Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Donald Trump has received yet another target letter.
From the DOJ. We have a star studded show today.
The shock Doctor and author Naomi Kwine tells us about how to counter RFK Junior's misinformation. Then we'll talk to Evil Genius' author Kurt Anderson about his new TV show with Fame director Steven Soderberg commands Z.
But first we have the.
Host of Showtimes the Circus, John Heilman.
John Heilman, welcome right.
Back, Hi, good, wanting to be back right.
From Los Angeles, the City of Angels.
You're joining us to talk about Donald Trump has gotten a target letter, another one.
When I saw it at for I thought it was from last month.
Why because he got to target letter last month too. I mean how most people only get one of those in their lives.
Yes, I mean, look, what is constantly toggling in the age of Trump between wanting to express and apprehend the scale of what's going on and the unprecedented nature of it. And so when somebody says to me, you know, Donald Trump just got another target letter. And I think everyone who's close to this investigation assumes that Donald Trump doesn't get a target letter unless he's going to get indicted in that investigation. That's kind of the prevailing assumption. So
is that a big deal? Obviously? Is it historic? Obviously? Yes, these are big things, And I'm not the thing I'm about to say, isn't it downplay them? It's only just to say that, like, it's just the reality that you molly me. Everybody who talks to anybody involved in this has expected this for some number of weeks, not necessarily
some number of months. But I think that at some point in the last prior to the first target letter from Jack Smith and then the indictment in the document's case, at some point prior to that, a couple months prior to that, maybe it started to dawn on people that the special prosecutor is really fucking serious and he's going for Trump. Nobody knew who Jacksmith was when he got appointed.
There was some chances that, like, you know, Merrick Garland's kicking the can down the road, Jack Smith's not going to do anything. We've had mixed experiences in this country with special counsels and special prosecutors and independent councils prior to that, but it suddenly became clear, and the closer you were to the investigation, the sources closer to the investigation of people who knew Jack Smith kept saying all along, no,
this dude is a stone cold killer. If Donald Trump has broken the law, which it appears that he has, and in both of these cases, he's going to go for it. So on one level, today's news is historic and significant. It's also on some level shocking. A former president of United States, now indicted in a separate not about to be indicted, has a target letter in a separate federal inquiry into his mis deeds. Shocking, but like not surprising, Like I didn't wake up and when I
saw this this morning and go, oh my god. You know Donald Trump's He's going after Jack Smith's going after in the one sixth case, Oh my god. Who thought that was coming. You know, most of us have thought this is what is the next shoot to drop? And now it's dropped. I think all the questions now are not is he going to get indicted? The only questions in both these cases are we don't know what the strength of the one six cases yet because it hasn't
been laid out in an indictment. But at some point we will know how strong that case is, and then the questions will be when is he tried? And can he get the Republican nomination and potentially win the White House before those trials take place. That's like the to me, that's the whole ballgame.
Right, can he run out the glock which he's going to try.
Oh, I mean it's always trying to do, and it's always trying to do. I mean, his whole game. It's very simple and all the other discussions. To me, he is almost certainly going to be the Republican nominee. And you know, one on one against Joe Biden. Anybody who says Donald Trump can't win is out of their mind. Like, is Joe Biden the favorite? He is? Is Donald Trump? Is it impossible for Donald Trump to win? We saw how close twenty twenty was. It was, you know, under
one hundred thousand votes in three states. You know, it's not like a big deal. So it's like, you know, he could win. And if Trump can delay these two cases and he wins, it's a fucking you know, apocalyptic cataclysmic end of the Earth, existential horror show.
I don't know the answer.
I don't think anybody reasonably can tell you with any confidence whether or not he will be successful in running out the clock or not. I just I mean, people speculated about it all day long. What will the judges say? How long will it take? Everything in court takes longer
than you think it's going to take. Everything takes longer than you think it should take, even if the judge isn't in the tank for Trump, and we know at least one of these judges is widely seen as being the one in the class by documents cases widely seen as being pro Trump. We'll see what happens in this case. If it gets filed in the one six case and gets filed in DC, that'll be a different venue and we'll see what we get as a judge there. But you know, that's to me, the ballgame right now is
like what's the timing of these things? And then largely obviously questions about the jury is going to be and et cetera, et cetera, But the timing is really everything.
And it is interesting because I want to like shift back to the Republican primary. Fuckeray, we can say fuckery because we're not on television.
I say fuckery on television all the time, and just not on MSNBC.
That you much cooler than I am, Molly.
I'm just telling you.
The thing about premium, about premium cable and streaming is that the main reason to be on it is not about coolness but about the ability to use profanity at will.
Well.
I respect the hell out of profanity use. I have to say, as someone whose mother has trotted the path of using profanity as much as possible, I.
Just want to keep along with it.
But this Republican primary contest, I'm curious. You're quite young, but you've covered campaigns for a long time. You've seen a lot of Republican primary contests get going, and you've seen people get excited about a fresh faced, brown haired Do you know.
Scott Walker, governor of a major governor of a swing state, that.
Kind of thing?
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, Pete Wilson not a governor of a sting state.
Jeb Bush, governor of a swing state. I've seen a lot of Republicans.
People get excited about a lot of absolutely obvious front running Republicans who are going to clearly be the nominee who then turned out to be.
A big fat goose egg.
Yeah so yeah, Rob Destanta is not an unfamiliar story in Republican primaries.
Do donors just say, like, this is our guy.
It doesn't matter that he can't say nice to meet you back when he meets people.
Well, I think first of all, i'd say a couple things just you know. Soyeah, I've been doing this for thirty years, and the truth is that all of that experience is in some sense helpful. Like I can tell you this when you read stories about the disarray inside the Dysantis campaign, right, and then you hear people push back on those stories. Here's a fundamental iron law of all campaigns, Republican Democrat. When you read stories about campaign disarray,
it's three times worse inside the campaign. However bad the press is making it sound, it's three times worse inside the campaign. It's never like stories about campaign disarray are coming out and in fact everything's fine. It's never like that because when things are really fine, no one's going
to the press and complaining about things. And when things are fucked is when people start to leak, because they start to go shit, this ship is headed for an iceberg or has already hit the iceberg, and I don't want to fucking go down with that ship. So I'm going to start to talk about how fuck the ship is. It's always worse inside, and so their hair is completely on fire, and the idea that like, they're that's all fine, We'll make a mid course correction, everything will be cool.
There's a lot of time that is not what's being said in Ronda Santas's campaign right now. It's people are like, well, we're not really firing that person, We're moving them over the superPAC.
Fucking bullshit. That person.
Yes, we might keep them on the payroll so that we can claim that we didn't fire them, but that person has basically just been fired.
So anyway, So there's one. That's one thing.
The second thing is none of my experience is meaningful in the sense that like, I've never we've never covered anything like cover two Republican nomination contests in the age of Trump, but not one in the age of post insurrection Trump right, and the full cultishness of the Republican Party, the full personality cultureusness, and the full swing to what you know, people like Walter Russell Meade politely called like Jacksonian populist cultural populism and nationalist populism in the party.
We've never seen the party be what it is like this now, And I think it's really important in the sense that like there are donors who are looking for alternatives to Trump, there are elites who are looking for alternatives Trump, media moguls looking for alternatives to Trump, a small faction of never Trump Republicans looking for alternatives with Trump. What there isn't is a critical massive Republican voters looking for an alternative Donald Trump. You know how long will
this owner donors stick with DeSantis? You know they're already obviously, I mean, you know the way, with the way camping finance rules, a lot of these people are we the maxed out donors are already maxed out. The unmaxed out donors are looking at this thing and going, this is a cycle, a poop cruise that's on fire, like one of those carnival cruises where it terms of the toilets don't work.
It's a flaming pop cruise. So no one's gonna write to that.
So the donor the numbers start unless he does something dramatic soon, because donors are not that smart and they look up and they see what's on TV and they go okay. So if he does something dramatic to change the narrative, I mean dramatic something I think he's incapable of doing, maybe some other people will write checks to him. But a lot of the people who really believed in RNDO Santas as a Trump alternative have already written all
their checks. They're done, they're out. And this is not the guy who's going to have a low dollar donor base. Like it's not like there's like a giant populist ups ground swell for him. They are all with Trump. They believe in Trump. And so the problem in this nomination fight is this race is I have never been less interested in doing all the stuff that I love to do. Like I love Iowa, and I love New Hampshire, and
I love South Carolina and I love retail politics. I've spent years doing it, and I find I'm perverse, I'm weird, I'm kinky, I like that shit, and I look at this in this run and I'm like, this is just all a giant kabooki fest. This is ridiculous. All of the things these people are doing. Like here's Mike Pants at the make pens that the pancake breakfast, and here's Nicky Haley grill at a pork chop. It's like, like none of these people have a hope. Trump owns the party.
He just owns it and everybody who wants to see an alternative there. It's not like there's no one, but the party doesn't want. The vast bulk of the nominating electorate does not want an alternative, And so how you're going to create that desire. I'm not saying it's impossible, but sitting here today, none of these people have a strategy for how you have a plan that seems plausible to me of how you're going to break his hold over the large plurality, if not the majority, over the
Republican nominating electorate. It's like no one has presented a plan or a strategy that looks to me like plausible.
Do you even wonder if Desanta's was sort of overplayed from the get go?
Yes, I made a comment a second ago about I said something about Scott Walker, Jeb Bush, Pete Wilson, Pete Wilson, I've seen candidate like I'm from California. When Pete Wilson ran for president nineteenninety six, they're a lot of people like Governor of California, far right. He's the immigration stuff, the public service stuff. He's going to carry the party. I was like, Pete Wilson does not have the talent
to hit major league pitching. Rick Perry, you know, Texas big blah blah blah, Like you know, there was a moment when people thought Rick Perry. I'm like, I don't see it. He'll have a donor base, There'll be people who'll be get behind him. But this guy, when he gets out there is just not He just doesn't have what it takes. I didn't necessarily say that was the case of Jeb Bush, and I still don't really necessarily believe Jeb Bush didn't have what it takes, but he
got crushed by Donald Trump. He didn't know how to handle Trump. But I'm not sure Jeb Bush couldn't have been presidential. There are these other people, and I just always looked at the Santas and said, he looks like a paper tiger to me. And I'm on the record saying that from the very beginning, I thought, on paper, I understand why the donor class who's desperate for an alternative to Trump, and in his general election candidate he
might be able to beat Joe Biden. But as an alternative to Donald Trump in the flesh on a debate stage in an ice cream shop in Iowa, this is not only not a Hall of Famer or an All Star. This is a guy who's like, you know, in terms of performance skills, candidate skills, He's like a double a triple A player, not a Major league player.
I thought it was amazing that they thought they no one is going to notice the cowboy.
Boots, well, all of it, all of it.
And this the absolute in the absolute incapacity to relate in a normal human way. Now with with with voters. You know, people overdo how important retail politics is at the presidential level. It's obviously much more about national media and more about about the big moments on debate stages and about advertising and other things. But in the end, those those guys have to go. And I'll tell you
one set of voters. They have to be able to be really good in a room with donors like you might not be great in an ice cream shop and you might really kind of hate having to go to the to the pizza ran in a Tumwa, But like, if you can't get in a room and work a donor crowd, this is the great genius of Barack Obama.
Like when he first came on, the first thing you saw was this guy can be on we can be on with Oprah, he can be on Monday Night Football, he can be in a at the pizza rengein to Tumwa, and he can work a room of Wall Street CEOs and they all think this is one of us. That's a candidate who's like has somewhere not necessarily guaranteed victory, but that's like that's you're talking about someone who can hit major pitching. And like you look at at Disantas
and donors started meeting him and going, he's weird. No, he doesn't talk like a normal person in this group where we're trying to like just sit around a little roundtable in private and a restaurant in a private room. He's like weirdo, that's what they said. And you're like, if he can't relate to those guys, And then you see him in these pictures when he's trying to do the pizza meta ranch. You're like, I'm sorry, this is
let's just shut this thing down now. He won't for a while, but that's where it's going.
I remember the scion of a big New York real estate family. The Republican came home and he was like, that's no money for me. Like, you're having that kind of visceral reaction to your guy, forget.
It the guy you're looking for.
Like the people walked into those rooms with Dissana's thinking, I really want an alternative to trump this guy. On the basis of his record in Florida. Some of the things I don't really love. I don't really love all this kind of you know, the punching down on the trans kids, whatever. But I like the economic record. I like the fact that his re election was incredibly impressive, you know, and expanded his margin and his strength with
keik stituencies, including Hispanics. Like people wanted him to be what they wanted to like him. They walked in the room, not skeptical, but like this could be the guy. And then they walked out of the room going, eh huh, let's go talk to Tim Scott. Let's see what that's about.
And now they've gone to Tim Scott just so much the reporting is about how the donor class has turned to Tim Scott. It seems impossible to me that you go from a racist to someone who is actually black as your nominee.
But am I wrong?
I mean, if your only objective is how do we stop Donald Trump? If that's your if that's what, if that's the category you're in, As I said, not what the party believes, but what some of the donor class believe. You don't really give a shit. Here's like, how can I be Trump? I've tried that guy. That's not going to work. I got to move on to the next best thing. And I think, I mean, Tim Scott gives
Trump some problems that like Ron de Santis does. And I saw Stuart Stevens on TV yesterday saying, how does a guy who got elected governor by running an ad where he's talking to his little kids about how the little kids about building a wall? How you know, how does that guy to become Trump's the antidote to Trump. It's just such a fundamental problem, right, Like he's Trump's creation. And people in the Jacksonian populist, nationalist Republican Party do
actually have they really value loyalty. Loyalty is a big thing in that in that Caudrid so the idea of like someone, hey, you know, Trump's was not being an idiot when he said over and over again I made Rond de Santis because he did to some extent, and he knew that his voters would be like, this is guy's an ingrade. You know, they don't want to see
that kind of betrayal of Donald Trump. They want to see someone who and John Ellis of the Bush family and of the great News items substack letter Giles is like, you got to figure out a way to praise, to do the eulogy before you try to bury him. If you if you don't, people want to hear in the Republican nominating electorate. They want to hear about how Donald Trump made America great again. We thank him, We're grateful,
he's a great man. And now I want to stick a ship in h Micheve and the and push him in the shallow grave. But like, you can't just try to kill him, and you can't kill him withology because it's not really about ideology. It doesn't have one. It's not about policy, it doesn't have one. It's not like I'm going to run to the right of him or I'm going to be more deregulatory than him. That's just
not what the Republican Party's about anymore. And so Tim Scott gives him problems, potentially gives him problems in the way that Rod DeSantis doesn't. He doesn't have a lot of that complicated relationship with Trump. But I still, you know, look at him and say, Tim Scott donald Trump one on one debate, if.
It ever got to that, like, can you imagine.
I mean, you know, I mean, Donald Trump's a freaking one man wheat thresher, you know, I just I just didn't imagine. I can't imagine Tim Scott, you know, coming out of that, not in like fifty seven pieces. But you know, who knows, we'll see. I mean, I continue to think it's very hard for me to see how many beats Trump.
Yeah, no, I don't want to watch. It'll stress me out. I mean, I feel like watching Trump destroy the sky. I mean, you know, he's not necessarily what I believe, but you know, he seems decent enough and someone. I mean, I think it's kind of sad when Trump destroys someone. The few decent Republicans laughed.
I mean, I mean, I think, you know, again, many people will have a lot of you know people, If you say anything nice at this point about anybody in the Republican Party, people yell at you. But I mean, comparatively speaking, Santas and Tim Scott, Tim Scott is a far less objectionable branded vodka than Ronda Santasy is. I think it's on the level of him. You don't see Tim Scott doing some of the most egregious stuff that
that's really offensive that Desantas has done. So Yeah, and you know, there's a little bit of a Bambi kind of a quality to like, you know, if Trump gets out there and has to like, well, I guess I'm gonna have to rip Nikki Haley, Tim Scott, you know in the little tiny pieces you're kind of like, oh, I mean, like, I don't really, I mean, I'm not a big fan of deer, but I don't like watching Bambi get like ripped into five thousand pieces. That's not fun.
The deer crush the plants and stuff. I don't want them in my yard. But like I don't I also want to see them like put a put it in a wood schipper.
You know it's not fun.
And I think the top line today is don't put Bambi in the wood chipper.
Thank you, John. I hope you'll come back.
Well, you're the greatest.
I'm sometimes a useless piece of shit and I sometimes don't go to the schedule, but none of it has anything to do with me not ever wanting to be on your shy.
Naomi Kline is the author of The Shock Doctrine And This Changes Everything, as well as a columnist for The Guardian and a professor of Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Naomi Kline.
Thank you. It's great to be with you.
I'm so happy to have you.
Such a fan of yours for any number of reasons. So let us talk about I feel like he's like a blight.
Let us talk about RFK Junior.
Let us let us let us Oh, he's been making news lately. So I spoke you have.
I mean, I feel like we have to, right, do we? I mean I think we do? So just give me the top lines here, I mean, what are we even doing?
I think there was a tendency at the start to just ignore him and hope he would go away. And I think it's under because he is a you know, serial misinformer. He spreads medical misinformation I think has has caused great damage, and during COVID it made a lot of sense to just sort of tune people like that out. But Kennedy has been very clear in some of his interviews that the entire reason he's running is because he was,
in his view, you know, silence censored. He said, it has felt like talking into I believe he said a fucking tin can. As a lawyer, he knows that when you you know, when you're when you're part of an official electoral process, there's a kind of duty to cover and that he would get more of a platform. So whether he's serious about, you know, his electoral prospects, or whether he's just doing this to get a platform, he
is getting a platform. And so the question is now, what do we do with the fact that he is spreading quite dangerous misinformation on a much larger scale. And I argue that we have to engage with the misinformation, and we actually have to debunk it and don't just assume that people understand that what he's saying, for instance, about the link between vaccines and autism is a lie, or the link between COVID and now he's claiming it's a bioweapon that specifically leaves out Jews, and you know
when he had Chinese. Yes, right, I mean it's not like you can just sort of sneer, right. I actually think these arguments have to be very effectively debunked. And I think there's been a little too x sneering and sort of assuming that people get it, and I'm not sure they do.
Yeah, we are in this strange time of like peak disinformation, right, I mean, I guess it's not true. I mean, I guess there have been times when there's been disinformation like this, but it does seem unusual how much of I mean, I think it's the death of local news. I think, you know, it's a number of factors have contributed to that. But is there a way to sort of fight back against that? And how right? So, I mean, I think
conspiracy theories are not new. They always spread in chaotic times, right, because they offer these neat stories that claim to explain
the world. They are also always tools for elites, particularly anti Semitic conspiracy theories have been used by going back to the first failed Russian Revolution in nineteen oh five, when you had this broad based working class coalition taking on Thezar and the landed elite, with the Jewish bound really at the center of this coalition but part of a multi ethnic working class coalition, and the response of the Czar what's twofold one to offer some their minor
concessions and on the other hand to start spreading the protocols of the elders and zion and saying that this is you know, a plot by these stateless, rootless Jews to attack a Christian nationalist values.
Right.
So conspiracy theories, particularly antisemitic conspiracy theories, are just why we have to take it seriously that our kids now openly you know, flirting with them. This is why Bannon
likes them, This is why Tucker Carlson likes them. Nothing blasts apart a coalition from below, like saying blame that guy over there, like not us, right, Or instead of having a structural critique of a system that is desiring to enrich and ewit and impoverish the masses, you say, oh no, there's a cabal of just like a small group of Jewish bankers who are plotting, like you, turn it into an aberrant part of the system as opposed
to the system itself. You know, that's also what Hitler did when he when he when he talked about a form of Jewish capital, is that that was taking over the kind of wholestim capital. You know, this is the context. But I think what's different, Molly about this moment, and
it is a big difference. I thought a lot about this is that conspiracies are an industry in themselves now, right, because you have figures like Kennedy who are playing the personal branding game and the person and they've learned how to monetize their own identities. And so when they spread and when they spread a conspiracy that goes viral on these platforms that you know, just want whatever kind of engagement they can get, and this is a good way
to get it. They're going to personally profit from it, right, They're going to get members on their sites, they're going to get donations, they're going to get book sales, they're going to get all of that. And so I do think that that is what makes this moment different, is the way that conspiracies are like directly monetizable on these platforms, and so you've got way more players.
Yeah, I mean it does seem like running for president and engaging in conspiracy theories both to have a kind of profit connection that they didn't necessarily have before, like you know, and so I mean it almost feels like and again I'm not being anti capitalist here, That's not what I'm saying, but I am saying that does seem like capitalism has bled into these two parts of political life.
Yeah, and I think you know what you were saying about local media and just sort of a vacuum of trusted information, right, even of a kind of any kind of shared narrative that we might all be watching the same TV show or all. You know, we've all heard these arguments. But I do think that you can't really separate these forces around the ability to monetize conspiracies, the fact that people have these kind of niche information bubbles,
which is where they're getting all of their information. Maybe it's you know, maybe it's Jordan Peterson, maybe it's Steve Benn and maybe it's Joe Rogan. You know, some mix and match of all the above, and they've all found each other and are all amplifying each other.
There are much of.
It around the RFK care. He's really kind of weaving together this network or coagulating it, or you know, whatever metaphor you know you want to use. It does bring us back to whether we believe, you know, whether whether you're a fan of capitalism or not. You know, if you're a reasonable person, you probably believe that there are some things that are a little bit too important to
leave to the market. Maybe it's healthcare, maybe it's you know, schooling, and there are there are all kinds of things we've carved out of the market, and the US carves less
of it out than most industrial economies. But you know something, if something is important enough, we can say, actually we're not going to let just the profit mode of govern here, and maybe information and media should be part of that so that we don't end up with this kind of free for all, which is I think a big part of the reason why somebody like the garf Cave has been able to find the audience that he's been able to find. You know, that said, and I think this
is intimately corrected. I don't think you could understand the success of his campaign so far and I think somebody is pulling at around twenty percent. You know, at a lot of pulls, you have to admit that there's something going on that that isn't just kind of Facebook's fault that they are tapping into something real. They're saying things that a lot of people feel need to be said. Right.
And so the piece I wrote for The Guardian, you know, I called him a counterfeit copy of a copy of a copy that it's tapping into a real need.
Right.
And so when he talks, and this is really the centerpiece of his messaging, this merger of the multinational corporations and government kind of ganging up agatest to you, whether it's big farm or big tax, sells a little bit like Bernie Sanders, and frankly, he sounds a little bit like me. He sounds a lot like the left. But he is not offering any kind of left solution. This is why it's a bait and switch. If you listen to what he's talking about, he's like, no, I'm a
hardcore free market here. I want to lead climate change to the market. He's not coming out in favor of universal public health care. He's not talking about raising the minimum wage, you know, so he sort of sounds a little bit like Bernie, but he is most definitely not Bernie. He won't even talk about a wealth past. You know, he's pandering to his Republican base and maybe who knows,
positioning himself. So he denies it for a Trump Kennedy ticket, which I think is obviously very very unlikely to happen, but nothing can be ruled out in this day.
I just want to, like, for a minute, talk about Kennedy as a I as a beneficiary of nepotism. Myself, coming from a famous mother and a famous grandfather, I've had a lot of advantages.
Because of nepotism.
So I always want to talk a little bit about how people are born on third base and think they've hit a home run. The Kennedys have had very much, you know, a similar kind of probably much more than a kind of advantage like that. I wonder how much that shapes Rfk's belief that he is not I mean, like, if anyone should have impostors syndrome, it's RFK junior.
But he's seems to be lacking it.
I mean, look, I think it's a really good thing to bring up and I think that there's no doubt that it's more than just a family. It's more than just being born on third base and privilege though. It's all of that, and it's nit, right, it's the power of story and NIT. And he's really playing into this kind of destiny narrative, right, like he's going to avenge the death of his father and uncle and finally get
at the truth. He's tapping into the energy around the unanswered questions, real unanswered questions and conspiracy theories swirling around the Kennedy assassinations and the fact that it's central to the Q and on world.
Right.
So he's not fully you know, he's not fully thrown in with Q andon, but he's dancing with them. He's dancing with them, right, because he knows how powerful the Kennedy name has become in the Q world. And for those of you who haven't followed this, I mean, it's so extreme, right, And they believe that Bobby Kenny Junior is still alive, did not die in the car crash in the nineties, And you know, I had a rally in Dallas waiting for his return, unveiling an announcement that
he was Trump's running me. So this is sort of the energy that is swirling around the Kennedy name slash brand. And I realized how like dangerous this all was when I was working on this book that I've been that I've been working for the past few years about my own doppelganger conspiracy theorists. You know, it just sort of just using Naomi Wolf as a jumping off point. But I started listening to Steve Bannon's podcast because she was
on it all the time. And then I just started listening to Steve Bannon's podcast because I was realizing the story like I was. I was realizing that we were at most people I knew were not keeping up with the stories that were really gaining resonance on the MAGA.
Right should I be listening to Steve Benn I mean, I guess this is not an endorsement.
I think it's worth listening now and then to keep up with the stories. He's listening to us. He is keeping track of who is being silent, what is being left unsaid, and he has the skill of tapping into the issues that the Democrats abandoned and the people the Democrats abandoned and saying, come on over here, We're going to solve your problems for you, and of course not doing so, that's what that's what he advised Trump to do.
And Trump did, you know, to disastrous effect in twenty sixteen with white working class union members who felt screwed over by trade deals that the Democrats had supported, right, and now he's doing that with or trying to do that with white COVID moms, you know, anti backs, that sort of convergence of the wellness far.
Out, so far right, you know, yeah.
So so simply to say that Steve Bennon had our K on his podcast in December of twenty twenty one, and he gave RFK an entire show just to spout anti vax conspiracy theories, but he lavished praise on him and the Kennedy name, and he really carved it out as being different than the Democrat Like, you know, it was really interesting to hear Steve Bennon he praise on the Kennedys, which I'm sure it is not the league, right,
but it was like the beginning of this story. It started in December twenty twenty one when Bennon realized that there was there was a powerful brand there that he could co opt into his project and use it against the Democrats. So that is happening. And look, I think there's no doubt that our kid Junior has this sense of destiny, has the sense that this is his birthright.
But because he was a heroin addict for a long time, it was sort of pre Trump assumed that that meant you couldn't have a political career, and post Trump, basically anything goes. So now he's in.
I think that's such an important point.
I'm looking forward to having you back to talk about Double Ganger when it comes out in September.
Until then, everyone should pre order it.
Just delighted to get to talk to you, really appreciate you and excited for our September book launch interview.
Thank you so much, Mollie. It's a real, real pleasure.
Hi, it's Mollie, and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right.
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Cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the rescue puppy on it. And now you can grab this merch guys only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Kurt Anderson is the author of Evil Geniuses and the co creator of command Z. Welcome back to Fast Politics fan favorite, my actual friend Kurt Anderson.
Hello, Molly John Fast.
Delighted to have you. So let's talk about your show.
I've got a show. A little show can tell us more. He once talked on this program, or maybe his predecessor program, about this book I wrote called Evil Geniuses, which was this history of the last fifty years and how the right wing hi jack our political economy and fucked everything up.
True.
One of the people who read and liked that book very much was my acquaintance Steven Soderberg, the filmmaker the Best. Started talking to me at the time, and so, what can we do? How can we make something out of this? How can I make something out of this that would sort of distill some of its messages and appeal to young people and get to people who don't care about politics and maybe nudge them towards civic engagement to try to fix things before they're unfixable, and so on and
so on, and anyway, very long story, very short. Over the next two and a half years came to be this kookie episode show called command Z, which is this scripted satire involving time travel and brain implants and horrible Wall Street power brokers and right wing politicians and religious fanatics and all of those things that are part of what makes life in America not so great right now
and how those people and things can be nudged. And it's kind of a fatal right, I mean, it's not realistic, and I think it's funny and that's what it's about, and that's what it is. And Stephen directed all light episodes, and it has movie stars like Michael Sarah and they have Schreiber and Roy Wood Junior from The Daily Show and a couple of dozen other great actors and it's just an amazing bit of fun that I'm very proud of.
And it's out now and it's available only appropriately in this time of strikes for a pro union show, as it is on Steven Soderbrukh's own website, which is called Extension seven sixty five. And in this park place where it's available called commandz series dot com and all the proceeds go to charity. So you know, it's fun, it goes to charity. It's all good.
Explain a little bit how you got from evil geniuses to brain implants.
Well, at one point early on, actually Stephen said, Maple, we could do some He didn't use the phrase arty documentary, but he used I don't know if you know the work of Adam Curtis. He's a brilliant British documentarian. You know he's thinking of all kinds of things because he thinks in all kinds of ways. He's a brilliant, radiant
thinking man. Anyway, So we talked through lots of things and what it could be and what it should be, and what we wanted to do, and really focused on, okay, how do we on this idea that I said before, How do you get people, especially people who aren't like you and me, for instance, politically obsessed, to watch a thing and have it maybe nudge them toward an understanding of how history works or doesn't work, and how things take a long time to fix and all those things.
So we thought, okay, some kind of scripted things in the future when things are even worse. Was a good idea. And then I've always been a fan of Time Trouble, and turned out he's interested in Time and Trouble as a as a fictional device. Brand implants are how our characters.
I don't want to give too much away, right, there's a way that many, many millions of Americas got brand implants, which just coincidentally, of course, is one of Elon Musk's current businesses is to give people brain implants that can
communicate with computers. And in twenty fifty three, this guy who was organizing this whole thing in our movie, Commandzie, played by Michael Sarah, has died on his way to Mars again could be a reference to some future Elon Musk's event has found this way to communicate with people back in twenty twenty three, and that's what that's what our team is doing to try to make people in twenty twenty three do better than the evil than they are doing.
You and I both I think of us as like nineteen nineties magazine people.
That's my origin story.
And I wonder if when you look at what's happening right now with sort of what's happening with TV and movies and cable. Do you think that that is a sort of similar phenomenon, this kind of business being totally changed by the internet.
It is, obviously being has been totally changed very different way in that for the last decade because of streaming, suddenly the same industry, that is to say, the show business motion picture television industry, thought, oh my god, not only is this not killing us as it did magazines and newspapers and nearly did books, but it's a rebirth. Right. We have this new way of making money and streaming
into people's homes. And by the way, we don't need to share anything with movie theaters, and by the way, and it's why. Of course, part of the reason writers and actors, including me I'm a remember the writer's guilt, are on strike right now is to say, oh, look, and if we get all this money from subscriptions, we don't have to give any of that to the actors and writers, all right, that whole half, this new half
of our business model, we don't have to share it. Great, So it changed it until they overbuilt and overspent and over everything, as happens in business. It was a totally good thing for them, rather than in the case of magazines print like kind of a for anybody who was paying attention, you know in the late nineties, certainly in the odds, was like, uh oh, this is bad for us. Nobody ever had it right, I mean there was no serious like boom booh good the Internet. It's going to
really help newspapers and magazines. I mean, you know, not for more than five minutes.
Right, but it's quite interesting this sort of like, I mean, do you think it's possible that with the magazine is what happened was that sort of a lot of magazines died. Some places were able to capitalize on it, but ultimately a lot of content ended up not being gated, going for free.
I mean, it's really been a constant crisis, right.
And that information wants to be free thing which was said not in the way that was taken ultimately by the Internet, which is like hey I shouldn't have to pay for anything, was a problem. And in their excitement to be part of the new economy as it was called back then thirty years ago, all these newspaper magazine it's like oh yeah, we'll just like here take it and somehow advertise it will pay the day. Well, that
didn't work out too well. Speaking of magazines, which is where your question began, because yeah, I too was a magazine person.
Certainly you were more of a magazine person than I was. I was just older anything.
You know, a magazine is this thing that can barely exist anymore in the Internet. I mean, which is to say, it's this fifty or one hundred or two hundred pages selected by an editor under a mission and a sensibility, and this is why we put these articles together this week or this month into this thing here. Enjoy it. I mean, yeah, Okay, the New Yorker may be kind of sort of great as it is, or the Atlantic
kind of sort of great as it is. They still do that, They still put on the magazines's New York Magazine, many Fatty Fair, whatever. But the Internet has made magazines unable to effectively exist in that way that they did for the one hundred and two hundred years that they existed and were what they were, right where it's this package of things and you read it all together, and it's and and the mixes of the articles in that issue ideally are a thing that you enjoy. And you know,
everything now is an individual article. Your article of Vanity Fair next month as great as I'm no doubt will be will be read by your.
Readers, right right, right, right right.
And so yeah, sure it's part of Vanity Fair.
But you know, and yet so you think that this is a movement from the platform to the person.
Well yes, and again it's funny right about what we're doing with command Ze bye bye by Stephen who you know made his great breakthrough with sexualized and videotape, which was the ultimate beginning of the indie movement, effectively right thirty four years ago, you know, and surprised everybody and started turning over the ventional wisdom about how movies were
made and distributed. Well, you know, we have Hulu and Amazon and and Netflix and these giant Peacock Disney, plus these giant streamers, some of which were not even in the entertainment business until a few years ago, now kind of running it, controlling it until now they feel like, uh, oh, we overdid it. And yet it's still just part of this you know, giant corporate thing of media and entertainment. And so to try in this one little small way to say no, you don't have to subscribe anything. You
just come to this Filmmaker's site. Pay seven ninety nine
and watch this show these eight episodes. Well cool, and so we kind of lucked into walking the walk in what this show is as well as talking to talk, because it's about how, you know, there's too much corporate dominance and everything is driven by you know, efficiency and largerness and money and all the things that are familiar to us about what's wrong with now and so here in this small way of not being on Max or Hulu or Netflix or any of the rest where so
it didn't have to be that way. There's all kinds of ways to do this. And you know, if you can figure out if you can make a thing that people like and it's good and you like and put it up there the internet, I mean it's kind of a return to the original dream of the Internet in a way that like just stuff could be out there and you'd go fight it. Oh no, you didn't see the Soderberg has a series. I can go pay eight bucks and I don't have to buy a thousand shows and movies I don't care about.
You know, it's sort of the dream of all creators, right.
Well, yeah, and my experience with this has been the dream that I was never counting on, yes, to have this person who is not easy. He's a very demanding, rigorous person in every respect. But it wasn't just some There was never some person, some suits, some whomever upstairs over there who says, oh what about this? Why oh do they have to be this? Oh can't you make her a man? Or can't you make him? You know this? There were none of those second guessings, and so yeah, no,
it was. It was a very pure, which is not to say, easy thing to be able to do and then just put it out like here, people take a look. Yeah, it was great.
It is the dream.
And it's a reminder that we all think of technology being bad. Yes it can be. It will be unless we control it properly, have the right guard rails and social systems. But here, look, this is what it was supposed to be. It's this amazing thing. Right you can you can put this thing out and on your phone or on your iPad or on your TV or whatever. You can can watch it. You don't have to go to a theater. You don't have to do it. I mean,
it is, it is. It's a it's a taste of what the utopians back in the nineties were dreaming of So yeah, it's when little we're making it real at this time of concentration and monopoly. The technology can be great if you use it, right.
Do you think that that could or still might happen with magazine writers?
Maybe, I mean it does. I mean, you know, I mean look at substack, right, there are plenty of writers who are making a very good living doing that. You know, you could undoubtedly.
Make a good living doing that, Malay Jones.
Pass so sure, I personally to me again, there are ways to talk about magazines and print writing, pros writing. Obviously, technology has upended all of these worlds. However, yeah, one writer at a time, great earn a living writing articles. Fine on substack or whatever other versions of that they'll be. But I gotta say, the thing about shows and TV shows and movies that are very different from that is that they are collaborateive. They are in the doing of
it and the making of it. Like old fashioned magazines. I mean, there is one commander, but of course, you know, Tina Brown was a commander, Brayden Carter was a commander. I mean, all great magazine editors are commanders in that movie director way. So the writer alone on her or his subseec is just a writer Laura her subsect, which could beautiful and wonderful and fantastic, but it's not the sheer team sport fun that magazines were and TV and movies that their best are.
Kurt, we are in the dog days of summer, but we are in impeachmentville politically.
I know what's keeping me up at night. But what are you thinking about right now?
As we're recording, just literally, as the former president has announced that the Social Prosecutor has sent him a target letter, meaning his indictment is presumably imminent for being whatever he's going to be charged with for the January sixth events and surrounding crimes. So great is my reaction to that. But also, of course, the immediate Kevin McCarthy's of the world is people running against him for the nomination and
Republican leaders. Oh this is terrible. This is a weaponization of the justice to warm and all that stuff he says, they say all the time. What I'm thinking is, I wonder if in all of history there's ever been such an intense disconnect between the public. Oh this is terrible, This is bad and the private Please God, let him be taken out. Let this finally take him out, so that we can go on and have our normal, awful Republican party without Donald Trump. You know that, it's so
clear the hypocrisy and disingenuousness on that front. So I just wish I had all of them bug both in their private rooms and their hearts of hearts, to see the intense hope and pleasure they're taking in this. I think what could be the biggest and most damaging indictment politically for swing voters, which is really, you know, all you can really hope for if you're me or you I think they're like, oh God, no, this is too much. I really just can't hold my nose and vote for
this guy. Yeah, once he's denominated, but certainly, I mean, the Rhonda Santus is the world. I just I find it so amusing that they have to say this is terrible, this is terrible. But his entire career at this moment depends on Donald Trump being somehow removed from the race during the next six months. You know, I mean, I will die politically if he doesn't die politically. But I have to say it's terrible. They're killing him politically.
Kurt Anderson, tell us how we can stream this show.
It's very easy to stream the show and it works just fine. And you don't have to be a subscriber to anything, and you don't have to just go to Command Disease Series dot com and take it from there and you say I want access, and they take a credit card and you pay seventy ninety nine and you can watch the whole ninety five minutes at your leisure as many times as you wish, and you subscribe to nothing, and that's what it is. You'll laugh, you may think
a little bit. It's nothing but enjoyable. In fact, your former employer, Mollie the Daily Beast just ran a marvelous review of this show. Just couldn't be more of a rave yesterday. So there you.
Go, fabulous, Kurt. I hope you will come.
Back always and any time.
No mo Jesse Cannon, Marley Jong fasta MTG.
She's not really a student of history, it seems, because she kind of doesn't know what she's ever talking about.
I mean, it's such an incredible moment. Marjorie Taylor Green recently said at the Turning Points conference LBJ is similar to Biden. They are both Democratic socialists. Lbj's big socialist programs to address education otherwise known as public school, a medical care otherwise known as medicare, rural poverty. I mean, you know, medicaid, food stamps, and welfare. So she's reading off those things. Little does she know that those are all wildly popular, and for that she is our moment
of fuck Ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.