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 Trump's former chief of staff says Trump didn't realize Hitler's generals were Nazis? What did he think they were? We have such a great show for you today, the Mary Trump Shows. Mary Trump stops by to talk about her uncle's cognitive decline. Then we'll be joined by CNN's Ellie Reeve to talk about her encounters with voters in Georgia. But first the news.
So Molly Trump's former chief of staff, very regarded man in many circles, John Kelly, has finally decided to do the right thing and start spilling the beans about what mister Trump is like behind the scenes. And the kids like to say, you're spilling tea when you do things like this. I'd like to think he kicked the Starbucks tea stand over in the whole place.
So I would say John Kelly has spoken before, but he never spoken like the way he has recently. So he basically gave Mike Schmidt from The New York Times. He answered a bunch of questions on the record, taped. They are on the New York Times website, and they're worth listening to. Basically, Mike Schmidt cues him up, says do you think Trump wants to be a dictator? And Kelly does, in fact answer these questions in his own voice. Now you'll remember Kelly John Kelly is a retired US
Marine Corps general. He served as White House Chief of Staff for Donald Trump for two years from twenty seventeen to twenty nineteen. He was also before that, he was the United States Secretary of Homeland Security. He went to the Naval War College. He's a very serious military guy. This is not the kind of person who does interviews
like this unless he is really worried. And I think that it's worth realizing that someone like this coming out and saying something like this at this moment is because he didn't necessarily want to, but he knew he had to. And The Times has done a lot of really good reporting on this. Somehow none of it has been none of it has made it to the front page, which I think is really disappointing, but it is good to
see that people are covering it. Jeff Goldberg wrote about it for The Atlantic and got into this sort of minutia about Trump didn't know that Hitler's generals were Nazis, and he also wanted to have the same kind of generals that Hitler did. It's a little bit of where is my Roy Cohen, But the idea is the same. He would like a lawyer who would do anything for him, he would like a general who would do anything for him.
There's also a really bleak part in it where he says he's going to bury this woman who's in the military, who's a general who was murdered and was Mexican, and then he starts yelling about how he said he was going to pay for it. He starts yelling about how it costs sixty thousand dollars, and he says some really racist stuff. And then her sister is now voting for Trump and is quite upset that this story somehow might be used against Trump. So it's not a cult exactly,
but it kind of is. John Kelly is not the only person who believes that Donald Trump is an autocrat and a danger Jesse can you play the clip from CNA sure kem Chief of Staff.
Kelly also said that he believed that Donald Trump fell under the definition of a fascist do you also consider Donald Trump to be a fascist?
You know, I've spoken out against lowering the civil discourse in this country and personal tax and labels and stuff like that. So look, I'm not going to get into that type of labeling if you will, But you know, John Kelly did something and he looked it up in ationnaring if you if you look it up, I think everybody should ask yourself does he fall into those categories? And it's hard to say that he doesn't when you kind.
Of look at those terms.
But you know, he certainly has those inclinations, and.
I think it's something we should be worried about. Yes, he certainly has so brave, he certainly has those inclinations. But you know, again, for Mark Asper to say this on CNN, these people are saying this because they are really worried, right, Like, they don't do this lightly. This is not like a pundit saying this. These military guys are trained not to do stuff like this. So I
do think it's meaningful. Another thing that Harris did which was really smart, was today at one o'clock she gave a statement about how meaningful it was that these guys were coming forward. Look, the Trump base. They don't care. Right, it's baked in. They are not going to be moved by this, but they are not going to be moved
by anything. What Harris needs is to is for the normal people in this country to go, oh, this is really important and to take heed that this is not a normal election cycle and Donald Trump is not a normal candidate.
So let's turnover to another fella that we unfortunately have to discuss all the time. One Elon Musk. Governor Walls at a recent rally described him properly as Elon's on that stage, jumping around, skipping like a dipshit. Musk did not like this song.
Right, we know what Musk believes now, we know that he is quite right wing. He's gone full in on the Trump train, giving him millions and millions of dollars and supporting him in any way, shape or form he can. He was incredibly mad at Walls. I mean, it's a ridiculous thing to do, jumping on stage, but whatever. So Musk responded to Walls on X by saying, you're going to lose at Tim Walls, saving the American people from the torture of hearing you for four years was worth it.
Maybe Elon Musk people relate to this nefarious South African billionaire. I sure don't, Okay, So Jesse, I'm hoping you can not to just clip from CNN today, but I'm hoping you could play this tape of Christin Unu, who is the new Hampshire governor. But he's term limited out and he is unable to disavow Trump. So basically the interviewer asks him, if he disavows Trump, just listen to this fucking thing.
Good new comments and the new warning from Donald Trump's former and longest serving Chief of Staff, Marine General John Kelly. Kelly, speaking on the record in a series of interviews, just out saying that Trump fits the definition of fascist and also confirming Trump's affinity for Hitler and Hitler's generals. According to John Kelly, I want to play for you what Kelly told The New York Times overnight.
Bon Myers, people who are dicators said that falls into the general definition of fascist.
More than one, you know, into some good things.
And of course.
If you know history, again, I think he's lacking a matter.
But if you know what his you know, hit was all about, uh, you would be pretty.
Hard to make an argument that he did anything good.
John Kelly also spoke with The Atlantic. Kelly says that he once asked Donald Trump, then President Trump, about his statement that he needed generals like Hitler had. Surely you can't mean Hitler's generals, Kelly asked him. Trump responded that that is exactly what he meant. Yeah, yeah, Hitler's generals. Joining us right now is Republican Governor of New Hampshire, Governor Christen You. It's good to see you, Governor, thanks
for being here. Hearing that, does that change how you feel about Donald Trump and your plans to vote for him?
Now? Look, I respect General Kelly. I think he's great, and he's got a long term relationship with the president. You know, when you get into these final weeks, it's.
All about it's all about results.
So of course you're going to get salacious things said and all that, and I'm not taking away the general's conversation with the former president. But at the end of the day, you just what that poll that your team is just looking at depends what independence, what results. They don't want that kind of ultraliberal extremism. They want to be told the truth. They want to get their cost of living down. That's where voters are going to go. So it's not just a Chris Sano thing or a
General Kelly thing. If you're talking to the American voters out there.
The American voters want fascism, so let's give it to them. Very brave, Kristin Unu. We should not have expected anything last from a Trump Sicka fan who could have not been that way. By the way, these people are not constitutionally mandated to go on CNN. If you can't defend the indefense ball, you don't need to go on television. Mary Trump is the host of The Mary Trump Show and the author of Who Could Have Or Love You? A family memoir? Hello Mary Trump, Hello Mulla jung Fest.
I feel like, what's less than fumes?
What is?
What is two weeks to the election? It's actually thirteen days? Or are we twelve days when this drops?
Oh yeah, uh huh yes, so yes, what is less than fumes? I think it depends on your understanding about energy works, because I've heard it's a big amorphous thing. But yeah, I think less than fumes is existing in.
An airless vacuum.
It's funny because it's like I am a NEPO baby. You may know this, and one of the things I truly hate is talking about my famous parent. And I was thinking about you, and my famous parent is not even that famous, nor is she that objectionable. And then I'm thinking to myself, like, fucking poor Mary, she has to be related to this guy. I'm sorry. So I want you to know I'm sorry.
Well I appreciate that, especially since like I'm not even an EPO baby, Like, I didn't get it from him.
Now, if anything, you got less from it.
He stole from me.
Yes, I was thinking about this because I was reading something where he used to trust to pay his bills, right, and I was like, god, damn it. I was like, she didn't even get like, I have a nice ring, you know.
I'm sorry, No, It's just it's like the funniest thing that people say to me when they think they're being clever and cruel, is that it's despicable that I griffed off his name.
I'm like, first of all, it's kind my name.
Exactly e.
Secondly, what exactly is the grift?
I'm not selling anybody gold sneakers or non fundible tokens.
You just have to do two seconds on, I need the kind of general's Hitler had. All right.
I know all of us have been asking this question for years ago, almost a decade, but given everything that's happened just in the last two weeks in terms of.
His obvious cognitive mind and the fact that it seems like some of the psychiatric disorders he's been walking around with for decades are reaching a.
Point, a critical point, and the disinhibition.
It's a really good point, the disinhibition.
Sorry, go on, yeah, and just even less comprehensible, less aware of where he is or what is the appropriate context in which to be, you know, calling the sitting president a fat pig or the vice president shit.
It's all unraveling.
So my question has been, is there anything he can do, given basically losing his mind on stage for thirty nine minutes and doing it again for another twenty minutes, is there anything he can do that will cause the corporate media or the Republican Party to decide that it was disqualified.
So far, the.
Answer seems to be no.
And we are literally living in a time when we have people who worked in his administration saying he's fascist to the core, and he adores and looks up to Adolf Hitler and wants his generals to be like Hitler's generals.
You know, It's like when I saw the.
Boat parade, Why that's the thing is beyond my comprehension. Down in Florida, a boat full of his supporters were flying swastika flags and from twenty twenty four flags, Like what.
Are we doing?
Yeah, And it's funny because it's like the weird thing. And I always think of you when we talk about mental illness, because you've worked in the field of psychology and you really know what you're talking about as on another level too, because that's what you do. And what I'm struck by is it's almost as if the party that is going along with this is almost more crazy than the guy who's you know, just declining.
Yeah, well, actually they're worse because yes, you can say a lot of his so called followers and a lot of his sick offense within the party, there's something seriously wrong with them. But then you have the people like JD Vance or Mitch McConnell who are cynically taking advantage of the situation.
And I don't want to give Donald the past.
He's horrible human being Most people with serious mental illnesses are suffering from cognitive decline, aren't.
He's all of those things right.
But the people in the Republican Party.
Know what's going on, and they have not once.
Stepped up to put a stop to this at a time, and there have been many times actually when the leadership of the Republican Party actually could have stopped him, chose to.
Go down this road.
Here we are twelve days out from this election, and now it just seems like they just want to drag him across the finish line. So come January twentieth, twenty twenty five, we're going to have the triumvirate of JD Events, Peter Thiel, and Elon Musk running the country.
That's sort of what I've been been sort of shocked by is Mitch McConnell could have said, vote to convict, then he can't run again. Then we'll reconnect, we'll figure it out, we'll you know, find a candidate who we think can win. And instead Mitch McConnell was like, no, it's too hard, Let's just let this fucking guy. And it's kind of an amazing place to be twelve days out.
You know, we don't know anything. All we I know is that that Harris is running this very very ambitious campaign where she's going to swing states, and she's doing these town halls with Liz Cheney, which I actually think are really excellent. What do you think of them?
I don't know. I'm of two minds.
Honestly, I think it's necessary. I think that Harris has to be pulling out every single stop. It's not my favorite part of presidential campaigns, right.
No, I agree, and my family has been long time no go on the Chenese.
Right, But this is a different kind of election, like it's it's it makes sense this time around. But just to be clear, like Republicans never do that with Democrats, when Republicans never talk about what Democrats should be in the cabinet of the Republican president. I think there's a
way to do it without pissing off the base. But I also understand that we have there are extreme circumstances here, and they do need to reach out to voters by utilizing people like Liz Cheney and Adamkinzinger and all the other Republicans who normally would not be people we would
be hanging out with at rellies. It's the gratuitous stuff that matters, Like I'm not entirely sure why we need to talk about Dick Cheney at all or thank him for his service to America, right, because that I don't think that helps your case, Like that's not necessary to talk to Republican voters, and all that does is alienate Democrats.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I do think though, what is important is that this is not normal. This is not a normal election, and this is one of these moments where you may not like a lot of the things that she stands for, though she's very centrist. You need to do this because otherwise the other guy's nots Yep.
This is the thing, Molly that definitely makes my brain short circuit.
We could say this, Kala Harris.
You may not agree in every single one of her positions, but Donald Trump is out of his mind, or Donald Trump is in serious cognitive decline. Or Donald Trump is a fascist, donald Trump is a trader, donald Trump is a convicted felon, Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist. Any one of those things should be enough, yes, and yet all of them together are not enough to get us more than within the margin of error.
What seriously is wrong with us.
It's not good. It's not good. I don't want to get depressed because there's a lot of really interesting stuff happening right now. I mean, I think of like in Nebraska, you have the Senate candidate who is an independent who could win.
Yeah, listen, I think there's a lot to be hopeful about. It just means that we can't forget.
Where we are now after we win. We cannot do that anymore. There's so much work to be done, and I think that should incentivize people. Hey, the more power Democrats have, the larger margin, the more we can start doing the real work instead of continuing to fight that rearguard action against fascism, which is what we've been doing for eight years now.
Even when we've.
Been in power, we haven't been able to do as much as we might have otherwise because we're continuing to deal with the fact that Donald Trump is the leader the Republican Party and the Republican Party supports him one. So, you know, by by focusing on what we could do if that weren't the burden, that should motivate us.
It's so true, and there are like things the government could do. I mean, I think about climate change, which is like this absolutely existential crisis heading our way at a faster clip than any of us had possibly dreamed, including you know, scientists for whom they had been worried about climate change that you know, they're shocked at how much worse it is, and we're just not addressing it because we're so busy with the terrifying spread of authoritarianism.
Yeah, and you know, how do you focus on that message when everything else feels like.
A crisis on a day to day basis.
It's also like, climate change is honestly something that I can't pay attention to because it freaks me out so much. Yeah, but it's an issue that shockingly has not been at the forefront of our politics, and the fact that it actually the biggest issue is that it has been made political. And this is another instance in which the Republicans drive the narrative. Why do Democrats act like, Yeah, immigration is one of the two most important issues.
What why give Republicans.
That much power to shape how we talk about this country and the future of this country?
And I feel like.
That that's kind of one of the things that's happened with climate change.
Yeah, No, it's for sure true and if anything has ever really shown the platebook for climate change, it's COVID. Right. I was sure when COVID came that Republicans would be like, Wow, this is serious. People are dying, Our people are dying. We have to take this seriously. And instead it was like, no, now it was not real.
Yeah, and actually I don't like giving Donald's credit for anything. Any other Republican who ran to be the nominee in twenty whatever it was sixteen would have handled COVID like any Democrat except Donald Ryan.
No, it's true, it's so bad. It's so bad. I mean, we really are in the worst possible timeline.
It feels that way.
I mean, obviously we're not in terms of our day to day lives. People are getting put into caps yet and et cetera. However, we are time limited here by the as you put it, the existential crisis of climate change.
We don't have.
Time to turn this thing around if the worst case scenario happens on have ever fit?
Yeah, we absolutely don't. And in fact, that's where we are right now, right, is that there is a limited window for climate We are seeing it happen in front of us. And if Donald Trump gets back in office, we will have missed the window, which is fine if you don't want to live on Earth, but bad if you want to live on Earth.
Yeah, I'm a I want to live.
On birth person, right, So sat that MASI?
Yeah, yeah, you.
Know, I don't know.
Maybe maybe you know, Musk has convinced a lot of people that Mars will be an option.
I don't know.
Oh yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, the dunning Kirger effective. Actually right there.
It's unbelievable because I before Elon Musk got on the internet, I was like, this guy is amazing, you know, before he started tweeting, I was like he's really smart and these people and we're really And then now I'm like nope, no, no, no, I was like nope.
And it's just a perfect storm of heart horrible that the most powerful, richest, most privileged people who have the most access to our data are also the biggest fucking morons on the planet.
Yeah.
Not to put peop find a point on it.
No, no, I think that's a very fair assessment as to where we are in this moment. And I might add just unbelievably depressing. I am impressed with Kelly coming out. I am impressed with these generals, you know, their whole careers, they're told never to be political, and they're told never to do this kind of thing. So I do understand what a big deal it is.
Yeah, it is. But also I would suggest it is not political.
Right, No, exactly. That's a really good point.
Yeah.
So, and also I think that the timing is good, yes, gone, no, just because it's not going to be one of those things that gets baked in, like we're constantly told, oh, Donald's is a rapist.
Yeah, it's baked. He lies all the time. Yeah, nobody cares, it's baked it. Well, hopefully the fascism Hitler thing will kind of like resonate a little bit.
I don't know, I haven't seen it on the front page of the paper, but.
Yeah, well yeah, and I think that as we're just talking about this, we are in a moment that hopefully will be the lowest moment and that from here will all be up.
Well. The good news is that again, if we win Donald's seventy eight, he cannot just like because we're all mortal, you know.
He cannot continue to be the center of the Republican universe. It just it's untenable simply by virtue of his age and what appears to be his declining health.
I mean the fact that, I mean, I know what the.
Excuse is, but the fact that he's not playing golf to me as a red flag. Yeah, I think it's an indication of what might just be going on.
And the disinhibition in the things you were talking about before, where he's talking about Arnold Palmer's penis, Like, we didn't see that in twenty sixteen.
We didn't see that in twenty twenty.
Yeah.
Yeah, I think it would be useful if more people kind of did the comparent contrast. You know, they did it by in twenty four hours a day. Why don't we do it with Donald Trump? Because the differences are even starker.
And there's also a difference between.
You know, getting a little old and rambly and slower and you know, starting to talk about rounding up millions of people and just having the most bizarre conversations about dead golfers and not knowing where you are for thirty nine minutes while you try to remember how to spell ymca. You know, it's clearly a much more dangerous kind of decline A neurologist said this, I wish I could remember who it was. Joe Biden is aging, Donald Trump is dementing.
Yeah, dementing is a really good word, and I think disinhibition is the watch word, you know, Mary Trump, Thank.
You, Thanks Molly, this is great to talk to you.
Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be? Well, so are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart to make a limited series with the experts on what a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's future. Right now, we have just released the final episode of this five
episode series. They're all available by looking up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube, and if you are more of a podcast person and not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back just like a broadcast. All five episodes are online now. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would or could do to this country, so please watch it and spread the word. Ellie Reeve is a correspondent for CNN and the author
of black Pill. Welcome to Fast Politics. Sally us.
Thanks for having me.
I want you to talk first about Black Pill and the book you wrote, and a little bit about sort of what your thesis was and how you got there.
So it's a flick us about how all of this Internet insanity that seems to a simbarole and unimportant became at the center of American politics. You know, I had this kind of epiphany on January sixth. I'm standing by the White House watching Groody Juliani said, we're gonna have trial by combat, and there's a guy in front of me in his fifties wearing a Pepe of the Frog shirt.
And you know, it had been years of teenage internet fascist like tweeting pepees at me, and now it's on this guy and he doesn't even know where it came from. The name black Pill is this kind of it's a sensibility, it's a feeling, a vibe. It's a gleeful nihilism that everything around you is hopelessly corrupt and it's going to collapse, and you should hasten the collapse of society because what
comes next will be better. And it's a take on Red Pill, which most people are familiar with, which it generally refers to taking on right wing ideas, sometimes white nationalists, sometimes just kind of pro Trump.
So explain to us how that world became the Rudy Giuliani on January sixth world.
Yeah, it was a slow and steady process. So it begins with this guy, Frederick Brennan, who has a teenager Oh I know.
Him, Yeah, he yes, our listeners won't know who he is, so explain who he is.
So in twenty thirteen, he is a brilliant but very angry young man. He's nineteen. He has brittle bone disease that makes him about three feet tall, and he's very fragile. His broad's break really easily, and he's had a really rough life. Okay, he has a reason to be angry, but that's taken him into the world of in cells, which they believe that some men are so ugly or unlovable that no woman will ever have a relationship with them,
and they become really embittered. And this might seem silly, but it's produced multiple mass shooters.
Right right, No, it's the in cell culture, right.
Yes, though he created a takeoff from four chan called eight chan that would be ultimate free speech. The only thing that would not be allowed would be what's illegal in the United States. And he had this idea that this would bring about, you know, this frothy marketplace of ideas with great ideas rising to the top. But no, only the worst ideas became dominant, and that was white supremacist, great replacement, that kind of stuff. And then it became
the home of q andon. Qnon was actually kicked off for Chan, and once it became the platform for qnon, it becomes a destination for baby boomers who are obsessed with this conspiracy theory. But it also is a place for other bad actors to target those boomers and try to accept them with other more radical ideas like white nationalism. And it's on that message board that QAnon takes off into this like quasi religious movement that fuels to stop the steal movement.
So let's talk about what happens next, hm, q Andon, we end up in QAnon Ultimately sort of they lose interest in right and keep going with that. Talk to us about where QAnon goes.
Qnon kind of fades away in part because of what these grand predictions don't come true. Is not an apocalyptic woman On June six, where Trump stays in office. There's a series of other events where Trump's supposed to step
in again and it doesn't happen again. Further, the people who own the site that came after Hm e Kun, essentially through some mistakes in the way they authenticated QAnon posts, they reveal that the owner, Jim Watkins, fundamentally just controls QAnon, and so that strips away the illusion that the person q who has been posting is this like godlike person deep within the government with a high level security clearance. But that stuff's not necessary anymore. There's it's all like
cult a personality around from a President Trump. Further, it doesn't need to be anonymous anymore. There are plenty people who are willing to say this with their real names and their real faces on Twitter and elsewhere. Ideas that were only on the margins that you could only say hidden behind Pepe avatar.
Right now, Donald Trump says them out loud. So you don't need it.
Donald Trump says them. Tucker Carlson says it. Elon of Musk get least interacts with it.
Is that sort of the thread of how January sixth happened? And is it sort of what the political movement of trump Ism is now.
Yeah.
So I saw this play out twice Charlotte'svilla January sixth, where people who'd gotten pulled into this world. You know, I went into their chat rooms where they thought they were only talking to themselves. People pulled it into this world. They're posting the same propaganda and comments and memes over and over and over and over, and they feel like they have mass momentum. They feel like they're getting stronger. They feel like they're finally meeting their real friends who
really get it. Really they don't actually know each other, and it builds and builds and builds towards this giant in person event where they all get to see each other people they've only known online, and there's supposed to be some confrontation with the left, and that's how they prepare themselves for violence. They talk about how they'll have to do, what kind of self defense they'll have to
do to defend themselves from the depraved leftists. You know, even if on January sixth, no leftists show up, you know, they're end up battling police, not anti Ema. So that energy happened twice. Now these days, the alt right, the people behind Charlotte'sville. They're hosting these like hours long podcasts where they're asking themselves, why weren't we the ones? Why
weren't we the guys behind Trump? We are the ones who would have defended American civilization instead of what the alt right sees is, you know, the magatypes like your Tim Pools, they were called the alt light for a while. They see those people as not as smart, not as effective. But I think the lesson that many on the fire right learn from Charlottesville is you can't go full Loancy if you go on Hitler, Hiland, Swasika waiting, Like Americans
think that's weird. Even Americans who might have a little bit of racial bias, you know, like they still think that's weird. But if you do a lot of those same authoritarian ideas behind the American flag, a lot more people will sign up for it.
Yeah, So let's talk about what you're seeing right now on the ground. You're talking to voters. Where are you talking to voters and what is it looking like.
I've been talking to voters a lot in Georgia lately. I went to the most pro Trump county in a swing state, and that was in Georgia, Brandley County, it's in the southeast part of the state. And then I just came back from Clayton County, which is south of Atlanta. It was the most pro Biden county in twenty twenty. So Brandley County went for Trump by more than ninety percent, Clayton County went for Biden by more than eighty percent.
The Trump people that I talked to, there's like this idea in the media of people think Trump is a jerk, but he's their jerk. He's fighting for them on their behalf. Like, I don't meet people who say that. The people I meet think he is a good man, that he hears about them. They don't see any cynicism at all. I mean this, one woman showed me sort of picture that she'd had me like a it looks like a painting, but it's a print and it's Trump next to Jesus walking on water. So yeah, I meet a lot of
people like that. I did in Branley County meet two old guys who thought Trump was despicable. They called him by American.
Wow, were you shocked?
It was?
Because you know, often in the South it breaks down by race, like very sharply, especially outside of the cities in the inner suburbs. These are all white guys. You know, everything about them would be coded conservative, what they wear or how they talked, their whole vibe. But this one told me he thought Trump was anti American, that he
was trying to overthrow the government. Another said Trump should have done something to stop the police or being beaten and that Harris was the only option to vote for.
Oh, so they're going to vote for Harris.
Yeah, yeah, these two guys.
Wow, were you shocked?
I was.
I mean, you know, you look at the numbers. Those ten percent have to come somewhere, But generally you see it as just breaking down, just like all white were Trump and all black volks for Harris, like in the Deep South, in the Deep South. But this wasn't that, and they weren't afraid to say it. We were at a table with a bunch of Trump supporters that they all knew, they're all friends, they all joked with each other, but they weren't afraid to say it.
So what did you see in the pro Biden County?
Well, I saw a lot of people who are on the fields because there had been so much money with the COVID stimulus.
And they gave Trump credit for signing the checks, right, Yeah.
And they never before, like I'd never heard someone really explain it to me, like twelve hundred dollars, you know, how is that really that much? But what they talked about was there was also the unemployment insurance. There was a lot of more money in the economy and people
who didn't have a lot of money. This one spam business owner was telling me that people were in the area were afraid that the government would claw back that stimulus check and so they cashed it right away and they would just walk around with all the money in their pocket and spend it. So this guy owned a pet store and he was just like raking in the money.
When Trump was in office, right.
And then once inflation hit and then people had less money, that stimulus went away. You know, he's making less money, and he says he's paying more taxes on it. So I met six or seven black men sort of who were self employed. They didn't like Trump, but they missed the money that they associated with his administration.
That's great.
I mean I was surprise. Yeah, no, I've heard that, I've seen it in polls. I just hadn't talked to anyone like that. I also met a woman who like misinformation, Like she was just kind of spoke to the power of misinformation. She like, she said she would get tons and tons of mailers from campaigns and then she'd go
and she'd research it. But from what she said, I'm not sure she got the very best sources from her research, Like she would search Twitter, that kind of thing, and you know, at the end of it, she said she was on the fence and that she believed that if aliens came, Trump would not hide it from the American people because he wouldn't be able to keep his mouth shut, and that was something she liked about him.
Oh good, Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So did that leave you feeling optimistic?
Well, one, misinformation is really powerful to a lot of people. Do not have faith in our institutions. I know, we know that, but then when you hear it from someone, it just hits a lot harder. When you hear from someone who's not paid to read the news and talk about politics, it hits a lot harder. And I and then a lot of people who said it was the lesser of two evils, or that I met I met a guy who didn't even want to vote.
Right, had he voted in the last election, He didn't say.
He said that he sometimes voted. He said he voted in local elections and that mattered a lot more, but on the national level it never. Basically they didn't feel listened to, that they're what they wanted didn't really matter.
Yeah, I just am a little bit baffled by that. But so, sort of where do you think we are now with this kind of far right world of this is really now the politics that informs Donald Trump? Any Elon Musk. So since you've sort of studied this culture, what would the sort of next step be Where do you think this goes?
Well, it depends on it are elected. But yeah, I do think that is the most interesting part going forward to me is how radicalized the Republican elites are, you know JD.
Vans.
I tend to think people believe what they say. You know, there's this kind of this idea for a while that people were just ironic racist, or they were just you know, cynically saying provocative things to get attention. I don't really believe that. I believe that people generally generally believe what
they say, you know so JD. Vans was a lot of these podcasts talking about something I've heard from other pretty far right influencers, this idea of seizing institutions of the left and a kind of like new velo McCarthyism where you route out you know, wokeness from the universities and other institutions, the cat lady stuff. I mean, like pepe avatars used to tweet that at me all the time. It's like astounding to hear it from like a mainstream
a senator. And I went back and watched a lot of his old high cast and Advance talked about having read a book by Pat Buchanan called Death of the West when he was a teenager and how it was very influential. Hell, and you know, Pat Buchanan was so fringe for a long time that he was kind of a choke. I mean, he was on Rachel Nas show a lot, right like he wasn't a threat, but his ideas have taken hold.
Party.
Jadie Vance seems strikes me as a person who says a lot of shit. He doesn't mean, he's quite smart. He knows where this is going, right, He's gotten on the Trump train. He wasn't on the Trump train as little as three years ago. So either he's completely changed everything he believes in three years is certainly possible, he's changed his name like five times, or he's just doing
this to get elected. Either way, I mean, it would mean that both people on the ticket don't believe anything they're saying, which is certainly possible.
But do you.
Think that's what it is? Like? Do you think he really believes the stuff he's saying, and that, like going with Trump, has emboldened him. It strikes me that the stuff he was saying three years ago did not show a lot of Pappy pan in it.
That's true, it didn't, But when you look at how he explains those positions now, it's really interesting. He has a lot of angerness and bitterness towards the elite culture that he clawed his way into from Ohio, and that feeling is not completely alien to me. I am also, I'm roughly his age. I was two states away in small town Tennessee in high school. You know, there's this photo of him, but I almost like reco like his clothes,
what he's wearing. It's like I know him without knowing him, and I do understand what it's like to think there's something better on the East Coast and you work and work and work to get there, and it's not quite
what you thought it would be. And he speaks with great bitterness about the careerism of the people he met at you know, and this is also something Peter Teal has talked about a lot, that people are working so hard to secure positions that are very prestigious, but that make them miserable, and that seems to be how he's explained his position to himself, and he said he also says that like, oh, I saw the passport where I could have made a lot of money telling everybody that
the people where I came from are just racist idiots, and I don't think that that's actually true.
He did make quite a lot of money. Ellie, thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back.
Oh yeah, it was great talking to.
You now Momentecly Jesse Cannon, Saba junk fest Elon. Every right winger on Twitter and Trump love to do this, especially oh yeah, I forgot Speak of the House, Mike Johnson. They love to push that it's going to be all immigrants voting in the election, so they could try to say it was stolen. Georgia's secretary of state might have a word with them. What are you seeing here, Well.
Georgia has a Republican Secretary of State, Brad Ravensburg. It has a Republican governor, Georgia Governor Brian Kemp, and they discussed. They have announced that they prevented non citizen voting by taking twenty people off the state's voter rolls. You know how many people are on the state's voter rolls, eight point two million, and only nine of those twenty non citizens have ever cast a valid So there are only twenty non citizens on the voter rolls of eight point
two million in the state of Georgia. And that is our moment of fuckery. 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.