Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Biden walk the picket line while Trump spoke to scabs at a Boss organized event supported by the National Right to Work Foundation. Because of course we have a great show for you today, Congresswoman Summerly tells us why we need to hold our corrupt government
officials accountable. Then we'll talk to historian Heather Cox Richardson about her new book, Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State of America. But first we have the host of the Ali Velshi Show, the author of the Trump indictments, the ninety one criminal counts against the former president of the United States, and the host of the Banned book Club podcast, MSNBC's Ali Velshi. Welcome to Fast Politics, Ali.
Belschi, always my pleasure to be with you.
You are discussed. I want to talk about banned books because as I am the daughter of a writer who wrote a band book and the granddaughter of a writer who wrote a band book. So first let's talk about the band book club, and then we're going to talk about how normal everything is.
Yep, the band book Club is probably the thing that I'm most fascinated by that we've done in the last year and a half. Because I didn't think it was going to be a thing. It was born out of a conversation that I had a really great conversation on air with Nicole Hannah Jones. She had just written the sixteen nineteen project, not the book, but the magazine's bread you know, the New York Times magazine story.
Then inspired the book, and I.
Didn't know anything about it, like I've just had no idea about the year sixteen nineteen, of why it was relevant and what it meant. And as we learned about it together, I remember thinking to myself how grateful I was to people like Nicole who write about things because I love histories that I don't know about. And I thought, you know what, my hard drives pretty full, but it
can always take more good information. And I was so surprised by the backlash and targeting she had, including by the President of the United States, about this whole idea that by introducing the date sixteen nineteen when African American or Africans were first brought to American shores, it somehow undermines the history that we've already gotten that we've already learned. I mean, I just don't think about history in those
terms right as absolute and being full already. So she was actually my first guest, but it fast became an interesting thing in which we were dealing with young authors, new authors, authors who didn't know, authors who were queer or hispanic or black or all three, or dead authors Tony Morrison who their stuff is still being banned, or Margaret Atwood, whose Handmaidsdale is playing out in the society
in which we live right now. So A, it's become one of the most successful things we do, and b probably the easiest thing to book that I've ever been involved.
In, because there's so many banned books.
Every week, new material, new material being generated by authors and publishers, and new things being banned. So on all sides, this is a win win situation because every time we feature one of these books, they shoot up on the charts.
It's so amazing though to me, as like someone who grew up in the eighties and nineties and thought this would not be a thing to be like, struggling with book banning in the year twenty twenty three is like beyond what I could have ever imagined.
It's beyond what Margaret Atwood imagine because she wrote a Handmaid's Tale in nineteen eighty five. So remember in nineteen eighty five, we had all for several years been talking about the book nineteen eighty four, right, and how the world hadn't turned out to be what that book suggested it would. And so when Margaret Iwood wrote her book, people kept telling her, Margaret, this is stupid. That's not
how the world's going to be. It's not going to end up being a theocracy, particularly in America, where they punish and execute people for crimes that were not crimes when they when they happened. I mean, she really wrote about all that stuff and that was actually happening in this day and age. So you're right, we grew up in a time where you couldn't have imagined this. There was a dystopian novels, but they were dystopian and they were novels.
Right now we live exactly. I'm right. They were dystopian and they were novels. So we do live that world. And last week we saw some book burning from a gubernatorial can today.
Right, Yeah, he was mostly burning other stuff. He was metaphorically saying that he would burn books. I think you must have called them smut or pornography or whatever. It's all the same stuff for the last five hundred years they've been complaining about. But the imagery was remarkable. Flame throwers. He said he's going to burn them on his front lawn if he becomes governor, or maybe even if he doesn't become governor. There's a lack of sophistication here, Molly.
There are real reasons to discuss whether or not high school kids should have access to mine COMF or the elders of the Protocol of Zion. I would argue that people should because how else would you become a scholar on the Holocaust or anti Semitism, more Third Reich or whatever. But that's a different discussion. Burning books as a whole, that's another thing. There's challenging books. There's not wanting them accessible to young people without a sort of a level
of education. Then there's outright banning them. Then there's preventing them from being in school curricula like they do in Florida and Texas. Then there's arresting at team in Texas last week for teaching a version of Anne Frank And then there's the burning of books. And the next thing after the burning of books is the decline of democracy. It's really a very direct correlation. When you burn books, you are sending an instruction to the people of your
society that you do not choose what to read. We choose what you read.
Chilling, speed of chilling. This weekend the publican front runner, you may remember him, Donald J. Trump, may have bought a gun.
Well on bail my word and make up up discuss Yeah, so very interesting because there were no reporters who saw said transaction.
Is campaign team said he bought a gun, and then very quickly because there were a bunch of people around saying I don't think he can buy a gun if I've just been indicted bad Then there were some lawyers involved, and then suddenly he hadn't bought a gun. And so no one knows what's true. But that could be the tagline for the entire Trump administration, right, No one knows what's true. The ilridy, of course, is that the memes create themselves on this one. First of all, that the
more serious ones are. This is the man who said I could shoot somebody on fifth avenue and nothing would happened to me. And you know, increasingly, Molly, we believe that to be true. These trials that are coming up with Donald Trump are going to be important to demonstrate whether or not he was right, or society and democracy and reasonable people were right. The other thing for with Donald Trump is you can't be that much of an idiot, right, You know that you can't buy a gun under bond.
But I don't know where he was letting him putting in my mind went to plexico birth, like don't shoot yourself, don't shoot yourself. But the whole thing was a stupid conversation. But that's the stuff we talk about in twenty twenty three.
I also think, like, besides that, that was like this sort of funny, trumpy, crimey, sort of ilegal story. But there were other things that Trump did this weekend that were pretty hair raising, like musing about executing General Melody.
So here's the thing with Trump, and as a student of history, I'm very concerned about it. Donald Trump is numbing, right, That's the net effect he has on people. He numbs you. You stop believing it, you think it's all conjecture, and so then he escalates what he does. It's very much like having a small child, except your small child can only do so much damage, right, They can mess up your furniture and your carpet and throw up on it. But Donald Trump is actually doing this thing with stuff
with democracy. So every time he jokes about something that is extra judicial, we have to keep in mind that we have been living in a world of extra judicial bad things. Certainly, if you're a black male American, black female American, you understand the concept of extra judicial killing, George Floyd being a perfect example. But when we say this stuff's okay, think about the president of the Philippines, do territe right. He wanted to clear the streets of
drug addicts. A lot of them just disappeared. There was no trial, Nobody got tried and convicted. People just disappeared, generally speaking, assumed to have been killed. We don't want to permission to that structure that Donald Trump is talking about. You can like Milly, you cannot like Milly. You can like the fact that Trump's fighting with Milly. None of
it matters. Donald Trump suggested suspending the constitution. Then he said within twelve hours that he hadn't done that, except he does it on social media, so we all have a copy of it. He suggested suspending the Constitution of the United States. That's straight up dictator stuff. Recommending people get killed is straight up dictator stuff. Wanting to tear down institutions of government is dictator stuff. Complaining about your judges is dictator stuff. So we have to just remember
not to be numbed by it. We have to remember this guy is seeing the quiet parts out loud, because you and I both know people who say things like, you know, Biden's really old, and I'm not sure he's going to make it now. You know, he's not really you see these polls, he's not really penetrating. He's not
getting through to people. And I don't know. And then I know people who would like their taxes to be lower and want less regulation and really like these Supreme Court judges, and some people who like the fact that abortion has been bad. You have to be very careful. This is not about your personal choices. This is about democracy or not democracy. Unfortunately, these elections are binary choices.
So you may not like all the choices you have, and you may think that in a country of three hundred and thirty million people, you should have better choices. That's not actually the discussion right now. The discussion is there's a guy who says out loud all the dangerous parts every day and he's asking for your vote.
Yeah. I think that's really really important. And something that kind of gets lost in all the drama is like you have this binary choice of like do you want to continue living in a democracy or do you want to spin the wheel again? With Donald Trump? And like the fact that he even like left the presidency, I thought that he might not one.
Hundred percent agree with you. And now that we read those indictments, I've just written the most geeky book in the world. It's just a compendium of the indictments with a forward by Mean.
Let's talk about that.
I really want people to read it. I really want people to read Jack Smith's January sixth indictment and Bonnie Willis's Georgia indictments just as a enough. They're written as somebody like you would understand that. They're written as a knob. They're like a thriller. You almost read it and you think this can't actually be true, right, this didn't happen this way. But to understand the degree to which This
was not a fool's errant. This was not Rudy Giuliani with makeup running down his face having a press conference at the Four Seasons Landscaping place next to a porn shop in Philly. We keep thinking of this as a clown car of idiots who will trying to change the result of the election. This was substantially more sophisticated. They almost did it. Our institutions did not save us, Molly. There were some people who either did the right thing or didn't do the wrong thing, and that's what saved us.
And that is not enough for me in America in twenty twenty three, as this country contemplates two hundred and fifty years of its existence, this is not enough that a few people who generally did the right thing saved us from critical collapse. I think we need to take this much more seriously than many people do.
So, since you've read these indictments and you've really studied them and written an introduction on this book, you really understand them. Tell me what were the things that really struck you.
The thing that struck me was the fourth count in Jack Smith's January sixth indictment. It's the smallest one. I mean, out of the forty eight or forty nine pages of it, it's the last page. It's just a paragraph. But it is the idea that what Donald Trump did was he attempted to take away the right for people to vote and the right for their vote to be counted. Those are the two things upon which all democracies exist. If you believe that you have the right to vote, that
your vote will be counted. So it was the simplest charge, but it was the idea that what he was doing was not simply underminy. And by the way, page two of that indictment says very specifically, donald Trump has First Amendment rights to lie about the election, to claim that he won the election, to do all that stuff. He has those First Amendment rights. What he did went far beyond that. It was a conspiracy to actually not have votes counted and not have votes cast. And that's the
actual This is not an abstraction. The reason to read these indictments is that it is not an abstraction. They were actually aiming to do something very specific that would cause the person who did not win the election to win the election. And that is why we have to be alarmed about a lot of people say, well, there was an impeachment, it's done, he lost the election, he's gone. We're moving on to other things. Uh, there is a deep scar and rip in our democracy that needs to be mended.
Yeah, and we're also not moving on to other things because he's a Republican front runner. I mean you could maybe say that if someone else were that charge has historical significance, right, Yeah.
Our entire civil rights movement is based on the idea that people tried to not have votes cast and not have votes counted. That is the statute against which that charge is made is a civil rights era and actually post Civil War era statute. You're not allowed to do that. You used to be allowed to do that. That's the basis of this country from the end of slavery sort of through to the early part of the twentieth century. Was Okay, first we didn't allow black people and women
to have vote votes. Then we let black people have votes, but we just want to make sure that they don't actually cast those ballots. So we had all sorts of ways of getting them not to cast it, and in the event that they managed to actually cast the votes, we could probably figure out a way to not have them count it. And that continues molly in sophisticated ways with gerrymandering things like that. We are still determined to not have a world in which everybody gets to vote
and everybody's vote gets counted. There was somebody in one of the western states who complained that we've made it so easy to vote for a college kid that they can literally roll out of bed and cast their ballot. And I thought to myself, that sounds outstanding, right, that's the goal. That's the goal. I should literally be able to roll out of bed and cast my ballot. I understand for security reasons that can't happen. Everybody can't go beside everybody's bed to get their vote, But that's how
easy it should be. Our goal should be everybody who can vote votes, and if you'd like to win the election, you campaign to get those people to vote for you. This trickery and bullshit about not having people vote. I mean, I live in a county outside of Philadelphia where if you want to do advance voting, it is such a complicated thing. You got to put an envelope inside an envelope with a photocopy of your it. It's designed that
died out of ten people will get it wrong. And that's the point because they've figured out least in the last few elections. It's Democrats who have been voting early. So anybody who lives in those counties, they just make it hard for you to vote. Whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, the point is you're probably a Democrat, so we're going to make it hard for you to vote.
Now you have segued here into Josh Shapiro talk.
That's just fantastic. It was a tremendous attorney general. He took on the right issues. He was a real leader during COVID in a state that was, you know, had some problems with that. Pennsylvania is not understood to be Georgia or Michigan or Arizona. Right in terms of the craziness of the Republican Party. It's there. It's fully there. I mean, the head of the Pennsylvania Republican Party, who by the way, was running for governor, he had gone to Arizona to watch that fraudut to see what he
could learn from it. They had hearings in Pennsylvania. I mean, the thing about Josh Shapiro is that he not only won this election because he was Josh Shapiro, he won it because mainstream Republicans in Pennsylvania supported Josh Shapiro because they definitely didn't want the guy.
The crazy guy.
Yeah, because it's crazy like that stuff. You know in Arizona, we know that the people who ran for state wide office, the Republicans didn't want them either. I mean, Liz Cheney went down to Arizona to campaign for Democrats in Arizona. Michigan, same thing. The head of the Republican Party in Michigan was a woman who ran against the Secretary of State, a complete election denier, and they're a bit crazy. Same
thing in Pennsylvania. So Josh Shapiro has returned normalcy to Pennsylvania for the moment at least.
And one of the things that Jos Shapiro has done is he is now trying to enact automatic voter registration, which has gotten Donald J. Trump to give up the game once again. And Tim Hughes that automatic voter risk registration hurts Republicans discuss the truth.
Is it doesn't. It don't hurt anybody in American history. Mail in balloting advance balloting, open balloting days where you can vote, you know, for many, many days. These, more often than not in America, were Republican inventions right back when the Republican Party cared about what democracy was. This I don't know if we can characterize it that way anymore. It's not a Republican or a democratic thing. It just isn't. Having everybody vote as easily as they can is a
democracy thing. Now, Historically there have been groups, and in the past they have been Democrats, and now they're Republicans who have not wanted certain demographic groups who they thought would vote a certain way to vote as much. I'm generally talking about black people. And so wherever you are in America, if you live in a black enclave or an overwhelmingly black community or county or district, it's generally
speaking harder for you to vote than not. And so we saw in Georgia, and we saw in Texas efforts to try and fix that through redistricting or ways in which you could get people to vote. You remember, there was a ban, I think in Georgia on providing people with water if they stood in line vote.
Yeah.
My father was first South Asian, first Muslim first South Asian to be elected to a level of parliament anywhere in Canada back in nineteen eighty seven, and Molly, we drove people to the polls, then we drove first if that needed, we drove them to campaign office first and we fed them. Then we drove them to the polls. Then we drove them back. They want to come back to the campaign office and have another meal, we'd serve them again, then we'd drop them home. That's what society
should be. Feed everybody, give everybody drinks, drive them to the polls. Anything you can do to make democracy more robust. And by the way, we may have been driving people to the polls and feeding people who were not voting for my father. Who knows. I don't know, because nobody knows what happens in that polling booth. But that's what democracy should look like. And Donald Trump does give up the game. He does say the quiet parts out loud,
but he's actually not correct. Republicans can simply campaign on the basis of the fact that there's lots more voting. You're automatically registered. Now all you have to do. It's way easier if you want to do elect Donald Trump, just go out there and.
Vote right exactly. And I think that's a really good point. The one last question we've got. We've run out of time, but I have to ask you about this because it's about your own network. This weekend, Donald Trump truths that NBC MSNBC was guilty of treason discuss.
Yeah, I'm not losing a lot of sleep over over that. I'm losing without Donald Trump becoming president again, because we're all guilty of treason at that ping you, Molly, I mean that I do worry about about this, this culture of retribution where he said I am your retribution, which is language that sounds very similar to what Mussolini used. Talk of revenge, is talk of being an avenger. All this nonsense that does scare me. The specific threat to MSNBC.
It's like, Okay, get a lot Donald Trump's world. We're all treasoners and I'll wear that as a Thank you so much for joining me, Amiley, Always my pleasure.
Congresswoman Summerly represents Pennsylvania's twelfth congressional district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Congresswoman in Summer late.
Thank for having me, Molly. It's good to be here.
We're delighted to have you back at a really important moment pre shutdown. Tell me what it's looking like in the House of Representatives right now?
WHOA.
Honestly, it's not looking good. And I think it's very important that we say why is not looking good? Right? This is a Republican shutdown. This is Kevin McCarthy's shut down because he can't control right, the rowdiest, the most extreme, the worst of his caucus. This has been the case since day one. This is our third crisis, our third crisis. This this man has tried to become speaker. So with that in mind, right, I just think it's really clear that he is one not capable of leading. He is
not capable of leading our caucus. He's not capable of leading our government. And two he is still not willing or able to put the needs of our country above his knee. Had his name on the sign right above the door, that's where we are. However long that lasts, right, whether it's one day or a half a term, that man wants his name on that sen I.
Feel like sometimes we ignore these democratic victories because we're so busy talking about the Republican dysfunction. I want you to talk for a minute about this Office of Gun Violence Prevention bill that you were involved in with Maxwell Frost.
Kudos not just to Maxwell Frost, but really really kudos to the organizers, the activists who had been working on this, like who had been really truly leading the charge nationwide. I want to start by saying it's important to know that all of the victories we get, right, however big or small, you know whether or not their first steps are one of the really big ones.
Right.
These victories are because people have been organizing, especially young people who had been on the frontline, to bring attention to gun balance, to bring a really sad perspective to this right that just couldn't be ignored. And it's that persistence, right that led Maxwell to team up with those of us who are here in the House with them serving this year to start to do something about it where
we can. Right, we recognize that with the Republican majority, right, we recognize with the stranglehold of the NRA and other Republican and just dark money lobbyists groups, that it's going to be very difficult to get some of the big things that we're looking for, like the soul rifles bands,
things of that nature. But This Office of Gun valid Prevention at the White House really is a testament to that movement's ability to move the Biden administration in the direction that we need to go and to start to look at to really put resources into programs, into efforts to start to stem the tide of gun violence, to start to address some of the more pressing needs that we have, even as we're kind of working around, right, this NRA majority or this NRA choke hold that they
have on our government right now.
Yeah, And I mean I feel like that was a pretty big deal. We've never had a president start in office of I mean, like that's a pretty big deal.
And it is so right moldy, like we really are not talking about these things when we do get a victory. And what that ends up doing is it makes us think that our organizing efforts that are rallying to the polls have no effect. That's it's not always true, right, Sometimes it is slow, sometimes it is a slow slog.
But to see the President move on an office gun balnce permission, that is such a big indication that this is an important issue, right that he sees, that the administration sees and Congress see that our nation can't go on like this anymore. That this is going to be a cultural shift that we have to make. Right. Gun balance isn't just going to be a gun safety laws right, gun balance prevention and addressing some of these issues around
gun balance, school shootings, my shootings. Right, this is a cultural issue and getting to it and really digging in or recognizing that there's no short term fixed But this is going to be a persistently chiffing away and persistently working on it, persistently directative resources to write the folks who are doing you know, gun balance, interrupt the folks who are on the ground doing that work, letting them know that there is a place that is focused on
getting resources for that. Its important.
So let's talk about this Senator Menande's indictment. It is his second indictment. There's a lot of fire. Democrats are really working hard to be the party of anti corruption. I think your thoughts on why Menendez must step down are really important in germane.
Yeah, you know what, I think that sometimes those of us in these positions that we forget that we serve at the wheel and the trust of the people. These are not jobs that we are guaranteed it is a privilege. We are not owed it. But also part of that privilege to serve in this job is to maintain that trust. It is to maintain the trust of the people who have sent us here, the trust of people truly, honestly right, who are struggling with government, who are struggling with the
royal of government. Right now, we're looking at unprecedented amounts of flagrant corruption from the Supreme Court. We're looking at people like George San Tos not just get to be able to conn their way in here. Donald Trump conned his way into the presidency, but we're looking at to
be able to keep their jobs. And then when we see one side of the out a freasingly becoming fascist, increasingly becoming just blatantly really I would say uncaring about the perception of corruption, the perception of you know, the illegitimacy of our offices, our institutions. We can't afford to
play into that at all. Right now, where we are dealing with democracy versus fascism, where we're going into election cycle where everything is at state right, we've already lost right for the first generation to lose rights, and right now we're one in the twenty twenty four, and we have folks who are playing around. We are playing around with the trusted, the American people. This isn't a job where you are able or supposed to come in here and take corrupt deals. You're not supposed to be able
to enrich yourself today. We have to get to the correct for that. Right, American people do not want their politicians to go into this role and enrich themselves while the community is being suck dry, while student loan did is starting back up, right, while women in birthy folks are worried about being able to get either abortion care or be able to deliver safely. Right while you know, our ways is are stagnant. A corporate bossing are taking
in more and more money. Right, we see corruption at the corporate level, we see corruption at the government level. We're seeking coruption at the court. And then what that's going to do is going to depressed turnout, is going to make American people feel like this is not worth you know, investing in, participating in, and it's going to really cause a hopelessness that we just cannot afford to have right now. It is disempowering and disenfranchising, and.
I think when we talk about like every day is more corruption from Clarence Thomas. But we just learned recently that he was involved in being at least at at least two different Koch Brothers, donor Summits. This is a member of the Supreme Court. I mean, if we are going to have the moral high ground as Democrats, we must stay on it.
Yeah, we have to speak truth to power, even when that power is our friend, even when that power is us. Speaking truth is an important charge when you are in leadership, and all of us are in leadership. Right if we are elected by the people of audition, we are in some form of leadership and we have to take that incredibly seriously. So yeah, right, we can't call out Clarence Thomas to be clear lagrant lagrant corruption. There is no world in which Clarence Thomas believed that what he was
doing was the right thing. In fact, if you were at other levels of the judiciary, a local level magistrates, court of common please, state level courts, they all know and they all have codes of conducts that say they're not allowed. Not only are you not allowed to be the draw at a fundraiser for a donor, for a donor base that has business before the court. The we know that, but also know, I know judges who are
actually elected, unlike our Supreme Court right appoints it. I know judges who are elected, they have to run for office, and they're still not even able to ask for money for themselves, Like they're not allowed to fundraise for themselves. So in no world should a Supreme Court justice be able to fundraise on behalf of organizations, on behalf of politicians, all behalf of donor networks, all behalf of dark superbacks. Right that had business before the court. Right, we have
to then at our level. Right, we now because we see and because we're in an era where we recognize that this Supreme Court and the Conservative members have no shame, They abide no unwritten code of content. That means we need to write some codes of content. That means that
we need to start to move on transparency acts. We need to ensure that we are creating accountability mechanisms through our body to hold them accountable, to make sure that there are codes of contents that reflect the same codes of ethics and contents that every other profession has. There's no reason, in fact, it is dangerous you know in any other body there are codes of ethics. This is
the Supreme Court. They've literally just made it unsafe and even deadly for women and birthing people to become pregnant. They took away rights for black and brown people to get educated.
This is the group.
These three folks, more than anybody, need overs.
They certainly do. Are you disappointed that more dumb grunts in the Senate haven't called for Menendez to step down? Or are you confident like I am, that they will today and tomorrow.
I've been seeing some more. I think I just saw both of my senators have now called for resignation, and I think that more people will. I don't think disappointed is the right word, because you kind of have to have an expectation of something to be disappointed. I think that what people really underestimate is that these books are serving with their friends. They're serving with their friends or
good or for bad. And when your friend does something wrong, your first, asthink does not always to call it out again. I think Dumbledore said right, not shouting out the person who creates double doore, but Dumbledore himself.
Yes, an important cavit.
Important gobby, not a shout out not a shout out of the person who created But Baba Dumbledore once said that it's difficult to call out your enemies, and sometimes it's even more difficult to call out your friends, but we still got to do it.
Yeah, it's so interesting because it's like, you think about all the Republicans who refused to call out Donald Trump again and again and again, and it is really so important because part of how Donald Trump was created was because of a weak Republican party that refused to hold him to account for the things he did.
Yes, and I think that he was a perfect store. We have a Republican Party that has increasingly shameless in their pursuit of power, power by any means. Right, That's where we are. This is the ongoing insurrection. But also
there are other institutions that have colluded. The Democratic Party played a role in this because as long as we as Democrats are failing to realize the ways in which the two party duopoly has played into the polarization, has played into even the bollying that we have of going back and forth between administrations, the fundraising that goes into it, all of that. And I'm not this is not a conspiracy. This is not to say that this is the both said.
I don't want anybody to think that the Republicans that the Democrats are the same. My goodness, they are not. They're absolutely not. But even we Democrats have to realize that sometimes the call out has to be swiftter and harsher when people are doing things, when Republicans are doing things that they should not be doing, things that are harming our nation, harming our democracy, harming the economy, which means not just our local and our and our national
kind of our global economy. We need to have harsher words than we need a robust Republican party, right. We need to have harsher word than bipartisanship by any means.
Right.
We need to say that, you know what, this is a part that is increasingly illegitimate and we will not stand to legitimize it. We need a media that understands its role, right, a media that where Donald Trump grew, right, that man grew and said off of the unearned media or the earned media that he got throughout his election. What lessons have been learned from that? And I'm not
seeing lessons learned. I still see the Republican Party that is committed to its pathway, a democratic party that's adjusting in real time, which is important that we are making the adjustment, but a media that's still trying to grapple, Well, what is its role in unwap laying or challenge democracy.
When we report every single thing that VI that Ramaswami says that's racist and harmful, or everything that Donald Trump says that is insurrection minded, without any coveyats, without any fact checking, sometimes without any context, we're perpetuating it.
Yeah. I think that's a really important point. And we all have to, especially in the mainstream media, adjust to this sort of brave new Republican world. So you are in this ground zero for Republican Fucktory right now, which is the United States Congress. Kevin McCarthy. He is clearly does not have control of his caucus. Matt Gates is clearly doing the will of Donald Trump. I mean, where do you go from here? And that is the sixty four million dollar question? Is that the number that it
really is? We talked about a lot. Donald Trump wants everyone.
He said, you know, he could pull a gun out if that noon shoots some let and that's proven to be true.
And he may have bought that gun this weekend, out the gun this weekend.
Which charges we're being in charges right is that we have existential crises that we're working through right now. I think the first thing that we're working through, obviously is the government shut down. Right there are a role like people who are going to be harmed at every level of the federal government, and then the trickle through their families, through their communities, right through our schools. We're going to
see that trickle as we have in it passed. We got to sort that out come hell, how water we have to sort this out for working class people. The long retim question is is what are we going to do about this part? What are we going to do
about the Republican Party? And they're just shame with power graphs, And again, I think that goes back to the way that Democrats interact with them, the way that we talk about them honestly, the way that we start to reflect on how we navigate right That goes back to dealing with not just me nindads, but everything that we do. The way that we navigate the way that we interact with money and politics. Systems have to shift right now. If we're going to if our the markets is gone
to sur bath, systems have to shift. Means that even things that Democrats are advantage that get an advantage from, like, we're gonna have to start to reassess that because anything you know, that breathes life into this monster that the Republican Party is becoming has to be nipped in a butt right now. And that's gonna be tough, right, That's gonna be tough, but it's real.
Yeah, that is a really important point. There are all these Republicans that very likely will lose their seats or can lose their seats, you know, if Democrats play their cards right. I mean, do you think that it's possible that those Republicans join together with Democrats to get us out of the shutdown.
I think that those are the conversations that are happening. It's I'm reading the room correctly. I don't feel like the majority of Republicans e didn't necessarily want this shutdown, but it's a train that's going off the tracks right. This isn't the reilment that we're watching in world time.
So even if they don't want the shutdown now, there are ways on which they've empowered the freedom cack is, Oh yeah, yeah, the freedom clocks might be a gnat to them right now, right, they might just be an annoying slat of them, But listen, they helped to position them to where they are. So we're going to need a little bit more to talk. Right. What we need them to do is to take them on head on. They got to take them on head on, and that might mean that they need to start to reclaim their
little conference. That might mean that, like, whoever these folks are, I'm gonna need them to have some energy clip behind and getting rid of them. Then, right, if they are working out to how dangerous they are, and this is not the direction they want to go in, and they
have to put their money where their mouth is. So the first thing that they have to do is to team up with Democrats to get a deal of that saves the American working families, that just keeps the light on for the government, keeps light on for poor working class people. Right first. The second thing they need to do is that they need to be committed to replacing
these people. They got to be committed to using their platforms, using their pocketbooks to readirect this Republican movement because this is not going to be the last time they do this. It's the third time this in the one hundred and eighteen that's right.
I don't want to laugh because people are being hurt, right, veterans and you know, disabled people, people are not going to be able to get healthcare. I mean there will be huge real world reverberations for working people.
All right, ch out here, yeah, baba formula you.
Know, yeah, food stamp. So I do think it's really important that we take this very seriously. But it really is true. They waited for I mean, Republicans really wanted Democrats to handle those well.
Republicans wanted to be in the majority. Right when you're in the majority, and you you were in the gay on governor, you know, you can't want somebody else to come and do it for you. You got to make the hard decisions, and the hard decisions right now are getting this deal done, keeping his promises and holding McCarthy accountable not to the Freed and Caucus, but to the American people. So they got to redirect this one. They
have to. What did Matt Gates say, we can't blame Joe Biden, we can't blame the Democratic Caucus for not moving their bills and not voting up. They can't blame even Chuck Schubert, and he said it's on him. He say him, but he said it's on Kevin McCarthy.
Representatively. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope you'll come back.
I would love to come back. But listen, the only way that can come back, I'm gonna do this shamelessly, as shameless as the Republicans.
Yes, let's go.
If I want to come back, right, I got to beat back against the exact same forces that we're seeing right now corrupted on our Supreme Court. Yeah, no, that's not even hot proberly. Literally, the same folks who are buying out our Supreme Court, right singer, the folks who are flying you know, a leito out having them on a shot, those are also the same people who are funding my opposition, even million to the folks who they put in five million against me last time. Those same
folks promising millions and millions of dollars. Literally right now you can read the articles. They are promising millions to defeat me because I'm fighting back against corruption in the court, right, because we're calling out their dark Dono net who are just harming and keeping black women and progressive women out of Congress. But they're also buying our courts to erodear rights to abortion care and healthcare and so much more. Right so, right now, I'm going into a primary, and
it's going to be early. It's probably going to be as early as mark, which means we're months away, and we still have to raise so much money. Black women are the most underfunded candidates in our country. So there are people who appreciate the voice that I have, the platform, the way I use my platform, the way that we stand up for working class people, for workers, for labor, you know, for our environments, for gun safety, for schools,
for health care. But we have to have a funded campaign to fight back against these very people because they're coming for me. They're coming far. So please send you folks, please, if you appreciate the work that we're trying to do, the work that we are doing, the movement that we are keeping alive, go to Summer FORPA dot com. Anything any amount helps us five dollars, ten dollars, but also the max of the thirty three hundred dollars. Right, all of that helps us to keep this movement alive. And
this is not a selfish ask. This is a selfless ask because our movement depends on it. So where they attack black women in distress like Pittsburgh, we know that they're going to then take that and expand that and stop our movement in its track. Wherever we show up.
Thank you, Summer, Thank you, Mollie. Heather Cox Richardson is a historian and author of Democracy Awakening, Notes on the State of a America. Heather Cox Richardson, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Oh, it's such a joy to be here.
I'm delighted to have you. So let's talk about Democracy Awakening Notes on the State of America. What are your notes on the statement? Give us the elevator pitch.
Well, the elevator pitch is. This is a book about how we got here, where here is, and how we get out of it. But the idea of Notes on the State of America is this is intended in a way to be a snapshot of this particular moment in America, which I really think is a moment in which we are transitioning from one kind of country to another, and what that might look like, especially if everybody puts a shoulder to the wheel.
Kind of country were we before? And what kind of country are we now?
Well?
Before?
And now is?
I mean now is pretty easy. Before is a little
bit sweeping. But the argument in the book is that the modern day political situation in which we find ourselves began in nineteen thirty seven when a group calling themselves conservatives coalesced around the idea of essentially taking the country back to the era before the New Deal, and they called themselves conservatives, although one of my big arguments is that they were not, that they were in fact radical activists, and that from nineteen thirty seven to twenty sixteen they
managed to convince a number of people to give up on democracy. And then Donald Trump entered the scene in twenty sixteen and took office in twenty seventeen. And actually, one of the things I found most shocking about writing the book, because I know that Trump presidency so well, was that when you strip the noise out of it, the piece is about oh so and so got fired, Oh, this letter was sent, Oh Congress did this? When you strip the noise out, the Trump presidency was really a
very concerted move toward authoritarianism in this country. But then instead of throwing up our hands and saying we're all going to hell in a handbasket. The final third of the book, to me is the most interesting one, and that is is sort of a blueprint for how in the past Americans, of all people, but really led by marginalized Americans, have reasserted the principles of the Declaration of Independence and have managed increasingly over time to expand that
definition to include more and more people. So it ends up on a very hopeful note.
When you think about this idea of authoritarianism. I mean, how many times does Trump need to be defeated before we get out of this thing.
I think it's crucial to remember that Trump is not himself alone meteor coming from nowhere, that in fact, he's a really interesting historical figure because in a way, he was never a politician. He was a salesman who could read a certain part of the US population and see exactly what they had been primed to want. So it's
not a question of simply defeating Trump. It's an issue of defeating the entire movement Conservative project, which, as I say, began in nineteen thirty s. But then even before that, the United States has always had one strand of its history that was supportive of authoritarianism. I mean, it's a truism at this point that Hitler got some of his key ideas from the United States Jim Crow laws and
Indigenous reservations. So there is this whole, long strand of American history and American thought that says some people are better than others and have the right to rule and should rule. So it's not just a question of getting rid of Trump himself or even of the manipulation of our political discourse to give us an authoritarian like Trump.
There is really a need to grapple with that whole concept, which is so antithetical to the genius idea on which the United States was founded, which was that everybody has created equal and as a right to say in their government. That's a principle that defined the United States but has never actually been realized.
Right, let's talk about what it means to sort of defeat this kind of authoritarianism. Okay, how do.
You want how do you want to get into this?
I mean, is that no more republican party?
What is that?
Well, so in the theoretical vision is to recognize as the Republican party of today did early on that the way you change people's minds is through the way you talk about things is through rhetoric, and that you can use the history of America and the rhetoric of authoritarianism to convince people to give up on their democracy, which
a lot of Americans have at this point. And one of the key pieces of that is to convince people that somewhere in the past there was a magical moment in which your country was whole and perfect, and that kind of history, I think, is an authoritarian history. And you can argue this through Hannah arent and Eric Hoffer and all the people who grappled with what it looked
like to convince people to embrace authoritarianism. But once you've recognized that, it's a pretty simple matter and a pretty easily accessible matter for everyone to refuse to use that language, to use instead a different kind of language that the United States has used over time at different periods, to say, no, that's not what we stand for. We don't stand for the idea of a few people ruling over everybody else.
We stand for the idea of equality. And crucially, when we have done that, we have altered our laws in such a way that it broadened economic opportunity, it decreased the extremes of wealth in this country, and invariably, when
we did those things, racial and gender equality got significantly better. So, in a way, a very simple formula, and it sounds like that I'm looking at and it sounds like almost too easy, but it is theoretically informed both with the stories of how authoritarians rise, but also with our own history.
I mean, you look at moments when this country has made huge strides, both in economic equality and also racial and gender equality, and they are always ones in which leaders have wreckedize that our democratic system has been taken over by a small group of people, an oligarchy or in this case, an authoritarian figure, and have said, wait a minute, no, no, no, no, this is not who we stand for. And we know that we don't stand for that,
because this is not what we stand for. And we know that we don't stand for that because look at our history, look at our documents, look at the Declaration of Independence, look at Abraham Lincoln, look at the Civil Rights movement, look at all these different moments in American history where we have been much better than we are today.
Right, And I think that is a really important point. So those times when Americans have sort of come together and been less terrible to each other, Like, are you thinking of as sort of a Lincoln? Who are the historical figures that fit well.
Lincoln is an easy one to point to because most people know who he is, and he very much was the person who articulated that in his era, Southern enslavers and the large Southern enslavers had come not only to dominate the Demmocratic Party, but through at the American South and then through at the American nation by taking over the White House and the Supreme Court and the Senate, leaving only the House of Representatives to stand against them.
And of course he built a movement behind that. But one of the points of Democracy Awakening is that it's a real mistake to look at our history and see just those shining figures, who are individuals, That these movements have always come from the bottom up. They have always been characterized by a community, and they have always been
characterized pretty seriously by shifting political alliances. So while you want to look at somebody like Abraham Lincoln, because he's an easy figure, people know who he is and you
can point to his record, which is pretty complete. You know, you think about people like doctor Hector Garcia, who recognized after World War Two that it was really important that Mexicans and Hispanics be recognized as equal American citizens, and how that gradually snowballed into a movement that includes then Senator Lennon Bains Johnson and later President LBJ that later on becomes things like the Civil Rights Act of sixty four and later on the Voting Rights Act of sixty five.
You know, it's a mistake, I think, to start at the end. Similarly, if you look at black rights. One of the things that really jumped out to me about this book and that I really loved about it, was that the way we have told the Second civil Rights movement in the nineteen fifty, sixties, seventies and on has been to focus on a few really shining examples. And there are examples of people like Bob Moses and Fanny Luhaim are people who are in the pantheon, Emmett Till
or Rosa Parks. But if you actually move back, the group that really informed all Americans about the unequal conditions under which African Americans lived was the NAACP, which is out there publishing the crisis, and it is publicizing lynching, and it is going around to places like around the South where Rosa Parks was electing stories of sexual assaults and lynching long before anybody knew that she was not
going to sit down on a bus. So that community organizing in that sense of taking back your government to be what it says it could be in the Declaration of Independence is a really important part of the piece, rather than simply looking at the Abraham Lincolns of the world.
Right a really good point. So give me sort of think, if you are a person who listens to this podcast and you're worried about democracy, what are the things you should be doing well.
So everybody always asks that, and there's the obvious thing. You should vote, and you should get people to vote, and you should donate to the causes that you care about. But one of the things that I really wanted to do with this project was to make people feel empowered. Because if you are an idealist as I am, which means that we believe that ideas change the world, we know the most effective way to change the way people think is to take up oxygen to re assert a
vision in public discourse. And I just made that sound really fancy, but what I really mean is take up oxygen. Talk to people. When somebody says something that is inaccurate about the way the United States works, correct them, make it. The same way that the radical right managed to take over our political discourse was simply by repeating garbage again and again and again. There is no reason that we can't reassert a reality based community by simply speaking up.
And that's something you can do at the supermarket without feeling like you have to go be a hero. That is precisely the way that people like the John Birch society corrupted the country to begin with, and it's precisely the way that we as people who care about the values of this country, could take it back.
So you think this is a propaganda war.
Yes, except my big thing is that what we have lost really in America, very deliberately since the nineteen fifties on the part of the right, is a reality based community. This actually happened. And if you're on Twitter right now or any of the social media sites and you look things like Senator Marshall Blackburn is spewing on Twitter, or Senator Ted Cruz from Texas. It's just not reality based.
And that idea of flooding the zone with shit, as Steve Bannon put it, is a really very effective propaganda tool, but it's not real. I mean simply reasserting reality, which I think at the end of the day most people actually want, is a really effective way to stand up for the kind of you know, enlightenment based community, reality based community on which this country was founded.
Yeah. Do you think that it's just people, when they get more reality, will come back to reality. I mean some of that polling sort of says that these people support Trump. I mean Trump supporters support Trump over their family, over their religion, over this, over the That is your supposition here that this crew is will come back to reality if offered it or now.
No, I think that the real Trumpers are gone. And again, when I say that, it's not simply my opinion. If you actually study the theories of authoritarianism and how the political belief systems work, you know there's a significant portion of people who are just going to follow an authoritarian
down whatever road that person goes. And there are really interesting studies of why that is the case and the degree to which people's identity gets wrapped up into an authoritarian in part because of how badly that authoritarian acts. That is, once you have said okay, I'm along for the ride on this, it's very hard then to say, okay, but I'm not on the ride for this, because you have to admit that you were wrong before, and by the time you've gone a long way down that road,
it's too much work to come back from that. And interestingly enough, Arnold Schwarzenegger did a really interesting video about this, I think it was about a year ago, in which he actually directly addressed people who were embracing Donald Trump and authoritarianism in this country. It's the only time I've actually seen somebody directly embrace them and say, that's going to be really hard to get out of where you are.
But even if they are lost, the real issue in a democratic society are those people in the middle, the people who aren't really paying very much attention. And that's why I talk about taking up oxygen. I know a lot of people who vote Republican because their parents did and their grandparents did and whatever. As long as it's gotten our by it, they're going to, you know, because they're really not paying attention and how bad could it be? Those people are reachable, and that's when I talk about
taking up oxygen. That's when somebody's saying, you know, that's not really what's happening has the potential to make a difference.
Thank you, Heathery, so interesting and so important.
Well, thank you for having me. It's always a pleasure to talk to you.
They're no more.
We're changing up the format today because we have been at trip Fest together. We are now we've survived the RFK Junior interruption, are comrades in arms, and so this moment of fuckeray is a special one for you. I know that you've seen it because I texted it to you earlier. Our ex mayor, one of the few mayors that we really one of the few Democrats that has really gotten our ire one, Bill de Blasio.
That's kind of funny how they're always New York mayors.
It's only it's called the Curse of the New York Mayor, and we are truly cursed. We now have the New York Post, which is our local paper, but it is owned by Rupert Murdoch, so it tends to run a little fascist. But they tweeted out and again I'm just gonna read it to you because it's so upsetting. And then I want your first your first thought, horn dog, horn dog. They of course they're so excited anytime they can use that horn dog.
X his honor.
Bill Deblasio caught in heated makeout session with mystery woman.
Discuss as a twenty plus year reader of page six, there's part of me that admires the headlight, but the other part of me is like, oh, I need a shower, build a Bungler, big bird.
No one wants that.
The groundhog killer. He is our moment of suffering. Don't say Democrats never get it on this podcast. That's right, that's right, Fuck you, Bob Mendez. 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.