Rep. Mondaire Jones, Greg Sargent & Cameron Joseph

Michigan's right to work law was a huge deal. Then Vices Cameron Joseph talks to us about the Claremont Institute snuggling up to Ron de Santis after being Trump's brain for many years. But first we have former congressmen and current best friend of mine, Mondair Jones. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Fan favorite Mandare Jones, Oh, fan favorite. Okay, I've been promoted. I apologize, but it's true. Trump was indicted yesterday or incited depending on your autocorrect or indicated.

I think according to what you truth and truth social Yes. By the way, I went to a dinner last night with a bunch of political writery people and they were like One of them was like, now every indictment is going to come down. I was like, really, no, I don't think that's how it works. I have great faith in the prosecutor down in Fulton County, Georgia, and I've got more faith in the special prosecutor at at Main Justice, and I do Mary Garland, and so I think they'll

indict when they're good and ready. Yeah, I do think that those indictments are amin it based on the public reporting here. These Republicans are right. There was so many machinations about this. Right, you had Linda Graham weeping on television like a televangelist, begging people to send donations to Donald Trump, right, begging people. What are they thinking. I don't know. I mean, lindsay I suppose once additional terms in the Senate. I don't know why he needed to

cry when he did that. I mean thinking just kind of tow the party line, as damaging as that is to our democracy without the the water works. And it's just really sad how far he has fallen from the standpoint of integrity. I think John McCain is rolling in his brave because of what is his dear friend has

been doing his past several years. But I will just say I think all of these people are very happy that Trump is finally getting indicted for things They do not want him to be the nominee, even though he is even more likely, it would appear, to become a nominee after having been indicted by several different prosecuting authorities.

They don't want to piss off the base, and unfortunately, the base is not persuaded by efforts to hold Trump accountable for whether it is inciting violence at the Capitol on January sixth, or trying to overturn the election results in Georgia, or holding on to classify documents when he's been told he has to return them right, and lying about what classified documents you have. That's what I'm sort

of struck by. Its like there were some Republicans, I mean some thought leaders of the Republican Party like Kat Turd and also Eric Ericson, who both said I put them basically on the same level, who said, like, you have now made Trump president again, and I actually don't think that's true. I think that what they were responding to is they now know Trump will win the nomination. I think that's right, that he's more likely today to win the nomination than he was before news of the

indictment came down. But I'm also not a hundred convinced of that theory because as we get closer to the primaries on the Republican side, which will take place next year, I'd like to imagine that Republican voters, as disappointing as they may be on a certain level, are concerned with electability. And by then, I expect that Trump will have been indicted by the Department of Justice at the level by the DA in Folts County, and of course he has

been indicted by the Manhattan disc Attorney. That's not something that is exciting for a for the average general election voter. I mean, if you're if you're an independent, you know you're you're concerned about that, and you're more likely to vote for Joe Biden than you would be in the absence of those indictments. And I think that there are still some Republicans who are concerned about whether their nominee

can win in the general election. That's this theory, right, That's the theory is that you are nominating someone because they can win in a general election and not because you you know, you're trusting a weird QAnon plan that doesn't really exist. Yes, I'd like to believe that. I mean, I don't know. You know. The thing that's so I want to say interesting, but it's really kind of what

if there's a sort of negative word for interesting. The thing that's so worrying about where we are right now is that there this is a sense in which this Republican party is controlled by its base, and its base is not living on Earth one. That's right. There is in fact an effort to completely delude the base Republican voter into thinking that facts are not reality. I mean that takes the form of Tucker Carlson's show, and Crime Time and pretty much every show at Fox News, with

maybe one or two exceptions. According to the discovery that we now have in the Dominion voting case, which is an extraordinary lawsuit that I think will end favorably for Dominion and hopefully be a boon to those of us who want to see truth prevailing democracy remain, democracy continue. Yes, I want to ask you about that. So you know, we are in the run up to this Dominion case. If I were Ruper Murdoch, which I am very much not,

thank god, I wouldn't want to settle this case. If I'm your attorney, and I'm urge you to settle this thing as soon as possible. In fact, I would have urged you to settle it a long time ago. Now. Oftentimes, and I know this from from having practice law for several years, clients don't do what you advised to do. And I think there's actually been some reporting to this effect.

But my god, this is really embarrassing. I mean, tuber Crompson is now admitting to a conversation he had with Donald Trumpton, which he apologized for the text messages that he seemed to which is about his public and admission that we're going to get I think, And of course he only went on far right media to describe that conversation, But if you continue to read the Wall Street Journal,

you're not going to hear anything Dominion gas right. I also feel like Dominion really has a kind of Thalmann Louise like drive off the cliff mentality with this case. So I'm kind of young, Yes, you're a little, thank you very much, a little young than Jesse and I thank you. What if someone is bragging about being in their thirtieth year. So the whole Felma and Louise baying is something em says, Oh Jesus Christ, no longer fan favorite, fan un favorite Manda Jones. My apologies, yah it, but yes,

dam by Louise. It's a story of two actress, middle aged actresses. I guess they were young then, but anyway, they drove off a cliff. They were willing to take themselves down. Oh good, I'm glad I could give you this insight into popular culture. Delighted. It's very There's a lot of bragging about how young he is here, but anyway, we'll allow it. No. I look, I mean, I just if I go to Florida, I'll never hear about it, because I'm sure this stuff has been banned already by

Ron de Santas. Right, exactly banned by Ron de Santras. We had on this podcast in the last episode we had JENSACKI and she was talking about this idea that this White House really can kind of sit back and let the Republicans destroy themselves on each other. Do you think that's a wise move for Democrats? To an extent, She's certainly write that the contrast is not one that's difficult for Democrats to draw. But I do think at the same time, and I don't think she would disagree

that Democrats need to be making the affirmative case. We need to continue to remind people about the crisis of abortion care in this country, which only grows worse by the day. We need to continue to remind people of the implications for our democracy of having these people continue to not certify elections, and it's otherwise subverts elections and

suppress the right to vote. More than anything, we need to talk about how they are trying to repeal provisions of the Inflation Reduction Act, for example, which would actually reduce our deficited and allow us to actually tax very wealthy people in this country so that we can continue to provide necessary government programs to people in me and yes to lower prices such as the price of prescription drugs.

All of these things are economic initiatives that Democrats are in favor of and that Republicans have been an active opposition too. This is like the most Republican thing I've ever heard. I can't remember who it was, but one of these horrible Republican congressmen was like, we should take the money in the Inflation Reduction Act that's for solar panels and use it to arm teachers. That's absurd and I was like, but this is like the perfect Republican thing, and I would like to talk to you for a

minute about the Thomas Massey conversation. Jamal Bowman, Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I mean that's that's actually what came to mind when you just said there. And then of course there's there's Tim Burchett out of Tennessee, who literally said to a reporter, not going to fix it, right after he was asked about the MAVs shooting in his home state, in his home state of Tennessee. So these are not serious people. When he said we're not going to fix it, put that on a T shirt and talk about it. Now,

that's something you want to make the affirmative case. You want to remind people of what this guy said, because it was the most honest thing that we have heard from Republicans in Congress. I would submit in many years. We're not gonna fix it. So these are not people who go to Congress and who enter public life because

they want to solve problems. These are people who at most want to maintain the status quo, if not actively make things worse, for example by arming the same teachers who they don't trust to select books for their children. I know, this is an amazing bit of sorcery. They don't trust teachers to pick books, but they do trust teachers to carry guns. I want to ask you about that. A screaming match, though, because what was interesting to me

was people got really mad at Jamal. The people on the Reich got really mad at him, and they were like, this is not the way you conduct yourself. Okay, sure we're in Trump world. But the thing is what struck me was here is Thomas Massey, who basically wants to make the government as small as possible, and drowned in a bathtub saying that the answer is arming teachers because they know that's the that's sort of their favorite response,

because they know that nobody wants that. Teachers don't want it, Democrats don't want it, Republicans probably don't even really want it. They just know that it's like a great throwaway line. That's right. And you know what's remarkable about that exchange between Representative Jamal Bowman and Representative Massey is that Massey didn't just walk out of the Capitol building as he saw and heard the Representative Bowman yell about what had

happened in Tennessee and the cowardice of Republicans. He stopped, he engaged him in a conversation, and I think that's because he was triggered by the righteousness, the moral clarity of the things that Jamal Bowman was saying in that moment, which is that it was cowardice. It is cowardice for Republicans in Congress not to try to fix it, not to support an assault weapons laugh, because we have children being murdered in school on a regular basis, and Republicans

are like me. I mean, so there's nothing funny about it. It's horrendous. But it's so horrible that it's like almost in some way commuder. They equate banning assault weapons like AR fifteens, these weapons of war with taking away all firearms that exist in American society. It is so intellectually dishonest.

We used to have an assault weapons band. It was wildly effective from nineteen ninety four to two thousand and four when it expired, and it is something that is the minimum I think that Congress Cannon should do, you know, along with universal background checks. But it's just pathetic, you know.

Byron Donalds out of Florida saying that people are responding emotionally to this, Well, yeah, we should all be so outraged Byron Donalds is a new trumpy congress person who actually comes from doesn't he come from the weapons industrial complex? So Byron was I think in the financial services industry as as he often brags about before he was elected to Congress, and is you know, really positioning himself as the one of the heir apparent heirs apparent to Donald Trump.

I just think when people say things like this, we ought to believe that, right. I mean, so what he is saying is that he thinks a conversation about common sense reforms to end gun violence in this country and to stop the uniquely American problem of gun violence is a mere emotional response. Right when Tim Burchess says we're not going to fix it, like, we have to take what they're saying in these moments of honesty very seriously

and vote these guys out of power. And that's where I think it's not enough for us to just sit back. I think we have to be talking about this on the stump, and you certainly have to talk about medicare and so security because I think more than any policy issue that is going to make a difference at the polls in November twenty twenty four. And you see it in the visceral reaction that Republicans have to the legitimate

charge that they do want to cut it. So security and medicare being made by Democrats, right, what do they do? The thing I really want to ask you about is George Soros. George Soros one of the sort of most I think demented talking points but really is so popular with this group on the right, is that this idea that somehow George Soros has caused these indictments to come

down on Trump. I am without words, this is really sinister stuff because it is steeped in anti Semitism, which is at this point pervasive within the Republican Party, is certainly among the leadership. I mean, they use words like globalists, and they cite to George Soros in particular as really the guy who spawns all of the liberal trouble that, from their perspective, is being caused in this country. And here was George Soros in an interview with Semaphore saying, actually,

I didn't donate to Alvin Craig. She knows, so you know, we know what this is about and you know it. It's the loudest people are of course, the same folks who are out here saying that they are Jewish basic leaders, right, and it's this is Marjorie Taylor Green and her Ill even as they try to accuse some members of the

Democratic Party of anti semitiss as a Jew. It's always been incredible to me that they believe Ilhan Omar is an anti semit They can't tell you why, they just know, right, Like my favorite thing to ask people, you know, I have a lot of fancy friends who hate Elhan and I'll say, well, why do you hate her? Oh, because she's an anti semit Well what's anti Semitic about her? Well? You know, And they can never write, they can't ever

follow through on that because why would they. But then you have actual anti Semitism, like real anti Semitism, like George Soros is running the American justice system, and they're completely silent. If anything, they're shopping the idea. Donald Trump literally announced his campaign by dining with Nick Flintez and Kanye West, who I guess it recently has said that

Jonah Hill has helped him change perspective. But like, seriously, How can you support someone like that while claiming that you care about combating anti semitism as it is just completely incredible stuff and quite worrying. What do you think comes next here? I mean, we're definitely going to see

a lot of Republicans debase themselves for Trump, right. I mean, what do you think to the extent that Donald Trump is even more likely to win the Republican nomination as a result of these indictments which will continue to pile up. I think these swing district Republicans earn a lot of trumble because it is going to be exceedingly difficult to disassociate from that guy at the top of the ticket. And he is even more toxic and will be even more toxic in twenty twenty four than he was in

twenty twenty. And now they're already competing against the headwinds that the decision to strike down Roe v. Waite by the far right supermajority of the Supreme Court has wrought, as well as the salience now of their longtime project of cutting so security and medicare at a time when seniors need those programs more than ever because of inflation and everything else going on in our economy man Dare Jones. I hope you'll come back, even though you are incredibly young.

I'm actually not so young. I'm just Greg Sergeant writes the plumb Line blog for The Washington Post. Welcome too Fast Politics, Greg Sargeant, Thanks for having me own another day. Another weaponization committee explained to me what you were saying before we started recording. Once again, Jim Jordan floated the lie that will just not die, right, which is the Democrats denied Republicans the chance to cross examine witnesses on

the January sixth committee. They've telled this lie constantly, right, But what actually happened is the following Nancy Pelosi did nix two out of Kevin McCarthy's five choices, one of which was Jim Jordan. But the reason she did that was because everybody knew that Jim Jordan, and I believe it was Jim Banks, had been chosen expressly for the purpose of sabotaging the very possibility of having any kind of real January sixth accounting. A three year old could

see that that was what was going on. So it was after that that Kevin McCarthy pulled his other three choices and he did this in a calculation which went something like this, well, okay, if there are no Republicans on the committee, and again, Adam Kinsinger and Liz Cheney are Republicans, but not in Republican land, right, But if there are no Republicans on the committee who are actual Republicans, then we'll be able to cast entire affair as a

partisan witch hunt against President Trump. They always call him President Trump, right, right, right, because in their minds, he will always be president. He will always be president, He'll always be President Trump. That was a disastrous miscalculation on McCarthy's part. For one thing, it allowed Democrats to tell the actual story of what happened on January sixth without any saboteurs. And then it also didn't work. It didn't taint the investigation in the eyes of the American public,

in the eyes of the middle of the country. Poles showed that people saw the charges is extremely serious and so it was just a disaster, and they just keep lying about it to this day, and it's it's just a joke. First, let's talk about what's happening in Michigan, where they've sort of countered an anti woke a GOP frenzy.

Michigan is such an interesting state because it's very good, very popular, female governor, you have a female Secretary of State, female ag they're all Democrats, and they're really working now on the state legislature. Yeah, I mean, the big context here is that Michigan, of course, was one of the three Blue Wall states that Trump cracked in twenty sixteen, in the heart of the Midwest, right in the center of the Democratic base, in the center of the birthplace

of labor. Michigan is often thought of as that, and that was a huge shot to Democrats right legitimately, so what Trump accomplished was pretty amazing. But in twenty twenty Biden was able to win Michigan and then in twenty twenty two Democrats took control of the state legislature on the governorship, so that was a real routing of Republicans by Democrats. And so they're using this power now to

try and do two things right. One is to restore a semblance of satin the on the culture war front by passing protections against discrimination for LGBCQ and rescinding an old abortion band. But at the same time they're also taking steps to strengthen labor in the state, which, as you guys all know, has been in serious decline for

a long time. So they're in the process of repealing right to work, which is a tremendous thing for both labor and Democrat Can you explain what right to work is for the few people who are not completely right in on this, this is a vast oversimplification, but the gist is it allows workers to free ride on the benefits of negotiated union contracts without paying any dues. And

it's been catastrophic for organized labor. Not just it, but it and other factors have been catastrophic for organized labor. And so when Republicans took control of a bunch of state legislatures in twenty ten, which as you know, is a huge routing for the Democrats, one of the big things they did was due these quote unquote right to work laws in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, which are really in the heart of the Democratic slash labor stronghold or work in the heart of and so that was a

tremendous blow. And so to undo that is a pretty major victory and a very significant event for Democrats on labor. You'd feel like Michigan is kind of a template. I'm hoping that it is right. What we're seeing here is that Democrats are using their power fairly aggressively to fortify both labor and LGBTQ slash abortion rights at the same time.

What I'm kind of hoping is that that can be a template for crafting a kind of pro what you might call a pro work or social liberalism that can really counter the claim of Republicans in red states that their reactionary agenda is somehow more in sync with working

class values than social liberalism is. If democrats can deliver for working people economically while also defending their social values fairly aggressively and succeed and make a lot of working people feel represented, then that could be, you know, something of a paradigm shift, or at least the beginnings of war. Yeah. I mean, that seems like a really important data point,

if that makes sense. Yeah, I hope so. I mean, I think there's a long way to go before this kind of thing can really be shown to work, but it would certainly be a bit of a game changer if it did so. The opposite of what's happening in Michigan. I think is what's happening in Florida, right. I mean, so we often are told to look at the contrast between Rondes Sans the government of Florida and Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, right, and Newsom, for his own purposes,

is very eager to play up that contrast. But as you just pointed out at the beginning of this discussion, Gretchen Whitmer is a very popular female governor right in the industrial heartland. She presided over a real turnaround of the Democratic Party's fortunes in a swingy state. Do we think it's a swing state? I think I think it's

a swingy state. For sure. It's swingy, right, like you know, it's not I think people have said this before, but it's not a swing state until it is a swing state exactly, And so you know, I think in twenty twenty four it could be swingy again. The better comparison, I think, or the more interesting one, is the DeSantis versus Whitmer comparison. Each one of them has a pair amount of control, and each one is implementing their agenda

pretty aggressively and using their power pretty aggressively. I think maybe in a way, De Santis is more aggressive on the culture war quote unquote culture warfront than Whitmer is. Whitmer in fairness is not she doesn't usually talk about it in the terms that we're talking about, right. I mean DeSantis is running for president, right. I mean that's what's happening there. This is not like Whitmer is just trying to govern a state. Right. I think that's true.

And as a result, DeSantis is trying to play to a national ideologically charged audience in a bit of a different way, right, because there's no world in which De santist is. I mean, everything he's doing is all about getting in front of Trump's people, right, and also showing

I think goop elites. As I wrote in this piece, I think one of the things that's going on here with the anti woke stuff is he's trying to signal to gop elites that he can actually capture the mega energy, but in a way that will be less destructive and less self destructive and counterproductive politically for the Republican park. So a lot of these display is right. So I think when he goes over to Texas and scoops up a bunch of migrants and flies them to Florida, then

flies them to Martha's vineyard. It's kind of a wink wink at the at the gop elite donor class as well. Right, Yeah, for sure, he's basically saying, look, guys, the base has kind of really lost its mind in the Trump era, and somebody's got to be able to say to them, we're delivering on your preoccupations. Well, look I can do it. I can fly migrants all over the place, you know, and so the bottom line will be fine, right exactly, just explain a little bit about this book band name bill.

I mean, the thing with all these Republican bills is they're very sloppy. So you know, like with the abortion bands. You know, they're not clear, so the doctors don't know who can get treatment in who can right. I think that the vagueness is a very is a real feature of a lot of these quote unquote anti woke bills. Right.

One of the things that we keep seeing over and over is that the bills are drafted in such a way that it's really hard for teachers and educators and school officials to figure out exactly what's allowed and what isn't and the result is that rather than risk running a foul of the law, they actually kind of self censor.

And some of the savvier observers of this stuff, and I agree with them on this, think that that's really a feature of these laws, that they're deliberately designed this way in order to create kind of an atmosphere of

fear and self censor. So you mentioned that the Florida book band stuff, Well, you know, there's a there's a there's a bill that's going through the state legislature in Florida right now that's getting attention because it would expand quote unquote don't say gay, which is the limits on classroom discussion of sex and gender identity, right. But also in that bill is a thing that clarifies the way

the book bands are enforced in the following way. What it actually does is it makes it possible for single parents to not just object to a book, but also once a book or classroom instruction material is objected to, it has to be removed promptly, right before any kind of oversight or evaluative process unfolds to vet the objections.

So if that passes, right, what that's going to do is it's going to make it even more inviting for your kind of local moms, for liberty parent who's sniffing how books to bend everywhere she can, to just say, here, ban this one, ban that one, I object to this that I object to that one, and they'll be pulled without any kind of oversight process determining whether the objections

are legitimate. It's interesting because it's like you have these Republicans who are so they're so mad at teachers, right, they feel the teachers who teach too much stuff about gay rights, that these teachers are grooming their kids, right. But then when you have someone like Thomas Massey's screaming at I'm sure you saw that incredible screaming match. I did was being yelled at by Thomas Massey, and you did absolutely think to yourself, or at least I did.

I thought to myself like, this is you know, Massey was screaming, if you want to keep these children safe, you should arm the teachers, which is like one of republicans favorite talking points because they know that Democrats will ap never armed teachers because teachers won't go for it, and it's predict Jamal Bowman and Tom Massey. Yeah, So I'm just curious. I mean it is one of those another one of those times where they've made up, you know,

a bad faith talking point. Yeah right, I mean everything is just about you know, not acting right. Everything is just about encouraging the belief that, well, if there's violence, the only answer to it can be more guns, right, and so in almost I think you're right that they know that teachers won't do it. In addition to that, they also want to further the idea that we could all be safer if Democrats just would drop their opposition

to being a hyber on society, you know what I mean. Yeah, No, it's just a completely strange bad faith what you would expect from this party with this Thomas Massey. I mean, you watch that video. It's now really you know, viral sort of smugness of Thomas Massey. I found that pretty infuriating. But that's kind of how Republicans feel about these gun crimes, right, which part of it, there's sort of smugness like if

you want a solution, let's arm the teachers. Like, you know, they're not really interested in having a discourse with Democrats. They're pretty damn pleasing themselves for all the victories they've had on quote unquote gun rights right, and everybody talks about those pictures of some of these Republican congressmen with their families, all of them holding ars or whatever, and they do look awfully smug. No one's going to take that ar from my four year old. You know, I'm

being a little glid. They're not literal, but that's sort of what the vibe actually is. I mean, it's just awful. It's such an insulting way to talk to the country when it experiences these types of traumas. It's just a way of saying, you know, well, okay, this is pretty bad, but it could always be worse, and we'll high rights.

And they're also saying, well, you know this is this is pretty bad, but you know we're kind of winning here, right, We're getting our way, and you, you know, you hysterical liberals are losing so tough. Greg Sargent, thank you so much, thanks for having me. Cameron Joseph is a senior political reporter. Guys, welcome, too fast Politics. Cameron Joseph, we are talking about Trump's favorite extreme think tank. But then we're going to talk

about something else. But first, this is super interesting because the Claremont Institute. I hesitate to use the phrase the brains behind Trump is um because it feels like an oxymoron, but it is kind of true, absolutely, And you know, these are not dumb guys, especially, I mean, there's multiple people at the Claremont Institute, and I think you kind of have to at some level evaluate them one by want in terms of both fealty to the actual constitution

and intelligence. But they're smart folks who think a lot about years. Some of them at least think a lot about Founding and the American Founding and have read a

lot of the traditional documents. Really kind of gave Trumpism a intellectual and ideological form in some ways, took the id of Trump and charted it into something coherent, or at least put it into a co current system of right wing conservatism, and you know, the Founding and Jacksonian principles and all of these things, and did a lot of work to try and make Trump palatable and acceptable on the right early on before he was president, and

you know, kind of swear his populist urges with traditional conservative viewpoint and before a lot of other conservatives were willing to bear hug him. Really embraced them, and it doesn't mean that they're like books. There's an old school of the Claremont Institute that's very conservative but kind of more not as fascist, I mean, like thumbsuckery, traditional traditionalist. They come out of the Strausseeans School and the Straussians. Yes,

continue on going. Yeah, I'm sure everybody here is very familiar with Leil Strauss and Harry Joffler, the guy who my college kid goes to a great book school where they're obsessed with straus Anyway, continue sorry, Yeah, the teal the r here is they were a pretty normy conservative, very conservative but pretty not out there think tank for many decades. And you know, the guy who founded it was very goldwater speech writer, and you know a lot of the fastors who wrote there were, you know, kind

of across the spectrum of conservatism. Would write for the Claremont Review of Books, including a couple of my old profts. There's a Claremont Institute and then a bunch of those guys teach at Claremont McKennitt College, which is a separate, unaffiliated institution, which is where I happened to have gotten to school. And you know, if you're writing there, you're conservative, but there were a lot of different perspectives of conservatism.

And then what happened was around twenty fourteen, Harry Jaffa, I think it was twenty fourteen, Harry Jaffa died, and there's this kind of new class of much further right, much less happy warrior mentality guys who came in and frankly, they're almost all guys, and started pushing this and in a pretty wild new direction. And it just happened to coincide with the time that President Trump was becoming President Trump.

And one of the senior fellows there, you might actually recognize the guy's name, Michael Anton, wrote this essay that everyone talks about is kind of the tipping point of the claimants too, because it turned off some of the old folks so much that some of the older contributors stopped pubeting. People kind of were like a little seized out by it. Frankly, man, it made a ton of news and attracted a new cohort of much further rights

kindness to some scary types. And the essay was called you might remember, called the Flight ninety three election, where he literally compared the choice between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump to the choice facing the folks during nine to eleven, and the opening mind would charge the cockpit or you die.

The idea like, maybe Trump isn't great in every way, but we're going to lose our country to the crazy liberal progressive leftists who wanted to destroy the country and this horde of immigrants they want to bring in was intently trust to this argument, right, an absolutely insane, insane thing to say in every way shape in form. Yeah, So he wrote this essay. It went viral, which was unusual for the Clarmonts too, because exactly a very well

known group outside of conservative Republican circles and Russia. Limball

read it the entire essay on air. It had been an anonymous but Anton quickly claimed ownership of it, and then Trump put him on the National Security Council as soon as he was in office, and so Anton didn't last a super long time there, but he kind of became this much bigger influencer on the right and claremont Insito, you know, that became a bit of a little feeding ground for the Trump administration and a couple of the folks, including Michael Pack, who used to be the president of

the Claremont Institute was very close with Steve Bannon, wound up running the division that controls Radio Free Europe and all of those things and basically tried to turn them into propaganda arms. And then they have these fellowships, these week long like learn about classical texts and learn about how Lincoln thought of the founding and how that fits

in with modern conservatism and all that. These training programs, these week followed programs, and it's kind of a you know, a right of passage for conservatives on over the last few decades, and they started picking much further out there guys for this, like Jack Sobiak, like the guy behind you and so. But a lot of those guys wound up working in the Trump administration. So how did this group decide that they no longer want Trump and want

to Sandis instead. So it's interesting because they are kind of we're like, Okay, Trump is usful, we think that he's helpful, we think he has the right instinct. We're going to try and help him get this ideology in format this out so that this is more programmatic and effective. And you know, they thought very hard. At the end of the Trump administration, John Eastman is the other guy

you might actually know from the Parana. It was the architect of the legal argument and legal strategy to try and help Trump's coup efforts, and he was one of the guys who spoke on January sixth on stage alongside Rudy Giuliani. He was in the war room with Trump guys trying to overturn get Congress to block the certification of Biden's win. On January sixth, during the riot, he had a very angry exchange with Pence's guy, who basically said, this is your fault, and he responded, no, this is

your fault for not going along with our plot. Basically paraphrasing, but that's what he was saying, and has continued to push this stuff. So they're super in the bag for Trump, and so it's really interesting to see over the last couple of months especially, but it's been building for over

a year now. A lot of these clear monsters, and that's what they like to call them, Clear monsters, have embraced the Santists and the most visible obvious example of this was, for the first time in the group's forty three year history, opened a borough basically like a little office in Tallahassee and the Santis ruled out the red carpet.

He and his wife, Casey, who is also his closest confidant and political advisor, met with them and was at this meeting with Anton and with Ryan Williams, the head of the organization, and Arthur Millick, who heads their DC office, and Sky Jenner, who's the new head of the Tallahassee office, and old time. Sure will get intimately into some of the interesting things he's had to say a little bit.

But they had a big meeting with them in February, and DeSantis has since had Yanner on a panel going after a diversity, equity and inclusion basically using him as like an academic vouching for why you need to get rid of the EI in public schools. They also have had I don't know if you've heard about that this little liberal arts school that they've done a hostile takeover down.

Yeah new College. Yeah, so the new College. They came in and they basically got rid of most of the board at this tiny school that is a pretty good school. It's got some issues, but the academics are pretty solid there and very liberal student population. So explain the thinking here. Do we think the thinking is they just decided Trump couldn't win, so they moved on. Yeah, there's different folks there, and some of them that's a rationale on reasoning is

like Trump lost and that's bad. Some folks there still think Trump won and had it stolen from him. But I think that the common thread here is that they like a fury from Trump, but they like that DeSantis takes that and puts it in ideological frame. And you know, DeSantis has been quoting one of the old thermout scholars for years, Angelo Codevilla, who died shortly after the last election after basically arguing that Ashley Babbitt you shouldn't have

been killed him as murder during January six. But there's an ideological kinship here. And you know, you can't really say that Trump is an ideological anything. He doesn't happen that type of ability to actually think through things comprehensively in the thing. Wait, they see an eager kinship here.

I mean that this is a bit of a bromance between DeSantis and the Claremont Institute because frankly, they see things pretty similarly and the threat of wokeism that de Santist is always talking about and how he likes to talk about how Florida's where Woke Goes to Die is very much in the clare Line Institute's wheelhouse. And you know, they both think that Black Lives Matter is this totalitarian

threat that is going to destroy the country. And they think that the sixteen nineteen project with the New York Times is a fundamental threat to American patriotism and full boot lies and misrepresentations, and they really see it as an existential threat. And Tom Klingenstein is the big money man behind the claremontits too. It's also the heads of Order Directors likes to call it the Cold Civil War. So give me a little bit of a sense here

of what is happening with DeSantis now. So he has this Claremont Institute backing, which I guess will equal more money. I mean, I don't right, I mean, what is the relevancy of this? I mean, Trump's space is Trump's space. They don't care if the elites go with the Santis. I'm not sure that makes any difference to them. Well, I think that there's different wrinkles here, and I think to Santis's best argument, and you know, Obviously he's got

some flaws as a candidate. He's not exactly great on the stump or in talking to actual human beings, whether they reporter. Isn't that sort of what candidates are supposed to be good at? But yes, continue, yes, I mean the biggest selling points for the Santis is a he just wanted a landside. It be how he wanted a landslide, and what we used to be a swing state while

pushing the state super hard to the right. Clairmont insite folks, what they're so enamored with and what they want to help them go further in is this right wing project like to talk about how the states are laboratories for democracy that old quote, and this is kind of de Santis is attempting a laboratory of illiberal democracy and right and they're involve all been helping it, you know, in small ways with Charles Kustlers, professor at CMC and also

you know, a head of Clarmount Review of Books, one of the publications is now on the board at New College along with two other Claremont affiliated guys. Three of the six appointees had some Claremont ties and they're you know, doing this hostile takeover new college that Castler also recorded some lectures for this new Civics program that the Santists is designing for the state of Florida. Basically like this is how you should look at America and it's going

to be in K twelve public education. And then you know they're they're taking bigger swings in terms of changing the law around basically getting rid of the EI programs at college. It right diversity inclusion. Talk to me a little bit about this other story you did about de Santists getting some of Ted Cruise's people. Yeah, look Ted Cruise and run The Santa's have a couple of things.

They both are unpleasant and not appealing their eyes, whose personalities may limit them as candidates, but they have huge appeal with I knew obtific conservatives who don't love Trump. Ted Cruz was limited by Ted Cruz in the last campaign, and part of the reason that he was not the GOP nominee was what you just said. He's not exactly the most likable guy, but his team was really good.

And the reason that Ted Cruz mattered as much as he did and managed to win a bunch of these Caucus states when Trump was dominating in other elections was because his organization was really good and the head of oat organization was Jeff Row, and Frow, his campaign manager, just went to run the superpack supporting De Santis and brought in a bunch of former Cruise guys, including David Polanski who has really deep iowatized, really good data and

digital guy, including Chris Wilson, pulling the Atlantics guy from the Cruise campaign. These were frankly the best folks in the primary and kept Ted Cruze competitive and tie where frankly, he didn't necessarily deserve to be that competitive because he wasn't that great at candidate at times, and built some of the networks that they needed to win voters and organized Trump in some of these states where you could do that in caucuses rather than primaries where it was,

you know, kind of more culti personality driven. And so them going to De Santa's win, I think that they're going to be blocked off a little bit because they're

on the superpackground in the campaign side. But it's interesting and it's not just that you know that the first congressman to endorse Ron De Santis and he's not even in the race yet is Chip Roy who I talked to about this, and Chip is Ted Cruz's former chief of staff, and you know, if you want to go way back, Chip was really instrumental in when Ted Cruz and House Republicans shut down the government to try and get rid of a Philbamacare. Chip was the guy basically

running the show during that. So they're very close, and so Chip's endorsement is interesting. There. Ken Cucinelli, who's the former Attorney General of Virginia, big mucky muck in the anti immigration and conservative religious space, lost a race for governor of Virginia, was a huge time Cruise endorser last time around. He is heading this organization along with Rowe and Mike Lee, who hasn't actually endorsed yet, but you know, was helped Kushnelli lead the floor fight against Trump during

the Republican National Convention in sixteen. They obviously lost. It was very embarrassing first day for Trump at his own convention. Was at recent to Santis fundraising of that down Florida, And so you start seeing this kind of ideological kinship with the folk on the right who resisted Trump in sixteen, most of whom fell in line and did a lot of things to back the dear Leader during his presidency. Are pulling away into Santis as the guy now fascinating.

Thank you so much, Cam. I hope you'll come back. Yeah, I hope that was useful in that too. Rambley Milly jugged Fast, Jesse Cannon, No Texas, I'm no Labels. They're up to some serious fuckery right now. Tell us all about it. So No Labels is a group started by Nancy Josephson and Mark Penn, maybe because Mark Penn is very mad at the Clintons for them not doing what

he wanted. I don't know. He has some kind of fight with the Clintons, and they are working on getting on the ballot in all of these states that Biden won so they can deliver the election to Trump. They are saying that it's because the American people desperately want Joe Mansion, but that's not really true. They really know that if there's another reasonable candidate, it will divide the vote and Donald Trump will win the election. So if you're a Republican and you give to No Labels, maybe

that makes sense. But if you're a Democrat and you're involved in no labels. It's time to take a long, hard look at yourselves because these people are really really they deserve that moment of fuckery and everything else. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to your 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.