Keith Olbermann, Robert Draper & Rep. Patrick Ryan

tell us all about well, exactly that. Then we'll talk to Congressman Patrick Ryan, who represents New York's nineteenth district, about his competitive race. But first we're joined by a countdown host Keith Olberman and iHeart media podcast, but you can hear Monday through Friday each week. Welcome to Fast Politics. Keith Oberman on my pleasure to be here and Ted Ted Ted in the background may not be happy about this.

I'm not the dog. I am usually the one with the barking dogs in the background, so this is very nice for me. I have Well, you haven't heard them bark yet, naked really bark. There's four of them. First of all, we're going to talk a little bit about what's going on with many exciting things that happened this weekend, starting with the Nazis in l A. Yeah, I just I just wrote that up for the for the podcast. It's just it's not a surprise. Nobody should be surprised.

It's southern California, where I lived for ten years. It's one of the hidden racist and anti Semitic enclaves, and maybe not often that that hidden in the country. But the point is that all of these groups and and Trump's fascists are moving together, I think a little bit faster than a lot of people expected. As in his re election announcement was supposed to wait till after the midterms, so was the whole the Jews run everything and we have to we have to throw them out of the country,

which is basically what this messages. Those guys are from the ones who hung the banners from the four or five freeway over the past yeah four five. Yeah, that a group of about twelve guys called the Goyam Defense League, and yeah, and there, I mean these were guys who were banned from YouTube in two thousand and ten, so there, how bad you have to be banned from YouTube at all? But when they had hundred people using YouTube, they were

banned from it. I come back to the one thing as as a as a gentile that I do not understand about this entire equation of anti Semitism. If you believe this, if you believe somewhere that what you are spouting about Jewish people is actually true, how is it possible that you don't expect to be thrown from that overpass? I don't know. I don't like it's shouldn't you guys being shouldn't Kanye West be in hiding somewhere by now?

None of it follows any logical train. But that's the thing to me that disturbs me the most in terms of an offense against logic. Yeah, I mean, I have to say as a Jew myself, who's constantly getting chastised by conservative Jews for not standing up against their like obsession with anti semitism on the left, you know, and by the way, the people they think are are people like Bernie who is actually Jewish. Yeah, it's interesting to me to watch them just completely Oh, it's not the

same thing. And you know, even Ben Shapiro defending Trump saying, well, he's not wrong about Jews, you know, criticizing Israel. I mean, it's so insane. These conservative Jews are on I just can't believe they can't see where this is going. That instinct is overridden by the by the other instinct that people who are of an authoritarian mind, and that's literally

a different physical entity than an ordinary human mind. They believe if there are two responses to a threat, one is to fight the threat, and the other one is to collaborate with the threat as quickly and as enthusiastically as possible. In other words, this, these terrible things will happen to the fill in the blank here, whichever is the most hated group of the moment, But it won't happen to me because I helped them. You know. It's the it's the Kent Brockman joke from The Simpsons. I

for one, welcome our new insect overlords. Right. So let's talk about Nancy Pelosi. The January six Committee wanted Trump to testify. They subpoenaed him. There's been I think a fair amount of anxiety about the idea of Trump testifying, because we know what happens when Trump gets a microphone, and it tends not to work out so well for anyone. But Pelosi sort of dared Trump to testify today. I mean,

what's your hot take on this? Well, I think unfortunately it's going to be an academic question because that committee and those hearings are not really going to be a vibrant force after the midterms. Right. But do you think he'll testify before that? I mean before before before January fourth? I don't. I don't think so. First off, why would

they why would they agree to live public testimony? I mean unless they have the James Thurber cartoon where he's the lawyer is accosting the man on the stand and he's holding a giant kangaroo in his hands. The lawyer is and he goes, perhaps this will refresh your memory.

Unless they have something like that. And even so, you know that Donald Trump is entirely successful and has been throughout his life on one skill, which is to say anything that is necessary in the moment, right, which is why I think he might testify because he knows he could,

you know, just do crazy ship with it. But he will testify to be to be live and on television because like so many people he is also he has become the thing that sent him over the total edge mentally, was was being a television regular television figure, because television is, and I can tell you this from forty years of its experience with it, it is an addiction stronger than crack cocaine. And you really, if you're not aware of that, you become consumed by it. And he wants to be

on television. But it's a very simple issue. I haven't seen anywhere that the January six Committee subpoenas suggests that the testimony would be live or even or even in front of an audience. So I can't imagine that he would. I mean, you're right, that's that opportunity to go and just say, well, never mind that, let's talk about how

I really won the election. I really do think by the way that we should we should all say, just before the presidential election, we should all say, yes, you're right, you won the election, and you you were president all this time. Sorry, that means you can't run again tomorrow. Your votes don't count. Sorry, See you have a nice

day by police. Yeah, that's that's why I realized this is not necessarily a really good last line of defense against another Trump presidency, but it's the only one I can come up with off the top of my head. But back to your point, I just I don't see it happening, because it's much better for him to again nail himself to that crucifix for the fifteen thousandth time and be you know, oh, look at them, they're trying

to kill me again. That's much better for him than it is to to actually even to satisfy the ego and the addiction of being on television. Right. Yeah, I mean, I don't know how that plays out. But do you think Nancy Pelosi sort of baiting him makes any sense? I think I don't know that it has any practical sense, not like the release of that tape of her to ce Ann saying, I'm, you know, doing a revision of the Kate Bush song. I'm gonna he's gonna come to

that hill, I'm gonna punch him in the face. I'm gonna feel real good that that that it's cathartic to do that. And and I you know, this is this is a guy who cannot abide criticism, has no sense of humor about himself, and is easily tweaked. And one of the things that we have failed to do since he took over the Republican Party in late two thousand fifteen is too at every opportunity. And when I say we, I mean people who have much more prominence than either

one of us. But people like Nancy Pelosi and people like Joe Biden and the others who have succeeded against him have all if you, if you look at this, they have all walked over and metaphorically slapped him in the face. And I think that's where it's a value. It's it's it's it's coming over and looking for the vulnerability and hitting him right there. And that's where it's it's value is cathartic rather than practice. Right, No, I I think that's probably right. I'm also curious as to

why Pelosi is getting involved in this. So let's talk about the documents. Who have learned more about the documents. We're learning every day more about the documents that Trump has. Now we've learned that some are at least some are related to Iran and China. And we already knew that there that there were some that that outlined the nuclear capabilities of another country. And there are only like seven of those. Yeah, we only knew that from one only

the Washington Post. The Times never went along with that, But clearly that's what it was. So so what's your take on that. I'm intrigued to see whether or not those two stories overlap. Are we talking about the same document, right, because there's a lot of documents too, But but I

do I do tend to think one. And this is true. Again, this is a generalization about Trump that is also absolutely true in the specific The volume whatever it is, the volume of stuff that he puts out, the volume of chaff, the volume of crime, the volume of grift, the volume of conspiracy theories is always so great that we do tend to overlook the significance of each one of these things. In other words, it's it's one of these, one of these documents that he stole contains the nuclear, nuclear and

defense capabilities of an entire foreign nation. It's only the one document. It's a that one is a death penalty, effec It is espionage and they're going to shoot you full of poisonous drugs, and we sometimes lose track that.

You know, perhaps these Iran and China documents are also on that level, and if they're not pretty close to it, these are these are perhaps the three greatest espionage crimes in American history and and we we get it gets lot while I stall hundreds of documents, and some of them, some of them were just a quick you know, the directions through the underground tunnels to the Burger King the

White House. Well, okay, I'm not that worried about that. Yes, when they when the guy fired a hundred shots, like, well, he fired a hundred bullets, he only killed three people, that's the same thing to it, right, I mean, that's it's this sort of deep band and flooding the zone with strategy. But but that's it's see, I don't it's not. It's Steve Bannon may have applied it to politics and particularly the Trump campaign, but that's the Trump Uh, that's his.

That's his his artistry that he has met a is flooding the zone with ship and whatever. It's been from defending himself against the racist apartment charges forty years ago or forty five years ago, to you know, whatever he's cooking up this week. It's always about doing so much material that you go, I forgot about that. That was a couple of months ago, and it turns out it was Tuesday. A hundred things. Since they're all the cliches about the latest shiny object and everything else and apply

to that too. So last night Trump was doing a rally in Texas, I think it was Texas, um, and I'm going to quote for you because I feel like this is just so ironic you And by the way, every time I forgot because I haven't written about Trump's speech and so long, but every time you read a Trump quote, you have to get used to the way he English is. Uh. You know in this country they leak all over the place, even on the Supreme Court.

I don't think you leak on it. But okay, well he had somebody complained about body leaking on him, yes, last week, and I thought, I thought we could solve the pee tape thing. By the way, tape. By the way, you have to find the leaker of the Supreme Court. Again not English, but yes, you have to find the leaker. You know how you find the leaker. And then he launched into a grand plan. But a little ironic from from him being from the guy who took all the

classified documents. Well, yes, because again this is this is why you know, people were like, what an extraordinary thing in American political history. It was for a man to come in and with no previous affiliation just take over a political party. It's like no, no, no, all all of the people in that political party were have been honing skills that they hoped would someday make them as good or and or bad as Trump in this particular area. There's no rules apply to him. The rules are there

for us to control the rest of you. And and he's been he has been the poster boy for that since the seventies. And it's and and that's how he did it. He came in and they said, they said, we have found our role model. And that's it's simply that they were able to say, we can now drop everything else that there was where we had to pretend we were interested in governing, and we were pretending we had that we were responsible citizens. We can drop that.

Now we just do what he does. That's over. I mean, basically he went in and took over the Republican Party because they were cowards and he was a little bit charismatic. Yes, and that's it right. I mean, there's no secret sauce here. No, I think there is one. And it's the only conspiracy theory I said, I agree, I agree with and and actually, I think I may have conceived this one. Do you remember the Jeff Bezos story where they were trying to blackmail him with the girlfriend one as an aside, I

used to work with the girlfriend. She was a sportscast year. Yeah, so that's like, it's a very small world. But number two, what do you suppose the odds are that the first person that the National Inquirer tried to blackmail on behalf of Trump had the money, the stones, the audacity to say, now, I'm gonna you know, any money, any any influence, because I mean, I don't love my wife anymore, but she she was a good person and she gets my money.

You don't screw you, guys, I'm not cooperating. What are the chances that the first person they blackmailed said no. I think those chances are almost infamitessable. And there had probably been dozens of people blackmailed with similar things by similar organizations on behalf of Trump. And if you sit there wondering, how did Lindsey Graham turn from a you know, blow with the strongest wind kind of fake reasonable Republican

to this prostitute? How did Ted Cruz go from being you know, what we're threatening Trump with a fist fight to being his biggest supporter, Ronnie Jackson, almost everybody at Fox News. People forget people at Fox News were so anti Trump in two thousand, fifteen sixteen. How did they do this? I think we need to admit the possibility that that blackmail was involved in it, because it's you know,

these are politicians, and they're being politicians. They're about a hundred times more likely to have done blackmail double stuff than the rest of us have. So I think that's the one little sort of mystery that might be explained by future historians. But I just I'm going to push back on this. I mean, we really think like Lindsey Graham needs money to be a sick of fant who wants to be popular, like there are horses. I mean,

these people just do whatever the crowd wants. I'm just saying that somebody may have gone on behalf of Trump and said, if you don't support Trump, everything you have will disappear because we have photographs of you and fill in the like. Could be anything, could be, could be him secretly attending a gay rights may something terrible like that. Right, But I mean, but but I just I just think that you know that that that the reversals when when this is written, if there is a future, and there

are historians and they try to analyze this. One of the things that we don't really appreciate it now is the limited, how small the number of people it is who could have stopped this by pushing back. He could have stopped this with a moral stance that didn't really require an awful lot of morality to it, and none of them did it, And it took it took four

years for Liz Cheney to get there. Right, No, just what there is there is there is there in a conditional components, and the biggest component of all political figures is is self interest and preservation of what they have. Yeah, I mean, I just would argue that these people all they care about is staying in power. So like you, So, I mean we saw in our my and mineighborhood the congressional race, my congresswoman who lost her seat would do anything to stay in power. I mean, I feel like,

I feel like you don't even need the blackmail. And it's funny because I just want to sort of extrapolate from there. I'm friends with Michael Angelo, Senor Elli, this wonderful activist who's been doing this for a long time, and one of the things you used to do was out gay politicians. And I said, why did you stop outing the gay politicians gay? I mean the gay Republican closeted politicians who were voting for all this horrible anti

LGBTQ stuff but then actually gay. And he said, because ultimately their people don't care as long as they vote for the stuff that's anti lgbt Q, they don't care if they're gay or not. And I thought, so, I just wonder how much of any of this is just this, like these people are, you know, they've sort of kidnapped themselves and are holding themselves for ransom. That's a plausible explanation.

As I said when I brought this up, it's a conspiracy theory, and I don't give it were weight than that, But I'm just thinking, you know, it may apply to people outside of the Republican Party. Every time I see Kirsten Cinema, who I went out with for a while, behave in the way that she has in in favorites of things that at least are favorable to Trump and Republicans, And I know what a psychotic liberal she was. I just again, it's not it's sure enough, sure enough, you're

right about this. Every politician will would would kill all of their members of their families to stay in office. But you can accelerate that by by saying, yeah, we're going to put you in that position right now. Unless you do this for us, we're going to blackmail you into doing it right now. I'm just thinking, you know, it's it's it would explain some of these sudden reversals. And I just the Kirston Cinema question is a mystery wrapped in enigma. For sure. How you go from like

at brought to a no labels is just baffling. I think she found that she liked having a car that took her places rather than living in a car. I think that's I think that's ultimately what it was. But I don't know. I mean, I know her, and if there's anybody who would be a victim, who's a conceivable victim of blackmail, it's her. So she's got It's just it's it was a very strange experience. That's all I'm gonna say. Thank you so much, Keith Oberman, my pleasure.

You didn't even ask about the dogs. Robert Draper is a writer for The New York Times Magazine and National Geographic and the author of Weapons of Mass Delusion. When the Republican Party Lost its Mind. Welcome to fast Politics. Robert very excited. We were talking about Steve Bannon going

to jail. Yes, the judge just moments ago sentenced Ben into four months in federal prison and fine, he will not impose that sentence, however, until Bannon is given the opportunity to appeal, and if he doesn't appeal in a timely manner, that he must self surrender by November. So he's probably not going to jail. Well, I think it'll just be you know, extended out beyond an appellate stage. But I think it's very likely he'll go to jail.

I think the Bannon has expected and perhaps even hoped to go to jail, you know, seeling his status is martyr once and for all, and you know the truth is, Molly, this is not. I mean, he's up on federal charges of fraud and may have greater risk and greater exposure in that case than in this one, which is a misdemeanor. Can you say a little more about that he was indicted for allegedly participate hating in a fraud scheme, relating to exactly that's right, favorite, that's exactly right. Yes, I

think it's called we build the wall, We build the wall. Yes, he's it's fair to say, never been shy about publicity and uh and the opportunity to posit himself as a guy who's been martyred by what he believes as a corrupt judicial system. That's something I've never heard him say before, um, the last couple of years, but now he pervently believes it would be, you know, a fabulous opportunity for him.

And I think that he's always Bannon has always regarded himself in a very outsized sense, and that this will somehow put him in a pantheon with you know, Martin Luther King and others who have languished in jail for a cause greater than themselves. Yeah. I think of Martin Luther King when I think of Steve Bannon. Yeah, Steve Bannon fights for the ability to wear multiple shirts and whatever it is he does. It has been pointed out that he probably won't be able to wear multiple shirts

in prison. I don't think that garbage is allowed. I think a big question that we all have is who will take over his podcast? Well he's in prison, Ted Cruz or Marjorie Taylor Grant. I think you answered your own question with those last few syllables. She's been She's been so frequent a guest on his show and has already tweeted saying I stand with Steve Bannham that she has practically a stand in for him. It's a miraculous story. So talk to me about the book Weapons of Mass

Delusion When the Republican Party Lost its Mind. The book captures an eighteen month moment in time beginning January the six, when you would have thought the Republican Party, faced with a horror of what took place and its culpability in that horror at the Capitol, would have maybe descended into a kind of penitence and sought to purge itself of the more extreme elements that gave rise to the insurrection.

Of course, that's not what happened at all, And my book is essentially, you know, a repertorial journey through that very trajectory beginning with January the six, and how far

from distancing itself from the maga influences. It has allowed itself to I won't say to become captive because captives suggested that it bears to no culpability, but instead the center of gravity for the Republican Party is now very much the magabase of which Marjorie Tayler Green, who we were talking about a second ago, he was one of

the central protagonists. Let's talk about that. You've been doing this pretty long time, and you've seen and you've written about many Republican iterations of whatever the funk is happening now? What is happening? Like they've lost their mind? You've written about w You're not new to this now. I've been covering Republican politics for over twenty years and was raised in a very concern ovative community. My father was a lifelong Republican, but you know, the Republicanism was a different

kind of thing in my father's day. I mean, he he believed the personal responsibility meant, among other things, that you don't foster all these grievances and blame everyone else for your plight. You certainly don't demonize the opposition party. If he had done that, he probably would not have stayed married to my mother a Democrat for sixty or four years. But you know, something has happened to the

party over time. And while we could talk, you know, at some length about the succession of steps that led to where the party is now, my book is not a history book. It's not how the Republican Party loss it's mind. It's when it lost its mind. And so it's very much a Trump era book. And and and I say Trump era advisingly because Trump, at least in theory, there's not command center stage anymore. He's not president, and

yet he certainly has a stranglehold over the party. No one knows that better than, for example, Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who, in his never an inquest to become Speaker of the House, he's got a plaquate the magabase. You know, that means play kating people like Marjorie Teler Green, but not even because he's just humoring her or is fond of her, but because of what she represents, so that she is the proximate warrior for Trump to the magabase.

I also think, though, and I'm curious what your hot take on this is. It reminds me of in the two thousands, when we were all sweet summer children, there was the sense that small dollar donations were going to democratize democracy. But Marjorie Taylor Green is a pretty good examplar of how actually that is not what's happening at all. Well, you're correct, Molly, that Green is one of the biggest

small dollar fundraisers on Capital Hilt today. But the question is how are these donations ray They're not just you know, people over the transom waking up one morning and deciding

to send Marjorie Taylor Green ten dollars. It's because that seen one of her tweets comparing Biden to Hitler or suggesting that Alexandria are explicitly saying that Alexandriacascio Cortez is a communist and um and them being sufficiently agitated to believe that civilization hangs in the balance that they'll then donate portions of their retirement to someone like margor Teeler Green in an effort to stand up in what they believe is this kind of existential book of Revelations style battles.

I do still, you know, root at least in theory for the positive force that small dollar donations can be up against pac money, but it does not necessarily mean that these are being UM solicited in a good faith manner. And Green is a great case and point of that. Yeah, that's a really good point. I think about somewhere and we were with a bunch of older people and someone

was saying, well, they've all been radicalized on Facebook. What happened? Man? Yeah? Right, well, you know so the title of my book is Weapons of Mass Delusion, and the real key phrase there is mass delusion, meaning that the base of one of our two big political parties UM has UM fallen prey to delusion on moss and and that's happened through a steady,

really unending marinating in disinformation. The big lie is the most obvious one, that the election was stolen, but there have come sprung up next to that all these other adjacent lives, that the January the six was a set up, or that it was you know, just tourists, or that um Antifa riled everyone up, seeing the COVID vaccines at minimum don't work and at maximum are killers or or or mind control from China, and that the mainstream media

is working with liberals to engineer a great replacement for with people coming across the border. I mean, these are these are things that that are big fed two people on the right by this far right media ecosystem that really didn't exist a decade ago. But now when you go to a Trump rally, it's on the riser. You don't see CNN and ABC, instead see Real America's Voice, One American News News, Max bright Bart and those people are treated like rock stars, are like a letter day

Walter Cronkite by the people in these Trump rallies. And so that's that's where they get their news from. And those those outlets are frankly nothing more, nothing less than propaganda outlets at best for Trump and at worst, uh, they are consistent spewers of lives. I was wondering if you had a thought about Megan Kelly, who has had this very mainstream career. Yesterday she tweeted this thing about how vaccines are killing our children. Does that sort of

fall into this and how I think? So? Yeah, So Kelly, someone who has taken on the guys of being like a credible mainstream media person, but in my view, has been a pretty dishonest actor throughout the years, has said racially offensive things when she had her own show on Fox News, and now, in her struggle for relevancy, continues to make herself adjacent to the mega world, which she had been kind of cast out of owing to her sparring with Trump when he was a candidate in back

in And yeah, I mean that's what she's saying, they're relating to vaccines sounds very similar to what you hear Arizona gubernatorial candidate carry Lap say about in Arizona. We're not going to stab, you know, these vaccines into our precious babies. We are not going to put those filthy

masks on their faces. And she's just shy of saying, uh, these vaccines are well of spewing basically conspiracy theories about the vaccines and about other COVID prevention measures, and so Kelly, once thought of as legitimate I think, you know, has instead aligned herself more with conspiracy theories. Yeah. It's interesting because my second son and I went and got the booster last weekend, and very few people are getting the boosters, so clearly this messaging is working. Yeah, well, I think

it's Yeah. I mean, there are some people I know progressives who are just sort of done with COVID as it were, and tired of all of this, and maybe are weighing the side effects of the vaccines against what they believe as a reduced risk of catching COVID. And but you're right, there are other people who just who who think that this is meant to be a money maker by big farmers. Yeah, yeah, right, meant or meant by big tech in collusion with the government to control

our lives. And yeah, these are you know, these are originated as far right conspiracy theories but have been somewhat mainstreamed. And there's you know, in the industry, to put it crassly,

of grifters who are profiting off of these notions. I mean, there's a traveling road show called Reawaken America in which, if you attend one of these things and they pay me the big bucks to do that, you can hear, you know, upwards of forty or fifty speakers talking about how these vaccines were basically you know, invented along with COVID itself by the Chinese, and they're planning chips in your head and soon, you know, we'll all be subject

to globalist domination because of the vaccines. Oh good, I had been hoping for globalist domination because you know who among us talk to me about where you see this going? For one thing, I mean, I'm generally kind of a glass is half empty person anyway, but yeah, yeah, but it's uh and I don't mean the town now. I

think glasses have full of stryct nine. But the reality is that, you know, when you pump disinformation into tens of millions of people and they swallow it whole repeatedly to flush it out of the city them is anything but an overnight proposition. And you know when when you know? So. The New York Times did a survey recently and concluded that three seventy major Republican candidates for office for this November mid term has said the election was stolen. So

they're saying it over and over. They're saying it, of course, because that's what their voters wanted to hear, because they believe it. And where then does this end? A doesn't end immediately, and be probably only ends after the people who are elevated to office on the heels of these

you know, um conspiracy theories. After there, they then performed miserably and or are trouts to the polls and a couple of election cycles, after which the Republican parties, you know, sen or individuals say, you know what, we've we've had enough of this, and even at the risk of getting primary to the right, our party can no longer forward electorally, you know, in general election races to be run by people who are in the swell a of these crazy notions.

Do you think that happens? That doesn't sound so glass half empty? I feel like glass half empty is like Eric's third term in office. Well, I mean, I think what it means is that it ain't gonna happen right away, and it will take something negative to happen, whether it's far right people coming to power and utterly bungling it, causing some kind of national crisis and or paying heavily for it at the polls. Such at the Republican parties, you know, wiser individuals say, you know, we can't let

these guys be in charge anymore. But that's we're talking about a period of years. You know, when I interview so called establishment Republican summer a lot more sanguine than than I've just expressed it, But most of them basically saying that's gonna We're just gonna have to lose for a while. You know, we don't want to lose. But realistically, when i'm you know, look down into my soul and see, you know what it will take to exercise ourselves of

this particular demon. We'll have to learn the hard way, and that's from being defeated. I still think that's in some ways weirdly comforting. Yeah, although I'll say Molly that one party rule is not good no matter what the one party is no agreed, agreed, And I don't think we're gonna have one party rule. I think we're gonna have one normal party and one crazy party. But I do think you're right, and the whole system is set up to be two parties. I'm curious to know Speaker

of the House. If the Republicans are able to use their jerrymandering to take the House, uh will be the Speaker of the House. Remember you have to tell me this, and I will then torture you years from now if you get this wrong. No pressure all the House Freedom Caucus types like Matt Gates and Martin Tayler Green and all that, for all of their weariness towards Kevin McCarthy they have, they don't have a person of their own. It's gonna be McCarthy, who's a very smart inside player,

and he's already gotten the requisite votes. So it will be McCarthy. But for McCarthy to be able to hold the gabble, he'll have to degrade himself and debase himself. Concessions will be extracted from him. I mean, already Marjorie Taylor Green has said she wants to be on Judiciary and oversight. He's gonna let her do them. The Chairman of Judiciary that will be Jim Jordan's in exchange for his support. And so I don't see that he'll be either a strong or an effective speaker, but I do

think that he'll be a speaker. You want my hotake? Yeah, sure, at least Deponic Oh, I think you you you're onto something. I mean, I you know, and I've also heard that school Ease, who hasn't made any kind of machiavellian move as the as the number two person. Nonetheless, will be their standing if McCarthy goes down in flames. The Conservatives still don't really trust Dephonic. You know, there's uh, you know, they know that she is not crazy enough well, and

also a new entry to their world. I mean she was. She was a moderate, mainstream, gult Way Republican until two thousand nineteen. So there actually are some Republicans, some conservatives on the Hill who have memories that extend beyond three years. Thank you so much. Will you please come back. I would love to come back, Molly, Thanks for having me. Congressman Patrick Bryan represents New York's nineteen district. Welcome too

fast politics, Patrick Ryan, thank you for having me. So you are the now congressman from the great state of New York. You won Antonio Delgado seat in the nineteen district, a very swingy district. How did you do it? We certainly surprised a lot of the supposed experts, if there

are any of those left in politics these days. We really ran the campaign more from the gut and the heart than from the typical polling and triangulation and watering down, because it was just such a moment of intense feeling in response to the jobs decision, in response to other Supreme Court decisions, in response to the January six hearings, just sort of this crisis of democracy moment, and we really centered that and and specifically centered on equivocally fighting

for reproductive rights and abortion rights in the campaign, and uh, we pulled off this what was certainly seen by outside folks as an upset victory, and I think it says a lot about where the country is and also what

November is gonna look like. Despite again some of the you know what we're hearing in press and media right now, I want to dig down on that you're saying, and you're saying this from your own experience, pretty recent experience, that voters care about choice and not falling into an authoritarian state more than they care about gas prices or

the same. I think actually the framing that it's a choice really doesn't give people nearly enough credit because it's like in all of our daily lives, we can hold multiple things at the same time, right um, and particularly to force people, which is basically what the Republican Party, at least the extreme right which is most of it these days of the Republican Party wants to do. Is basically they're saying, Okay, either you can pick putting food on the table or you can pick having access to

reproductive care, but you can't have both. That's not who we are as a country, and we actually really centered both fighting for reproductive rights and other fundamental freedoms and rights and also delivering on relief, and both are necessary and neither alone is sufficient to meet the moment. I mean, I think fundamentally the fallacy here is that Republicans will somehow do something to stop inflation that Democrats wouldn't do. I have yet to see Republicans do anything but tax

cuts for rich people. So there go exactly, and the oldest trick in the book obviously talk about the problem over and over and over. Of course, that's the first step, is identifying the problem. But then what are you going to do? And actually, I think even more importantly than what are you going to do, what have you done in your life, in your career as a human, as an elected official to make people trust that you're with them, Like I think, distrust in a lot of institutions, certainly

in politics right now is so high. I really talked a lot about what I've tangibly done to help provide relief. In my last job, I was a local elected official up here in the Hudson Valley north of New York City. I talked about cutting our gas tacks and half at the local level, which provided a lot of immediate visceral

relief for people. I talked about this really serious fight we're in with our local utility that's been price gouging people above and beyond the already high increases and utility costs and those kinds of very tangible I get where you're at. I am fighting for you. I'm fighting also for myself because I'm experiencing the same in my family pressure. Like that values level connection before going right to policy, I think is is so important to really authentically connect

with people. So you were losing in the polls by as much as ten points, he explained to me. This is it's kind of incredible, right the first poll in our race, so this was a really quick race to it all started in May and then the election happened in August, so it was like a very rapid pace

of everything. The first poll that came out, we were down, and all the all the conventional wisdom was, you know, don't invest a lot of energy and resources in the special election, focus on because I we knew I was gonna have to run again in November, which were now eighteen days out from but who's counting, but who's you know, for a whole bunch of reasons, both sort of political

strategy wise, but also just morally. I think we're at a moment in the country where like, if there's an opportunity to stand and fight for democracy, for reproductive freedom, for preventing more kids from getting killed by the same weapon as I carried in combat, we have to take every single opportunity. Whether it's a special election, whether it's a local election, whether it's a presidential election. We've got

a fight. And that is what I think actually really rallied people to our cause and gave us the boost to win was we just showed the willingness to get that this is existential and that we're going to fight in an existential moment. Let's talk about power companies, because this is actually more and more becoming really important issue. It's something that has devastated Texas, largely because Republicans have led it, and we're seeing it in California. It's a

real problem. How is the government going to negotiate with the company is to avoid price gouging, to keep you know, the lights on now that climate change has you know, created these temperatures that are I mean, what are you seeing and what is your plan? No pressure. Also, we need a really good answer for this, even though it's a very complicated question. Go I mean, I think we what we've lost sight of in the country and certainly in our area here. These are public goods, right and

in New York their public utilities. But yet our local utility, which in this are is called Central Huts and is owned by a foreign owned private equity firm, so their motives are like so far disaligned with the motives and interests of their customers and even our broader community, where rather than putting earnings back into you know, preparing the power grid for resiliency, they instead do shareholder buy backs

or pay out dividends. These are public goods, just like health and public safety and everything else, and I think we need to figure out how to pretty fundamentally relook how we provide oversight to these utilities. In my last job, I was able to call for a formal investigation by

our state Public Service Commission into this price gouging. And it's been dragging on for months and months and months, and people are increasingly losing faith not just in the utility, who they've totally lost trust and but also our own state government to hold the utility accountable. So when that's happening, we need to figure out pretty significant reforms, which is something I want to work on at the federal level to try how to address this. Yeah, so now you

have to run again. You're running in a new district. Is it better as it worse? So yeah, I'm running in it's a different numbered district, and it's a different district by like about fift new turf, you know, about percent overlap, and we've only had a few months to sort of you know, get on ground and get out

there with folks. So that's certainly a challenge. The good news is in terms of on paper, we're going from what was a Biden plus one and a half seat in the one that we want in August to a Biden plus eight and a half, So certainly we start with some kind of structural advantages there. But that being said, I think this is going to be a tight race. We're you know, on the kind of top ten or twenty most competitive house seat list of all the different

ratings groups. So we are just you know, working hard in every dimension of the campaign. But I think most importantly like our message and the focus hasn't changed. We've seen the Republicans, or at least their leadership and most members dub will and triple down, for example, on a national abortion ban at the same time that it's been roundly rejected from Kansas to New York to Alaska. So the fights even more existential, I think, and we just have to do the work to help remind people of

the stakes. The big takeaway from me from our special was certainly it was about fighting for abortion rights, but people got that it was much broader than that. People got that if you could come for those rights for tens or hundreds of millions of women and people in the country, it's pretty easy to then see where we go next. And it was even telegraphed and some of

the decisions. No question, I mean the big question that all of us in the media industrial complex, and obviously there is no media industrial complex, but has the mood shifted from August when you won your special two? Now we can all agree that no one trusts polls, right, So do you think the mood has shifted or do you think this is sort of a media creation. I

don't think the mood has shifted. I think that people are still really feel a visceral like struck, a nerve response to the job's decision in particular, and what that represents about threats to freedoms. I think continuing to hear what's coming out of January six hearing is resonating much more deeply and broadly than people maybe are like processing and understanding and pulling. But certainly people are still feeling

tremendous economic pressure. So again, I just think we have to make clear that there's one party that's both delivered tangible economic relief at the federal level and most state and local levels too, and is also fighting for your rights and freedoms. The other one is pointing out problems and has no solution on the economy other than to give more, as you said, big big corporations tax cuts, and also not only not pro tecting your rights, but

it's actively taking them away. And I think as long as we explain it with that clarity, people will rise to the moment, just like they did in August. For us here, I hope, so tell us about your opponent. He represents like everything that's wrong with where the Republican Party much of the Republican Party is going. He's a relatively you know, young guys in the state legislature here, going back to like two thousand twelve, he was calling

for Trump to be the Republican candidate for president. He's extreme, sort of maga type candidate cheered on insurrectionists on January six, is aggressively anti choice. We had a debate earlier this week where he straight up and follow up questions from the moderator said, even if a doctor says a woman's life is at risk, I don't think that she should be able to have an abortion. Yeah, and increasingly this is not the exception anymore in the party and increasingly

in the country. So we have to send a decisive message in these mid terms that we roundly reject this kind of extremism. I think it's an existential fight here and I know in a lot of other districts too. What happens if Democrats hold the House. When they hold House. When they hold the House, well, then I think we

can continue the momentum we've shown. I mean, I was really encouraged earlier this week that President Biden made clear he would introduce legislation to really defend and codify, defend reproductive rights, and cootify row right out of the gate. We need to keep pushing there. We have to keep

delivering on economic relief. We actually had a visit from President Biden to our district, to the Hudson Valley a few weeks ago where because of the Chips Act that was passed, you know, to to help bring back semiconductor and quantum computing here, to to the US twenty billion dollar investment from IBM and the Hudson Valley based on the fact that this legislation changes the game and encourages companies to bring those jobs back here to the country

and specifically to our region. Um. I mean that is a big, big deal. That's that's like going to change my two young kids lives. We need to continue to deliver on those big pieces and then also just figure out how to get back to the place where there's some agreement on even things like infrastructure and treating veterans exposed to toxic burn pits and re earning back trust that government can actually deliver for folks. Thank you so much,

Patrick Ryan, thank you for having me. Molly John Fast Jesse Cannon, you know, one of the great mysteries is why anyone would vote Republican. That's old since they're always about to cut Social Security and Medicare. And we have some thoughts from some one minute Nancy Mace on the subject. Kevin McCarthy suggested that if your party wins back the House, uh, he would refuse to lift the debt limit unless Democrats in the White House agree to spending cuts. Are you

on board with that plan? Are you willing to risk the US defaulting on its debt as leverage to impose these spending cuts. I support that strategy because look, at the end of the day, when COVID nineteen happened, you had the federal government and state governments to literally shut companies down. Businesses had to make tough decisions about how they were going to keep their doors open. And the federal government just kept getting record revenue year over year

and hasn't had to make those tough decisions. And I can tell you I sit on the oversight community where we look at waste, fraud, and abuse in the federal agency level. Yeah, they're going to try to cut Social Security and Medicare. That's like the worst kept secret of this middrum elections. It just astounds me that this isn't the thing that Democrats just push and push and push, where his Republicans try to find every wedge issue possible. Well, this is a real thing as opposed to all this

stuff Republicans are talking about in the mid terms. I think that if Republicans went back the House, besides the fact that it will be the greatest three way three ring circus since Barnum and Bailey, it will also be that they're likely We're gonna see Republicans go after all the social programs they have and always will be here for tax cuts for billionaires and not much else. Republicans plan to undo the Social Safety Net? Is Today's a moment of funk Ray. That's it for this episode of

Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.