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. Media and editor in chief Aiden McLaughlin joins us to talk about what is happening with those Tucker cross and video leaks. Then we'll talk to Fair Votes David Daily about the latest and jerry mandering and voter suppression. But first we have the editor of The Bulwark.
I will be appearing with and New York's Peter J. Sharp Theater on May eighteenth, along with the Charlie Sykes, Tim Miller and Sarah Longwell. You can buy tickets on the Bulwarks website. Ladies and gentlemen, The bullworks Jonathan Last. Welcome too, Fast Politics, Jonathan Last.
Mollie, how are you?
You know like you're one of my favorite editors in the entire world, So to get to talk to you, it's just a delight.
That's down. I used to be your favorite editor in the whole world. So you have found people better than me, which is great.
No, it's just a memory makes the heart grow more confused and.
Out of sight, out of mind.
Yeah, exactly.
So I want to talk to you about the very very unfair firing of one Tucker Carlson. Was he really fired for that one text? I love that text because it's like, it's still not as bad as what he said on the air every single night.
I have no insight into this, but it does seem to me that these leaks are most probably coming from Fox.
Right one Arena Baganti.
Yeah, Fox seems to be on a campaign to make it look like this is the reason they fired him. The real reason is probably the reason which makes the Fox executives and ownership look the worst, which is that they didn't like in support nation. You know, it's like the story of capitalism throughout the ages, right the bosses. The bosses have a worker makes them a lot of money, and they're one to tolerate anything that that worker does that's bad except disrespecting the bosses. And that's when they
suddenly say, Ah, don't they understand who we are? We own this thing right right.
Now, it seems very clear to me that we're just not getting the whole story. Though even beyond that, I mean, I think he's expensive, and I think he's crazy, and I think they were sick of paying out lawsuits.
I still don't think we're getting the whole story.
Well, good news is, eventually we will. There are too many people with too many conflicting motives and incentives for this to actually stay buried. And also, Rupert's going to die. So I don't mean to be ghoulish, but God, you're so goulish. I know, I know, and I hope that he has a long, beautiful natural life and can marry six or seven more women before he's called home to the father.
Just because he's nine thousand years old doesn't mean he's going to die.
But here's the thing, right, once he goes, it's going to be lord of the flies. Right, there will be all sorts of people who have lists of where bodies are buried, who are going to rush out to try to enhance their positions in what comes next, and so all of this will come out.
Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment.
We just have to wait until Rupert is called home.
As uncomfortable as I am with the idea of death, it does seem to me that the center cannot hold on this.
I think that's right. It's too big a story, you know. I guess Tucker's going to lunch his own media company or something, which is what it seemed.
Like, but announced it seems like the obvious choice.
But so well, I would say it wasn't the obvious choice. There are a bunch of things he could have done.
Well.
He could have just written books. Right, you write a book, then you can cut all of the middlemen and just go right to your audience with whatever you want to say, and you can make a ton of money doing it. And he could have sold a lot of books. He could have taken some time off for self reflection. He could have go on to a monastery press saying I'm just saying, look, he's got enough money. He could have not worked. He could have done spend the rest of his time doing charity.
Work, right, making Kelly dilemma, Right, you have millions of dollars, but you don't. But you didn't do this for the money.
You did it for the fame I got.
You know what I anybody wants to give me millions of dollars to go away, I'll just go away.
Yeah, me too.
If you would like to come and write me a go away check, then you'll never have to listen to me talk about anything else ever again.
Exactly.
But I mean the drive that these people have is not related to their welse, it's related to their zealotry.
It's about the love I think. I think. No, I'm serious though, I mean this in like the showbiz sense of the word.
Right.
What's intoxicating is being loved.
At scale, right exactly.
And if the price of being loved at scale is being hated at scale as well, some people won't take that, you know, won't take that that deal because being hated at scale really hurts. But there's a certain type of personality that a certain type of personality who gets off on it.
Right, As someone who's hated at scale, It's okay, It's not as bad as you think.
There's an adjustment period, but it's not as bad as you think.
This is something I've struggled with. I've only been hated at scale for like a couple moments in my life, you know, because my level of visibility is firmly in the middle.
There's still time.
And I have found it really disconcerting the caneful of times when I've you know, become hated at scale and I just I didn't like it. And I've like asked around to like famous friends to say, how do you deal with this. And what made me sort of a little weird about is that none of them had real advice. They were just like, it's fine, and so it led me to believe that this is just a genetic predisposition.
Right.
There are people who can handle this, some people who can't. And I'm one of the people who can't.
So no, you know, I also think you just get used to it, and then like for a while you're like, oh, this is so terrible.
These people all hate me.
And then you're like, all right, yeah, well you're like, oh wow, You're like they hate me, but you know they're listening to the podcast, you know.
And then there are people who literally just get off on it, right, right, I mean, there are people for whom being hated at scale is like a kink for sure, and they're like, oh.
Well, took Carlson.
I mean took her Carlson, you know, as much as I mean, when you listen to those videos, you realize like, this is a person who actually I don't think he would pick like I think he is. He's quite comfortable being hated by a large quantity.
I think that may be right. I don't know, so speaking.
Of large quantities, you have so many Republican candidates and this field is really open. So when does Trump just be declared the nominee?
You know, I wonder how far away we are from the move to short circuit the primary process itself.
Oh god, it's going.
To happen at some point, right, at some point, there will be a Look, President Trump is so far ahead that it is impossible that anybody could catch up with him, and so we should move to doing this via acclamation, right, or we'll have party. We'll have a party convention, and a party can be well, you know, at the state level, will hold a vote and that's help will decide our delegates. No need to go through an actual voting primary.
Imagine how fucked up that is, you know, like that's the moment that the Republican Party has completely abandoned even the pretense of democracy.
They did it in twenty twenty. They were afraid of like having Joe Walsh and mister you know, the South Carolina governor who went hiking with his mistress or something. I forget the fellow's name.
Oh yeah, that guy, Yeah.
Yeah, They would go Marshall. They didn't want him going to Shogho with those guys, even.
If hiking with your mistress is wrong, he doesn't want to be right.
I think we're on the way to that. I don't think it'll happen. I think that the Republican Party will go ahead with having an actual process, and I think that it's an open question as to whether or not anybody can make a move on Trump. I don't think they can. I should put my cards on the table for people who don't read me. You love Trump, I just I love Trump and I need him from my business. And so that's why. So I I said that Trump
was going to be the twenty twenty four nominee. I started writing this in October of twenty twenty, so before the elections, I was on the record saying, look, Trump is going to lose, and then he's going to declare immediately that he's running again, and then he's going to be the nominee in twenty twenty four. And everybody was like, oh, through Trump derangement, sent Trump And here's the problem, right,
he won't go away. Well, there's a foundational problem for opposing him, which is that if you are going to be a Republican in good standing, you must stipulate that a Donald Trump was the greatest president in the history of presidents. B That everything Donald Trump did was great and you agree with it and you will do the
same things. See that Donald Trump won the twenty twenty election and was unfairly cheated by the Democrats and the deep state and the big tech and the media, and so step d to that is, so vote for me, Like, how does that work?
Right now?
If he's standing right there saying I'm going to run and I'm the rightful I'm the rightful king, you know, and I you shall, you shall return me to the throne, and all the other guys are standing around and saying, no, he really is amazing, and he absolutely was cheated out of this. But you know, vote DeSantis. That doesn't work, right, And so nobody, even when Desants was rising on the polls, he didn't have a way of squaring that circle. And none of them have even tried to square that circle.
And I just don't see again as a selling proposition to Republican voters. I don't see how that works for anybody else.
My favorite thing about DeSantis is that he was Trump without the humor.
Trump without the charisma.
Right, I mean, really, so it was like, we got this guy.
He's not as famous, nor as charismatic, nor as successful, but the National Review crowd, which has barely a like to stand on in this Republican party, has decided he's the heir apparent.
Well, I mean that's all about self interest, because the anti anti Trump guys are terrified that they're going to have to vote for Trump again, which they are, which
they are, and which they will do right. And I can already tell you what's because this is my gift is can I come to you from the future, right, Just like in October twenty twenty, when I was running around telling everybody that Trump was going to run again, people told me it was Greaty, I'm coming from the future, And I'm telling you that actually the capitulation to Trump this time is going to be faster than it was in twenty sixteen because this time they really think it's
the last time they'll.
Have to do it right.
You know, in twenty sixteen they thought, oh, what if, you know, we really got to put up a fight here because we could do better, and what if what if he wins? And this time they'll be able to tell themselves there's no way he'll ever run again. There's no way he can win. We won't have to live. Let's just suck it up and do it. And what they will do when they win, these people, the anti Antis, go and capitulate to Trump. It's going to be your fault and my fault.
No, yeah, no question, we.
Made them to. They didn't want it, they were really but you know, we we're the ones who kept saying that Ron DeSantis was just as bad as Trump, and we kept pushing all of our woke socialism. And if we weren't out there putting kitty litterboxes in the every public school bathroom all across America.
Right, they not exist in kitty letter my favorite. I mean that know it's true. I mean the whole idea, why did you make me hit you? Is this sort of thinking man's Republican. You know, if Dems hadn't gotten so left with that crazy socialist Joe Biden. I mean, I remember it was on TV with someone and she said, you know that socialist Joe Biden And I said, really, you really think Joe Biden is a socialist And she said, well, he's not a socialist, but he's controlled by socialists.
So why do the fucking socialists hate him so much?
Yeah, because he doesn't do any of the list.
I don't know. So, you know, whenever I get into these, every once in a while, I'll get into a pissing match with somebody on the stuff like this, and we're and they always begin with that, right, he's a socialist, he's controlled by sentence? Well, why do the socialists hate him so much?
Like?
Why are the progs always threatening to run off sides on them? Because he doesn't get them what they were? And they say, well, well, Joe Biden's only not a socialist because mansion and cinema made him not be a socialist. Yeah, okay, well in that case, so he's not being a socialist, but he's not being a socialist for a reason that you don't find convincing. That's how Okay? Great, good to know, thanks asshole.
The old thing is just amazing.
But I do think we find ourselves in a very interesting situation here with this Republican.
Party we have.
You know, we're in this run up now to the primary. Is the map for Republicans, the CENTEMAP is incredibly favorable and yet you can see from Carrie Lake you'll Remember she's the governor of Arizona.
She has big news.
Oh yeah, she's gonna run, right, I mean, I don't know.
Maybe the big news is that she is giving up the governorship.
She's going to give up her fake governorship.
Yeah.
Here is a thing, which is a dirty secret that the normy Republicans are loath to admit because they are desperate to get away from Trump, and so they'll use any excuse they can find. And one of their excuses is, well, we gotta protect the rest of the party because Trump is so terrible. And the fact of the matter is that down ballot Republicans did much better than they should have done by the numbers in twenty sixteen, much better than they should have done by the numbers in twenty twenty.
Where did they suffer twenty eighteen and twenty twenty two. And what that says to me is that when Trump is on the ballot, you have all sorts of problems at the top of the ticket because he's so repellent to normy voters and independence, right, normally Republicans and independence, and so a lot of them will run away from him.
But he does bring in what we will euphemistically call non traditional voters who won't show up when he's not there, right, And so the truth is that if you are a Republican who wants to do as well as possible in the Senate, you probably want Trump on the ticket in twenty twenty four because he's going to bring out a bunch of voters who will pull the letter for your guy who won't be there otherwise. And the normies who will be repelled by Trump are still going to vote for your guy anyway.
Right, right, right, And that's the calculus that's killing democracy.
Yes, I mean, that's one part of the calculus that's killing them.
I mean not to put too fine a point on it, but I mean.
Basically, the Probalicans want to win. They know their guy sucks, but they can't stand up for what's right because they'll lose.
That's part of it. I mean the electro college is part of it too. Electric college has like suddenly become a thing which is really hurting democracy. Our incentive structures are so fucked that I the only consolation I have is that it must have been this bad in all sorts of other points in our history too, and we muddled through somehow, so we'll probably muddle through somehow this time, but I don't know, maybe not right the asteroid only has to hit once.
I mean, that's the problem is I think so much about you know, you have one party. You may not like Democrats, but like, fundamentally Democrats stick to the rules law, They're you know, running primaries, running people, They're not doing crazy shit. And then you have this other party that has just completely lost its mind, right, like banning books, spanning drag queens. It's just a complete nightmare. And I just wonder how long democracy is allowed to stay.
It's not great, it's not great. But whatever you want to say about the Democratic Party is fine. But the Democratic Party is also responsive to inputs in a way the Republican Party currently is right, right, right, And the reason for that is that Democrats have for the most part, not not always in everywhere, but they have concrete policy items which they would like to see enacted. In order
to enact those things, they need power. In order to gain power, they need votes, right, So they they want to expand healthcare coverage, they want to bring back more manufacturing.
You're a liberal, now, right, I mean it depends. Sorry, I mean, I'm sorry.
To I don't want to dance on the grave of your political beliefs. But I mean you came from the world of the Weekly Standard. I feel like we've shifted you over.
Now, Like yeah, well, I mean that's the problem is I was always the commie over there because I bought all of the Catholic social justice stuff, right, So I was you know, I was always like, you know, hey, we got to take care of the poor here, and.
They were like, shut up.
Lib Basically, you're like, I think starting you still run the website.
Yeah, So, like, do democrats want to do things with government? In order to do things with government, you need power. If you can't get power through votes, then you've got to change the things you're offering voters. Right, Democrats are the Democratic Party is a fairly responsive organism. We have that CBS poll out this Did you see that? It was asking Republican voters, likely Republican voters, the qualities they
most wanted in their represidential candidate. The things they wanted most were the one of four.
Things, violence, stupid to day, racism, no go on, no, no, no.
They wanted somebody who would be against woke stuff, somebody who would veto any gun legislation, somebody who would make liberals angry. And I forget what the fourth Poe was. But the point is the things they wanted can all be accomplished with Twitter.
Right.
You look at the list of things they were offered to choose from, and it's like, you know, reforming entitlements, strong foreign policy, things that require governing power interest them not.
At all, not at all.
Yeah, And so this makes the Republican Party as an organism very unresponsive to inputs, right. They just the voters want stuff that they do not need government power for. They can have government power, great, because then you can hurt some brown people more effectively, I guess. And they like that, boy, they like that. But the rest of the stuff on their little Maslow's pyramid, they just need somebody who's willing to go on Twitter and say shit.
Yeah, I mean that is that This fundamental a what we've seen, John last, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you.
Aiden McLaughlin is the editor in chief of Media eight.
Welcome to Fast Politics.
Aiden, Thanks for having me on, Molly.
It is in very exciting time in the time of media.
It is.
Indeed, I think last month I've been saying, at least on the cable news beat, might be the biggest month in cable news news that I've ever seen.
Paint the picture for me of where we are right now in the cable news world, and where do you think we're going.
I think we just went through a pretty significant upheaval. I don't want to overstate the consequences of what happened, but like, let me just give the broad overview. Fox News has this massive defamation case against it. In fact,
it has two massive defamation cases against it. It just settled one of them with Dominion Voting Systems for seven hundred and eighty seven million dollars, which is a historic sum for a media outlet to pay out, and it did that to avoid a trial, where from what we can tell, Fox News was pretty scared that a lot of more bad information was going to come out about the network in the courtroom where I was there down in Delaware, and there were hundreds of reporters present in
that courtroom, so like this was going to be a huge story and Fox News like could not. It wasn't something that was just going to blow over. If Tucker Carlson was on that stand, it would have been covered by every single media outlet in the country. So this was like going to be a big problem for Fox and they spent nearly a billion dollars to avoid that.
And so you have that on the one hand, which is historic, and then a week later, I'm trying to breathe a little bit after all this has happened, and Fox newsfires the most watched cable news host in the country, Tucker Carlson without reason. They didn't even give Tucker a reason. And CNN fire is Don Lemon, one of the most well known cable news hosts in the country, and that reason was a little bit more clear. You know, he had some problems on the show on the morning show.
He wasn't really as equipped for a morning show as he was for like his primetime show, which he was really good at. So it really marked a turn for these two major cable news networks away from sort of the more opinionated, brash punditry of the Trump era. And I think, obviously there are huge differences between Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon. I would never compare the.
Two, right I was gonna say, yeah.
But right now we're seeing a real shift in the way these cable news networks which remained highly profitable or approaching the news so they are profitable.
Talk to us about that.
Yeah, I think this is something that a lot of people miss about cable news, Like cable news as an industry is, from all indications, heading towards something of a clip when people really finally cut the final cords and move more towards streaming, which is far less profitable. But right now, cable news is an extremely profitable business. Fox News every year makes more than a billion dollars profit CNN, which, you know, everyone talks about how bad CNN's ratings are,
and let's be honest, they're not great. CNN still turns a profit of more than half a billion dollars every year.
Because the cable carriage fees.
It's the cable carriage fees. Everyone thinks it's the advertisers. It's not the advertisers. It's the fact that when CNN starts to negotiate with like DirecTV or any other cable box company, they say, you need us on your package, otherwise people are going to opt for one of your competitors, and so DirecTV will shell out an enormous amount of money yearly to be able to say we have CNN. Those numbers have not been negotiated down that much yet. So for now, MSNBC, CNN, Fox News turn an enormous
annual profit. And that's why for now, like cable news is still the power house that it is. They have enough money to be able to spend to have these massive, you know, muscular newsrooms. But it's only telling how long that's going to last before these cable carriage companies look up and say, wait, there's just not enough people watching CNN for us to pay this much to have them on our service.
And right now Fox is actually renegotiating it's cable carriage fees.
Will you talk about that?
Yeah, so Fox is renegotiating them. And I do think that one of the considerations in Fox settling the dominion case, Fox also getting rid of Tucker Carlson was saying like, Okay, we we want to be a little bit more palatable to these cable companies and be a little bit more
palatable to advertisers going into these negotiations. And certainly like Tucker Carlson, by the end of his show, he suffered ad boycott after ad boycott, and the only companies that were advertising on a show were my Pillow and some other you know, direct to consumer companies. His show was not that profitable despite being the most watch watched show on Fox News because of the ads. So that was a real thorn in the side of Fox News's bottom line.
And I think, you know, Rupert Murdoch and the board, which the board includes Paul Ryan, who really really doesn't like Tucker Carlson, I think they made a strategic decision that like, this wasn't worth it anymore.
But the damage is already done, right, oh.
I mean, I think that's why everyone this week is looking at that text that The New York Times reported from Tucker Carlson, where he's you know, expresses this like racist murder fantasy and says, well, how in the world was that text different from anything he said on air for the last seven years. And that's a great point.
But I will say that the Fox board, at least, which again includes people that do not like Tucker Carlson and were vocal about it even when he worked at Fox, I think that they saw that as a particularly acute threat to the brand coming out during this trial. And I think it was probably just a good excuse on top of the millions others that they had to fire this guy to finally let him go.
So I want to ask you, there's a lot of speculating that Tucker is going to go on his own start a media company. I read a piece in the Washington Post today. I'm sure you read this where he's Tucker's trying to get the debates now the Republican debates, and well, I enjoy a good wish cast. Don't you think that Tucker has a contractual NDA that's going to prevent him from jumping back into the media circus because his contract runs till twenty twenty four.
Right, So his contract runs till twenty twenty four. Fox News is going to desperately try to throw the remainder of his contract, the money at him, so that they can enforce the NDA. Yeah, and noncompete, right, so he doesn't go to any other network. Tucker Crossin doesn't need the money, right, That's the thing he was making, you know, twenty million dollars a year at Fox. And he's a very wealthy man to begin with.
Yeh heartwarm mine and.
Like you know, like every other cable news host, he craves people listening to him more than anything.
Right, And he doesn't want to be Megan Kelly.
No.
And the idea that he's going to go away and you know, live on his property in Maine or his place down in Florida and shut up is crazy. I think it's way more likely. I mean, first of all, he's got Brian Friedman, who's this pit Bull Powerhouse LA Entertainment lawyer, right, who's fighting this contract fight with Fox.
I suspect, just knowing Tucker Carlson and reading all the reporting on this as of late, that he's going to basically say no to the money and do everything he can to get out of this contract early so that he can actually you know, he's not going to sit out the twenty twenty four election.
Right.
I think anyone that assumes he is is delusional.
Right, I mean that's a dream, right, people who like democracy and don't want to see a failed Not to.
Give too much of my own opinion on this, but after that alleged assassination attempt on poos happened on the Kremlin, the first thing I thought was like, oh, thank god, Tucker Cross it's not on air tonight.
Yeah, because he would be had been all over it.
Airing a graphic of like Zelensky with like a suicide bomb vest or something like. I can only imagine what his coverage would have been.
So we're going to.
Really see now, and I think we're already seeing the beginnings of it with the leaky leaks.
Leaks like remember Rolling Stone.
Rolling Stone runs a piece last week eight sources Arena Braganti has an OPO file, she's not afraid to use it. This week we start seeing little videos and text message. Is nothing that seems worse than what we've seen before, but clearly this is a shot across the bow.
So I'm of the camp of people and I've spoken to a lot of reporters about this who know how Fox News operates really well, and like I've covered them for you know, five years now, I have a pretty good understanding of how they work. I'm in the camp that's a little skeptical that this is coming from Fox News leadership right, Like the videos are clearly coming from Fox right because somebody had to go their internal videos.
They're behind the scenes videos, but they could have very well come from any number of producers that were let go, or the lawsuit or the lawsuit. Here's why I don't think it's Fox News leadership or Arena. Bring on to who's the head of communications for Fox. The first video is Tucker mocking Fox News's FOXX Nation Yeah, which is their streaming platform that they're very eager to say is
a success. The idea that they'd leak this video of Tucker saying that it's a crap website and that no one should go on it and they should just go on YouTube defies logic. Also, the videos are bad, They're not worse than what we know, certainly not the idea that Fox would leak these videos in an effort to prove what we already assume Tucker.
Is like, right, doesn't make any sense.
No, it doesn't make sense to me. I don't know.
No, I agree, I think that's right. I think the question is one is where are they being leaked from? And I think the choice are really like lower level people or.
But I don't. But I also think, like, clearly there's more.
Right, It's hard to tell what the situation is, at least with the video leaks, like Media Matters is leaking them out daily, sort of trickling them out. I think they've probably got a big batch of them and are are spacing it out for you know, for reasons that digital media websites.
Do that kind of thing, right and why not?
And why not? You know, you might as well get the traffic people want to read about this stuff. The funny thing is here that it's is really hard to figure out why these are being leaked, because it's hard to tell, you know, if they were really, really bad, I'd be like, Okay, Fox is leaking it to have everyone, say, everyone validate their decision to let him go, you know, to have even his fans look at it and go, Okay, this was really bad, maybe they were right to fire him.
But since they're not that bad, I've heard people theorize that they're being released by Tucker's people as like a way to say, look, this wasn't even that bad. This is what they fired him for. Isn't this ridiculous?
That stinks to me, Like.
I don't believe it for a second. Yeah, I'm saying the nature of the videos makes it to me impossible to conclude where they're coming from. I really just don't know. I think hopefully we'll get some reporting about it, you know, down the line, or Fox News fires someone. That's what happens. I still remember when we published a story at Mediaite about Laurence O'Donnell melting down behind the scenes at MSNBC
and NBC found the leaker. They did an investigation and found that he was you you can find who accessed the internal video files. Like we didn't out him to NBC. NBC found him on his own and they ousted him. So you know, Fox moves might try and do that with this person. I'm sure if it's not coming from them, I'm sure they're doing an internal investigation.
So let's talk about what else we're seeing in the media right now. So there's that then, I mean, Don Lemon, do you think Don Lemon is done? Do you think he comes back? Do you think he goes to News Nation? I mean, where do you think that he lands.
I don't think there's any chance he's done. He is an incredibly gifted broadcaster, despite the problems at CNN, He's also incredibly ambitious. He's also very young, right, he is very young, and so I think he's certainly going to come back. That the problem with all of these cable news hosts when they get ousted is Don Lemon was reportedly making seven million dollars at CNN. Finding someone to pay that in this climate gets a little trickier. So
I think everyone has to take a pay cut. You know, certainly Chris Cuomo had to take a pay cut going from CNN to News Nation. I read that News Nation is interested in Don Lemon. It seems like a fit that would make sense for him. I've also you know, I've also heard that he's interested in doing something a little bit more talk showy, right, you know, he had that show for CNN Plus that was a little bit more of a talk show than what he was doing
on CNN. I could picture him doing something in daytime. He's got a lot of options. He's certainly got more options in like mainstream media than Tucker Carlson. Tucker Carlson doesn't have any options at you know, CBS, NBC.
Yeah, can you imagine.
No, It's like it's just not going to happen. And he got fired from all the cable news networks, so he can't go back to any of those.
He has been fired from many cable news networks.
From many He had the hat trick for getting fired from cable news networks. But then again, Don Lemon and other hosts like him, they don't really have the personal audience that someone like Tucker Carlson has. Like right wing media pundits have big personal audiences that will follow them if they do an independent media venture. I think mainstream media hosts like Don Lemon have a little more trouble
if they wanted to do something independent. So I think both of them have their own lane that they could return to, but they're different lanes.
That's really true.
We have this cable news drama, the behind the scenes stuff that's happening right now. Are the debates right the Republican primary debate, whatever that looks like. I mean, do you think that I mean, Trump doesn't want a debate, because why should he?
I mean, do you think we'll have debates?
Do you see a world where this gets settled in the traditional way or do you think they just let Trump do whatever he wants?
You know, it's hard to tell. Well, first of all, the RNC can't do anything about Trump, right, they have no control over Trump. Trump controls the artist, right, Like, watch Ron McDaniel on air any day of the week on Fox and you'll see exactly why Trump runs the RNC. The RNC doesn't want Trump, so if he doesn't want to do a debate, he's not going to do a debate.
I would say the last time we had this issue, right twenty sixteen, he skipped the Fox News debate because he just didn't want to do it, and he eventually came around and did a bunch of other debates, and you know, the debates were part of the reason why he won the nomination, because he demolished every other Republican candidate. I think his calculus now is that he's just got too much name recognition. Obviously his numbers are too good.
More to lose than gain, right, But you know.
The thing is, he's going to do this the CNN town hall this month, and part of the pitch that his campaign is making two reporters is that the reason they're doing this town hall is because he wants to show that, unlike DeSantis, he's not afraid to go and do an interview with a network like CNN, whereas DeSantis, you know, pretty much stays in a bubble of conservative media. So that argument's going to get harder to make if over the summer, DeSantis declares his candidacy and Trump says, well,
I'm not even going to debate you. Like DeSantis will be able to use that as a battering ram to say, well, Trump's scared to debate me, and he can't just waltz into the nomination again. He lost to Joe Biden the first time, So I think that'll be an interesting dynamic when it comes when the summer starts heating up a little bit.
Elon owns Twitter. He has taken a hard right tact. I think that's fair to say, you can't get rid of your blue check. I have to change my name practically every day to get rid of that fucker.
Were you one of the people that he just gave it to.
He keeps giving it back just to fuck with me, and I keep taking it off.
But anyway, the point is he.
Basically he has just squandered all this money and is trying to fix it, right, I mean, what is happening?
I mean his stewardship over Twitter is one of the most confounding things I've ever witnessed anyone. He bought a company for forty four billion dollars and is completely misunderstands its entire value proposition. I remember when he first bought Twitter, and he said, Okay, one of the first things I'm going to do is I'm going to make Twitter faster.
Right.
I don't know anyone who's ever complained that the problem with Twitter is that, like it's not fast enough to load. I mean, it's an Internet website. It's fine, loads fine, right exactly, And then thinking one that anyone would pay for a blue check, and then tormenting the top users of your social media platform and sending them into exile all the way until he started doing it to the Twitter files, guys like Matt Tayibi. I mean, it's just
it's baffling. It's kind of fun to watch. I actually kind of enjoy being on Twitter these day because it's such a shit show. His whole problem with Twitter from the beginning that he said it's not profitable. He's certainly not making it more.
Profitable, right, making it truth social.
Very very few people are going to pay for those blue checks. He's not going to turn a profit that way. He's trying to charge businesses an enormous amount of.
Money thousand dollars a month.
Right, But like media, he just gave us the goal check, so he's giving it to most places, and then he wants like basically the people that like him to fork over the money, right right, it's the business model is like the craziest thing I've ever seen. So it's not going to start making money. And I think it's only a matter of time before he loses enough money that he just gets rid of it. I don't know. I
don't know what the fate of Twitter is. Someone smarter than me could make that judgment, but it's not going to make money, and it's just going to torment him for the rest of his life.
Yeah, no, no, no, I think that's completely right.
Aiden. I hope you will come back.
This was so much fun.
Thank you.
Hi. It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right.
Now, is going to have merch for sale.
Over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot Fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. David Daily is a senior fellow at Fair Vote and the author Rap Fucked Why your vote doesn't count? Welcome to Fast Politics.
David, Thanks for having me, Mollie.
So let's talk about voting right. You have written two books on this subject. Explain to me sort of how you've sort of come to this decision, and talk to me about unrigged, how Americans are battling back to save democracy.
You know, it was a decade ago, really that I started writing about this. I was editor in chief of Salon and running our politics team, and it seemed like every single day what was coming out of Washington, d C. Was crazier and nuttier than the days before.
Those salad days.
I missed them, right, I mean, it was fifty votes to repeal Obamacare, and we had just had our first child, and I grew up in Connecticut, and so when Sandy Hook happened, I wasn't naive about the politics of gun control, but boy, I thought maybe a massacre of kids at an elementary school could possibly move the needle on something. And of course it didn't. And I asked a really simple question, I said, why didn't the Democrats take back the House in twenty twelve, when Obama was reelected and
Democrats grew their majority in the US Senate. And when I took a look at the numbers and said, oh, Democrats won one point four million more votes nationally but still didn't take the Chamber. I mean, of course, we don't do anything by a popular vote in this country. Gosh, let alone elect the House that way. But it's really rare for the popular vote in the House vote not
to line up. And then I looked at the delegations and you see purple states like Ohio with a twelve to four delegation and a bluish purple state like Pennsylvania was thirteen five and North Carolina was ten to three.
And it hit me that something had happened here. And I stumbled across a Republican strategy called red map, which was short for the Redistricting Majority Project, the goal of which was to flip state legislatures in all of these states in twenty ten Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, and more, and to use redistricting and the wild computer, sophisticated map making software that had arrived on the scene to draw lines that could not be beaten, and that
is in effect what they have done. We are living with the consequences of Redmap a decade later, and it's only been reinforced by a US Supreme Court and state courts that have effectively greenlit or cleared the runway for whatever these state lawmakers want to do on voting rights. And it's created so many uncompetitive districts that the only thing that matters are Republican primary So we end up with and none of your people.
Slow down and walk me through this. You find a state like purple state like Pennsylvania. Let's talk about Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania really is now at this point of blue state, blue governor, blue Senate. Talk to us about how Republicans were able to sort of keep the advantage there.
It's really wild in Pennsylvania. As the twenty ten elections approached in in Pennsylvania, Democrats had a one two one oh one advantage in the state House. Huge state House, really tiny majority. And what Republicans did is they identified a handful of state legislative seats, national Republican operatives in Washington, designing national strategies and executing them in these otherwise sleepy local races. This is not long after the Citizens United
decision comes down. So they're loaded up with all sorts of dark money and untraceable funds, and they come into the state legislative races in the last six to seven weeks, having already focus grouped the issues that they were going to use to go negative on these incumbents, and they swamp them with hundreds of thousands of dollars of ads and mailers in the last days of the campaign, and
they flip the Pennsylvania State House. This is the same strategy that they pull off in Wisconsin and in North Carolina, in Ohio and Michigan, all states that had been under Democratic control in state legislatures, and Democrats really have not been able to come within sniffing distance of state legislatures in most of those states since what they do afterwards after they take control of these members, they redraw all the lines after the census, right, And what you see
in places like Pennsylvania is even though Democrats win the statewide vote count by a couple hundred thousand votes, they cannot win more seats.
So explain to me how Democrats could change those Oh boy.
Well, Democrats kind of fell asleep on the entire plan in the first place. Unfortunately, it's hard to fix it because it's really hard to defeat a gerrymander at the ballot box. So you can fix it any number of ways. You can try to get around the impact of redistricting with an independent commission in which citizens draw these lines,
you know, states like Michigan and California do that. You can try to get around it by filing litigation, by suing under and citizens tried to do that in the federal courts for the last decade until John Roberts's voting rights wrecking crew in the Roucho Versus Common Cause decision out of North Carolina in twenty nineteen closed the federal courts.
Right, So let's pause for a minute. If you had the presidency and the Senate, and you were pretending you were a Republican, how would you fix it. You could see how a Republican president might come in here and just do a bunch of executive orders. I mean, there certainly are non conventional ways to vex those.
Right.
If I was a Democratic president and I had both houses of Congress from twenty twenty one to twenty twenty three. I would certainly have tried to do something to fix this, whether it was the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, whether it was for the People Act, whether it's working to expand right size the Supreme Court and bring ethics reform
to this body which is so unaccountable. You know, I think that there are all kinds of more creative ways as well, if we want to talk about things like a more proportional system, something like the Fair Representation Act involving multi member districts and ranked choice voting for Congress that takes the sting out of these individual district lines in the first place. There are lots of things to do.
Rank choice voting really seems like a big win for democracy.
Oh. I think it absolutely would be, And it's especially important because of gerrymandering. Once you have as many uncompetitive districts as we do right now, the only race that matters are these sort of low turnout summer primaries in which the only folks that tend to turn out are the most extreme, and because it's the easiest way to a seat, you might have ten twelve people running in that seat, and the crazies only have to get twenty one twenty two percent of the vote sometimes to sneak
into office. This is how Matt Gates first lands in office. He wins a gerrymandered seat in Florida with a percentage in the mid thirties.
Yeah, but Florida's first district is a Ruby rad I mean, oh.
It certainly is. I'm not suggesting that rad is going to win that seat. I'm just suggesting that if you had ranked choice voting and the winner of that had to get to fifty percent instead of win at thirty three percent, you might have a different kind of Republican who's not an election.
A denier, right, And that's what we saw in Alaska.
That's exactly right. When you use ranked choice voting in these elections, you get a candidate who most people actually want. And there are members of Congress right now who have won their primaries with about twenty percent of the vote, and then because the district is uncompetitive, they're able to just waltz right into a seat, even though maybe twenty five thousand people in a district of eight hundred thousand
actually voted for them. And when you use ranked choice voting, you have an instant runoff, and you always have a winner with the widest and the deepest majority support. You have to talk to everybody.
So let's talk about what happened in Wisconsin. Democrats flipped the state court, the state Supreme Court. Explain what the consequences of that are and why it's good.
This was the culmination really of what has been a twelve year plan in the state of Wisconsin to try and eke back levers of power after the Republican jerrymander in twenty ten. Wisconsin may well be ground zero for this kind of jerrymandering. It is a perhaps the ultimate fifty to fifty state, and Republicans have got sixty four of the ninety nine seats in the state Assembly and a supermajority of twenty two of the thirty three seats
in the state Senate. They have gone on wild power grabs after the state elected a Democratic governor in twenty eighteen. The jerrymanders survived twenty eighteen, even when Democrats had a big night and voters replaced Scott Walker with Tony Evers. Re elected Jammy Baldwin gave Democrats all of the state wide offices two hundred three thousand more votes for the
State Assembly, Republicans held on sixty three thirty six. Anyway, so Democrats have tried to find their way back in Wisconsin by winning back seats on the State Supreme Court, and they have finally, after many years, enough seats came up that they were able to build a four to
three progressive majority on the Court. So next I imagine you will see litigation that tries to use Wisconsin's state constitution to overturn these gerrymandered maps that have really rendered a representative a democracy a thing of the past in the state of Wisconsin. I imagine what happens is that the State Supreme Court will in fact rule for three to overturn those maps, but then Republicans will sue to return this case to the US Supreme Court under the independent state legislative theory.
And this Supreme Court is what Harlan Crowe pays for.
Harlan guests, Harlan Crowe is getting what he paid for. I know, Charlie Brown in the Football is sort of a cliched metaphor to use, but it's you almost have to just kind of shake your head, right. I mean, Democrats go through a decade plus of trying to strategize and figure out a way back, and they finally win the last election to make that happen. And Republicans just
make up a theory. They're just like, yeah, but there's the independent state legislative theory, and we're going to take it up to our blot and paid for federalist society court and we're going to wash that. So, you know, sorry, nice try.
I mean, I do think the fundamental problem here is that Democrats played by a completely different set of rules and Republicans do.
I think that's exactly right. And you see it right, and you see it in North Carolina where the state Supreme Court just about two weeks ago decided that they would overturn the decision that the state Supreme Court made a year ago when they got rid of the old maps in North Carolina as on constitutional partis and gerrymanders. Republicans took over the state Supreme Court and then they said, well, we're going to take another look at that decision, and
sure enough, they overturned it. And a lot of the coverage of this has been like, well, the Republican court overturned what a democratic court had done, right, but the democratic court didn't install a Democratic map. Right, the Democratic Court led to a seven to seven congressional map in the state of North Carolina, and Republicans still won majorities
in the state legislature when they won more votes. Right, Republicans are going to lock in at eleven to three map in their favor and supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. And they're already getting ready for this by advancing a twelve week abortion bill that would create all of these new bands on reproductive rights in a state where that's deeply, deeply unpopular. But they're going to do it anyway because they've built this self perpetuating loop that keeps them in power.
So your sense is that the only way for Democrats to solve any of this is just to get out in enormous numbers and vote violently, if that makes any sense. Not violently, obviously, but to vote an enormous quantity.
I think so much of this begins and ends at the US Supreme Court, and that we have to be thinking really seriously about how we fix and reform an institution that is wildly unaccountable has become effectively a rubber stamp for conservative policies that can't be attained any other way.
But of course this kind of big structural reform is really difficult given the realities of the US Senate and the filibuster and the demographics of the US Senate, which only get worse for the Democratic Party as time goes on and population shifts.
Worse for the Republican Party.
No, I would say worse for the Democrats. I mean, if you look at it right now, you have most of the population in the country in about fifteen states, and pretty soon that is going to be you know, seven or eight states. So these smaller, wider, more rural, more conservative states.
Are going to have more power, are going to.
Have a lot more power. And certainly there are big states like Texas that you know, have got a couple of Republicans, and there are small states like Connecticut that have a couple of Democrats. But if you look at it overall, the balance of power in the last Congress, when there were fifty Democrats and fifty Republicans in the US Senate, the fifty Democrats who represented about forty two point five million more people.
Thank you so much, David, This was great, my pleasure.
Thank you anytime, no moment exactly, Jesse Cannon by jug Fast.
It just gets word war hilarious.
Each day when we find out these Clarence Thomas things, I always have to think pro public is like just save with the worst for last, and I wonder what's next.
Exactly.
I think that the trip trip trip of Clarence Thomas is undisclosed, now seemingly being disclosed financial disclosure. The most recent financial disclosure was that the grand nephew of Clarence Thomas had his private school paid for by everyone's favorite conservative money bags, Harlan Crowe. When not collecting Nazi artifacts, when not taking Clarence Thomas on his jet, Harlan Crowe is paying for Clarence Thomas's nephew's private school tuition.
Don't forget buying his mother's house and renovating it. And you know, friend of of the show get Here had this really good thing. He dug up a quote where Clarence says about the supreme work, the job is not worth doing for what they.
Pay, right.
Exactly.
Public service isn't for you, chief, exactly.
And so for that Harlan Crowe and his Nazi artifacts and his many many many payments of various things, real and Sundry is our moment of fuck Gray. 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.