Mehdi Hasan, Lydia Polgreen & Jordan Weissmann

But first we have the one the only author of Win Every Argument MSNBC is Mattie Hassan. Welcome to Fast Politics, Maddie. Thank you for having me, Molly. So, the question is with this book, when Every Argument the art of debating, persuading, and public speaking, can you transfer what you do to

us by reading a book. I'm skeptical. Yeah, I don't blame you from being skeptical because a lot of people think that public speaking, being able to argue, debate rhetoric, TV interviewing, TV hosting is something that you're kind of born with. There's a lot of talk about natural born speakers natural born orators, and I don't quite buy that. Look, is there an element of nature too? Of course there is, but there's a lot of nurture. There's a lot of

training and practicing that goes into it. And the reason I wrote this book and I wouldn't have written otherwise. There was twenty other books I could have written, But I genuinely wrote this book because I believe that these skills are transferable, they are learnable, they are teachable, and it's been going on for centuries. You don't have to date my work for it go back to the ancient Greeks, the ancient Romans. They came up with how to teach

this stuff. A lot of the lessons and tips in the book are stuff that have been around for millennia. And if you go back. I tell the story of Demosthenes in the book Legendary Ancient Greek orator, lawyer, speech writer. The guy was hopeless as a public speaker. He was so bad. He had he had a stutter and a stammer. He had a shortness of breath when he spoke. He was embarrassed when he was out in public. He lacked confidence.

So what does this guy Demostenes do. He basically builds himself an underground cave batman style, goes down there for months at a time. To make sure he doesn't come out of there. He shaves off behalf of his head so he'll be too embarrassed to go out in public. And he sits down there practicing, speaking, delivering, standing in front of a mirror. He runs up a hill when he does come out of the cave to work on his shortness of breath while he speaks as he runs

up the hill. And Plutarch talks about this, that this guy Demostenes becomes one of the greatest orators of all time. He's the guy when it comes to rhetoric in ancient Greece. And I tell stories about Martin Luther King and Winston Churchill and others who we consider today to be great orators, great debaters, but they didn't start out that way. Winston Judge Will practiced while sitting in the bathtub, right his valet would overhear him murmuring in the tub. So yeah,

I do think that you can learn this stuff. I think people try and wing it. People think you're either a natural one orator not true, or they think you can just wing it not true either. And the point of this book is to say you don't have to be a natural one orator, but you do have to work at it. There is a body of evidence as to how you can win over an audience, how you can corner an opponent with facts and figures, how you can connect with people emotionally, how you can kind of

duck and dodge and evade your opponent's rhetorical attacks. There's a body of literature and work out there, and I try and bring it together in this book. And I try and bring it together with examples from my own life, my own career, and from history. So I want to ask you about this idea that there's sort of a way to stop bullshitters like Trump. Yes, so explain to us how we do that, because that could be useful.

So I started writing this book, and I say, I say in the introduction to this book, there's a lot of books on rhetoric and oratory out there. I'm not the first person to go with. In fact, I rely on a lot of other great authors who I cite in the book. I mean, they're not that common, right, Like, I mean, it's a pretty cool move there's also an issue of have you actually done it? I say in the introduction, a lot of books are written by experts

on rhetoric, history, professors, debate coaches. I'm coming here saying, look, I'm the guy who has argued with people all over the world. I'm the guy who's argued inside the White House. I've argued inside Number ten downing Strey. I've argued inside the Saudi Embassy and managed to walk away with my life thankfully a few. Yeah. So I'm saying I'm bringing practical experiences. I'm not just a guys saying here it is in theory I try and say in the book, and here's how I did it, and what I would

say on the bullshitting front is. As I wrote this book, I realized, look, a lot of these lessons are not new lessons. I need to address what's going on right now and right now. And you and I've discussed many a time, Molly on my show and yours, that we live in an era of kind of post truth conservatism

and not a reality based Republican party. A former president who wants to be president again, who is a serial liar and bullshitter, whose own top strategist Steve Bannon famously said, our opponents are not the Democrats, they are the media. And the way to deal with the media, Steve Bannon said, is to flood the zone which shit. And that is exactly what they've done. You and I I cannot cope with the number of controversy, scandals, lies, gaffs because there's

just so many of them. We rebut one lie, and there's one hundred behind them. And that is what Trump has perfected. And what I say in the book is beware the Gish galloper because Trump is not the first to do this. There is a technique known as the Gish gallop and it comes from a guy called Dwayne Gish who was a creationist, a Christian evangelical who went around debating with evolutionists, with scientists, with biologists about evolution.

And the way he beat them, and he did beat them in public debates, was just by overwhelming them with cherry pick statistics, out of context quotes, misquoted scientific papers. But he would do it in such a confident, eloquent, fast paced way that an audience of lay people sitting at home or watching in the hall would say, wow, he knows his stuff, and the scientist hasn't rebutted every single thing he says, and that's how he was able

to run rings around people. And that's where one scientist came up with this phrase, beware of the Gish gallop, and Trump does that, right. It's an incredible phrase. By the way, the Gish gallup it is. I think it's Eugenie Scotland name was who was the scientist her name is, I should say, who came up with this phrase because she said, look, I'm not going to debate with these people. I'll go on radio with them, but I won't do these debates which allow them to gallop uninterrupted. And that

is what Trump does, right. We saw him in the Joe Biden I think it was the first debate with Chris Wallace in twenty twenty, where he just goes on and on and on and Wallace can't control it. Chris Wallace, who was a great interviewer, cannot stop him. Joe Biden cannot rebut every piece of nonsense he says. But at one point, I think he says a lie every nine seconds.

And my point in the book is there is actually a way to stop a gift galloper and I say there's a three part structure that I use, and that is Number one. You pick your battles. You cannot stop every lie, don't try and do everything. Pick out the most ridiculous or dumb or offensive one, knock that one down, and allow the rest of the house of cards to fall. The second way you do it is to call it out. A lot of people don't know what's going on here.

You've got to identify it to the audience. You've got to say this is what they're doing, this is what Trump is doing, this is what Dwayne gets She's doing. They're trying to overwhelm you with nonsense. They don't want to stop and get deep into anything. Call it out. And the third point is don't budge. This is what I say to a lot of my colleagues in the US media. We move on too quickly in interviews. We

need to have the follow up question. We need to say, hold on, hold on, I've asked about this, and you've given me seventeen different answers. I only want to know the answer to my question, and I'm not going on to the next question until you answer this one. And

I point out it's my pinned tweet. That clip I did with Steve Rogers, who was a Trump advisor in twenty eighteen, which went viral, has had ten million views on Twitter because that was an interview where we decided my team and I Al Jezier English at the time, said we're not going to budge. We're going to ask him about Trump slie about steel mills. Trump had said, oh, they've opened new steel mills. No, they hadn't opened any,

and he wanted to move on. I only tried his best to say, let's talk about this, let's talk about that. No steel mills. We're not budging. So that is how you do it. It can be done, but it requires a strategy. People think Trump doesn't have a strategy. He does, so you have to have one too. And when I say Trump, I mean Trump is mini Trumps, all of the people who are spreading through the country and around the world. It's become a worldwide phenomenon, this Trumpian approach

to interviews and debate. I mean, that's such a good point because you really can stop and get stuck in this kind of For example, Nicki Haley recently asked about Trump and she just you know, they don't feel any accountability to answer the question because they know you'll just move on. Yeah, don't budge is my motto. Don't budge, right, And I actually remember from like the nineties in the UK, you know you'd watch interviews where they would say no,

but I asked you about this, what about this? Well there was a legendary clip and I heard your listeners to go look it up on YouTube. Jeremy Paxman, who was a kind of hero of mine when I was growing up in the UK. He was the attack dog on the BBC, the most famous ruthless political interview. He once said, I start every interview by thinking in my head,

why is this lying bastard lying to me? And he he famously did an interview with the Home Secretary, the UQUA equivalent of the Attorney General, Michael Howard at the time, who had fired I think a prison governor, and the prison governor had said I can't remember the details. There was some argument about he fired the prison governor, and Paxman asked him about the governor thirteen times or fourteen

times the same question because Howard hasn't answered it. And can you imagine on American TV having a public a government official on and asking the same question thirteen times. Amazing. Yeah, No, I think you really have a good point here about the sort of style of interviewing that we really do need to go back to. I want to ask you about Democrats. Why are Democrats better at this? I've got

multiple theories. I can't say for sure. I do think there is this kind of technocratic element to the Democratic Party, and it's a lawyerly element. Although you can't just blame in the law, but I do think there's a lot of lawyers in the Democratic Party, a lot of policy wants who think that if you argue with enough statistics, just one more policy paper, just one more statistic, one more fact or figure, and you will convince the nation. And it doesn't work like that. That is not how

the American public, That's not how human beings. And I explain this in the second chapter of the book. I have to have facts, but you need to approach feelings too. It's not just facts. You need to address people's feelings. Aristotle told us this more than two thousand years ago in his book Rhetoric, that you need to focus on people's pathos, on the emotional appeal. You move people by

hitting them in their heart, not just their head. And too many Democratic leaders for too long have focused just on their head. If we rationally win the argument, if we point out the contradiction and the other persons, if I have enough pages in my policy document, I will win them over. And I should think of the twenty sixteen presidential election, Molly, and I think Donald Trump understood

this and understands this very well. The right have understood how to energize their base by appealing to their emotions. And the emotions they appeal to, sadly are bigotry, anger, resentment. They are very good at kind of negatively demogogically riling up their base. But there's a theory behind it, which

is people respond to emotion. Now I'm not telling Democrats to do that, but I'm saying, offer another emotional message, whether it's one based on hope or one based on anger at the right people that the point one percenters, the bankers, the people who actually screw you, not migrants, not trans kids. Right, And I think what happened in twenty sixteen was Donald Trump comes on and says, lock her up, build the wall, ban Muslims, Hi, easy to remember and gets you really worked up all those issues.

Tillary comes along and says, hey, here's my childcare proposal. It's seventeen points. It's really good. And I'm not saying it wasn't a good childcare proposal. I'm sure it was a great childcare proposal, but it's not going to win you a presidential election. And think about it, Molly. There have been six presidential elections in the twenty first century. I keep making this point, it's so important. Three Democratic victories,

three Democratic losses. The Democratic losses were Al Gore, John Kerry, and Hillary Clinton. The Democratic wins were Barack Obama and Joe Biden. What do Barack Obama and Joe Biden having common They talk like normal people. They talk in a way that's authentic. They're not just rehearsing talking points. Whereas Kerry, Gore, and Clinton, for all their brilliant they didn't inspire or

move people. One of the things that I think all of us are thinking about all the time is can me Ron, I'm sorry, Ron de Santis, can he you know this fantasy of Trumpism without Trump right, which is really authoritarianism. Let's be honest, because there's not there's a you know, it's slogans and fascism. Can Trumpism without Trump be a thing? And what I think a lot of these people in the Donald request don't understand is that

Ron de Santis is not a charismatic guy. No. On my book, I would say there are three chapters you can read which will tell you why Ron de Santis probably won't beat Donald Trump. The first is that chapter I mentioned on emotion, on appealing to people's emotions. He's been doing it well with his own kind of Florida captive audience. But Donald Trump is an expert at rilling people up, and in terms of that, he's a better speaker.

What if we think about Donald Trump, in all his craziness, he knows in a kind of demagogue way, how to move crowds and rallies. To Santis, I was going to say, to sanctimonies. And that leads me to my next point, which is I have a chapter in the book on am arguments. Why ad hominum arguments work. People keep telling you in debate schooling, high school debating, who play them ball, not the man? Don't attack people individually, attack the arguments.

In the real world, Donald Trump showed us in twenty sixteen, he defeated sixteen Republicans, all of whom were more qualified than he wants, often by just calling them names low energy, Jeb, you know, lion Ted. We were all the little Marco and whether we like it or not, we could say, oh, that's so gross, are so offensive, that's so childish. It worked. It totally undermined his opponents. And good luck to Ron de Santis or Ron de Sanctimonius, or meet Moron when

he's on a debate stage with Donald Trump. And again the third chapter I mentioned is that is the gish galloping. Trump will just gallop all over him. We saw DeSantis in the debate with Charlie Christ. He couldn't even take on Charlie Chris. Charlie Chris absolutely rhetorically destroyed him. Now, Charlie Chris didn't win the races because Charlie Chris wasn't right. Canada and Florida basically isn't a swing state anymore. I don't see how Ron de Sands beats Donald Trump in

a debate. I just don't. I also think Tramp won't let him like Trump, maybe can't win, but he can make sure that DeSantis won't exactly I think that's the best bet for Democrats if you want the best personally, either Ron Desantist can't beat Trump. But let's say I'm wrong, and I've been wrong before, I was wrong about Trump winning in twenty sixteen. Let's say Desantist does beat Trump. That's probably the best scenario for the Democrats, is that

DeSantis beat Trump. Trump doesn't concede, of course, he never concedes defeat. He says it was stolen and he either goes scorched earth on Desantists just attacking him and running as a third party candidate, or he says to his followers, stay at home from Mara Lago. And that is probably the Democrats best bet. If the reporting a body is divided between Desanders and Trump on the eve of November twenty twenty four, Yeah, this is going to be so stressful, Andy,

and I could really use a break. I was promised that the world would go back to normal, by the way, just to get into sort of something I'm curious about my own personal edification. I mean, was this always going to be this kind of messy process to try to come back as a country or do you think it's been made worse by this incredibly smileless Republican Party. You

can see, I have no opinion on that. I was going to say, you could have gone anywhere with that sentence, because I thought you'll send was it going to end with the spinelessness of the d J well also that yeah, because I would argue that I had no expectations of the Republican Party. I didn't think they were going to go, hey, get rid of Donald Trump, let's clean up our party. That became clear when Kevin McCarthy went to bow to

him at Moral Lago after to January the sixth. That was the moment you knew we do want to shadow of a doubt this party's not going to disown Trump. You see Nicki Haley right now being asked about Trump. She say, oh, I don't kick sideways. It's okay, good luck to because he does. By the way, also, it's up Donald Trump sideways up. Yeah, you're not the equal of Donald Trump for whatever you think you're appolling at

six percent? Good luck. Yeah. What I would say is I didn't expect anything the Republican Party, but I did expect a democratic administration to do something substantive on these issues. And we know they tried and failed with the various bills to protect democracy, and Joe Manchin and kist In Cinema screweders all over. And we know that we now have a special counsel who seems to be taking all sorts of interesting actions, but in my view, all too little,

too late. The idea that Donald Trump think about this, Just imagine that a proverbial Martian lands near your house and says, what's going on in American politics? And you say, all right, let me give you a quick summary. The president who lost the election last time around, didn't concede the election, incited a violent insurrection, tried a coup to stay in power, was condemned by everyone in America, including his own party, for about twenty four hours, and then

he left office and nothing happened to him. And he's now running for president again and leading in his polls. That's ridiculous. And the Democratic body have to take some responsibility for that. The Biden administration has to take some

responsibility for that. I mean, if this was another country, we always say the Brendon nine line, what would you say if you saw this in another country, that a president who's incited insurrection tried a coup is now inex basically in self imposed exile out of the capitol, still inciting violence, still lying, and possibly about to come back to power. We would judge that country to be in our own offensive terms. Banana Republic failed date all of

that stuff. That's America in twenty twenty three. No, I know, I mean, it's just completely an utterly I mean, Merrick Garland was not the right guy man for this job in my opinion. I've said this on my show. He's a great lawyer, I'm sure a very decent human being. Democrats thought they were owning the cons by putting the guy who Mitch McConnell a rejected of the Supreme Court in the DOJ. But it just you needed someone like

an Elizabeth Warren in the DOJ. You needed a kind of fighter who was going to come out the gate and say, let's clean this mess up. Democracy is under threats. My job to protect democracy right now, not try and appeal across the aisle and be this kind of fake bipartisan figure. Yeah, he just doesn't seem like the Fanny Willis case in Georgia. I mean, I don't know that that's a perfect case either. I mean, in theory, it's

a perfect case. I've been I as a non lawyer, I've been saying for a while, like, what else do you need to lock him up? If I had been caught on tape telling Brad Ravensberger to find my candidate eleven tho, I'd be in prison. You and I would be in prisoned by now, right, Oh, no question, we've been j at least we'd be awaiting trial for sure.

It's literally on take, and there's no secondhand here say issues now this week, these past few days, we've been worried about what might happen because the grand Jury four person has been doing media rounds and giggling her way through interviews. She's someone I wish had read my book before she went on TV, because her appearances didn't do her any favors and may not have done the Georgia case any favors. But let's see, I'm not a lawyer,

and legal experts are mixed on that. But you know, as I've pointed out many a time, Georgia all his businesses won six and the incitement of violence, those are multiple cases. Just go back to obstruction of justice from Muller report. I mean, I'm sorry, I'm sorry to be the anarak on the Mulla Report. But Robert Muller outlined ten cases of obstruction of justice by Donald Trump. He then went and sat in front of Congress and said there's no immunity for a former president. He could be

tried after he left office. He leaves office. Merrick Garland doesn't bring a single one of those cases before the statute of limitations runs out, they should just prosecute him for that, right, No, it's true, Maddie. You are one of my favorites. Thank you. I hope you will come back. Thank you so much for having me. Jordan Weissman is the Washington bureau editor at Semaphore. Welcome Too Fast Politics, Jordan, thank you for having me on. Happy to be here.

I want to talk to you about the rail disaster in East Palestine. A rail disaster causing innumerable problems we don't even know the scope of them, largely environmental, much of which is caused by a lack of regulation. It

appears so. I mean, right now that the federal government is still digging in, they're still investigating exactly what went wrong, but already people in Washington lawmakers are starting to get a sense of ways this possibly could have been prevented, and there are a lot of policy options that have

already been put forward or people are discussing that. Yeah, I mean, I would say in general, the catastrophe disaster, I mean, just this whole thing is brought a lot of attention to an issue that has just gone under the radar forever, which is rail safety, and thankfully because it affects a lot of communities, especially in rural America. Yeah, so I want to go for one, which is like

a stupid question, but I need you to debunk it. Anyway, There's been a lot of like pushback on the Republican side of like, while the particular regulation that Trump rolled back would not have prevented this, and while that is, I guess theoretically true, I would love for you to explain why, you know, this is not actually about one specific regulation. This isn't about one specific regulation. It's more about a general approach to rail safety. That's it kind

of stretched back for a long time. You know, some people who have blamed the Obama administration too for maybe not doing enough fun to you in the past, or at least being too willing to kind of give into industry lobbying. But I think, yeah, we can talk about Trump briefly and what he did, and then we can talk more broadly about what's going on here. And so

let's start with the controversy over Trump. And so at one point, the Obama administration put out a rule that involved what are known as highly hazardous flammable trains or trains that are carrying highly hazardous flammable material, which is a very important term here, and I want your listeners to remember. It's a very evocative term, but it actually

needs a very specific thing. And part of that, there were all sorts of safety rules attached to these trains that were rolling through communities and basically posed a risk of explosion. And one of the rules that Obama tried to put in place would have required that they use essentially more modern, advanced electronic breaks instead of the sort of nineteenth century technology a lot of American rails equipped with.

Right now, this seems like a good investment, seems like a reasonable thing to do, right and especially given the kinds of freight we were talking about it. And this rule was really designed to apply to trains that were carrying oil. It came out of the fracking boom sort of, and when a lot of trolling products were being transported by a train inst of pipeline, and sometimes they were derailing and causing serious environmental hazards and communities. We shouldn't

laugh because this is so horrible. I'm only laughing because it is so horrible. Yeah, it's very one of the things that are you just look into like kind of the grim void of the way we do business in this country sometimes and you just it's dark, and you

do have to laugh sometimes it's dark. Exactly. They put this rule in place, and so this rule got a lot of pushback from the industry, and Congress listened to the lobbying and they passed the law that said you need to kind of rethink this rule, and then they made them do what it's called a new cost benefit

analysis on it. And after Congress did that, then the Trump administration came into office and they used this new law and the new cost benefit analysis as an opportunity to roll back this rule saying you have to put modern breaks on trains that are carrying explosive oil. Like, right, and yes, a crazy rule. Yes, yeah, this isn't the only instance where Trump rolled back or tried to kind of power back some real safety rules. But it's the one that everyone been focused on. Now. The reason this

wouldn't have helped. This rule that Trump nixed would not have helped prevent this specific disaster is that it actually would not have covered trains carrying the specific type of explosive chemicals that this Norfolk Southern train was carrying. The highly hazardous Flammable Train rule really applied to things like oil, specifically what are known as Class three flammable liquids, and vinyl chloride, which is the chemical that was aboard this train in these Palestine is not a liquid. It is

not a classy flammable liquid. And I apologize deeply. I cannot remember the specific classification of this chemical. I think we've got enough for our non experts here. Yeah, so it wasn't actually covered by this rule, and so I think. But what that illustrates is that, you know, there's been this partisan back and forth about oh, well Trump undid the rule, and well, oh wouldn't have covered anything in

the first place. And you know why if Biden cared so much, why didn't he try to do anything in the past years, A lot of people involved in this discussion are kind of looking at this situation and going, wait, okay, we can all agree something is really messed up here. Well, And I mean, I think that one of the things I would love you to talk about now is that when the Biden administration came in, the Trump rhetoric actually

worked on regulation, right. It made Democrats and I think other nonpartisans if there already left anxious about the idea of putting in more regulation because Trump had for so long said like regulation kills business. I mean, he wasn't the only one. Obviously. This is from a long line of conservative quote unquote thinking. But I would love for you to talk about the hesitation that Democrats had when they came in. But it's been pretty aggressive in a

lot of ways about trying to reregulate certain industries. Part of the issue here is that it can just be really difficult to reregulate an industry that has been deregulated. Just sort of a logistical level. There are all sorts of laws and steps you have to take in order to get a new regulation in place. And part of what Congress and Trump did was they made it harder. Essentially,

to reregulate the industry. They put certain kind of hurdles in place if anybody wanted to come back and say, actually, no, you should have electronic breaks on these trains. And that is something that Peputigg has been pointed too often when people have accused him of being too slow and too hesitant to try and tackle trains safety roles. He has essentially said, hey, you guys shackled me. There's only so

much we can really do here. Nonetheless, it does appear that this disaster has really motivated is galvanized, Yeah, exactly, is galvanized the administration to maybe be more aggressive and try to push things harder and also ask for help from Congress. I would say a combination of maybe conservative rhetoric, but also just more the concrete roadblocks that Republicans have put in place have made it a little tricky to

regulate this industry. Yeah. I mean. One of the things that I think is really interesting that has come out of this environmental crisis is you hear a lot of Republican including Hillbilly Senator Jady Vance and Ivy grad Yale law school graduate, I think, saying a lot of things about that They almost sound like they're on the populace left. Yeah,

there's been a little bit of that. I mean, the rhetoric around this accident has been a combination of interesting and kind of horrifying, right exactly, there's a real play to make this a thing that you know, white people are being forgotten, and that I mean is just craven but not unexpected, right, I mean, it's sort of you would anticipate it and maybe wrongful, maybe be naively a little bit surprised with how aggressively certain conservative talking heads

really just dove right in to saying, oh, Democrats don't care about white Charlie Kirk wasn't surprising, but Charlie kar Verbatim said, if this is a result of the war on white people, Jesse Waters and Fox said they were trying to fight environmental racism by dumping toxic chemicals on poor white people, and Tucker Carlson had a whole spiel about how the fact that they were white and conservative was why their plight was being ignored, and jad Vance kind of danced on the edge of that in some

of his comments. He basically said at one point that Pete Boutajidge was so wrapped up in fake woke quote issues like whether or not construction companies are hiring too many white workers, which was sort of a distortion of some comments he made, right, that was their favorite distortion of comments. But you know, poo Boodagage basically gave a conference where he said that you could hire more workers of color and communities where you're building things. But that's

besides the thing. You know, he said that Boodagude was so wrapped up in these kinds of woke issues that he was ignoring real things like train safety. But you know, leaving that kind of mud slinging part of the conversation aside. And I don't think we should ignore it, but just

for the moment. Yeah, there has also been this kind of populous sentiment among certain Republicans who've been saying, yes, the train company should pay for it, Yes, we shouldn't let these corporate just get away with it, which is the basis of the Republican Party as I remember in my youth. Yeah, I mean, yeah, right, it was laz a fair sort of a light touch, to say the least. And yeah, people have accused him of saying, well where

were you during the Trump years? In JV. Vance's case, he actually wasn't in Congress, so that gives him a little bit more credibility. Although he's been hesitant to criticize Trump, and if you ask his people about that, they'll say, we shouldn't be making this about Trump. This is about the year now. But he's been on the ground barn storming. And while he's been criticizing Biden, he's also been criticizing

the company and saying more needs to be done. And he's been also working with Democrats on sending out letters and asking about possible policy responses. And as I wrote in an article this week, you know, his office tells me he's been workshopping legislation with members of both parties, which is that's why I say it's an interesting development.

I don't know if you're Jesse and I age. We grew up during the time of the exon Valdis, and you will remember the Republicans were basically like, you know, the birds are fine, you know they need a little soap. So I do think this is like a real development in its own strange way. I did think that the stuff with DeWine was fascinating because you know, he has during the Trump administration been held up as a sort of more rational Republican, and then we really saw he

was kind of allergic to the federal help. Yeah, I guess that's one way to put it. Dwine's been interesting because he said, on the one hand, we don't need federal help. He's like, or he hasn't, he doesn't. He said, if we need it, we'll use it. We just haven't felt we haven't felt like we're missing anything, right, I mean, your cat will be fine, you know. You know, DeWine's response is less like keep the federal government away and

more just that, yeah, people are handling this competently. And one notable thing about his response is that a lot odd Republicans early on have tried to suggest that Biden was too slow and that it was a problem that you know, senior officials weren't on the ground immediately and that they weren't doing enough to help. And DeWine has has literally said, I have no complaints about Biden's response. Right.

He has said he's gotten up there and said, yeah, they're you know, offering whatever I need and it seems to be going to you know, we're getting the material that's necessary, and officials are helping us when we ask. You know, it's been a funny contrast. Like there was one point where um, and he's I think he's generally been trying to urge calm. There was one point where Vance challenged Biden officials to drink the tap water in East Palestine if they thought it was okay, this is

so stupid. Yes, what happened with then Michael Reagan like showed up, Michael Regan, the EPA administrator. He went there and he and Dwine got together said cheers point classes to drink so stupid. You know, Dwine has been his impulses, like you said, kind of urge calm and and just be a mellow sort of what we thought of as an Ohio Republican for decades, kind of a Portman style Republican. You know, it's the demure small business owner who just wants to taxes low. That's sort of his m and

it seems like the way he's trying to comport himself here. Yeah, it's so interesting, And I mean I do want to point out there's been like criticism of the Biden administration, which I think is totally fair, criticism of the Ohio Republican governor, which I also think is quite fair. But there was I mean, the EPA was on the ground that day, I mean supposedly within two hours though right

the heads of the departments weren't immediately there. But the people who actually do this job day in and day out, you know, the civil servants and the experts were on the ground figuring out what needed to be done. So every no one really denies that. I mean it's a very meta conversation in a way, like a lot of the criticisms have just been, oh, you didn't show like, you didn't show you cared enough, you weren't there, although

I will say there have been. You know, there was one former head of the EPA under George H. W. Bush, who I believe toiled political that he thought that it was a mistake that they didn't make a bigger deal of it, because it really would have helped communicate with the local population and made them feel safer in that sense. The communications response was sort of fumbled, and so you could possibly genuinely criticize on those grounds, But in general, the folks who are supposed to show up in the

wake of a disaster showed up. Yeah, I mean that

I think is a really important point. And again, like I think there's really a sense in which this is an issue that Democrats can be leading on, and so when they, you know, there was a certain sense in which they ceded the opportunity by not getting in there sooner, and so that would be my criticism is that this environmental regulation could be sort of the cornerstone of democratic legislation period paragraph and especially with the Chips Act coming

down the pike, we're going to have another opportunity act for environmental legislation and make the case. So I do think in that way. You know, if mayor Pete had been there the day after her, there would have been an opportunity. Yeah, and you know, I think just to harp from politics a little bit more, you know, one thing that Biden really emphasized early on in his administration was that he was going to be a president for everybody, right,

He really made that point. And one of the most concrete ways in which Trump kind of made it clear he wasn't a president for everybody was disaster response, where he would sort of dangle it in front of the state of California and act like, oh, maybe I'm not you know, maybe you guys don't deserve my help because you don't vote for me, or because he haven't been supportive, whereas Bid came in and made it very clear that he wasn't going to be that sort of a vindictive

you know, chief executive, and in general, he's been extremely his administration has been extremely responsive to disasters everywhere and has been responsive here, but maybe lost sight of the need to really show it. And that might possibly because the week this happened, all of Washington was totally obsessed with that balloon that flew over the United States. Right, Oh, that's right, I forgot about the balloon. You've already forgotten

about the damn balloon. But like that week, all of DC was just talking about nothing up the balloon and so and they were mad that he hadn't shot down the balloon sooner it was right, which that was he was sitting there saying, you know, that could actually cause a little bit of a disaster in one of these rural communities. Meanwhile, but that was all of Watchington was

focused on this balloon. And so you know, maybe if that hadn't been the case, that the administration would have done a better job kind of handling the communication side and making sure that the local community felt like it was being looked after. When there was this massive, terrifying smoke plumes right rising from this controlled burn of the train, you know, it was you know, white noise had suddenly

become real life. That is I think also a fair criticism, maybe again just to talk about the optics as opposed to the substance of what happened. Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point. This rail disaster really does show us at all. Politics ultimately is local, and Ohio is going to have a Senate race in twenty four We're going to be talking a lot about Ohio. It's gonna be a throwdown. It's going to be a throwdown. I don't know who the Republicans are going to run,

so it might not end up such a road. Yeah, it depends. Right, Shirt Brown is girding himself and if you'll notice, he's also all over this crap. I mean he's he and Vants are working together on stuff. You know, they're sending letters. You're saying, oh, I'm gonna work with Van Stuy make sure there's a long term plan to look after East Palestine and ensure that the local environment is safe for everybody. I mean, he clearly sees the political importance of this. Thank you so much. I hope

he'll come back, Jordan, have me anytime. Lydia. Paul Green is an opinion columnist at The New York Times. Welcome too Fast Politics, Lydia. Oh my gosh, I'm thrilled to be here. A long time listener, first time caller. Oh well, we're delighted to have you, and you are a newly minted opinion columnist since October. Since you have come to opinion, and this is not obviously your first rodeo. You come

from writing and editing and podcasting. But one of the things that I think has been incredibly cool, and this leads to why we're having you today, is that you have done opinion with more reporting than is the standard, and in a very exciting an international way, which makes sense because you were also a war correspondent. Well, thank you. That's very kind of you. I always say that I actually don't have a ton of opinions, and the only way I can figure out what I think is to

go out and report. So this is just really a laborious way of me figuring out what my opinions are is going out into the world and seeing what I can see. So, but I had a long career as a foreign correspondent, and that I think has always kind of been the heart and soul of my work and

the thing that I'm most passionate about. The first column you wrote, your debut column, was about Haiti, and I want you to just explain to us a little bit about why you chose Haiti and why that was such an important column for you to write, and then we'll get on to what you're focused on now. Yeah, I mean I have been engaged with Haiti two thousand and four, when I was sent there as a very very young

reporter at the New York Times. It was really my first experience as a foreign correspondent, and it's a place that really gets under your skin. A lot of people have worked there and have kind of made their bones there as foreign correspondence. And I've always thought a lot about the work that we do as foreign correspondence, the way that we kind of parachute into places, the extractive nature of the work, and how our sort of quick impressions can have a lasting impact on the places that

we covered. And so I wanted to go back and really reflect on the current situation and my own work there on the relationship with the United States, as a sort of statement of purpose that I was, as a columnist going to go out into the world. I was going to report, and I was also going to hold by self to account and really think about my own role as an observer and a chronicler of these things. So that's why it felt really important to me to

go to Haiti. Yeah, that's such an interesting point. I mean, because I see so many people that I am friendly with or tangentially. Now those people are all in Ukraine right now, and then they'll go to and so I

think it's really interesting. I was really impressed that you went to Syria, though, because I feel this way, maybe because my cousins grew up in Lebanon during the eighties, and so there are always those countries where it feels like America has decided the country is too far gone, which was always growing up, my feeling that America had sort of had decided that Lebanon was sort of an

unsavable country. And so everything I've read about Syria has given me the sense that they're just it's so complicated and there's so much tragedy. So I thought it was really impressive that you went back there, and so can you talk a little bit about that. It's remarkable the extent to which we've all kind of memory hold the conflict in Syria, Right, This is a war that started, well, it actually started as part of the Arab Spring and a kind of civilian uprising that then kind of morphed

into an armed struggle. And you know, it's been going on since twenty eleven, twenty twelve, and in these like really fundamental ways, if you think about it, it has shaped the world that we live in now. It's really hard to imagine the rise of right wing parties in Europe, for example, and to a certain extent, the rise of Donald Trump in the United States, were it not for the huge migration crisis that the Syrian conflict set off.

Looking back, it seems clear that Russia getting involved in Syria was very much a kind of training wheels moment for what they would ultimately do in Ukraine and the kind of brutality that they would bring to bear. And I think that a big part of why I really wanted to go to Syria was because because of that forgetting.

And I feel like a big part of my role as a columnist is to remind people of things that we'd rather not think about and try to link them to the present in a way that makes them more real and more pressing. And I think also just to remind people like, we're all human beings, and you know, I met the family that I met there, I mean, how could you not be moved by the extraordinary story of loss that they have been through. And I think it's just really important that as human beings we actually

see each other's human stories. Yeah, I think saying about Russia's really so interesting because it's absolutely true, and we saw so much of this early propaganda disinformation come through the war in Syria. I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about that. Yeah. I mean, again, that's another example of something that, you know, the sort of information wore that the Syrian government and also later the Russians helped prosecute in Syria was really kind of

a portent of what was to come. And we've seen the credible technology prowess that and also just kind of human intelligence prowess that the Russians have in being able to manipulate the conversation in any given society, and that certainly happened in Syria. It certainly happened in Europe. As relates to Syria. That was absolutely a harp in Europe. What was to come? Yeah, Oh, it's such a releak

time in American life. One of your columns, there's like a tad phrase about how, you know, Americans think of themselves as the center of the world, but we're really you know, we're really just part of it. I'm not quoting verbade him at all. I'm butchering the whole thing. But growing up, I would always be so impressed when you go to another country and people would just make fun of you for being American, because Americans are social centered. Would always be my what the takeaway I would get?

But what's happening in India right now is and you've written about this is kind of like we don't devote a lot of national news to it, but it's a pretty big deal. Oh, it's a huge deal. And you know, I would also say, Molly, like just to your earlier point about you know, who's the center of the universe.

I had a psychoanalyst who I saw for many years who had this line that has always stuck with me, and he said, ninety five percent of what people say is about themselves, and so is the other five percent. It's human nature to think that you're the center of the universe, right like we all we all do it. And I think that the United States has a particular virulent strain of that disease. I think that what's really striking about Indian and I've been following India for quite

some time. I first went there in two thousand and nine as a foreign correspondent. At the time that I went there, you know, it was this sort of world's largest democracy, and it sort of seemed like a lot of the problems that had bedeviled India in the past we're really sort of firmly in the past, including the deep, deep divisions between Hindus and Muslims, which had been a

sort of recurring motif again and again. And the thing that really struck me in just looking at the rise of the current Prime Minister Norrendermodi, but also the relationships that he's built around the world and the way in which he's kind of playing on this international stage which has become much more multipolar, with the rise of China,

the rise of Russia. It's fascinating to see how the United States and other Western powers are sort of turning a blind eye both to the prejudice and in some cases atrocities that are happening to Muslims and other religious minorities in India, but also the increasing consolidation of power that makes India look a lot less like a democracy

than it used to. Part of what I was trying to say in that column was that as Americans, we've always had a foreign policy that is utilitarian towards our interests, and you know, it's useful for us to pretend that India is this amazing democracy and to pretend that none of these problems are actually happening, right and going on, And so I just wanted to remind people, Look, we may think of this as our great democratic ally, but actually Narandramodi is in the process of essentially trying to

become a figure non unlike Shijing Ping in China. So I just think it's really important for us to to think about these things in a global context and also with some real kind of historical knowledge. So that's what I always try to bring It is so by the way,

incredibly grim to see this happening. Like every time we lose another democracy, it does ultimately, you know, America, I think for a long time we all thought, or at least I certainly thought, will never be one of those countries that's on those you know, democracy watch lists, but we did end up there. I think that this is another thing about thinking about the centrality of America to

the world thing. And I'm actually writing about this right now because I'm working on a column about Turkey, which was the other place that was really affected by the earthquakes, much more so. I mean, fifty thousand people died, and ninety percent of them died in Turkey. But what we're seeing right now is we're really in the age of the elected autocrat. You know, where you have elections and

those elections produce a winner. They're elections where you know, technically people go to the polls and file their ballot and you know, elect somebody. But the person who's on the ballot who wins has usually undertaken a huge number of measures beforehand in order to make sure that he's the only viable candidate. And of course it's always a heat, almost always a heat right, And so you know, they've cracked down on the independent media. They've really really reduced

the role of civil society. They've made sure that that the parliament or the legislature has essentially no role in overseeing or checking their power. You know, use the judiciary to make sure that none of your viable opponents can actually run against you. That's the thing that's happened in Turkey, which is going to have an election, which was supposed to have an election in May. We'll see when it

actually happens because they're dealing with this devastating earthquake. But you hear that set of facts, and it's hard not to think about our own country, right, the way in which various politicians are trying to take the judicial or the legislative or and this is happening more at the state level than at the national level. Of that, the Supreme Court is a whole other conversation. But it's very, very striking to see how we're actually not that different

from these other places, right. It's the De Santist plan. Crackdown on the media, make sure that people are studying what you want them to study. Don't allow people to vote, write like Florida had voted to let people who have been incarcerated vote, and then he sets up these stings to make it so people who were incarcerated can't, you know, I mean, just a lot of the stuff that we see in Turkey, we're seeing in this modern day Republican Party.

I think. I mean, I feel like there's a real shift that in certain parts of this world, we're seeing a sort of embrace of this autocracy. Absolutely, and I think that those policies are coming along with a kind of social revanchism as well, which gets into another topic

that I've spent some time writing about. I think that we're living in this age of I think tremendous backlash against the social progress that we've made around gender, around LGBTQ, issues around race, and that is absolutely playing out here in the United States, but it played out earlier in places like Hungary. You're seeing in Israel, for example, which was a pioneer of lgbt right, a very very strong pushback and roll back from the reactionary conservative forces within

the government. And so I think we're really living in this age of reaction and all of the old kind of political chivalleths about the right is actually about freedom, and you know it's up as down, down as up, and words in many ways feel like they just don't have any meaning anymore. Agreed, And it's such an interesting time. I mean, do you think I want to like now we need to do? This is something I always do in interviews, which I think people find very annoying, but

I enjoy it. I want to know, like, I mean, there's a historical precedent for times in which there is a lot of progress and then there is a kind of backlad Susan Valuti wrote about it. Do you think that we are in one of those backlashes and that democracy will continue or do you think that we really run a field and this is going to We're going

to go into something more horrible. I'm inherently an optimistic person, and I think that the reality is that curveballs come that we don't expect, right, I mean, take Turkey for instance. You know it it seemed to be on this trajectory that you know that the current president type air to one, was just going to kind of continue on and consolidate power. But a couple of things happen that we're outside of

his control. One is this huge economic crisis related to you know, COVID and interest rates and all that kind of stuff, which was already eroding his popularity, right and then now, like a literal act of God, an earthquake has brought all of this condomation down on his government because of the slowness of how they responded, because a lot of the buildings were shoddy and the government hadn't done enough to make sure that building codes were adhered to and so on, and so I think, like this

sounds a little grim, but the place where I find optimism is that, like, we can't really predict what's coming around the corner, and earthquake is actually a little bit like climate change. It's this thing that we know is coming, but like we sort of think about it as a

thing that's in the distant future. But I think that there are things like that out on the horizon that you know, they could end up sort of sharpening and pushing us further in on the trend line that we already seem to be on, but they could also push us in an entirely different direction. And it's just hard to know. And I think our work is people who care about other human beings and who want the world to be a better, more inclusive place, who believe in

self governance and all those kinds of things. It's our job to really sort of focus and build even in these moments that feel like they're filled with despair. And you know, as a journalist, I feel like it's my job to highlight the places where people are doing that work and trying to make change happen, because when the opportunity arises, never let a good crisis go to ways, there is the moment to say, actually, this needs to change,

and let's radically shift the direction that we're going. I have one more question because this hits on something I've been thinking about a lot. This environmental crisis, this trained crisis in East Palistin is one of these moments where

we're seeing why we have regulation. I think about this all the time because during the Trump I don't want to even say presidency because I don't know that that was what it was, but the Trump fever dream there was he would constantly get up there and say regulation is bad, and everyone would be like, is regulation bad? Maybe regulation is bad, you know, because like it's one of those things where, until you have an accident, you can't quite figure out, you know, it's hard to make

a case for a regulation. We're seeing, really here a moment where the American people in a red state, in a red town, or seeing really firsthand the value of regulation and the value of holding these companies accountable for their misdeeds. I mean, do you think there's an opportunity for legislation and do you also think it's craven to

think this way? More importantly, well, I mean, I try not to judge when it comes to legislation, and under the current political situation, you know, I don't know if we can say this, but the current political clusterfuck in Washington, it's hard to imagine. It seems like we're just going to have a parade of crazies doing investigations into Jewish

space lasers. So I don't know about legislation. What I do know is that, you know, I do think that we're coming to terms with the fact that we have two kinds of problems in this country when it comes to regulation. One is we're incredibly lax when it comes to corporations and environmental rules and things like that. And that's absolutely what we're seeing in East Palestine right this is a chemical that like absolutely should not have been

transported in the way that it was. Those railways should have been upgraded long and long long ago. So it feels like there is a place where we need, you know, much more stringent action and more regulation. But there are other places where we have regulation, sometimes for environmental reasons or reasons that seem on their face like oh yeah, I agree with that, like local control and things like that that get in the way of solving other problems, like,

for example, the housing crisis. So much of our housing crisis comes from the fact that it's very, very difficult to build anything, and that is a very very complicated thicket. So I think that we need to think really really carefully about like what sort of rules we make for ourselves as a society and what the knock on effects are going to be. And ultimately the question is, you know,

qui bono, who benefits? And in every case we need to think about how do we spread the benefits of the protection or the benefits of the loosening of a regulation towards more and more people, which I think gives an opportunity for it to be more sort of human centered and less for corporations or for wealthy homeowners in both cases. So that's I think the direction that we need to be moving in Lydia. They thank you so much.

I hope you'll come back. Such a pleasure and anytime, Molly Jesse Cannon by John Fast did you know that I'm a director? You're a director? Tell me more well by GOP congressperson standards of what they do for there's resumes these days. I once audited next Girlfriends UCLA film studies classes three different times, and really by their standards these days, that means I can say I'm an expert film director. This is my favorite new GOP fabulous first

term Congressman Andy Ogles. I kind of like Googles, like it feels more fun. Googles claims to have graduated from Middle Tennessee State University with a degree in international relations. However, it turns out he has a degree in Liberal studies and is only take in one single economics class, for which he received a see congratulations to all the people who enabled this to happen. The modern day Republican Party is prepperd Grate. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.

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