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 Donald Trump says Milwaukee, where we're having our convention, is a horrible city. Doesn't he hate all cities. We have such a great show for you, the Guardians, Margaret Sullivan stops by, departs the consequences of the newsroom changeover at the Washington Post. Then we'll talk to the Boston Globes Sam Brody about Trump stopping by
to talk to Congress. But first we have the host of the Lawrence O'Donnell Show, MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell. Welcome back to Fast Politics. I think of you as sane, which in this world is unusual, and also someone who knows history, My friend, Lawrence.
Yeah, all I'm really doing for myself is keeping the clutter out, you know, keeping the noise up.
Yeah.
There's just a tremendous amount of noise that, more than ever, that has to be kept out to try to hold on to sanity.
That is a Herclinian task. Why is there so much noise right now? I mean, is this typical of an election?
Yere?
No, it's it's the explosion of data sources. It's just wild. You know, when you think about when elections and campaigns made a certain sense, and when politics made a certain sense, there was a what we thought was an adequate source of material, you know, from several major serious newspapers, New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post, Seattle Post, Intelligencer,
La Times. They were everywhere. Serious newspapers were everywhere. They all had Washington correspondents, most of them had individual White House correspondents and campaign correspondents.
And you know.
Not surprisingly, most of the people doing that work thought alike in the way that mathematicians think alike. It doesn't mean that they agree on everything, but they do agree that two plus two is four. And we've lost all of that. Not only do we have this explosion of data and information sources, but there are sources who are insisting that two plus two is not four, and they have stronger access to some voters than the traditional sources
of information that are much more reliable. And so it's a chaotic information environment that's only only going to get more chaotic. Just when you didn't think it could get more chaotic, somebody like Elon Musk buys Twitter, and Twitter was already one of the explosions of data that had become a source of a lot of unreliable data just
because anyone had access to posting data there. And then it gets owned by someone who can't tell fact from fiction, and that makes it all worse, and it's an unmanageable flow of information in which all the traditional forms of talking about campaigns have no meaning. This word message, which I hated when it came into the world of campaigning and started to dominate the world of campaigning in the
nineteen nineties. It was such a simple minded, goofy notion that you could reduce a campaign to a so called message. But people were trying to do it, you know, and working on doing that within a relatively manageable environment where if you sent Bill Clinton out one day to campaign about the economy and nothing else, then the campaign coverage that day would be about Bill Clinton's approach to the economy in covering that campaign. That was pretty much the
last time you could do that. Now you're living in the twenty first century in a chaotic information environment, and the old ways of thinking about it dominate. The loudest versions of the news, you know, cable news and New York Times, the big news suppliers, and you have people in those venues that are constantly saying Biden has to do this with his message, or Biden has to convince people of X, or Biden has to work harder on
this constituency. And what they never say, ever, because they don't know the answer to this is okay, how do you do that? If you're sitting on a cable news show, or you know, you're writing a New York Times up ed piece and you think you're thinking up something that the Biden campaign hasn't thought of, you are completely wrong. You're totally wrong, or that the Trump campaign hasn't thought of,
and so they've thought of it all. And when you're looking at it saying why haven't they done X, usually what you're talking about is why haven't they landed a seven forty seven in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and then just floated it to shore, Meaning you're wondering why they haven't done something that isn't possible to do because you don't live in a campaign environment that allows for the kind of control or even attempts at control that campaign press used to expect.
Hmmmm, that's a really good point. What I think is sort of interesting is like the Biden campaign is actually underwater. They are paddling as fast as they can, you know, opening campaign offices. They have a lot of money, but they're also running this very disciplined geno. Malley Dylan, who really ran a very disciplined campaign in twenty twenty, is running this very disciplined, very kind of on the ground campaign.
That is necessary. But you know, you're not seeing everything that's happening.
Yeah, and none.
Of the you know, armchair pundits of cable news or rent are ever talking to you about that. You know, they're never saying, hey, they have to do more and terms of campaign offices in this place or that place, because none of them know anything about that. And there's a reason why none of them know anything about that.
None of them have ever run a presidential campaign. You know, when we had to cover a COVID pandemic, we didn't bring on political reporters because they literally don't know anything.
We brought on you know, doctors and scientists who could guide us with the best they knew that day or that week, and the minute that that information changed, we brought those doctors and scientists back on to say, here's the latest information based on what we've seen about the way this disease progresses, and what to watch for in all of that. And so those are the only people to ever listen to about campaigns. If you listen to David Pluff talk about a presidential campaign, that's a smart
use of your time. He's run one, he's one. He knows what he's doing. You know, if you listen to Stuart Stevens, you know who ran was involved in running a bunch of Republican presidential campaign winning campaigns, Bush losing campaigns. Romney guy knows what he's talking about, and reporters don't. They aren't the vaguest idea what they're talking about.
Stuart Stevens is on the last episode of this podcast and was also quite soothing, maybe because of his accent and maybe because of his mentality. But I'm wondering now, right now, this moment in American history, what do you think it's closest to.
Oh, I really don't think that it has a parallel. When people look for parallels, what they find are these very small episodes of a kind of madness that obviously had no chance of succeeding and was obviously going to expire, especially when looked at you know, in history, we didn't know that. You know, in nineteen sixty three, you know that the ku Kuck's Plan in its violent assassination form, was going to expire, but it expired before the end
of that day. When you look at it now, you go, well, it's inconceivable that in nineteen seventy two there would be guys running around in hoods and burning crosses and assassinating people in their driveways. It's like, yeah, it was inconceivable by nineteen seventy two, and it was happening in nineteen sixty two. And never, never, never, never did that madness grip forty five percent of Americans. Never, We've never had a dangerous madness in America that had a functional grip
lock on forty five percent of Americans. And so those forty five percent of Americans represent a new danger that the country's never had before. That sounds a little bit scary, Well, it's forty five percent. So you know, this is a this is a country you know where the states, at least, although they are carved in a as much a gerrymandered way as congressional districts, they are democracies within those boundaries,
and fifty one percent. You know, when things as we know, the presidency is not a product of democracy and is a product of the electoral college, which is in fact deliberately designed not to be a functioning element of democracy, created by founders who weren't in any way supporters of
democracy at the level that we are now. They were experimenters with democracy, and in their experiment they said, well, we could try this, but let's make sure there are these wise men, we'll call them electors, and let's make sure they make the real decision. Forty five percent is an unbelievably troublesome number of Americans. And you know, in the United States Senate, if you have forty five percent of the United States Senate, you can stop anything.
Right. One of the things you and I have talked about a lot, and it's something that I don't hear anyone else talk about, but you talk about a lot, is this idea that Trump has never ever, ever been interested in growing the electorate. This seems to be continuing.
Now.
Look the first thing you always have to say about him, it just has to be said, he is the stupidest person who has ever been nominated for a federal office. He's stupider than Marjorie Taylor Green, He's stupider than all of them. And so that that stupidest candidate ever is the only presidential candidate who has never tried to get more voters during the campaign than he had at the
beginning of the campaign. And so even candidates who are running for president for the first time when they get the nomination, and Nixon was the first one to say this publicly and explicitly, but once they get the nomination, you're supposed to start running toward the middle. So you know, for Nixon that meant running to the right to get the nomination in nineteen sixty for the first time, and then trying to run back to the middle in the time that's left to try to pick up the people
who might have been alienated by the primary campaigns. And Nixon that in nineteen sixty eight, and he won in nineteen sixty eight, you know, by less than one percent of the vote. And then when he runs for reelection,
you know, he wins forty nine states. Well, what did he do in the meantime, Well, he did a few things to try to appear more reasonable, and he did appear more reasonable with his opening to China, which was a gigantic event that only a Republican can do at the time, because if a Democrat did it, Richard Nixon
would have attacked him and things like that. You know, he did not satisfy any real anti war protesters, but he was in a process of trying to wind down the Vietnam War, and that moved him a little bit more. You know, that picked up some more space in the center. And that's what everyone has always done. And Trump is the only one. He gets the nomination, he doesn't try to get any more voters. He wins the presidency and
he doesn't try to get any more voters. You know, every other president at their first inauguration is trying to speak to the voters who didn't vote for him. Trump's first inauguration was, you know, stunning for a bunch of reasons, including that there wasn't a word said to voters who
didn't vote for him. That is a losing formula. If you knew only those things, like if you knew only this, that we elected a president who was an extremist in twenty sixteen, who then didn't spend a single day of his four years trying to appeal to voters who didn't vote for him. And oh, by the way, he got millions fewer votes than the other candidate in twenty sixteen, and he spends no time trying to pick up new votes. I would have said to you, that guy's going to lose,
and you don't have to tell me anything else. You don't have to tell me the names, you don't have to tell me the parties, you don't tell me anything else. I'll say, well, that president's going to lose reelection just on that math alone.
So my question to you is, and I think this is sort of an unknowable question, so it's more of I don't know how you am.
That's my specialty. Well, my specialty is trying to weave at least a paragraph around an unknowable so that it sounds like a much more repponsive thing than simply saying I don't know.
Let's try it.
We'll start that section of the game show right now.
So what seems very clear to me is that we don't really know what two hundred million Americans are really thinking, right We don't really know because we just don't have the tools anymore. I feel like the unknown is, to quote someone who is dubious at best, is how are these people getting their news?
Well, we know how they're not getting their news because we've always known that, and that is the undecided voter consumes nothing of what we consider news their consumption of coverage of government. Let's say, for example, Wow, the miracle that Joe Biden got the port opened in Baltimore in eleven weeks, got the debris out of the channel, opening up the roots for grain exports from Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa who export their grains through the Port of Baltimore.
That is unn and will remain unknown in Kansas, Nebraska, and Iowa to all undecided voters there, and it'll remain unknown to most voters there. But undecided voters relationship to government achievements like that or student loan forgiveness or whatever you want to name in government, or their understanding of campaigns and candidacies, and the difference between you know what a Trump presidency will be and what a Biden presidency will be. That is comparable to my knowledge of the
PGA tour. I'm sitting here right now. And if Tiger Woods is still a professional golfer, he's the only name I can name you. I can't name you another one. And if you're telling me somebody other than Tiger Woods wins golf games somewhere, I have no idea, and.
I'm not going to know.
You know, by the way, it's not like I spend any energy avoiding that information. They're not spending any energy avoiding MSNBC and CNN in their channel package. You know, they're off on those other channels, and they don't even know where we are. And we have known in the twentieth century. We knew way back then. We knew that the undercided voter has never read an op ed piece, not just in the election year, never in their lives.
We knew that the undercided voter had never read an editorial ever, you know, which made the game of chasing newspaper editorial endorsements really funny to people in politics because those are for undecided voters, and undecided voters don't read the newspaper. It's like, if you could get the endorsement of Sports Illustrated at the time, you know, a big sports magazine, you know that would help because the people reading that included a lot of undecided voters who never
read and consumed any political information. And then so what today The way that's changed is on their Facebook feeds and in their lives without ever seeking it out. Their friends can pop in some political hunk of some kind, you know, that floats without particular welcome into their field of view, and that stuff is all random. It's just totally random. It's not like, well, you know, the guy lives in Kansas City, so at some point he noticed
a Kansas City Star headline or something. No, it's not that. It's a totally random thing. And so, you know, the shorter answer to it is they're not getting undecided voters and not getting their information from any of the places we would.
Like them to m That's a good point.
Which parenthetically is why you need a lot of money to run for president, because the way you pierce that is by the ultra expensive thing called TV advertising, and a TV thirty second ad pops on in the middle of your sitcom and you cannot avoid it. That's the reason campaigns are expensive.
Yeah, and Biden just like Josh Shapiro, you know, Josh Shapiro fixed that. I think it was a highway Route ninety five, Route ninety five in in something like some incredibly short amount of time, and I feel like that did affect his popularity. So maybe doing these things does if projected correctly.
Sure it does in Pennsylvania where the drivers are who know there's a hole in their highway, like absolutely, And eventually, you know, the people who use that bridge in Baltimore, so they're not going to care very much about the channel because the people don't use the channel, just giant shippers do. Right, But once that bridge gets across there,
they'll like that. But the bridge is going to take years, you know, because bridges take years, and you know, no one's going to say thank you for that, you know, for taking years. You're right, that miracle they did on Route ninety five was amazing, and everybody who lived in and around that area and used that road absolutely knows how quickly that happened.
Yeah, Josh Shapiro, there we go, Lawrence, Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you very much. Spring is here, and I bet you are trying to look fashionable, So why not pick up some fashionable all new fast politics merchandise. We just opened a news store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats, and top bags. To grab some, head to fastpolitics dot com. Margaret Sullivan is a columnist for the Guardian and author of Newsroom Confidential.
Hello Margaret Sullivan, Welcome to Fast Welcome back to Fast Politics, my friend, my mentor.
Thank you, Mollie.
It's great to be here with you again and with your many devoted listeners.
I love chatting with you all.
Well, I'm so happy to have you. So every time there's like media drama, I'm sorry to say that you end up being the number one call for a number of reasons, but largely because you are very, very smart, but also because you have a moral compass.
Thank you.
I appreciate that people often tell me that I'm the voice of sanity. You know, it sounds a little dull, but I mean, I'll take it, and it's an king world. So I well, thank you. I hope I have a moral compass. I would like to think so, and I appreciate your saying that.
The first thing I want to talk to you about is what does it look like? So we have this A lot of drama at your former employer at the Washington Post. A lot of media stories are just like media staring at themselves and they find it fascinating, but doesn't necessarily have so much real world impact. This really does.
Basically what happened is The Washington Post is owned by a benevolent billionaire by the name of Jeff Bezos, who very booky and interested in books and interested in literature, which by the way, makes him like one of the two billionaires who are interested in that which will take it. Barnow. So he had this editor you worked with for a long time, Venera famous, you know, real newspaper man. Then he stepped down right, That was Marty bar They put
in a woman very capable from the Associated Press. They put in a publisher who comes from Murdoch World, and now Murdoch World can be okay. Sometimes they create people who are very good newspeople. One of my best friends is an executive at News Corporate. I mean, it is not necessarily there are good serious journalists, maybe some of them still around at Fox, though they're not necessarily allowed on air at night.
Well, I think you see a lot of what you're talking about on the news side of the Wall Street Journal yes, it's Murdoch controlled. And while the opinion side is very right wing and often illogic goal and insane, the news side has done some fantastic work. In fact, they broke the famous Theanose story, they Brokemmy Daniel's story, they do work.
Right reporting, and they broke the Elon drug story. But can you sort of talk to us about the phone hacking and where he comes from in Murdoch world and how he was actually quite involved in a lot of these controversies.
Basically, a number of years ago, maybe a decade or so ago, British tabloids were involved in this horrible you know, breaking into private people's and celebrities phone calls. It was illegal, and they were doing it for stories, and they had many stories about it, and then it was busted wide open. Eventually one of the papers involved, The News of the World,
a Murdoch paper, had to go out of business. So, I mean, it had huge repercussions and will Lewis, who's the new publisher of The Washington Post, was brought in to do sort of cleanup. And you know, it's not one hundred percent clear what his role really was. But now the reason that in the news now is that Prince Harry.
Yeah, there's a whole royal family aspect to this.
Harry has sued you know, number of these media properties and the case is making its way through civil court in the UK.
Okay.
So will Lewis, who was a named publisher and CEO of the Washington Post, has been named in the suit, not as a defendant but as a sort of interested party, someone they want to talk to and so on. I mean, it doesn't look great for him, and he's eager to make sure people don't really know about it. So that's I mean, a really vague but you know, kind of the broad background.
I think that's a really good point. So what happened here is that the editor of the Post then, Sally Busby, had a piece on the hacking he did not wanted to run, right, or a piece on his involvement in the hacking.
Yes, a piece on that you know, mentioned his name as involved in this whole scandal. But you know, I mean very certainly, I'm sure a very factual, fair piece. It didn't say he was responsible for the scandal, but it did, you know, I think, connect his name with this whole thing, which he really did not want.
And there really is a sense in which there's really like supposed to be kind of an editorial wall between what editorial publishes and what the desire of the publisher and CEO.
Is right, and that's always you know, there are gray areas with it, believe me. And I was the editor of a newspaper for twelve years, my hometown Buffalo, Buffalo News, and I had a publisher who was very interested in the newsroom and got involved, and I had to push him back all the time on projects that he was really interested in.
You know.
I mean there's frequently sort of some tussling between the publisher and the editor that is not all that unusual. But in this case, what will Lewis did, if I can get ahead of the story here is he said to Sally Busby reportedly, I don't think there's any news value to that's story that you want to run. I think it's a it would be a lapse in judgment for you to run it. And she ran it anyway. Then fast forward a little ways, not very far, and she is abruptly defenestrated.
You know, she's kicked out.
No one really thinks that that was the direct reason for it, but it didn't help. And I think the direct reason for it was that will Lewis wanted to do this very radical reorganization of the paper in the newsroom supposedly, I mean, this is crazy talk, but a third newsroom, which there's not two newsrooms, so I don't know how you have a third because there's the newsroom and there's the opinion side, which is not a newsroom.
Then talking about this third inch anyway, she seemed to not want to go run the third newsroom very much understandably into her credit, so she stepped down because she was being demoted. That's what this is about. And then, interestingly, and you can speculate on why this now surfaces and who might have been interested in make its surface now reading the New York Times about how she tried to run this story and he got too involved.
What Margaret's saying, it is really important. When you read a story, it's always worth thinking, especially when there are sources and it's not clear who the sources, which is most stories, It's always worth thinking, why am I getting this information now?
Exactly who does this benefit? Where did it come from? How transparent is the news organization being with me? About why I'm reading this, especially if it's all sourced anonymously. Now, that is really bad stuff because it's very hard to tell whether it's trustworthy.
But it happens all.
The time, and I particularly object if I can get on my high horse for a moment.
I love it.
Blind quotes meaning an actual quotation that crashes somebody, that is put according to a person with knowledge of the matter. I mean, that should not happen. I don't believe in that. I think that know, we shouldn't. We shouldn't do that. It's a very bad practice. But but Molly is one hundred percent right that you have to think about why am I reading this story right now?
And who does it? Where might this have come from? And why are you know? What are the what are the sort of underpinnings.
Of it, and why is it coming out now?
We mustn't forget the NPR David Falconflick aspect to this.
Oh yes, Oh I love David Falconflick tell that story.
No.
So there's a wonderful, very good media reporter, very well respected in the industry and by the public, David Falconflick. And it turns out after Sally Buzzby's story comes out about how she was told not to run this piece
about will Lewis. Then David Fulkenflick felt it was appropriate to tell something that he'd known about for a while, which was that will Lewis had tried to squelch a similar story in NPR by offering David Falcnflick a deal and the deepal supposedly was, don't run that story and I'll give you a big exclusive of some sort later. Well, that wasn't something that David Folkenflick was going to buy, and he went ahead and ran his story. By the way,
the cover up is always worse than the crime. There's also something called the Strysand effect, which is the more you try to stop something from coming out, the more publicity it's going to get. But at any rate, Thanks Volkli comes out with this thing, and then will Lewis says, oh, this guy's not a journalist, he's an activist. And he denied that. He said it was off the record, that David had broken their off the record arrangement, which is very difficult to believe in David denies, and I will
believe David Wolknflick. One hundred times over, you know, just about anybody else. It's another example of will Lewis trying to squelch stories that make him look bad.
And it really is.
A case of throwing attempting very clumsily to throw his power around.
Yes exactly. I just want to add one thing about David, which is he is really a very respected, very mild mannered person who I think of him like Eric Wemple, Like I mean, Eric Wemple is not mild mannered, but both of them are like very committed to the story.
Yeah, you know, these are factual people for the most part.
And yeah, I mean you know. Also, David has done a lot of work. He wrote a book about the Murdocks. He's very knowledgeable about this stuff. Just another part of the Strysand effect here, which is don't try to cover things up because it only makes it worse. Is that by will Lewis being so concerned about squelching these stories. Now I know of three news organizations that are pursuing his involvement in all of this much more than they would have been would have now they're like, oh wow,
there must really be something there. And these are big news organizations with investigative staffs, so you know, who knows what we're going to learn. And then there's also the discovery aspect of the of the legal case, so a lot could come out there too, and you know, it may be that he hasn't really done anything wrong, and that's fun. I mean, there is this whole line of inquiry about thousands of emails that he is said to
have deleted in the clean up process. Now I don't know whether that was okay or not, but it doesn't really seem that great. I don't know.
I feel like we're getting pure, unadulterated Margaret today, which I love. I'm here for it. Well.
You know, I don't always feel totally knowledgeable, but because I worked at the Washington Post for six years, I'm in touch with people there. I was the public editor of the New York Times, so I have this kind of inside scrutiny thing. I actually feel like I'm on reasonably solid ground here. I just wrote about this yesterday, with all learning fresh for me. A lot of times I can't actually say anything because I don't know, but here I feel I know what there is to know.
And you should also read Margaret's column in the Guardian, which is really really, really good. Going to talk about this without naming the person's name. As this continued on, because the story even has another mushroom. It turned out that someone did give will Lewis the piece he wanted. Yes, will Lewis went to someone who is a media reporter and gave them the fluffy piece that he had wanted to run.
And that's tells us something about.
Again, you know, if we're like pulling back the curtain on journalism here, it's like there's a kind of story that we call a beat sweetener.
And that is be eat, not be ee t. So it's not about red beats, but it's about we have a beat.
We're covering a beat, and if we want to sweeten our sources and make sure they come to us with stories or that we can have access to them later, we will sometimes write up a kind and loving and flattering piece about them.
And that's called a beat sweetener.
And I think that, you know, sometimes people do that in order to keep access. Yes, but it's actually not the most wonderful kind of journalism there.
Is, and in a situation like this, it really focks you.
Well, it's not good for the reader It might be good for the reporter, you know, it's not good the reader or the listener or whatever.
But it's not good when you have everybody talking about that. It doesn't make you look like a serious person. So then the other thing I want to talk to you about is what could Jeff Bezos do right now if he wanted to just like get rid of this whole situation.
Right Well, a little bit of background here is that the Post is losing money. It's leadership is down. Of course, almost everybody's readership is down or listenership is down.
We know that.
And news organizations are mostly, with one or two exceptions, they're mostly struggling badly. So the Post is not special here. But he's trying to like get it on the right track financially. Okay, So what could Bezos who owns the Post, and by the way, he basically came in ten years ago and saved the Post and gave it a new one, so we appreciate that. First and foremost, he could fire
will Lewis and start over. And that would be I said in my column, that would be the cleanest and best move, and it would be.
Not so hard to do. Ultimately, give him a severend.
Well that the problem then is, oh, now I have to go out and find a publisher who's going to write the ship.
You could even also just bring back Marty for a little bit.
Well, Marty was an editor, not a publisher, so they need somebody on the business side. Anyway, I don't see much sentiment for that right now, so I tried to think about what could he do while still keeping will Lewis in place, which is what he seems to want to do. My sources tell me there's no immediate move to dump will Lewis, so okay, but we still would like to deal with this. So I have three suggestions
and they go like this. One will Lewis needs to pledge to the staff and to the public that he's going to respect the line between the business side and the editorial side and bought out so you make a declarative statement. Two, the Post should hire an onbudsman or public editor like they used to have, and someone who could be an internal watchdog and help assure that, you know, bad things don't happen and would be able to be
you know, show accountability and transparency. And third, Bezos himself, who hardly ever says anything about anything should in this case make a statement that he's proud to own the Post. He wants it to be the best paper it can be in the tradition of Watergate and you know, Snowden and all that stuff that the Post has done, and he you know, strongly believes in the independence of the
of the newsroom. All those things would go a long way while leaving Lewis in place until he possibly stumbles or discovery or a story makes it completely untenable for him to be there.
Yeah, all good ideas. Can you just give us one second on what journalist should focus on right now now in this run up to the twenty twenty four election and potential autocracy.
Yes, I think they should, you know, and I'll borrow this because some people are smarter than others from Jay Rosen at NYU and he's talking about the tendency for there to be a constantly interest in the horse race, coverage of the horse race, who's winning, who's ahead, what's the latest poll say? And using that horse race metaphor, he says in the six words that we should focus on not the odds, but the stakes. In other words, what are the consequences of this election. What will it
mean to have Trump elected again? What would it mean to have Biden re elected? We should be focusing our attention on that, not on the latest poll from Resmussen, which is probably bad, you know, all of that, and not focusing endlessly, I feel, and pointlessly on Joe Biden's age, because we know how old he is, and we know that Donald Trump is three years younger and is talking about sharks and so on.
Yeah, Margaret Sullivan, it's always shark week here. Thank you for joining us.
Absolutely, we have to have that every week.
Sam Brody is a political reporter at The Globe. Sam Brody, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Thanks for having me.
That was a very good, fancy introduction. You get this fancy introduction because on Thursday, Donald Trump is back in Congress the first time since the insurrection, which he actually did not go while his people were smearing poop on the walls, but he did give a speech nearby before they marched over there. So he is back. He is sharing his wisdom with the United States House of Representatives. And I want to read you a few quotes and
get your hottest take here if you don't mind. Of course, these are from Jake Sherman, who is really punch bowl news. They really cover Congress in a way that you do. He called the DOJ dirty bastards. He called out Nancy Mace and said he was proud to support her and said how much he likes her. He made the case that he was harder on Russia than Biden was. He told the group that he was leading in the presidential contest in Virginia. He also said that they sang him
Happy Birthday. He said, I mean, this is like, if the polling weren't so close, this would be hilarious. He also told them this got Jake. He gave us a lot of question marks here. Nancy Pelosi's daughter is a wacko. Her daughter told me, if things were different, Nancy and I would be perfect together. There's an age difference, though, God discuss.
Here's why this is all sort of funny is that when Trump was it was like Announce said, he's you know, get a visit with the House Republicans and visit with the Center Republican. Separate listener Mike on the radio this morning talk about the reasons that they were bringing Trump to Capitol Hill to have this meeting and he's saying, Look, we're all just, you know, very very excited about the election, and we're really anxious to hear from the president what
his plans are for governing. We want to discuss ideas with him about things that we can do together when House Republicans are in the majority next year and Donald Trump is back in the White House. And you've heard a similar thing from Center Republicans. He said, we want to hear about Donald Trump's plans. And I think ahead of time you could go, Okay, maybe this isn't Donald Trump's strength necessarily is talking about what his policy plans are.
But we had congressional leaders having this very like earnest we are inviting him so that we can hear more about what he wants to do. And now, within like two seconds of Donald Trump entering the room in Capitol Hill, it's just like glaringly obvious sort of the jig is up here that like, this is not about Donald Trump
coming to discuss what he wants to do. We may get some interesting like tea leaves that sort of suggestings that he might do, but you know, this is like the Donald Trump story hour, and this is kind of what happens every time he goes and is in front of a bunch of adoring House Republicans are Senate Republicans.
It's like he loves, like, oh yeah, like calling out.
Individual people like who want who how to support like Nancy Mace, Like that's an interesting thing.
He's like, you know, completely going off on the DOJ. It's about him. It's always about him.
And to the extent that there is plans or kind of an agenda that is going to be discussed in a forum like this with Trump, it kind of surrounds him. I think something I was thinking about leading into this is like House Republicans and Center Republicans are sort of bending over backwards to show that they are going to take some kind of action in response to his conviction in Manhattan, right.
And defund the DOJ, which you can't do, but.
Right exactly, or in the Senate that they're going to grind all business to a halt, or you know, a dozen or more senators are saying that they're going to grind everything to a halt because of this conviction. And so I think we'll hear a lot of actually helpful specifics in terms of understanding what he wants to do It's not going to be about tax policy or healthcare.
It's going to be about you know, what might happen with Republicans in Congress in a second Trump administration as it relates to witning for the DOJ steps that they may take, just specifically in response to what they see as this political persecution.
I want to read you one more thing that's coming out of this meeting, because I feel like this is really the Trump We all know one out of ten that impeached, only one is left, which is also by the way, So he's talking about getting rid of the impeachment ten. But the great part of this is actually he's wrong.
Yeah, that's not true. About to say there's actually to day Nobody tell him, don't tell him.
Actually I saw that one of them is at least in the room who came in, Dan Neuhouse, who is a Republican from Washington State who voted to impeach Donald Trump has endorsed his primary opponent, but Dan Newhouse went in there, I guess just to because.
Everyone else is doing it. Not sure.
And then another guy, David Valadeo, who is another one of them from California who's kind of has a Blue district. He's going to get booted, it's not going to this, So it captures why he's there. What's really interesting too to think about is, you know, obviously the January sixth book end. Here, I find myself thinking about that weird moment two weeks after January six where Republicans were distancing themselves.
For Donald Trump.
Right, they almost care?
Yeah, And the idea of Donald Trump coming to the capital even six months after January sixth would have been considered, you.
Know, is this something that they want to do. Now here's his first visit since then.
And I don't even really know when he would have gone before because as you point out, like you were not there, he was nearby, he was there. I don't know when he was up there even before that, It's been a long time since he was up there. But now the party is more fully within his control and graphs than at any point really in years, forget since January sixth, maybe even before. And I think what we're seeing is they're pretty symbolic and start confirmation of that.
Yeah. But the other thing is, like the larger joke about this, right, is Trump is going to come and talk about policy? What policy? He has policy. Policy is tax cuts. His policy is he wants to give people tax cuts so they vote for him, and then his party wants to end birth control and IVF and the Morning after pill and maybe gay marriage. This guy's not running on a particular policy. Like twenty sixteen, Trump was running on. What He was running on this idea that
he was going to make America great again. He was going to do this populism that somehow Hillary wasn't going to do. He doesn't even advertise that anymore.
Right, Yeah, you know, he's not talking about Trey for instance, And that was like an enormous component of his twenty sixteen run that made him so successful in states like Michigan and Wisconsin. So look, I mean, yeah, I think where do Republicans and Trump align, Where do they want to hear from him from in terms of what they're
going to do. I think tax policy. And look, if you look back at the first Trump administration, what was kind of the one area where they managed to do anything like legislatively, It was tax cuts past his prologue. I think that's that's the most obvious thing to happen again. I think you know, all the things you note on what congressional Republicans want to do as it relates to you know, reproductive care. Trump is hard to pin down at best on that stuff. Unclear how he would handle
it if you were president. I do think the one area where they are very, very aligned and really what they want this election to be about is immigration and the board. Beyond tax cuts, certainly there are executive actions that Trump would take. It's obviously extremely hard to get
any kind of standalone immigration reform build through Congress. But I think with the appropriations process and like other things, should Republicans control Congress and Trump is in charge, I think they will be very aggressive on that and they want to put that on the front burner. I think it will be this year's version of you know, the trade and kind of economic populism that that Trump had.
It's going to be tax cuts, immigration, and then like revenge sort of for this, you know, alleged weaponization of the government.
Jailing journalists and the Biden family. But I don't know that people vote on this or people necessarily give a shit about issues anymore or policy, because clearly we are in this post policy goop. But it is interesting to me, like a lot of the populist trade stuff Biden has has been doing. And then he also did do border legislation. I mean, he tried to pass a border legislation and then he did an executive action. But you're here to talk about Congress and the Senate. Can we please do
a few minutes on where we are now? It seems like the MAGA senators have decided that they're going to try to make Trump happy by holding up appointments. Is that where we are now?
Yeah?
I mean so basically after the conviction in New York, Mike Wee who has emerged as you know, the kind of most maybe MAGA senator of them all, which is really interesting for a lot of reasons, given that you know, he was previously kind of glukewarm on Trump, which represented where like you know, Utah Mormon Republican conservatives had been on Trump, and now he's kind of.
And really still are yeah, mean very much. He may have gone along to MAGA, but like, this is a state that elected Mitt Romney right after Trump won, and Mitt Romney is really I think more of what the state is still.
Yeah, and you know, they elected this governor, Spencer Cox, who's like kind of the classic example, who's like talking about civility and like does events with democratic governors where they talk about like have a disagreement with more empathy and civility. So that's where you Tai is and so that it's interesting saying that Mike Lee has kind of really I mean, he has taken the mantle of the
most sort of naga partisan warrior in the Senate. And so what he did right after the conviction was issued this letter along with several other senators including marcro Rubio, which was very interesting because he was sort of an odd man out of this group until you doctor and potentially that he is jockeying for a vice presidential consideration.
But they said that, you know, this is unacceptable and that Republicans are not going to go along, obviously not mentioning that this was a state case and not a federal case. But they said, yeah, we are not going to cooperate on judicial nominations, we are not going to cooperate on government appointments, we are not going to cooperate on any non defense spending. You know, it's very general
and vague sort of threats. Now you might be ausking, wait, were these folks cooperating at all before with any elements of the Democratic agenda, and folks like Mike Lee really weren't. The thing is is that in the Senate, even one senator has a tremendous amount of power not to stop legislation or stop people from being conferred. They can just make it painfully, painfully slow. And you know, if you
have well people who are committed to doing that. I think that's where it is right about now, because more people have signed on to this, you know, Mike Lee letter since it came out, and so it's all about how it's applied. I don't think anyone just yet is blaring the alarm bell saying, you know, how, how is anything possibly going to get done in the Senate under these conditions? But it's a notable sort of upping of the anti to say, you know, here's what we're prepared
to do. And look, you know there's a lot that Biden and Democrats want to do in the Senate while they still have control. They've confirmed judges and administration folks that are pretty rapid clip. They want to keep doing that because that's what the Senate can do.
Can they stop that from happening?
Now?
They can't stop it from happening, but there's procedural levers that they can pull in order to slow things down.
The Senate is a lot different from the House justin that, you know, it operates on a basis of there is like a mutual kind of partisan understanding of each other where you know, like parties will put up fights on bills, but when it comes to like expedited consideration, the party, the minority party will often just let the majority party, you know, proceed with something and not completely.
Jack it out. Usually the reason is because people just want to go home on Thursday.
If they don't want to keep people in for the weekend, they don't want to keep people in on the holidays. Ultimately, you know, they want to put up the partisan fight, have the argument post, the tweets, have the floor speech, but people know, Okay, this is ultimately going to pass.
That's the thing. They can't stop things now.
I think what some of these you know, kind of the magnfaction and the Senate wants to do is make or at least what they say they want to do.
Is make everything as painful as possible.
Again, they can't stop the sayings unless they are able to, like marshal votes or do whatever internally in order to actually try and defeat dominees. But the biggest tool that they have in their toolkitten is to slow things down, and that's just going to make it more painful for everybody. So whether they actually follow through with it is interesting. But I do think it was the most kind of concrete, sort of downstream thing happening from the Trump condition in
terms of what it meant for Capitol Hill. I mean, pretty predictable that Jim Jordan and those kinds of folks are.
Gonna theseus are always going to be on board. But Bill Haggarty from Tennessee. I watch a lot of c SPAN and he's really turned into a lunatic, that's my professional opinion.
So he's on this letter. He's interesting because he's like kind of more of a like he was Trump's ambassador to Japan and had kind of positioned himself as more of a statesman. But I do think what this Lee effort has done a little bit has sort of been like become a bit of a litmus test, right are you maga?
Are you not for Donald J? Trump?
Right?
And I think one thing to really hone in on that I think is super important with all this is with the connection in New York, and I pay a lot of attention for better or for worse, to like what people in the like MAGA or like MAGA adjacent influencers spheres are saying about all this and the resounding feeling and it is extremely strong in this group is we're done watching Republicans put out statements and tweets and do media appearances where they cry the treatment of Donald
Trump and then just kind of do nothing about it. In their eyes, they want action. They're saying, the time we're talking is over. It is time for you guys
to act. And that basically is the sentiment that Mike Lee was speaking directly to when he was doing this letter, and he kind of threw down a gautlet is actually kind of smart, basically saying, look, if you want to show people, not even show Trump, if you want to show the party base that you are serious here, that you are actually doing what you're saying you're going to do, not just another swamp rhino, then you got to get on board with this. And the funny thing is like,
is this going to have any impact? We don't know.
That's the litmus test.
I want to talk about a piece you just wrote for The Boss. Democrats are running for state legislature and record numbers. This is this fact that wonderful. Amanda Littman from Run for Something talks about this tail codes effect where that maybe the bottom of the ticket helps the top. What do you think.
Yeah, I think it's a really interesting dynamic to keep an eye on and something that could make a big difference this year. And I spoke to a man there for the story, and I think she makes some smart points about Look, what I focused on in the story is that, you know, in many states there are just Democrats running in almost every single legislative state, legislative state Senate district. A lot of those districts they may not win,
they're solidly Republican districts. But by putting up a candidate giving people another reason to turn out, often these candidates are more well known in their communities. They're canvassing her hockey doors. By giving people another reason to turn out, you can you know, just slightly bump up that turnout in you know, maybe a red district, but in the broader content of statewide. Because we're talking about states like Wisconsin, Arizona,
North Carolina, Pennsylvania. These are the states they're going to decide the Senate, they're going to decide the White House. And Democrats, I think are now understanding that if you compete everywhere, if you bring the Democratic message into more places, that's just necessarily going to help the top of the ticket. And I think it's important because you know, this is Joe Biden. You know, if he's struggling with popularity, people may not be inclined to just come out to vote
for him. They need to give Democrats other reasons.
To come out.
So it's a dynamic that is important to watch, and I think it's going to have big implications not just for how these states are controlled and who's in charge, but also you know what ends up happening at the top of the ticket.
It's an important and it's an interesting idea. Thank you so much, Sam.
Brody, always a pleasure. Thanks for having me. They're no moment second. Jesse Cannon my junk fast.
I often think of when people talk about how Trump got elected, they say, is an authentic Fox News grandpa, And today he was described as your drunk uncle, and I say that sounds right too.
So Donald Trump went to Congress first time since the Armed Insurrection, though he didn't actually show up for the Armed insurrection, but he showed up there, a source in the room put it, and these are Republicans, these are his people, right. He did also say Nancy Pelosi's daughter was a quote unquote wacko. You would think he had done enough to that family. As one source in the room put it, Trump was rambling like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion. I'm reading this from
notice NTUS. You should all subscribe. It's a nonprofit newsroom. Very very good. Trump was just Trump. And then they took lots of embarrassing photos with him where it looked like they were kissing his ring. And immediately afterwards, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story that started with Trump calls Milwaukee quote horrible city weeks before RNC comes to town. Congratulations, Donald Trump, you are our moment of fuckery. 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.