Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And George Santos has asked a judge to delay his sentencing so he can make more podcasts. Well, that's a cursed sentence and that might be Peak twenty twenty five. We have such a great show for you today. Evil Genius is author KURTA. Anderson gives us his historical perspective on how bad Buchanan brought us to the Trump
of today. Then we'll talk to author John Gants as he examines the path that led us to this current political moment. But first the news.
Somali, I have to say my mental health has not been doing well for watching fires raging throughout la very close to where I used to live once upon a time. It is not looking good.
Yeah, it is really this. We're just watching and it we're watching and thinking and praying for all the people in California. My brother and my father and my other brother, all of them live in California, and we're just thinking about everybody. So there are three major fires. The Palasades fire is the one closest to Los Angeles, or is in Los Angeles. It's burned about eighteen square miles. And then there's the Eton Fire, which is north of Pasadena,
which has burned about sixteen and a half miles. And then there's the Hurst Fire Hurst Hurst Fire in the San Fernando Valley, which has burned a little bit less than a mile. So this is you know, we're watching these videos come out of California and they're just really dystopian, so dark, and we're just thinking about everybody and hoping they're okay. Seventy thousand residents so far under evacuation orders, and a lot of those evacuations were in the Palasa
Hides parts of Santa Monica. Four hundred thousand people without power, that's half a million people. Continues with these high winds, no ray and lots and lots of fire. It's really important, you know. Right now, Trump and a lot of Republicans are trying to blame these fires and Governor Gavin Newsom.
But the truth is, like we all know, these fires have been getting worse and worse because of climate change, because California is a hot, dry climate, and as it gets hotter and drier and the weather gets more intense fires. You know, they spread more, they cover more area, and you know they have eighty mile an hour winds, And it's just this is not Gavin Newsom's vault. It is the fault of Exxon and Chevron and all the oil
companies that knew about climate change fifty years ago. So there are things we can do to cut back on all of the you know, effects of climate change, or we're just going to keep living like this. And so it's really dark and just thinking about everybody in California and hoping that they stay safe, smiling.
One of the things you and I often talk about is there's some people who when they have a hammer and everything is a nail. And I'm starting to think that's Trump. With the economy and tariffs.
Yeah, this guy really really really really really wants to really really wants to enact these tariffs. He is now has this he's considering declaring a national economic emergency. By the way, that is insane. Our economy is really really good, and he's going to do it to provide legal justification for a series of universal tariffs on allies and adversaries.
Cianna and who's reporting this again? It's Trump Earlier this week, he said he was going to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America, or as those of us in the Democratic Party call it, the Gulf of Trump being unable to make egg prices any lower. Look, you know, Trump is going to throw a lot of stuff at the wall. This would be a terrible, terrible idea. I hope Democrats will push back on it as much as possible. We know historically Herbert Hoover did this. It caused the
United States economy to crash. It was a huge mistake. Nobody wants these tariffs, not you know, but Trump somehow thinks that it would make things less expensive. We all know tariffs are wildly inflationary. It will make everything more expensive. You know, he wants to put a sixty percent tariff on Chinese goods and ten percent tariff on global exports. Let's hope that there are enough cornups in the room who convinced him not to.
Yeah.
Well, another fun news. Everybody's wondering why President Trump is so interested in Greenland and the Panama Canal and willing to use military coercion to get them. What do you see here?
May so Trump is saying he's willing to use military coercion to get there. I wouldn't trust him. My thinking is that Trump says a lot of stuff. He speaks in this fombastic way, and the hope of getting our allies to do what he wants, he wants people to think he's crazy. He wants Mexico and Canada to think he might invade them in the hopes of them negotiating with him on tariffs. I don't think any of this
is Again. His justification here, or least according to USA Today, is that it's an expansionist minded that he's worried that an expansionist minded China and Russia might be jocking for geopolitical supremacy. This is really stupid. China is in the middle of having a somewhat of a financial crisis. Russia is very very much, you know, financially exhausted by the war in Ukraine, and this is ridiculous. Republicans have been using about taking back the Paama Canal since Carter, and
it's really been a kind of dog whistle. It's totally not going to happen. But it's also just a way in which republic and are able to kind of show themselves to be colonialists and to say, you know, these other countries, we have supremacy over them. And so I would just look to this as kind of it's its own sort of dog whistle. It's like they're eating the dogs. It's this idea that Trump thinks that he can sort
of do whatever he wants. And again it does feed into this Nixonian idea that maybe he can be the strong man and that can intimidate our allies and adversaries. But I wouldn't put a lot of stock in this. But I would also say that I think that they're you know, Greenland continues to not be for sales, so and Trump does not have you know, a one percent win in the popular vote is not a mandate to go to war with Denmark. So I think we all just need to take a deep breath here and realize that.
And I wouldn't I Also the mistake, I think is to sort of say that Trump is doing something that's well thought out, when in fact, a lot of times he's just doing whatever's right in front of him or whatever somebody told him on plane on the way there. So don't give Trump too much credit.
Somalie I think we have to eat a little crow here, and I'm not talking about Harlan. We're not going to eat the rich here. Merrick Garland intends to release Special Counsel report on Trump's Gen six case. Doo JSAs So.
Merrick Garland says he's going to release the Special Council Report on Trump's January sixth case. Look, Merk Garland has tended to not be the horse to bet on for bravery. But you know who knows.
Those are very very polite saying there you have there.
Yeah, but perhaps now he will change his spots. We never know. It's possible. Good for Merrik Garland if he wants to be brave at the eleventh hour. Anyone here is welcome. Though he has really been such a disappointment, let me tell you, you know, talk about not having been playing three dimensional jazz.
Or even the two dimensional one or even two. Yeah, yeah, i'd call it. You know those chess games where somebody just leaves the board for a while, it doesn't do anything. She decides to not make a move for a long time. So I think we've been looking at.
That's it, Marca. Yes, Kurt Anderson is the author of Evil geniuses and the co creator of Commands THEE. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Kurt, My pleasure as ever.
You know why I wanted to have you on was because I was reading a book that was all about how Pap Buchanan, you know, said a lot of early Trump stuff, et cetera, and that got me thinking about sort of the history of how Republicans lost their minds, and that is you So let us talk well.
Happy Canon obviously was the Trump prototype. You know, he was a famous journalist, media funded guy, and and that is what led him to run for president in nineteen ninety two, nineteen ninety six and did pretty well as a Trump Trump plus thirty IQ points and Trump who actually knows stuff and knows history, but and has this coherent, more coherent idea about you know, the right wing populism
that from the degree he has in ideology bodies. So yeah, there he was doing all this stuff, you know, back in the nineties. And at the same time that, you know, he had the new gingrich taking over the House and being a right winger in that way and moving the party right. But no, but Patty Cannon was really in
his way ahead of his time. That's why when we did one of our spy magazine specials in right right around then when he spoke at the right after he spoke at the Republican Convention in ninety two, and he gave this cultural war speech, and we we just we've put it on our special on NBC Prime Time, ran thirty seconds of it translated into well, not translated but actually just with a soundtrack of Hitler speaking as his book and amazingly standards and practices at NBC let us
do that. But yes, Pabriu Khan was there early, and Donald Trump grew and inherited that beginning version of the modern Republican party.
He did.
And it's funny because it's like I'm thinking about, like the big Senate loss that Democrats had in nineteen eighty, Right, wasn't that the biggest the second biggest loss a single party had ever had?
I trust you on that. But the eighties were, yeah, I mean obviously the Reagan land slide and then bigger Lan slide in eighty four.
Yeah, And I'm just wondering, like I'm trying, because I'm trying to grapple with what exactly happened during this election that I still am not able to process, and so I'm trying to sort of think about it in the historical precedent. I mean, do you when you think about this election, what does it remind you of?
Well, does it remind me of Reagan? Particularly because that was genuinely, you know, a mandate in a landslide, especially eighty four, so it was different there. I mean, you know, yes, we finally had a Republican the first since you know, two thousand and four, to become president, having won the popular vote. But he won it barely, and I don't want to over diminish the reality and the significance of he won. He won by you know, healthy electoral vote margin,
and one in many areas, including New York City. Of course, moves significantly right in being voting for trumpmore so it meant something, But it isn't to me yet anything like eighty eighty four. One thing is one I'm thinking about nineteen eighty is you know, Yes, in nineteen seventy six, seventy seven, eight nine, all of us liberals thought, oh my god, this guy's a nut. What's he going to do?
Well?
Immediately, he didn't govern as a nut. He governed as a very conservative Republican and talked to Tipple Neil, the Speaker of the House, and yes, said mister Gorbacheff, tear this wall down, but pursued daytide with NATO. You know, it was it was a whole different thing.
It was.
It was in retrospect. Although there was a lot of hair on fire Sky's falling talk in seventy nine and eighty, it didn't turn out that way. I'm not saying he was a great president, but he was a normal president and we all like adapted to it and it didn't do crazy things. So it isn't like that, so I know in my lifetime, you.
Know, it is its own thing, closest to Nixon, except if Nixon had gone realized.
As he was an inheritor of Pat Buchanan, Pat Buchanan before he became the famous Pat Buchanan running for president, of course, worked for Richard Nixon. That was his big first thing as a political figure. And he was to Nixon's right and he was the House right winger, whereas Nixon. Because it was nineteen sixty eight, sixty nine to seventy seventy one, it was still the sixties. Effectively, it was
still this liberal hegemony. Democrats still ran Congress and everything else, and you know, we have the Democrats and liberals were complacent because they basically run the show for you know, since the New DA in World War Two and done pretty well, so like it was fine. So Nixon was, in fact, until arguably I think the Biden administration the
most liberal president we've had in my life. But what Nixon did and felt and embodied the way Trump does in his bizarre worldwide was this resentment of the elite, you know, the resentment of the elite. And he created his silent majority during the Vietnam War and during the counterculture and during the anti Hippie period, during the protests that all of you regular, normal, good Americans, don't we hate these the media and these hippies and these uppy
black people and all the rest. So, yes, Donald Trump, in his crewed again Nixon minus fifty I key points revived that he is, in his semi witning, unwinning way, the inheritor of this of the worst of Republicanism of the last sixty years.
Yeah, And it's funny because when we talk about I just want to fact check from Jesse here in nineteen eighty Democrats lost fourteen seats in nineteen eighty four. They lost too in the Senate.
Even though Reagan's victory was bigger, right, and you see that and when it gets hopeful, like the electorate goes, okay, we give you fourteen more seats in the center, Oh my gosh, Senate, you know majority, Oh, big landslide for Reagan. But it also at the same time pulled back, you know, it reacted and kind of in his overall way, does this thing of forward or to the right one two steps back to the central one. And that's what it did, as those numbers about the Senate and Congress showed. So
we'll see. I mean, it's very hard because you know, we've gotten all tired of saying, oh, it's unprecedented, it's unprecedented. Well, this is a freakishly new unprecedented thing. So well saying it's like this election or that election in the past, I don't know, I don't see it. You know, it's
not there. I mean, there are bits and pieces they're like, I mean, there is some nineteen sixty eightitionists here, but which was a close election but a victory for you know, this bullying Richard Nixon version of the beginnings of you know, working class appeal, which was, to say, in nineteen sixty eight, as it was in sixty four, an appeal to the South, that was the white South which was so upset about civil rights.
Right, you're bringing this up a really important point here, which is this idea of like the backlash from a sort of backlash to this, a backlash to that, the sort of movement of the sixties, and then a backlash with Nixon, and then the seventies and Carter, and a
backlash with Reagan. It feels like if you look at twenty sixteen, it was Trump and then it was me too, and then there was there just been backlash and backlash and backlash and back What do you make of that and talk to us more about it.
Well, it's you know, the right being the right uses the backlash effectively again and again. I mean, that's almost the nature of its different nests from the left in this country to do it. But whereas what Democrats do over and over again, did it with Clinton in the nineties, did it with Obama in the aughts, Yeah, the aughts and tens, and then did it again with Biden is clean up the basically budget busting, deficit building messes of
the Republicans who precede them. So that's what they have over these last six years, in addition to stupidly and incorrectly dumping the white working class and labor unions as they started doing in the seventies and eighties. They because they're responsible good boys and girls, are the ones who sort of balance the budget and try to be responsible and govern after the kind of drunken, fiscally nuts benders
that they inherit from Republicans, you know. And that's how we turned into in this last election, and Kama Harris and the Democrats into the goody goody elitist responsible people who are effectively conservatives. They want to get back to normality. And there is this rowing hunger that has been here for thirty years since since the industrialization of the rust belt and all that happened economically starting in the nineties especially,
There has to be a change. There is I won't say revolutionary, but there is this intense reformist, populist This is screwed up, this is rig We don't understand our healthcare system. It doesn't provide for us. You know. College is unaffordable and our on. And so the electorate, in its mostly low information, ignorant way, reaches out anywhere it can. And Donald Trump looks like he'll shake it up, you know.
I mean, people don't know, and they for that rather than this kind of college educated, good boys and girls version of Democrats from al Gore to Kamala Harris.
What do you think Democrats should do?
Obviously it's a different world than it was in twenty sixteen. There's not the same. The mainstream media is not what it was. I mean, I am so struck by Oprah doing an event with Harris.
And I love Oprah and thinks she's a genius.
But Joe Rogan having doing three hours with Trump gets in front of like seventy million people, whereas television doesn't get in.
Front of those numbers anymore.
So I'm wondering what you think, Democrats, what that solve is for this, because this is something I spent a probably disproportionate amount of my time obsessing about. I mean, what do you think the answer is? Because clearly what we saw from Biden's loss was Biden passed a lot of really good legislation and voters not the voters who watch television or read the news, but the voters who make up the line and share the vote, right, because Trump won and he won the popular vote, they didn't know.
So what did Democrats do?
Well?
Donald Trump is this unwittingly brilliant person in many ways, And there's all these quotes that had such meaning in the aftermath, like a star gets to do whatever he wants. He said that you know years ago about sexual assault, Well he's living it in every way. I can appoint these idiots in the cabinet, I can shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue. All those things are so true and so real, and he's living not in so many ways. So I'm
not saying, oh, we need a Trump. However, the level of understanding that politics is, and certainly for the lessons in the TV age and since, been a show. It is a show, and just face up to it. Maybe you don't like it, Okay, fine, that's the way it is. So all of that implies in a way that you can still keep your human dignity and stick to more or less the facts, live with that be a little more incautious. I mean, that's the thing about you know,
whether you're again, whether you're al Gore. I don't want to keep mentioning al Gore, but he he to me, he was as people said at the time, he was the boy who got good grades and every adult's idea of a good young person and all that. Kama Harris, too, was the well behaved and highly cautious person, you know who, whether she did or didn't, have a a kind of human political center that she shared with the world. And I liked her fine, just like I like them all fine.
I like all these Democrats fine. But she was highly cautious and that prevented her from being effective. So that's one thing I think democrats have to do is and people have talked about it. Whether you're Chris Murphy, oddly the most good boy Democrat, we have one of them who says, oh no, we got to be populous, we got to I agree with him. It's funny coming from that messenger, how right he is. But that's what you need. You need the you know, the Dan Odsbourn's the guy
who did so well running as an independent Nebraska. You need all these people from various ideological stripes. John Fetterman, I don't care, you know, moderate, you know, progressive, socialists, maybe even conservative Democrats, But it's less about this specific ideological stripe, you know, and that all obviously depends on where they're running from for what as opposed to the style, the approach, the sense of authenticity, all those things. I mean,
none of this. I'm not saying anything you haven't heard a million times and thought through. That's to me what the Democrats need to do as well as you knows, as Murphy and many other people say, you know, under recapture what I wrote, what I've spent a book writing Evil Geniuses, about a version, a twenty first century version of being on the side of the powerless and the workers against the man and capitalists and the ruling class
and the evil geniuses. And when you see as we saw in this incredible Trump press comforence at his mansion club the other day, you know, the brazen corruption, it's
really it's just amazing. It made me think of the as I've been thinking about that comference, oh in the week since it's happened, days since it happened, the oh, we're not going back Comaho said again again, Well, we if Trump and the Republicans have they wear, we are definitely going back and not just to pre row, which is what that The main subtext of that slogan was, we're going back to the eighteen nineties and nineteen hundreds early, you know, we're going back to robber barons. We're going
back to just shameless corruption. That press conference is amazing. Okay, here it is at mar A Lago, an artifact of the era. He has his his Emiathi billionaire golf course developer partner there, who he said, oh yeah, we're going to give this guy government deals to build data centers and due real estate billions of dollars.
Oh yeah.
Here's Eric, my son over there in the back and he's building Trump towers in the Middle East. Oh yeah, and we also just got a new the Saudi Golf Tour is going to have a great tournament at my hotel in Miami, the Dural And oh yeah, yeah, here's my here's my crypto business partner who's also my middist envoy to Helly, Steve Wodcoff. He'll tell you about what we're doing in Gaza.
I mean very conflicted, right.
I mean conflicted, beyond conflicted. It's just like, nope, this is corrupt and this is no logarchy. Welcome to it now. In the last time this happened in the center good ended in what was you know, certainly until Watergate, the most famous presidential scandal in history, which was the teapot Dome scandal, which was oil and all that. This stuff doesn't last forever. I guess that's what I take my knowledge of history and my long view being old, is that none of the there is all his here tofore
unless history suddenly changes. And I don't think it's going to in this sense. It's one way or another. It
swings back. There is a counter reaction, and you know, I mean the Republicans in a certain sense, and some of them do know it, which is why the you know, in his disgusting, egregious way, Josh Hawley, you know, for instance, uh, you know, mouths and sometimes does more than mouth does things with Bernie Sanders on behalf of you know, versions of actual economic populism rather than just cultural populism and be more manly and all that stuff. So so there
are you know, there are Republicans who understand that. To me, the the the inherent contradiction that they've lived with, you know, in the in the fifty odd years, they've been trying to be both the party of the white working class and the party of the billionaires. You know, at a certain point, one hopes, one thinks it just becomes you know, irreconcilable.
But we'll see. I mean, that's that's that's the weird contradiction that has exists among Republicans and on the right and has which is, oh, yeah, we're the working class party of people who are who are just you know, who have undertaken and successfully done and now want to redouble the transfer of wealth from the have not to
the tops of the haves. You know, that's what they want to do in their big one bill that gives you know, extends these twenty seventeen tax cuts for billionaires another five or ten years.
Thank you so much, Kurt. I hope you will come.
Back always and happy to be your little resident historian or when I play on podcasts anyway.
John Gantz is the author of When the Clock Broke, Comment Conspiracyists, and How America Cracked Up in the early nineteen nineties, and the author of the substack on Popular front Welcome to Fast Politics.
John, Thanks so much for having me.
Molly. How are you doing You know, I'm good.
I mean, whatever is happening here.
In fact, let's talk about what's happening here. I read your excellent book.
Thanks, you're welcome. I want you to give us a sort of how you think we got here?
Where to begin? I mean, my book begins in the nineteen nineties, and essentially what it begins to pick up in the story that was still kind of going on in the underbelly and hadn't really made its way through the mainstream, was that there was a fact that the Republican Party, who called South of Paleo Consbermaden, which wanted the Republicans that pursue a very different kind of politics, and they had pursued up until that point, which was
sort of moving to the sector, moderating, embracing certain ideas of liberalism while you know, rejecting their own and bringing along ideas of conservatism. For them, Ronald Reagan was two at wing, which probably sounds to you and I, you and I as being rather crazy. They wanted a type of politics that could smash the institutions and elites of liberalism, and they believed a kind of charismatic emigog figure. They put it that bluntly would be the man to do it.
They almost sort of got it.
Huh, there were prefigurations of it. Patu Cannon's primary campaign against George H. W. Bush was kind of unexpectedly strong and gave that campaign fits and may have even sunk it. And then you have Ross Perrot, who comes along in that era, not exactly considering movement, would certainly come kinds of conservative and right wing ailance to his populist campaign running against the establishment as a kind of billionaire who
could fix everything. That era, you get kind of eerie precursors to what's happened since I noticed that there is a terrible distance act between the American public and the institutions that are supposed to represent it. And this has created an enormous amount of of resentment and anger. And the least which which could be the beneficiary of this of this anger against say, an unequal economy, hasn't seized
upon it. The right has with a different set of issues and concerns, part of which is an unequal economy, but they would do don't know why that is so. Yeah, I think that we have come to the terminus of this political wave that began at this time and likened toy sixteen. What unites the rather contradictory, incoherent coalition behind Trump. You know, you had people who were angry about the war in Gaza for exactly opposite reasons. Voting for Trump is a sense that he's a protest vote is a
sense that he represents the interruption of as usual. Now, how much of that is real and how much of that is part of the Trump showmanship? I mean, I think we can tell, but that is definitely a big part of his appeal.
I think that's right.
Right, So the idea is the nineties again, is this New Gingridge set the table for this?
Right?
Yeah?
I think New Gingrich is definitely a part of it. New Gingrich, I think saw the kind of confrontational politics his constituents wanted. He was still a creature of the Republican Party. Trump kind of brings us to his conclusion by attacking the Republican Party from outside. You know, the Tea Party was already beginning to do that, but again,
closer to the conventional conservative movement perhaps than Trump. But Trump, you know, represents a kind of hostile takeover of the Republican Party, and in a weird way internal democracy in the Republican Party. The elites of the Republican Party could not stop him and decided that it wasn't worth it. Two because he was where their constituencies were at, where the voter, what the voters wanted, and he was the
only really powerful figure on the national stage that they had. Now, you know what's interesting even about this election, and I think going forward to think about, is where are the limits of Trump's electoral power?
Right?
Well, you know, he won the popular vote this time, which he couldn't do before. But you notice the really fringy people that he tries to bring along with him often go down. It seems like the electorate has a limit, right, So Roy Moore goes down, Mark Robinson goes down, Blake Masters goes down. There are certain people who they just decided are a little too weird. Now the line seems to be that jd Vance is okay, He's relatively normal in their view. Trump is relatively normal in their view.
But the line sort of gets dropped at the Moors and the Robinsons.
I want to talk about Jady Mans for another minute, because Jadvance is a fascinating character to me because he was never Trump, and then he was Trump curious, and then he was Trump. So Trump loves a convert. But does this crew just go along with that?
I mean, jad Vance is an extraordinarily ambitious man who came from a modest background and advanced himself through America's elite institutions. He became, for a brief period of time a kind of darling of Liberal America when Hillbiliology came out as a kind of explainer of the Trump enthusiasm. I think he had a bit of a falling out with Liberal America because they soured on him and picked up on some of the weirder, nastier parts of that book,
and we're not thrilled with its adaptation for Netflix. I think he felt personally wounded by this, but I think he also knew that the future of the Republican Party was with Trump, and as a politically and socially ambitious person, he went through this. He also had many of his mentors and close friends moved in those circles. I mean,
he worked for Peter Tiel. He is part of what I would call like the authoritarian Right family, which is a kind of intellectual demimon that's you know, probably built their social media and group chats. That's interested in kind of post liberal and post democratic visions for America.
Right, I'm going to make you like explain this to our listeners because you and I know the shorthand here, but like I don't want to have a moment of saying bacon if that makes sense for sure, So I want you to explain. This is the mensches mo bug that's Curtis Jarvin's stage name. These are this is the intellectual dark Web, So explain what that is.
Well, I think essentially what it is, I mean not to get to you. Conspiratorial is is a is a group of intellectuals and semi intellectuals and media figures that exist in a broad patrenage network created by Peter Teel who combine authoritarian ideas about American governance with a kind of belief in technological advancement. So they're kind of reactionary futurists or reaction ra a modernist group. But they have a variety of different theories about American government that's non democratic.
Curtis Jarvin Menius mobug Is is very into It sounds silly, but he's very into the history of absolute monarchy. He's very elitist.
Yes, I was hoping you were going to bring up monarchy, because can you explain to us what the history there is.
He aligns on this idea by taking his anarcho capitalist ideas to their absurd limit, which is that basically the world should be modeled on family businesses, which he interprets the history of monarchies and feudalism in Europe to be. That's not quite right, but that's basically what he thinks the model of the world should be is these kind of patriarchal family businesses, of which Trump is close enough.
So yeah, he's interested in monarchy as a replacement of democracy, which is different than say, people on the populist right or even on the fascist right, who have a populist notion of replacing liberal democracy with something that's more representative of the true people. Now, Curtis Jarvin mentions Molbug, he doesn't believe in the true people. He believes that the Republican voter is not some kind of sturdy, heartland person
whose common sense could be relied upon. He thinks that they're kind of redneck idiots who need to be ruled by what he calls the dark elves, these true elites, of whom, of course he's a member. So there's a variety of different visions here, but what unites them all is basically a belief that the liberal democratic model of capitalism is exhausted, is over, and needs to be replaced with some kind of form of authoritarianism. Some of these
people look very favorably to Singapore. Obviously, there's a lot of interest on the right in dictatorships like Franco's and Salazar's, and you know, among some people who don't get as much public hearing, of course because they try to keep them in the shadows Hitler and Mussolini, and a lot of interest unsurprisingly and apartheid South Africa, where David Sachs, Peter Teel and a lot of muscle got their start, yeah, which was you know, an extremely hierarchical, brutal, authoritarian form
of capitalist development that took place in the middle part of the twentieth century. So they basically believe in capitalism without democracy. The thing about what united the American left and right for you know, in the post Warrior and longer than that, was a belief in capitalism plus democracy. Now what Teal at all are proposing as capitalism minus democracy or maybe a different form of democracy, not liberal democracy.
Certainly.
Right.
It's funny because I just recently read a book about how much right has always loved authoritarians.
Yes, that's also true America last.
Yes, America last, Yes. I just read that book, and in it it is all about how even at their best, Republicans were still like Franco's Gray, talk about that.
Yeah, there's always been a curiosity on the American right or authoritarian regimes. You know, they are not the only people who can be charged with this. Obviously, American left had a lot of sympathy and interest for a long time in the Soviet Union, and not just communist liberals. Also, you looked favorably on the Soviet Union until you know, it became clear what Stalinism really was.
My grandfather was one of the last people to reject Stiles.
Yeah, of course, I was going to say, you know this very well. So they can't be charged entirely with this. There's a tendency among American and American politics in general to look for models overseas. The models that the right wing looks overseas, naturally, are you know, right wing authoritarian model. You know, obviously, the Catholic National Review looked with great interest at Franco and Salazar and some of them even you know, sort of left the orbit of the National
View to kind of join those politics entirely. Even before the Second World War, America firsters looked with great curiosity at Mussolini and Hitler, and before that, you know, there were some of the American rights who thought the Kaiser offered a type of governance that might be preferable. So, yeah,
it is a very old tradition. The sans among conservatives and the right is that American society is able to be manipulated by liberals and changes too fast, and we need a stronger way of governing to prevent those changes from happening, a revert to older ways of doing things.
So obviously authoritarian models of rule look appealing, and I think basically that that's become more less of only an elite project and something that's shared among grassroots Republicans because of the real fee years of the changes that have happened, you know, in the liberalization of the United States around issues like race and gender.
Yeah, such an incredibly strange moment we find ourselves in. I wonder if you could explain a little bit about why Trump is a protest vote even though he was president once before.
Well, I think people have fond memories about that administration, forget very much the downsides of it. I think, you know, they feel like the economy was cooking and they were doing well and the big I think these things were Trump's fault, and because of his bad foreign policy decisions and his upsetting of certain regular patterns of geopolitical order. But you know, the wars in Gaza and Ukraine are
concerning to people, seem to be out of control. He comes along and says, I can put these things back, and you know, under control. I don't think it can. My sense is that he will make things much worse. But it makes sense, you know, in a world that
seems to be coming apart. And also, you know, I frankly think the United States, I mean, Trump is not no spring chicken either, but the United States, where it stands in the world in terms of its importance, cannot be led by someone who looks so frail and old. It's just it invites a lot of anxiety, both by people here and people abroad. So I think there is a sense fairly or unfairly, that the Democrats were unable
to govern, and Trump's kind of showmanship suggests governance. Whether he's actually able to accomplish governance, I think it's pretty clear that he's not that good at it, but he gives the impression that he can take charge. That's out of appealing to people in a world that seemed to be coming apart.
Now.
The Democratic Party, you know, they got in shape when they decided to change candidates, but it seemed like a chaotic mess, you know, and it was to a certain extent. It's kind of remarkable they did as well. I think it stands to try sweaknesses and people's distrusted them that they did as well as they did. But I think in another circumstance it could have been a real blowout.
But you know, I think that the fact of the matter is, rightly or wrongly, the perception among the public was that the Democrats were unable to govern, and that's usually why people vote for a different president. Trump kind of synthesizes a protest and a return vote because he says, well, I governed before and it wasn't so bad, and people kind of remember it that way, which I mean there was more to within that, and also, aren't you tired of these people who don't know their business?
Yeah?
I think that's right, but it is still just strange. One of the things that Trump World has spent a lot of time talking about is this idea that this time and part of twenty twenty five was a little bit of this sort of pr for this until it wasn't that this time it's going to all be different because this time Trump has got really smart people figuring out how he can do a lot of the stuff that he was not able to do last time. You think that's pr we'll see.
I mean, he probably has learned some things about Washington, DC and governing and politics in his time. Him having so many challenges with the really not seemingly very well considered cabinet picks doesn't suggest to me that Republicans believe he's a particularly strong leader who can menace them, either at the polls or in other ways. It seems like they're willing to stand up to him in limited ways, especially when they think people don't care, aren't looking. I
don't know. I think also the lessons he has learned may have been the wrong ones, and his opposition has also learned lessons of how to deal with him. I think right now everyone's in kind of wait and see mode.
You know.
I think Trump has personal challenges in terms of just the capacity of his mind and focus to accomplish some of the things. And I don't believe he has fully. I mean, some people are willing to work with him now, but I don't know if he has really first class talent willing to go to bath for him. He also enters office as a lame duck on day one and less. Instead, you know, he goes through with his business of trying
to remain president and so on and so forth. But I mean, I don't know how seriously that's going to be taken by you know, there are other people waiting in line right right.
He's a very old guy. I mean, it's not like he's sixty year old.
He could kill over at any moment. I'm sure that Vance wants to be president one day. I'm sure that he will try to take advantage of a circumstance that would allow him to do that. If that, if that means betraying Trump, he might do it.
Yeah.
Yeah, I don't think he has any personal loyalties to him or cares for him as a person. So yeah, I think that what we're seeing is as the you know, the possibilities of a post Trump future is also being considered, and we'll see that, you know, with how much Republicans are kind of willing to push back and ignore him,
which you know already looks like quite a bit. But again, who knows, a very unpredictable person who's also you know, unlike we can talk about politics normal politics, and that's true so far as it goes, but it has to be remembered and how much this stuff works or it's just bullshit and actually backfires for him, I don't know. But it has to be taken seriously that Trump is willing to also do illegal things and not just work in the in the in the channels of normal politics.
He's willing to commit crimes of of really grave nature. Now, are we going to be in some kind of environment where members of the opposition have to be worried about being gunned down or thrown in prison. I think that that might be a stretch, but let's hope not. It's not totally out of the realm of possibility. Considering that mobs have been willing to get in the streets and try to do stuff for him before, So it's not
something that you can last. I mean, I don't see that as being a law, long term effective mode of politics and governments. Trumpet, it doesn't seem like he does either with the way he's talking. He's talking about primary people.
Right, which is much better than killing.
Right of course, But you know, I don't think he's above leaning on people in an illegal ways. So I mean that is a new dynamic to American politics.
It's not a new dynamic.
It's everything as old as new again.
Yeah, I mean, it's a dynamic that hasn't been in American politics for quite some time.
But yeah, yeah, since the sixties. Thank you, Thank you, John Gantz, Thank you so much for having me.
Molly Moment, Jesse Cannon, Samaijung Fast former two time guests of this podcast.
Justice riggs down in North Carolina. She was ahead in the final vote COUMP by seven hundred and thirty four votes. But the Republicans because they are clinging onto any power thereafter having a monumental loss in North Carolina state where they've done massive remaindering the control for well over a decade, they're cleaning on the power. What are you seeing here?
So she won by seven hundred and thirty four votes and Republicans are basically trying to throw it out. It is so incredibly this is the nine to one one stuff. This is the thing. They're refusing to certify the election results because they don't like what happened. And this is the kind of stuff that you should be paying attention to.
This is just really really bad, really like, this is what trump Ism gave birth to, you know, is this idea that if we don't like the idea, if we don't like what happens, we can not not certify the election. This is the anti democratic stuff that is so incredibly toxic, corrosive, bad for democracy. And this is in norms and institution that Republicans are trying to destroy. And I hope that Roy Cooper will, in fact, you know, step in and there is a new Josh din is the new governor,
and that Democrats will force them to certify. And this may go up to the Supreme Court. But even if you win by a litle if you win, even being a Democrat, you still win. And that is why this is just so appalling, and I hope this gets whooped down. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.