convince Israel to exercise that restraint I was talking about, and also convince Arab country the leadership and the population that Israel is doing that, which is deeply complicated by the fog of war, and as we saw with the explosion at the hospital earlier this week, so much information and disinformation and misinformation spreads quickly, and even in the best case scenarios, even when there are people who are
sharing information or what they believe to be information in real time, all of that is complicated. Of everybody in that region is at extraordinarily high level of tension. It's the world's all this tinder box, and there's a lot of people standing there with matches and the US is trying to blow them out.
Right.
One of the things that's been really interesting is that Jim Jordan has used all of Trump's tactics to try to become speaker, and they haven't really worked.
I mean, in some cases it appears to be backfiring. There's a member of Congress Don Bacon. Can we talk about Don Bacon's wife, right? Don Bacon's wife was being harassed by text She was pissed, Yeah, she was pissed. And also Mary net Miller Meeks from Iowa was, you know, getting threats. Apparently that's not working, right, it's not making them want to vote for Jim Jordan.
The idea that you're going to you know.
That you're going to scare people into voting for him, you know, with intimidation and harassment.
I mean, maybe it works with a few of them, but it obviously has backfired with others. That Bacon's a general.
Yeah, explain to us a little bit about Don Bacon. This is what I think is interesting and what we're seeing in Congress right now. And again, this is Thursday. You know, there may be one hundred votes by f and Jim Jordan maybe Speaker of the House, though it's looking less and less likely.
One of the things that.
I was certainly struck by was these are all the tactics of trump Ism, right. You got Sean Hannity out there publishing members of Congress's phone number. You've got Don Bacon's wife getting text messages like if you went back, if you were to rewind the tape to twenty fifteen. This worked incredibly well on members of the Senate when Donald Trump was running, you know, you had he was able to take down party chairs this way. So, I mean,
is it just that trump Ism doesn't scale? Is it just that Jim Jordan pretending to be Trump doesn't work for Jim Jordan, Or is it that Trump has diminished power in the party.
You know, maybe all of the above, and then also at some level like so Number one, Jim Jordan definitely is not Donald Trump does not have that cloud ever. A Number two, I think that Trump does have diminished power within the party from where he was when he was president. I mean, he is running away with the Republican nomination right now, and at the same time, you know, a lower share of the Republican Party approves of him than did when he was president of the United States.
I also think that these tactics are reflective of people in Trump world who aren't Donald Trump that kind of predated him, Like he hired a lot of people that did this kind of work on Capitol Hill and other places. So I think it's also important to remember the individuals like you talk about Don Bacon. He's a retired Air
Force general, Brigadier general in the Air Force. He comes from a district that is politically swinging, and it is politically swinging not only at the congressional level, but that district because of an anomaly with how Nebraska does it. It's electoral votes is also swinging in presidential elections. He has a different calculation than many other Republicans just on the pure political level. And also he's a general who is being threatened by Jim Jordan's more right, It's just.
I don't know.
I mean, Jim Jordan was, you know, a college wrestler, but that's not you know, that doesn't outrank the guy that survived in the military to get to the point of being a general. And by that, I mean, if you're a general, you're probably pretty good at internal politics.
You do see though, like Sean hanned Ay, Tucker Carls and all the regular crew, Benny Johnson in Wokeness.
You know, these sort of people who.
Are real and imagined and hopefully more imagined than real. They have really like like doubled down on trying to bully these people, but it's not really working.
Yeah, I mean it worked at some of them.
You saw some flips into Jordan's direction over the weekend, and I think that was kind of the high water
markt Well, see how it ends up. But I think that, you know, sort of more globally, what you've got is this fight within the Republican Conference and the moderates or the normans or everyone want to call them, see right now like an existential threat to their influence within the party, and this is just sort of another thing that puts them that position of not being able to like kind of get things done within the party and to get done within Congress.
Is that really what it is? Though?
You really think that the moderates are seeing trump Ism as something that's preventing them from getting things done, or do you think that the moderates are finally like, and again, the moderates, a lot of these people are not really moderates, but they're not as demented. Do you think that it's really that these people are like, you know, actually we should fund the federal government and maybe we can get rid.
Of trump Ism.
Like, don't you think it might be that there are cracks in the ceiling here.
Maybe some cracks in the ceiling, But these are people who do want to get things done, like the people that are fighting against the people that are fighting against the sort of Matt Gate's minority rule revolution in the House.
Right, are people who want to continue funding.
The government, right, They're not nihilists, correct.
You know, arguably what we've seen is that there is an ability for a small handful of extremists within the Republican Conference to wag the dog because of their tactics, because of their extremism, because they would argue, and I think this is right in some cases, the constituents of the districts of some of the Republicans who are who are get stuffed done are not as interested in getting the things done as their members of Congress are. So all of this gets to this kind of broader battle.
And if Jim Jordan is empowered or somebody like Jim Jordan is empowered effectively by mac Yates, that makes the side that is, you know, the sort of revolutionaries, much stronger than they have been in the past.
The Trump side of the party stronger than it has been in the past.
Right, you get all that more power to continue doing the kinds of things that Jim Jordan and his allies have been doing over the course of the last several days.
It gives them more power, wouldn't it give them less power?
If Jim Jordan becomes speaker, the Trump wing of the party is empowered.
Right, But if he can't do it, then the Trump wing of the party is diminished.
I'm not sure that it's diminished from where it was before all of it started, you know, before this sort of speaker thing started, right, But I think that's why you're seeing whatever handful of members it is kind of put the brakes on Jim Jordan is because there is this kind of fight between the tr Trump wing and the non Trump wing, and there are members who don't want to continue to operate the way the Republican Party has been operating in the last half dozen years and
would like to see it take a different direction.
Now.
I'm not talking about the people who have abandoned the Republican Party or will ever abandon the Republican Party.
Right right, right, right, right right.
You're talking about people who don't mind a gas stove hearing, but would like also to cut social security in medicare.
I'm talking about people who have an r neck to their name today, I will continue to have an R neck to their name tomorrow, regardless of who the.
Leader of the party is.
For John Allen, we do happen to be friends.
So when I do really mean things to him on this show, it's okay.
No.
John Allen's were hurt in the making of this podcast. I do think it is an interesting idea here, and I want more importantly to bring up that this is all really out a Veep and Mat Gates is actually Jonah from Veep discuss.
I'm not sure that either Matt Gates or the actor who played Jonah on Veep would necessarily love the comparison. Also, I mean, Joonah and Veep, is I.
Feel less less serious than Matt.
Gates, Yeah, well, less effective.
Matt Gates is a person who has basically blown up the House of Representatives. You notice he's like seeding into the background a little bit after doing this, Like, I do get the sense that he might be I mean, I think he probably enjoyed the media attention, but certainly there are people who are quite mad at him at this moment, right, I think that's true.
He definitely enjoys the media attention. I also think that it's.
Not helpful for the candidate that he supports at this point, who is Jordan or any other candidate that he might support at any point for him to continue to be the face of what's going on, because he has so irritated so many of his colleagues. So you know, he was valuable to anybody who wanted to be speaker who wasn't Kevin McCarthy getting rid of Kevin McCarthy. But he is not, as a result of that or the way he went about it, credible as a validator of the
next speaker. It's a little bit of a tyrobin. I mean, Gates is in this, you know, sort of fascinating spot where I think certainly the vast majority of Congress and probably the majority of his own party in Congress would rather spit on him.
It's pretty mad at him. Is he going to leave Congress?
You think?
I think if people believe that he's got something better that gives him a bigger platform, if he gets an hour on Fox or something like, I think it possibly, But also like the Congress gig isn't bad for him. I think we'll have to see what happens with the ethics investigation ongoing into him.
Thank you, John Allen, Bye.
I think they're.
Nogat tarn Allposki is an Israeli based reporter.
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Noga.
Thank you very much, Morrillie.
Noga. Where are you?
Bye? Am in Jerusalem outside the Jerusalem Theater where it's pretty empty.
These days, give me like the TLDR about where you are right now? President Biden just laughed, what is it like on the ground in Israel?
Everything feels like suspended animation. There's nothing normal about life right now. So, for example, in my neighborhood WhatsApp group, where normally you have people complaining about like the music from nearby concerts and that kind of thing, now you have neighbors posting who is in mourning for whom and could people come and make a shiva call for different neighbors. Some have sons or daughters dead or missing. I just today got a notification about a neighbor who's in her
fifties I think, whose brother was murdered. They just found his body, so she's sitting shiva. So there's that. The streets are empty. Some of the restaurants after thirteen days of war started reopening. As you mentioned, Joe Biden was here yesterday. Today, the British Premi Rishi Sunak is here. But the visit that has had really massive impact is Joe Biden.
Explained to us why.
I think there are several reasons. I saw a headline go by today on my screen that mentioned Joe Biden's bad polls in the States or something right. And it's interesting to me because in Israel I think he would be elected king right now. There are several reasons. One is that Biden has a set of skills that are exactly what Israel requires right now, which is both of this combination of tremendous and absolutely authentic empathy and also
some tough talk. Israelis have really absorbed him, standing and talking about what it means to lose a relative, how you will survive, and at the same time saying that he supports the Israeli government's aim to destroy from us. He said something else, which is that he really made a demand that Israel acquiesced to certain humanitarian demands for the civilian population in Gaza. And that was I'd say ignored.
My most Israelis just they didn't likely hear it, and has been i mean received with rage by many hundreds of people who have relatives who are presumed to be hostages in Gaza, the Israeli families who have hostages in Gaza. I don't know if everybody knows, but part of the Hamas attack on Israel and October seventh involved a very concerted plan to basically steal civilians and take them back
to Gaza on motorbikes in minivans. And so we're talking about seven month old babies, we're talking about eighty seven year old grandma's. The families are panicking. The families are panicking about the infants. They're panicking about people who require daily medication, or who have chronic conditions like chromes. They're
just panic. Now, the Israeli government hasn't said a word, but the assumption among these families is that they're being held inhuman conditions, and many of them are in underground tunnels that Hamas built so as to enable an invasion of Israel, and therefore that if the Israeli army acts against Hamas leadership that's hiding underground, it would also be
massacring these estimated two hundred Israelis. So both families are enraged that Biden had the goal to ask Israel to make any kind of humanitarian gesture, even the most minimal, when they have heard nothing from their loved ones. The Red Cross isn't allowed to visit them, Hamas is not making them available to the Red Cross, and they have had no news of them, and they are panicking. They're counting the minutes, you know, until they think they're going to start dying.
I feel like we get so little news, like we don't get exactly the news that you have, if that makes.
Sense, Sairn.
I thought that before the hospital saying, wasn't it true that they were going to release that?
They said they were going to release the hostages.
No. Never, there was a single report made by a very good reporter, Richard Engel of NBC. Yeah, and he reported that a top Hamas official who he'd never named, had said to him that Hamas was willing to release all of the hostages within an hour. That's it. And for some reason, maybe because he's so renowned as a reporter, that one report has gotten an immense amount of echo, right, And it's never been confirmed by any Commas person, by
any Kamas spokesperson, by any Hamas leader. It's not what either the American government or the Israeli government is hearing. And so I don't know what to say.
Let's talk about sort of the nuts and bolts of what's happening now.
What is happening now?
On one hand, what's happening is this massive diplomatic envelope around Israel. So a different head of state is arriving here basically every day with this double message. One is we're supporting you in your darkest hour and Israel will never walk alone.
And the other is don't do it.
You're right, you're exactly. You're a member of the democratic family of nations and you can't act like these terror organizations. Do. You have to keep to certain rules.
This is really interesting because it's like the opposite.
Of the Young Kipoor War.
It was really Israel alone versus all of these Arab nations surrounding it, and America and the more European country is not interested in, you know, sort of having to kind of be brought in.
Yes, absolutely that I can speak to. So Israel had to all but beg At that time, it was President Nixon and Secretary of State kissing your to send Israel an airlift of American weapons. Israel almost ran out of weaponry at that time. What's happening now is totally the opposite in a sense that President Biden has almost taken
possession of this event. From the military point of view, the US sent two fighter jet carriers to the Mediterranean rough right off of the Israel's coast, and he has announced a massive package of military aid to Israel, which Israel did ask for, but he has declared that it will get And moreover, Joe Biden is perceived by Israelis as credible when he says that he will do everything he can to get the hostages back, and Nisania who
is not. And so one of the headlines today in Israel and Yadiota who notes that's just like, you know, it's a very I think it's a top read newspaper in Israel. At tablet it was what if we're not Americans? In other words, there are a small number of families of people who have dual citizenship, where Gaza right and the other one is saying, what about us?
So this is a really interesting tension here. Net Yea, who is not a beloved leader, He is not.
Explain to us. This is like you have a president like Trump.
I mean, you don't have somebody where you feel like this guy is doing it. And in fact, there was a lot of reporting right after the carnage that, in fact net Yea, who was not on the ball at all.
I don't think that's even a question right now. Nasania is clearly not on the ball. He is clearly not at the height of this event. And there are a lot of paradoxes here absolutely so one is you're right, Nazaniello has not been a popular leader for a very long time. He's been tolerated by a large chunk of Israelis who I think are now paying i mean, an almost undescribable price for this sort of passivity for every time Nataniell who broke the rules, or broke protocol or
did something else outrageous. Over the last certainly five six years, I think that both Israeli media and Israeli populous had this attitude of there he goes again, bad boy, bbe but whatever, you know, Like the economy was fine, life in Israel was good, and many issues, many deep problems in Nitzanelle's leadership that now have really i mean jumped to the four were viewed as sort of like ignorable,
you know. And I'll give you some examples. In twenty eighteen, Nitanielle found out that the police was investigating him for crimes.
Right, never so bad, so bad.
He's not only an unpopular prime minister, He's not only a prime minister who's polling before this war was like at twenty seven percent. But he's a prime minister who's done everything within his power to destroy the institutions of the state that he felt had no right to you know, quote unquote turn against him. So Natsanyahu did everything within his power to destroy the Israel police. That was like his first line of attack. Israel had no police commissioner
for years. There's budgets for the police have been slashed, and I could go down the list. Nathaniel's latest government that he formed, you know at the beginning of this year, is to say it's extremist. Is it's sort of like the Tea Party part of the House of Representatives right now. His police minister, Itamar Benkvier, is a guy who never before has held public office. His official title is Minister of National Security. This is his first job in public office.
And before this, he's a convicted to terrorist, a right wing terrorist. The guy was convicted eight times of terror and hate crimes. That's who's in charge of these big national institutions and mechanisms that israelis now badly need. This government has transferred funds from welfare to Nitzaniao's ultra orthodox or settler West Bank settler adjacent coalition partners. To keep his government alive. This government transferred, they relied on technology,
military technology. They transferred four military brigades from the border area to the West Bank in order to offer military support for illegal settlement settlements that are illegal even under Israeli law, as part of Nitzaniao's finance minister's plan to basically engage in a silent annexation of the West Bank,
the Palestinian West Bank. So what's happening now is that all of these gimmicks and tricks and dirty tricks that nitzania was engaged in very naturally over many years, now all of a sudden, the feeling is there's no state, there's no emergency plan in place.
Right.
I can't describe to you. It's like a howly vacuum in terms of the power of the state. And so when Biden comes in and he's something simply you know, he's tall, he's slim, he's dressed in a proper suit, and he walks in and he strings together coherent sentences and he embraces the families of the hostages or survivors or families of people who were killed like he means it. If you give me another minute, I want to tell you about an incident that happened here.
Yeah.
So we're thirteen days into the war. Nataniellou has not yet had the guts to meet with Israeli public, not once. Crazy, it's two weeks. He hasn't taken one question from one Israeli journalist.
Zero.
Okay, So he appears to have simply vanished. The criticism against him is mounting, as you can imagine. And a few days ago I can't remember, but let's say three four days ago or so, his office announced that he was going to meet with five families who had hostages presumed hostages held in Gaza. Now, just to make it clear, these are people have no idea. Let's say their daughter and her boyfriend went to a music festival in the desert and they never heard from her again. Is she dead?
Is she being held hostage? Are there any commas torture videos that show her like everyone is just in this terrible, terrible limbo.
So are there videos out there?
Yeah, send enormous amount and they are the worst thing you could ever see.
Yeah.
Yeah, So Nathaniel meets them in this super secure location in the middle of the country all of these conditions, and the families were like handpicked for being the kind of families who are not going to have, you know, a temper tantrum in front of him. And the whole thing is managed. And in the middle of this event, a bearded guy shows up. No one's ever met him four none of the found members have heard of him. And he's a bearded guy and he's wearing the a pipa. He's a religious Jew.
Oh Jesus.
He just shows up as if this were like at a cafe and anyone could drop it.
It's not smoothly boutish, no, but they're not far off, molly right, because I see where this is going.
That's right, Okay, so you see us is now? So well, what happens. I'll make it short. This guy stands there and he says that he has a twelve year old relative and unspecified relative being held in Gaza, and that he is willing to make the ultimate sacrifice so as to allow the Prime Minister to execute this war as it must be pursued, all right, So he's basically saying,
you can kill her. And then he stands in front of the premierter and he starts heaping in with praise, and the families are there, and on the one hand, maybe this is a family, right, they don't know, they're perplexed. They don't say a word. Jump A day and a half later and an Israeli journalist called Aviad Glickman publishes that this entire mortifying farce was engineered by the Prime
Minister's office. The guy has no relatives who have been affected in any way by the tragedy, no hostage, no death, no nothing. He's the CEO of one of these marginal weirdo right wing races groups called FONO, and he's like a die hard Nitzaniell fan.
So he's just full of shed.
Yeah, I didn't know I could say that on your podcast.
You can.
Yes, he's full of shit. He just wants war. He doesn't have a relative, he just wants war.
Well, I think it's worse again. I mean, forgive my language that I pick. What he wants is to kiss the Prime Minister's ass and to make sure the Prime Minister sees him kissing his ass. I think Natana, who over the years has nurtured this smallish group of fanatic like ultra fans, and they're willing to do anything, no matter how treasonous, and no matter how harmful, and no
matter how humiliating, to make him happy. It astonishes even me, Like I've spent most of my career covering Natanielle, and I have to say I am left mute by the fact that his one encounter with a very small number of Israeli citizens in the last two weeks, his single encounter, in fact, was an attempt to nilate them and humiliate them. And that's it.
That is pretty craven.
It must be really scary to be Israeli and to not trust your government when you desperately need them.
It's terrifying on every level. The army failed, military intelligence failed, the government has failed on every level, and so people, you know, you have people in Tel Aviv like scouring the black market to buy ceramic high tech ceramic flat jackets. People feel unsafe in the most basic physical level all over the country, not just where they're shooting. They're terrified.
And in addition, there's this feeling that I'm trying to describe that is of a vacuum, like you look up and you look for where's the state, and there's nothing. And there's a huge irony behind this, which is that, as you and I have talked about, Natagnell Over last year was trying to basically perpetrate a coups de tat and pass a series of laws which would make Israel
authoritarian and keep power forever. A huge protest movement arose against this, and a big chunk of that protest movement were military reservists who were saying, basically, We're not going to go to war for this son of a bitch. We have a contract with the army of a democratic state. This is over, and they organize these massive protests and what they have done is established a kind of shadowed state.
So in Tel Aviv, the entire this huge convention center, the expo grounds are now this huge emergency services center run by these former protesters, and they're providing basic emergency services, transportation, food, clothing.
I don't know how many Israelis are displaced now. Anyway, the people have taken over are these same people who were trying to save the country from Nitaiao before, and now they've jumped in and taken his place, and they have all of these logistical and organizational abilities because these are people served in the army for decades and they have the experience.
This is the coalition government. We're out of time. I hope you will come back. My heart breaks for your situation and for what's happening. And I really appreciate you your giving us news that we're not seeing anywhere else.
Well. I really appreciate being able to talk with you. It means a lot.
Thank you.
Robert Mann is the former Louisiana State University Chair of Journalism and author of Kingfish, You, Huey Long and LSU. Welcome to Fast Politics. Professor Robert Mann.
Good to be with you, Molly.
Explain a little bit what happened.
Well, almost two years ago, in December of twenty one, I and some other faculty members were pushing my institution, Louisiana State University, to topping up its COVID policies. We had a lot of students and some faculty who were refusing to get the vaccine. We had been active in forcing the university to impose a vaccine mandate that really made Jeff Landry, then the Attorney general now the governor elect,
pretty angry. And we were pushing to require those who didn't choose to get the vaccine, have to do weekly testing and go through jump through some other hoops to just keep us all safe. This was in the midst of a worldwide pandemic, so Landry sends a person on his staff to the faculty sent a meeting that day to read a letter that was full of misinformation and
out write lies about the vaccine. And I was there and just tweeted that it's kind of ironic that he would send a flunky to read a letter full of lies about a life saving vaccine while he simultaneously calls himself a pro life politician. He took offense at that and went to the university president and demanded that he will At first, he called him and then wrote him a letter demanding that I be reprimanded or punished for that.
And that's when I begin thinking that probably one day, not too far in the future, I might need to be planning my exit strategy. Because it's one thing to get a call from an attorney general who doesn't control your budget. It's another thing to get a call from a governor or a governor elect who very much does
control your budget and a points reward. This was a decision that I feared that I might have to make eventually, and so when I saw that there wasn't even going to run off, it was pretty clear what I needed to do.
What has happened to you is exactly what tenure is supposed to prevent.
Yeah, tenure, And I think the First Amendment. A one thing that I believe is that even if I didn't have tenure, what people like me do and say is also protected by the Constitution.
The whole point I mean, obviously the First Amendment protect your speech. I was married to someone who now works in business but was an academic. The whole point of tenure is to protect your academic speech right so that you can do the scary research. You can do the things that otherwise an untenured professor might not feel comfortable doing, and that cannot happen here right right.
And I would argue that I was engaging more in political speech, which I probably would would rely more on the First Amendment than my tenure. But I think it kind of was double protection. But there are a lot of people on this, you know, on our faculty and other faculty around the state, who are doing the kind of research that I'm sure Governor like Landry would not approve and other Republicans in the legislature do not approve of climate change and other issues that will have fallen
into disfavor with that side. And they're going to be I think, really careful, if not very fearful of speaking out, not nor only engaging in that resoarch, but just speaking, you know, just sharing it with the public or talking about it in forums like these, Worried that they're going to incur the wrath of the guy who sets their budget and provides the money for their research. And you know, a lot of them are just going to leave because
they're not going to put up with that. Even if tenure is not destroyed or curtailed in this state, they're going to you know, they've got grant money, they've got NIF funds, so they can take other places. Other universities and free states will be happy to welcome them. So they'll they'll leave, and what will be left as a diminished institution that's just run by political whim.
Now you know this governor, you have sort of seen who he is, So what what do you think this means? What do you think he's going to be like as a governor?
Well, I mean, he's a full blown culture warrior. People who asked me that question here, I said, just you know, look, look to Florida is what is cassandas done. I think you can expect Landry to probably do pretty much the same thing here. It's you know, going to be culture war twenty four hours a day, all day long. That's what he's done for the last eight years or so. And he toned it down a lot in the election.
I think, you know, politically, that was a smart move because he didn't make that a big part of his election, and so people were kind of lulled in this ball security. This is just a guy who cares about me and my family and helping me get a better job. But he's very very much a culture warrior. He's going to come after liberal faculty of quote unquote liberal institutions. I think that any hope that there would be any liberalization or any sensible movement back toward bodily autonomy for women
in the state is gone. We've got one of the most draconian laws that was you know, ironically signed into law by a Democratic governor last year. That's going to make it really hard for women to have any assurance that they have control of their bodies. And I think it's going to make it hard for Landry to recruit new business into the state, and it's going to make it harder for institutis like LSU to recruit new faculty into the state.
So one of the things that happened in Florida was Ron DeSantis or Ron DeSantis depending on his whim, is that he turned New College, which was this jewel of an institution, into a kind of testing ground for a lot of really reactionary, kind of Hillsdale style education. Do you worry about the institutions in Louisiana.
I do. And so constitutionally, the governor cannot just come in and wipe out the governing board of LSU, like I believe DeSantis was able to do in some way their staggered terms. So it would probably be halfway through his second term when he would have finally appointed every member of the LSU board. The reality is that what happened after Bobby Jendall, the Republican governor who proceeded John
Bell Edwards. When Edwards came into office, about half of the Gendall appointees went to the new Democratic governor and
switched jerseys and pledged their allegiance and got reappointed. And I suspect that a lot of these John Bell Edwards appointees to the LSU governing board are going to have, if not already, they will soon go and pledge their allegiance, been the knee and kiss the ring and become Landry people because they're just plumb appointments and people want them and they'll do whatever it takes to stay on the board.
So at some point I think Landry, if he wants, could do very much like what DeSantis has done in Florida.
Louisiana has had film companies boycott the state before, so there is a precedent for a kind of over zealous autocratic rule of the state.
Yes, what troubles me a little bit is that, and I think we've seen it in other states that North Carolina before. You know, a few years ago, when they were on the cusp of passing the law to ban gender affirming care, they backed off because of those kind
of threats. The same happened in Louisiana and then everything sort of collapsed and those laws went into effect, and there's been a few boycotts here in Louisiana, and I'm assuming places like North Carolina, but it kind of petered out, and you know, I worry that the energy on the other side for you know, making it painful for states that do that is kind of is kind of dissipating a little bit. I just don't see it here in Louisiana.
Maybe it'll get a second win, but so far it hasn't been as pronounced as I thought it would be.
You were worried that the sort of the Democratic Party in Louisiana is.
Sort of a little bit exhausted. Is that you're.
Feeling exhausted would be a vast improvement. It's a corrupt entity, is a better way to put it.
Even though they got John Bell Edwards elected.
Well, that was probably more Edwards than the party. Edwards was a Democrat who was basically created in a lab to get elected in states like Louisiana. You know, had the perfect profile in every way. We'll never have another one like Kim any time soon. But he was elected in spite of the party. The party leaders were not all that particularly supportive of him because they didn't think he could win, and they tried to talk him out of the race. Because a lot of history you don't
really want to know. But he came into office estranged from the Democratic Party and never spent any time trying to build it or even take it over. The previous party chairs in prison right now, and the current party chair is a quasi Republican who spent most of her time tried to undermine Democrats and install people that were loyal to her, and even at a brief dalliance in
the spring with running for governor herself. It was just a cluster from beginning to end this year with the party, and it has no credibility and it needs to be blown up and destroyed and rebuilt on a firmer foundation because it just has no ability to get, no credibility to advance democratic causes in the state in his current iteration.
You know, you see this in a lot of state party as Florida as a really problematic Democratic straight party, though supposedly getting better. This is not as unusual as you might want it to be. Is there other stuff you've seen that where you were like, this is going to be bad about this guy, or is it? I mean, is there anything that has really just sort of shocked you?
It's more his style that I think has alarmed a lot of people. I mean, this is a pugnacious guy who plays hardball politics, and I think he is very much Trumpian in his in his approach to politics. So I think there's going to be a lot of bullying. And you know, I have people who have told me, don't worry. There's a lot of moderate Republicans in the legislature who are not going to go along with him,
and it's not going to be as easy. And I'm thinking, you know, I don't think you fully appreciate what a bully this guy is and how he is willing to use the levers of power to punish his enemies. I think people are going to be surprised by just how authoritarian he's going to turn out to be.
Yeah, we've seen again and again more people have said don't worry, the guard rails will hold, and a lot of times that has really it's just been sort of bare lay holding.
Yeah.
I think that's right. And I think I think people are underestimating Landry. They've underestimated Trump, and Landry is a more disciplined, arder version of that.
I think that is.
Sort of the nightmare that was always in my night row with DeSantis when he was running for president, was here is Trump without the chaos? You know?
Yeah, I think that Landry he really has lulled people into a false security and I think the election his campaign really I mean, he portrayed himself as this sort of moderate, mainstream guy and a lot of people felt for it. But that's just not him. And if anybody was paying attention to him in the last five or six years, they would know better. He's going to quickly revert back to form. This was just a facade that
he had to create, and it worked really well. I mean, my god, no one thought he could get fifty two percent of the vote in the first primary.
That's just crazy.
Yeah, yeah, a lot likely, Youngkin exactly.
Yeah, I was hoping you could talk about he really did actually kind of overperform. He did really really good numbers. I'm just curious why you think that is.
At least two things. I think one was that the Democrats just did not offer any coherent opposition to him, and I think part of it was because everyone assumed that there would be a runoff that would be the real engagement. Sean Wilson, the Democrat, was underfunded, so he wasn't going to spend a lot of money in the primary because he thought that the runoff spot was his for the asking, and it should have been. I mean,
the state's thirty three percent African American. You should be able to get in a runoff without any problem, but I think there was. The other assumption was that on the Republican side that they would be fractured more than they were, and that Landry would Flandery and before other Republican opponents would split the votes, so Landry would come out ahead, but the others would get a pretty big chunk.
No one else got over six percent of the vote, and Landry played it pretty smart because he only participated in one debate, so there was just no opportunity for anyone to personally attack him while they shared a stage, and so he really cleverly, I think, toned down the election and ran this front runner race, this sort of rose garden strategy from beginning to end, and it worked perfectly for him.
What are you going to do now?
You know, I'm.
Fortunate that I have enough years that I can retire and not have to worry about feeding my family, and I write books, so I've got a bunch of book projects and the works and have more time for that, and I may, you know, I still think I have a few years of teaching in me, so I may go find someplace to finish out my career, not in Louisiana,
but maybe somewhere else. But if not, I'm happy just focusing on my writing and hopefully spending a little bit more time doing fun stuff that I haven't been able to do.
Would you just like tell our listeners what you think this sort of lesson year is.
For people in Louisiana.
The thing that I hope that my activism that I've engaged in for a long time, but the statement that my retirement makes is that we really need to care about these institutions. For a lot of people in Louisiana, when they hear a Louisiana State University, they think of football, and it seems that that is really the part of the institution that people really care about and demand excellence from.
And I just feel that we don't begin to understand how important these institutions are to our state toward the future of our state. We've got tremendous brain drain here in Louisiana. The young people are fleeing and by the thousands every day. And I hope that at some point people begin to connect the failure of our education institutions, particularly our higher education institutions, with that brain train. And
we're not going to build this a new state. We're not going to build a better state on the back of a football team. It's going to be on the on the back of a stronger economy, a stronger you know, more social capital. That it's going to come out of our universities, not only out of our universities, but it's going to come out of our universities largely. And we need to support those institutions. And if you want to support your college, you got to you want to support
your local university. You've got to support the people who teach your young people. You got to give them the freedom to do their work. You've got to encourage them
to do research without political interference. And I hope that that my retirement sparks the conversation about that, and and I also hope that it spurs the leadership of my institution to speak out and develop a spine and stand up and defend their faculty because I think faculty across the state in Louisiana need to know that the leadership of their universities have their back. And I don't think they know that or feel that today.
Well they don't. They don't have.
Right, they don't.
It's just so politicized.
I know realistically that the minute that the governor and the legislature come after these institutions, that they'll fold like houses of cards. And that's what's so painful about it, because I don't think there's much to stop them if they want to, if they want to do to Louisiana State University and other colleges and universities here, what Desanta's has done in Florida.
This must be so heartbreaking for you.
It is.
You know, I love the state. I love my university. Both my children are graduates of LSU, my wife is as well. My friend James Carville says it this way. No state university is more important to its state than Louisiana State University, and I don't know if he's right or not, but you know, I choose to believe that it is, and I just hate that it may be in store for some pretty rough seas.
Yeah, thank you so much.
Thank you, Molly, It's been a pleasure.
There a moment full Jesse Cannon, Mirley Jong Fast the chaos in the House when we heard about like fighting on the four back of the day, this is like just like the new version in my mind, like this is We're just never gonna have speakers.
It's going to be in disarray all the time, right well.
Until Democrats when here's the deal Republicans are. They have a four seat majority and they are just absolutely destroying themselves. I'm going to read you a tweet from a congressional reporter that I think is really kind of one of the smarter takes because I think it's a really good example of what's going on. This is a congressional reporter
called Brian Meltzer. He writes for this is Insider goes without saying this chaos and the likelihood that the House goes at least three weeks without a speaker will have a significant effect on House Republicans prospects in twenty twenty four. You don't even need to do OPO, just replay the tape of the last couple weeks, and that, my friends, is our moment of But you know what, I'm going to say today, because this has been such a crushing
couple weeks, It's our moment of Gleefolfacktory. It is our gleeful factory congratulations, Matt.
Gates, you won.
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.