Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and Marjorie Taylor Green was laughed at by Democrats when she asked for them to observe decorum. We have such a great show today. Representatives Summerly talks to us about representing western Pennsylvania with progressive values. Then we'll talk to author Doug Rushkoff about AI and Ronda Santis' failure to launch. But first we have Washington Post columnist
Dana Milbank. Welcome back to Fast Politics, one of my favorite guests and writers.
Dana Milbank, Well, thank you very much, pleasure to be with you.
Yeah, we started the Republican primary cycle last night Putting fingers announced discuss.
Yes, and quite an announcement it was. And I think that was a bit of a metaphor the failure to launch on Twitter. But it's been a failure to launch overall. Here we are. It's twenty sixteen all over again. Got a huge field would be Republican candidates, and Donald Trump is in a perfect position to pick them off one by one. And that's what happened last time. Nobody got a clear shot at him. It looked like DeSantis might have been that guy. But then came the indictment and
the rally around Trump effect. DeSantis bungled it and it's been sort of a disaster for him ever since. So I think the launch, which was sort of a you know, in microcosm, the disaster that his campaign has been. So look, I don't you know, we've learned a long time ago not to make predictions, particularly as regards anything where Trump is in the sentence. But you know, history is definitely rhyming here. I can see the path again for Donald Trump.
Yeah, I mean that is I think a really good point. I mean, what's amazing about Trump and Trumps in general is like there were never secrets in trump Ism, right or in Trump He just says what he wants. So he's like everyone should jump in, you know, And he's encouraging these people because he knows that this is the not Trump lane of the primary. And maybe if you had one candidate, you might be able to run a real challenge to Trump. But you have a gazillion candidates.
Yeah, and you'd think that maybe the rest of the Republican Party would have learned a lesson from Jeb and Marco can Cruz and all the others back in twenty sixteen. By the same token. You would think that some of us in the media would have learned our lesson from twenty sixteen. But we're starting to cover him exactly the same way we covered him last time, with just a whole lot of credulity and free airtime. It's kind of
nauseating to see it all happening again. You know, look, we don't know, you know, what other indictments await, and maybe Republicans can get wise this time. But you know, I've lost a lot of money betting on the wisdom of Republicans.
I mean, what's interesting is if you'll get twenty twenty right. The primary field was messy, right, and in fact, Biden lost those first two primary contests, right and Mayor Pete. It was messy. But then there was a moment Democrats came together and they supported Biden and it wasn't like there was really it was really I've never seen Democrats do that. You know, they all got together and they were like, you know, he's maybe not my guy, but
we got to get rid of Trump. And Republicans have not come into it with that same kind of steadfastness.
Not so far still, Trump commands overwhelming support from the Republican base, and you know, just the tribal nature of things, you know, if it looks like he's going to be the nominee, then all of them will once again the other way and accept it. That's just the nature of our politics. It doesn't matter whether it was Trump or DeSantis or somebody else. They're going to rally around whoever it is. But just looks like we're already seeing that
rallying effect this far out. I think the Democratic experience around Biden will surely. I mean, I think there's going to be a whole lot of unity around the Democrat Joe Biden in twenty twenty four. These notions of sort of dissatisfaction with his age, I think those largely vanished for the same reason that it's you know, if it's him or it's Donald Trump. It's not like people are going to be on the Democratic side are going to be holding out saying if only somebody else.
Had run, right.
I also think, you know, Biden versus Trump is very different than Biden versus someone else.
Absolutely, Yeah, I mean, you know, a younger candidate a DeSantis. May his campaign rest in peace. No, that's absolutely. I mean, you know, the best thing for Biden, if not for America, is Trump as the nominee. He was made to be the anti Trump. So this, you know, this, this extinguishes a lot of the doubts that would have bubbled up from Democrats. And Democrats are very good at, you know, bubbling up doubts, as you know we're seeing with the
debt limit and everything else. They're just I mean, it is a it is a doubt bubbling factory.
Yeah. Oh no, I mean that's the brand. I feel like, you know, that's what it is.
Right.
The thing that I'm so struck by with Democrats is the dead ceiling. Like I do think there were a lot of Democrats who before the twenty twenty two election were saying, we probably should just fix this fucking debt ceiling bullshit. There were people who were saying it, why didn't he get done?
Well?
I mean there were, you know, some obvious reasons like Joe Manchin and Kristen Cinema and the lack of ten Republicans who would go along with it. And remember it was already a very heavy lift to get there, you know, end of the year legislation through, So that may very well have sunk it. You know, I don't see that
as a real possibility. And you know, I think part of the reason they were able to get their deal through at the at the end of the year is explicitly because because of that, because the Republican said, all right, we're going to have another bite at the apple after McCarthy takes over, and that's exactly what they've done. Was there really anybody out there who thought that Biden would say, well, I'm not going to negotiate and they're going to pass
a clean debt limit. I mean, of course that's what you say. That's a negotiating tactic. But the people now who are shocked and stunned that Biden has offered up a freeze of spending. I mean, that's how this game is played. I don't think anybody should be surprised. This is just the way it works.
Yeah, no, no, And I think that's a good point. I mean it's true watching it is so interesting and also quite scary. I mean that's the thing is like with this debtlimit stuff. The stakes this is not like a government shutdown. This is like a catastrophe.
Yeah, I've got my column coming out for this weekend on the subject. You know, in foreign affairs, Richard Nixon pioneered the madman theory, and the idea is if the other side thinks you're just crazy enough to launch a nuclear attack, well it gives you a lot of leverage and they'll be down. And I think that's exactly what's happening here, except I don't think it's really a theory.
I think there are a lot of mad men in the House Republican Party who think, well, you know, the government is not going to default on June first, you know, maybe default isn't a real thing after all. And then you've got you know, people like Matt Gates saying, you know, I don't think we should negotiate over this hostage. He's
acknowledging that this is a hostage situation. And if you really don't care, you know, or in the sense that you think, well, okay, the economy tanks, and guess what, they blame the incumbent president when the economy tanks, that's somewhat rational. I mean, it's not rational to bring about economic cataclysm, but it's rational to think that the incumbent
president would be blamed for it. Then the leverage really is on the Republican side, and it is one hundred percent up to the administration to avoid this economic calamity.
Right you cannot assume that voters will not blame you even if you didn't do it.
A lot of the Democratic handring right now is over the messaging, and Biden isn't out there countering. I don't think the messaging back and forth over the last ten days is going to matter a whole lot if we get to the point of an actual default, because then it's presumably going to be some sort of an apocalyptic situation. Right right now, we're not going to wonder what was Biden saying on Tuesday. We've got much bigger problems at that point. You know, the White House is playing this.
They've decided that they're going to work the negotiation, and they're not going to be out there jawboning, you know, attacking the Republicans on this. They're actually trying to get a deal through.
You Know, one of the things I was always shocked by was when you would have Trump negotiate something and he'd be out there saying stuff where you'd be like, how is this ever going to work? You know, he'd be out there blowing it up, you know. So I do respect that, Like with the Biden administration, you do feel like there's not an insane person who could come in in the last minute and blow everything up for no reason. But unfortunately that is the GOP base now, right.
I mean, you've got Trump explicit saying don't give in unless you've got everything you possibly wanted to, including the kitchen sink, and you've got the Freedom Caucus saying don't negotiate unless it's everything that we passed as part of our budget.
They can't agree on what everything is.
Right cause that you keep getting things added in immigration and other things. So I do believe there'll be a deal, and whatever the deal will be will not be Biden's surrendering on five trillion dollars and essentially everything that he enacted over the last three years. But you know, people need to be rational and understand that they're going to get their freeze or something.
The stakes are incredibly high here.
Right, because you bring about this kind of a catastrophe, it's going to do a whole lot more damage than freezing spending at twenty twenty three levels or even slightly below that.
Yeah.
Yeah, this is one of these ways in which the Republican Party has really taken a normal, non political you know, it's really just meant to be a kind of piece of government legislative slature, and made it into the potential for catastrophe.
Yeah. I mean we've seen versions of this before, you know, after twenty ten and lesser one subsequently. But there was always somebody, you know, there was a John Baynor, Paul Ryan or somebody saying all right, guys, you can't actually default. And I'm not sure. I mean, you have Mitch McConnell saying we won't default. He's not actually doing anything to
prevent that. So I think they've kept you know, I think it'd be giving it a little too much credit to say this has been a deliberate negotiating strategy, to say we're dangling the threat of default out there. I think that it's a genuine threat of default out there, because there are plenty of people who would be perfectly happy seeing that happen.
That I think is pretty scary.
That is new. That is not what you had after twenty ten. That's what has taken this fairly mundane thing. And you know, as McConnell says, yes, we have these fights all the time, but there is something different here, and that you've got significant amount of craziness in the House Republican Party and McCarthy isn't necessarily one of them himself, but he can't lose more than five of them or
he's out of a job. So that's the difference here, and he cares I would venture to say more about keeping that job than whatever happens to the world economy.
Oh, no question. But I also think that it does seem to me. And again, tell me if you think I'm wrong that McCarthy doesn't really have control over these people.
It certainly doesn't. You know, based on his public pronouncements. You know he'll be saying things are terrific in negotiations, the Freedom Caucus says, don't negotiate, and then he comes out and says we're nowhere near a deal.
Right.
I mean, that's the thing.
I mean, I don't want to feel bad for him because he put himself in this position and he helped destroy the Republican Party and make it this weird tea party disaster. It is today. But you definitely get the sense that the guy is whistling in the dark to keep himself from being a friend.
Yeah, he's a follower, not a leader. Now that doesn't mean it won't work in the sense that Biden's sitting across the table from McCarthy knows what he's up against and that we will do anything to keep his job, even if that means placating the Freedom Caucus into going off the cliffs. So it gives him a whole lot of leverage. Right, whether or not that was what it was intended, that's the way it works out.
I want to have two seconds with you on what you think this summer, this is like the last summer, this sort of sleepy summer before the twenty twenty four armageddon where we have you know, democracy on the ticket again. Do you what do you first see happening right now? What are you watching? What is on the horizon? What is keeping you up at night?
Well, I love the idea that you could think it would be a sleepy summer that when we could actually
have the first ever to fall. So I'm not taking you know, I'm still holding out the possibility that that occurs if we survive if we survive the debt standoff, which also presumably reduces the threat of government shut down at you know, when the fiscal year ends in the fall, then I think we returned to status quo ante, which is basically ninety percent of the time fighting about Hunter Byte, which would be kind of you know, endearing, right, and
Jim Jory can have multiple weaponization hearings with you know, featuring January sixth insurrectionists and.
A whistle blower they can't find.
Can't find the whistleblower, youre the ones they can find seem to seem to be a little bit suspect of, you know, is it criminal criminal conduct? The FBI said we can have some good old fashioned fun with Jim Jordan and James Coher because the stakes are lower. But you know, I mean I say that in Jess, because
the stakes aren't at all low. You see what's going on with you know, abortion restrictions around the country, Efforts to rein in the referendum process to prevent people, you know, actual voters from right.
You know, that's a bill in Ohio that comes up in August. It's called Proposition eight, and it raises the so basically Republicans have decided that these ballot initiatives are too popular and they don't want people doing democracy if it doesn't work for them, and so they're raising them standard the minimum to sixty percent.
Exactly. Basically, we step back from the precipice of instant worldwide destruction and go into more of the sort of steady, day to day erosion of our democracy, which is really very satisfying and relaxing by comparison.
I have to tell you that the stuff they're doing in Ohio. I just wrote about this in my Vatty Fair column this week. Everyone took it out. In it, I talk about how there is you know, in Ohio they have a bill, I mean, Republican legislature legislators are unbelievably stupid and like at the state level, it's like incredible, and so they have a bill that academics cannot endorse controversial ideas. Amazing.
Yeah, no, that's excellent. That's that. That is the end of the education process.
Not only are they going to get rid of tenure in Texas you had Dan Patrick is in a war with academics about tenure, but you're going to get rid of academics having controversial idea terrific right.
Twenty five hundred years later, we finally banished Socrates.
I want to ask you one last question. Besides the dead ceiling, what are the things keeping you up at night?
It's that constant drip drip erosion of the democracy. It's the obvious return of Trump, these routine assaults on the Justice Department, on the FBI, and you know what will happen at the next stage as they start to decide who's going to bear the brunt of these funding cuts.
We don't know the top line number yet, but we do know that basically all of these cuts are going to be focused on the fifteen to twenty percent of the government is non defense, you know, discretionary spending, and that's going to wipe out a lot of people.
Yeah, thank you, Dana. Congresswoman Summerly represents Pennsylvania's thirty fourth district. Welcome to Fast Politics. Congresswoman Summerly, thank you for having me. We're delighted to have you. Tell us a little bit about your story, how you got to Congress and you know, sort of your backstory.
Well, goodness, how I got to Congress.
You know, I started as truly an organizer trying to find my way, and believe it or not, I was just have this idea that more people would vote, and then that line, more people would vote if they had people who look like them and responded to them and sounded like them running for offits, right. Yeah, really, really a simple notion. In western Pennsylvania, we have a lot
of municipalities, you know, a lot, one hundreds even. Each of them has you know, their own school districts, their own borough councils, their own mayors, you know, their own
township commissioners, and so many of these offices. And I knew so many people, or should I say I knew very few people who actually knew a single elected official, right washingn Pennsylvania had this old boys network and it worked for them, and it was almost impossible for any of us to break into this to ever, you know, just stare an agenda that actually matched with the people
in any of these communities really really caring about. And we were in the midst of figuring out how can we use and how could I use the organizing skills that I just you know, encountered on my stint being an organizer, you know, in a twenty sixteen campaign, how do we translate that? And we started to, you know, talk to candidates and talk to community members and organize these communities around these races.
And that's when someone came to me and said you should run.
And I never thought about running for elected office before then, never not once, And that's how I ended up running in twenty eight team for the state House and the urgency that carried me there.
You know, it hasn't gone away with the same issues.
Right if you're black, or you're brown, or you're poor, you are more likely to live in these communities with environmental pollutants, these communities that have a dearth of jobs. We have inequitable funding schemes for our schools, so our kids are basically running through a cycle every generation that is just almost impossible to break. And we had so few politicians who were talking about it, acknowledging it, working
through it. And when we couple that with the rising tide, trump Ism, of white supremacy, of anti blackness, and so many other attacks, our attacks to democracy, it was just clear to me that we deserve and we need people in office who are going to respond and be responsive to the actual electorate who's going to expand it and care about it and center it.
And that's how I got here.
What you're saying is so relevant and important and also important to the Biden administration in twenty four and for winning elections, but also more importantly for serving the people that Democrats, you know, say they want to serve. I'm thinking of this, you know, a blue Sky tweet. I guess it's not a tweet that I saw the other day, which was that, you know, feminism that isn't intersectional is swam supremacy? Yeah it is, And so I wanted to talk to you about this idea. And then also, you
come from a battleground state. It's not like you're from Connecticut. I mean, you're from like a state that Democrats must win and you're progressive. So explain to us a little bit about the area you come from and what it looks like and how you built a grassroots campaign there.
When I first got into politics, when I first ran for office in our state house, we had one woman in a delegation.
She was a tea choice.
We had two black folks in a delegation, both from the city of Pittsburgh, from western Pennsylvania. We had never had a black woman serve. We had never had a black person serve from western Pennsylvania. Outside of the city limits. We had almost no people who identified explicitly as we are progressive leftists, however you want, you know, to categorize that. When I ran, I ran, you know, really closely with my good sister who just got elected to county executive,
Sarah and Morado. We were two women who were like, we can't win the same way that other people do this.
We have to do this together. We have to take it differently. We have to show people a different way to do politics.
We doubled the number of women after that with a group of people we found this pack because we needed to build infrastructure so that we can get more people in right. Me and Sarah saw that we were supported, We were well resourced for fay House candidates, and we get sparked and energy that you just typically don't see around local elections.
But what we know is is that it wasn't unintentional.
It takes a lot for candidates to be able to start on day one with the organizing capacity, with the volunteer base, with the money, to be able to gain
the traction, to even be considered viable. We lose so many good people who are more representative of our lived experiences, more representative of our of our ethnic, racial, gender backgrounds, and they never make it to the starting line because we have an outdated political system that tells us that, you know, you can't be in here unless you can
raise a lot of money yourself. You can be in here unless you can go through your own rolodex and find one hundred thousand, five hundred thousand a million dollars.
And those same people who have access.
To that money have access to even more because of the corporate money flooding into our politics.
So we had to start to address that. So we chipped away.
We started to we use our pack to start to help other candidates, progressives, people color who were running not just for state House, but for our magistrates and our quar to common please DA county counts, so city council's, borough councils, school boards, and we ran Canadas every single cycle.
Yeah, we never were lented.
And you know, the people who were accustomed to Begionaire are just every cycle they just thought we'd go away.
And we never ever did. And you never found a way of get us.
The thing that I can never get my head around is how few black senators there have been.
Yeah, I'm not shocked.
It's so fucked up. I can say this because we're not on cable news. I can curse.
We love that.
Yeah, Like, oh my god, Like what did we even do it?
I'm not shocked at all.
How would they get in?
Like when you think about like again, like going by just the western Pennsylvania, Right, you're supposed to be white male, blue collar labor, or.
At least you're supposed to look like.
You care about labor. Right, those are people we talk about Central Cassie. If you're black, weren't gonna get millions of dollars to listen in Pennsylvania. When I was organized in twenty sixteen, we broke a rock frund in Pennsylvania. I think it was something like thirty four million dollars was spent on the Senate race. This year, John Fetterman and doctor Au spent two hundred and thirty million dollars. That's the difference in what six years? Two hundred million dollars.
How can you if you're a block, if you're working class, if you're brown, you're coming from an immigrant background, if you're poorer trends, if you're working class in a union, where are you getting from? Where are you getting it from? And both parties rely on this flood of dark money. Both parties do because it's the way that we stop progressives, and they are just able to flood us.
But it doesn't just stop progressives.
It keeps us from having a representative democracy, which then keeps us from winning races. It keeps us from expanding the electorate. And it's a cycle that we cannot bring.
So how did you win?
We raise money? Honestly, no, you know, but it didn't come early.
First.
We won by energy, We won by momentum.
We won by tapping into people that the parties had said were not worth wanting to get. So you know where typically you get the parties who say we're only going to send a mailer to super voters. I said, you know, why won't we send If you're a black voter and you voted for Obama, we're going knock on your door. If you're a woman, we're coming to find you. If you are young, if you are in college, we're coming and talking to you because I know that I
can speak your language. So by doing that, we were able to bring new people into the political process who had just been discarded right, they had been ignored. We were able to double voter turnout my first race in twenty eighteen. In twenty twenty, in a pandemic year, we were able to build even on that. We had almost over fifty percent voter turnout in our primary. By still
being committed to going back and getting those people. We just go and talk to people about the things they care about about here and housing and racial inequity and covid or unions and workers' rights and just things that working class people care about.
They believed.
They believed it because they knew that I came from that, and because in my two years I never folded. And we just keep building and we keep listening, and we keep centering. That's all these folks want. They just want to know someone's fighting for them.
I also think you may not realize this, but I hope you do because you are a woman, and women politicians always you know, it's there. I don't know if you remember there's a statistic that women politicians, right they need to be asked to run, you know, numerous times multiples more than male politicians do. But also you're just a very gifted communicator.
I didn't know that when I was well.
I mean, I'm sure you didn't start out knowing that, but you must.
Know that I didn't know that that was it was truly, you know, I had heard that.
I heard that statistic a lot when when when me and Sarah and Mrodo were running twenty eighteen because Pennsylvania was wearing forty ninth out of fifty states for women in elected office, forty nine. This is Pennsylvania with Pittsburgh and Philly. That's how bad it was.
So we heard it a lot. I think I was ex once and I don't know. I don't know. I've taken leave of my senses when I did this.
So what's next for you? I mean, I feel like, I mean, Pennsylvania is so important in this map. It's such an important state. I also feel like it's important a because it's a swing state, but really it's important because it's just state that is is transitioning.
Yes, and that think that's precisely what we show in Allegheny County. Right, Allegheny County is this sleeper area that people when they think about Western Pennsylvania, they're still thinking about the nineteen you know, seventies, eighties or even fifties. We're thinking blue collar, we're thinking large white male, we're thinking blue dog Dems. But what we shown in Western Pennsylvania is that actually a progressive movement was was not just you know, it wasn't just timely. It was able
to have the impact. It was because we leaned in, because we were uniquely able to build coalitions that other cities just hadn't been able to replicate. And because of that, when we had a progressive and Congress with two progressives in Congress and our county executive seat which is our biggest office, mayor school boards, Senate, judgeships, Senate and those
all came from Western Pennsylvania. And I think our organizing model is what we're going to need to apply a because in Pennsylvania we do have to run the tab some area where we're going to have to mitigate losses for our twenty twenty four candidates. You know, we just don't want to get crushed, you know, in the middle of the city. But Pittsburgh and Philly and Weshtern, Pennsylvania, we have to bring out voters. We have to bring
out new voters. We got to get young people, and we in our movement, has shown that we can attract young voters, not just as voters. We can get them to volunteer, we can get them to participate, we can get them to lead. And we did that by not ignoring them, by not being condescending to them, right, by not patronizing them.
What can President Biden do to make your job easier?
He can continue to do the things that our base is asking him and put him in office to do. Young people came out and historic numbers around climate justice. Yes, around you know, making sure that kids are no longer being killed in their classrooms, black and brown folks, around housing justice and racial justice, students, around student loan debt.
These are the issues that galvanize the nation when we pull. They are popular everywhere.
They're popular in the cities and urban communities, rural communities, since exerman communities, all across the country. Right, we have to resist the urge to lean into a nostalgia that just doesn't exist anymore.
That was a time period where it was easier to cod to work with one.
I have to tell you that nostalgia, I mean it seems like so stupid to me, Like it's a terrible time for everyone. I mean, I don't know, it was nostalgic for.
That except for the people who wasn't a terrible time for and for those people was really good.
I mean, I guess. But yes, I agree, the nostalgia will kill us. I mean, that is just the stupidest American.
It is a fatal mistakes. I believe it is a fatal flaw. If we don't get it together, it ain't just going to be a fatal fall for the Democrats. It's going to be a fatal fall for democracy.
Yeah, the stakes are so incredibly high. I can't believe how the stakes have stayed so high.
Well again, it's because the Republicans are up in the ante.
Yeah, every cycle, every you know, every project, every bail they r in a state, every takeover they do, they empower and umvote in themselves and their bases, and now they have to and they yearn for more. When they get away with one thing, they're able to then tiptoe into the next thing. Right, they got away with stealing a Supreme Court seat, so then they can get away with it with the next thing.
They got away with an insurrection.
So now they can take the state of Florida and they can turn it into a fascist state. They got away with racial justice against black people, so now they can move on to our Jewish siblings and our trans siblings. Right, every time we allow them to get off with something with impunity, we give them permission to go harder, to go deeper, to go further.
I totally agree. And in fact, I don't know if you read this really scary academic paper about how when police shoot black people, then in that area black people vote less.
Oh I've not seen that.
I haven't see that, but I would imagine it's because it's another reminder that no one is coming to save and protect us. Yeah, we're looking towards our Democratic leaders to take our side, to not throw us under the bus. But what we see is when times get tough every election cycle, the first thing that we throw away is our you know, criminal justice lens. We always throw away that racial justice lens.
With policing with George Floyd, we always just go back to, oh, well.
Now we have to keep walking people up, you know, we have to keep criminalizing people.
We know that it's going to have an impact on black people.
So when a police officer kills a black person and no one gets indicted and no one goes to jail, and no one needed gets fired, we're reminded that that is the state. The state did this to us.
And the thing I'm struck by is like, the message should be these police need to be trained or they need to be fired. There are complaints against them, they need to be fired. And that can I go a.
Little bit deeper?
Yes? Please?
Police officers are American citizens. They reflect our societal conditions. So the real thing is is that implicit biases are rampant and pervasive in American society, implicit biases against black men, especially black women, black children.
It proliferates throughout every aspect of our society.
Police officers get that same conditioning, They taken that same messaging as everyone else.
Training that we need needs to happen from K to twelve.
It needs to happen in our jobs, It needs to happen in our schools.
Right.
We have to realize that when children are born, they learn and they internalize that black people are dangerous.
Black kids are different than white kids. You learned that early. So how are you going to thenk.
Get to police, to the police academy and have to unlearn that what training can help you learn something that you that you have implicitly internalized your entire li likes, not just police, right.
I mean, we also had a reporter on this podcast you talked about there's a policy. I'm sure you know this, but I was shocked by this that there are like police gangs in Los Angeles. They are gangs of police officers.
Yeah, the nineties happened.
That's always said when this movement around police battalion and police bolalci. This isn't a new new movement. This movement wasn't sparked with Tamir Rice or with my Gone or none of these. This movement has been happening since black people have existed in this country. That's why it's so disheartening when people say that, oh, we just don't care about public safety, or we don't care about police, or we hate police. No, we love ourselves, we love our communities.
We recognize more than anyone that when black people are in danger, so too is the entire country. That's how we got here. Now, that's why democracy is at risk. We understand this, right.
Right, this is all connected to democracy, right, Like, if you disenfranchise a part of your country, you are not practicing democracy. And that's how we got here. Tell me something that makes you a little bit hopeful, like Maxwell Frost makes me hopeful. I mean, you make me hopeful. Tell me what makes you hopeful.
The People's movement that continues to grow right western Pennsylvania makes me hopeful. We shouldn't have won there. If conventional reason had prevailed, we would not have even run in the first place.
Let alone been in the position to win.
Young people who are walking out of schools for their own safety, who are protests, and environmental and climate justice reinforcements are coming. Reinforcements are on the way, and we will outnumber them, we will outlast them.
Now, the problem is is what happens in the interim.
We're going to fight to make sure that we mitigate as much harm and damage as we can. But those reinforcements are on the way, and it's powerful, and it's strong, and it's accountable, and it's intersectional.
That's a precise movement that we need.
Now I'm going to cry, and I'm not allowed to cry, because I cried when I was interviewing State Senator Megan from Oklahoma. So I'm not going to cry, but I do feel like very moved by you, and just I appreciate you and thank you. You know, it gives me a lot of hope.
So thank you, thank you. I appreciate that, I really do.
I think that The other thing that we need to know, though, is that listen, again, these movements don't just happen. We have people who are making them happen. They are under resourced, they are undersupported, and we see black women candidates who are coming with fire and with energy. No, we are the least fundac CAUs candidates that exists, the least funded politicians, the most attacked, and we are also.
The ones who lay ourselves on the line.
When we see people who are trying to break into politics, we need to support them.
We need to trust them. And we can't say we trust black women.
We can't say we trust young candidates and then not make sure that they go into these fights well resourced.
That's the same for organizers and activists.
You know, those are things that can help us to continue to stay in the fight.
Our biggest threat is not being able to stay in.
The fight Congresswoman Summerly, thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Hi. It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your c guy to spread the word about our podcast and get a toe bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise
only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Doug Rushkoff is the author of Survival of the Riches. Welcome back to Fast Politics fan favorite It's true, Dog Rushcoff.
I'm both a fan and fan favorite. I'm glad. Oh my gosh, yes exactly.
Let us talk to you and I about AI. In five months, Will this entire podcast just be a bot talking to another bot discuss huh.
No, First, I don't even think that there is AI.
There's these sort of language models, right, and the idea of these language models someday becoming AI feels to me a bit like maybe search engines becoming AI. I mean, they looked really cool at the beginning, but they're just it's just basically Wikipedia automated.
What we're looking at.
This AI panic for me is just AI hype, like Crypto flopped. AI is the next thing, and put out these letters and these calls for regulation.
Let's just pause here a minute.
Whenever big business is asked for a big pause, it's to try to entrench their positions. It's to preserve their monopoly. Everybody's stopped right in the game. Okay, pause, time out. Concerned tech pros are in a coordinated money grab to get funding for their their either their little tech pro orgs. You know, remember Obama did that Brain Project and all. It's all these little orgs, Future of Live, Center for
Humane Technology, Future of Humanity. You know, they want to make another Netflix movie like Social Dilemma and get famous. But the worst case apocalypse existential scenarios for me pale in comparison to the real problems right now that we know.
Algorithmic injustice, prison sentences, police work, health insurance, mortgages, actual real world injustice, incarceration, economic disenfranchisement, it's all real, and I have a really hard time imagining these language models threatening anyone because, honestly, what they don't admit, these AI things, they are so labor intensive. They look free and profitable, but they are anything but. Machine learning involves thousands of human beings tagging all this data and preparing it. It's
not machines trolling the net like Google did. There's thousands of minimum wage workers. The chips for this stuff require zillions of tons of cobalt and rare earth metals, electricity and minding. Its billions and billions of dollars of investment, and the result so far, it's not profitable. They just commodify all the businesses that use them. So we're looking at an intensive amount of capital expenditure for something that's not actually going to produce that much, right, right, It's
that thing, you know. It's like, did you ever see in the streets of New York when somebody's like, hold me back, man, hold me back, right, like they're gonna fight. It's like that's what they're doing. That's sim hold me back. My AI is so big, baby, Oh hold me back, or I'm gonna unleash it.
It's going to take over the finger planet.
Right.
It's very interesting to me, and I think that's right. And I think we see that again with every new technology, right, there's a sort of panic. Right, Yeah, And so I get what you're saying here, and it's quite interesting. So we're going to talk about failure to launch the Rond
De Santis spaces again. I love Ronda Santis because he's a terrible candidate with zero with negative charisma, who is completely not ready for time time, and yet being treated like he's going to bring down this wildly popular, if not demented. Other presidential candidate, Donald Trump discussed.
Yeah, it is funny, isn't it. I mean, it's it is weird.
It's almost like, you know, DeSantis is to Trump as like Alon Musk is to what Zuckerberg.
I don't know.
In my mind, it's Jeb, except without Like with Jeb, you felt like the guy was sort of a good guy deep down. Maybe you didn't believe in what he believed in, but he seemed like he was sort of a good guy, whereas with Desanta's I have none of that. I just think he just as completely craven.
Right, Jeb had some sort of romniesque something going for him.
Right, at least it's in our minds.
Yeah, DeSantis is like you a Roman roy or something at best.
Right, But here's my question to you. You are a tech guy. You know what's going on. Did Santus's wild popularity break Twitter spaces or was the fact that Elon fired half of the people work their relative?
Oh?
Twitter spaces is the old uh what was it called periscope code? So it's code from ten or twelve years ago that was never quite finished because you know, Twitter decided not to go into video. They brought it out of the dust bin and they're running something that was written for like you know, Netscape three point six right right right, your iPhone three out of a modern thing. Of course, it doesn't work, it doesn't scale. They have no people, it turns out, And this is the thing
people don't get. Technology requires lots of lots of people to make it work. The tech pro dream is to get rid of people. That's what they've wanted. Well, that's what industry has wanted since the eleventh or twelfth century. Right. The assembly lines were about getting rid of me, get rid of human laborers. You know, they need insurance, they need money, they need whatever. And the tech bro dream has always been to get rid of people.
You know. The reason why the tech brows.
Are panicking now is because the ais are modeled on themselves, right, And if they've spent their lives getting rid of humans and now they created these super machines, they were like, oh, shoot, they're going to try to get rid of us now.
The create is something that colonizes themselves. But yeah, so when Musk goes into Twitter and gets her to half the people and then tries to take something out of a box and run it without any of the legacy people who even worked on the project and go, oh, here we're going to go and this is going to launch what this is? This what Tucker Carson Show is going to be on that scene, same platform.
If you're Tucker Carlson right now and you saw that space as you're feeling pretty.
Nervous, I would think so like you're like, I.
Just went into business with Amateur Hour.
Yeah, although in theory they have enough money to buy any of a number of other streaming streaming video is not that hard anymore.
I mean back in the days of see U see Me, you know.
So, why did the Twitter space die of streaming video? Is not that hard.
Because they are utterly incompetent. I mean, they and they've got a guy who's like, you know, the what's kind of boss that musk is?
I want this now? I'm sorry, Boss is not going to be possible. You're fired next. Oh we can do it.
You know it's going to be like I'm sure the yes people around tossanti sir Trump. You know, it's like Trump's lawyers, you know, you keep firing them until you find one that will say that the law says what you think it does. But code doesn't work that way. It's like, you can you know, code as hard rules to it. Finally it yes, the server will crash. Sorry, I mean that is I.
Think such an important point what you're talking about there that you can't bully code.
You can't. And these are the guys.
These are the guys that are going to make the AIS that are going to be sending you your ambulances or doing the analysis on your radiology.
It's like, what possible task is? Like, the only task.
I'm comfortable with AIS doing is like writing game scripts or you know, scripts for video games or something. And even then, it's like, what's the point of that like, are you would you watch the last episode to Succession if it was written by an AI? It's like I wouldn't care well that, I wonder.
No, because where we care? What are they thinking?
What are they wondering when you look at a van go, are you thinking what's the impact on my retina of this palette?
No? You're thinking who was that crazy dude who made this thing?
Right? Right?
Right?
I think that's a really important point. I do want to get back to this for a second though, this idea, because I think a lot of times, because a lot of us don't have like a working knowledge of code.
I'm going to shock you here, a lot of times when we're talking about tech, we defer to sort of people who you know, Like one of Elon's huge advantages when he's lying about stuff is that he is lying about something that most people don't know about, so you have to sort of agree with him, right, Like he's tweeted a number of times like we're going to put our algorithm online for greater transparency. Did he actually do that? No?
I don't even think.
I don't think they can even find their algorithm at this point. You know, it's like running explain the dudes, the dudes that wrote it, know where it is and how to work it, or understand the code. I mean code as code doesn't really mean anything to most people. You have to document the code. You have to write notes along the code, saying here's what this line of
code is trying to do. If you just look at code, it's really really hard to know kind of what it is and what it's for, because it's all mixed up. It's not in order. Things are going to other things. I mean, no single person even understands Microsoft Windows, much less you know Twitters. It's true, and half of it's written by a half of that's written by by bots anyway, so you can't really know.
You have to document your code to really understand what it is. But I do.
It's not necessarily a problem not to understand the layer of code beyond you, because even if you understood the code of Twitter, say, then you might not understand the code of Browser. You might not understand the operating system or the machine language under that. But what these guys don't understand is basic capitalism. They accept capitalism as this underlying operating system of humanity. They don't realize that what
they're doing is coding for capitalism. They're coding to extract value from people in places and convert it into you know, share value. That's what all of their companies, that's what they're really really doing, you know. And that's that's where it's a little bit dangerous. It's like, if the tech pros are kind of like the equivalent of the of
the Renaissance monarchs, then social media. Social media was like the missionaries that they sent out to South America to like learn about the people and convert them to Christianity.
Ais. That's the conquistadors, right, They're.
The ones who come in using everything that missionaries learn and finally take over the people. That's their intent. But I don't think I don't think it can actually do it. I really don't think it would work. You know, if it did really work, it could be great. I mean, I've got no problem with robots doing all the work if I get to do all the play, you know, But that's not the intent here. That the intent here is not to relieve human labor to make humans have
a better time. The intent is to extract and monopolize resources. So when you hear the guys building these things saying, oh, everybody slow down a second, let's freeze on development and have a bunch of meetings at the White House. They want to create regulations that make it that their companies are the only ones that will be in a position to monopolize this stuff, because in truth, AI is really easy to do. The code is easy once you actually see how it is. The code is easy. The only
thing that's expensive is gathering all the data. And that's why they've got to regulate. That's why they want to lock it down because they're going to lose their competitive advantage really fast, right, And that I think.
Is really important. And again that there are shades of Mark Zuckerberg going to Congress being like, please regulate us. We must be regulated, We have to be Can you regulate us? And then you know, of course, I mean, the good news is Congress cannot figure out how to do that. I did think I watched the congressional hearing about AI. I actually thought these guys are actually seem a little bit better off and seem a little bit more better briefed on what's going on than previous ones
of these hearings. Can you explain to us sort of? I mean what is the hope. I mean Elon wants Congress to stop it so they that he can quietly do it on his own. I mean explain well.
I mean there's two things.
One, you know Elon and you know there's this crowd, the Sam Bankman freed Elon Musk. Dudes, these these effective altruists as they call themselves, really do think that they are creating a post human creature. They're building the humans or human robot AI things that are going to go off to other planets and star seed the universe with
what's left of humanity as our planet goes away. You know, we the eight billion, we're the larvae, you know, the little maggots on the planet, and they're the flies that somehow spawn and get on. So that when that's their model when they're going to Congress, it's kind of I mean, they scared themselves a little bit.
I think that they built something.
You know, they believe in this idea that you know, if you don't do things that are friendly to AIS now that when the Ais are in charge, they're gonna make you suffer later. So they they're afraid to do anything that looks anti So it's like if they could get the government to do the stuff that's anti.
Then later the oh I was good. I you know, I tried to create a.
Repuschement between us in government. But you guys, come on, somebody stand up to this because we were kind of afraid to. So there's that. But it's also it's about really locking down things as they are. It was really telling that in this open letter they wrote, they said, and let's stop right now where chat GPT four is.
You know, let's let's stop here.
It's like you imagine Zuckerberg going, let's stop social media at the exact place that Facebook is at right now. It's like, what's that. Everybody stop teaching your AIS everybody.
You know, right right?
Let us get ahead, right, let us get ahead, and let these little non so called nonprofits of fallen tech pros get a ton of funding from the government to come up with nice ways of regulating AI that are still friendly to our industry.
So let me ask you about where we are right now. Where are we right now?
I think we're at a much much earlier stage of AI than people think.
I think this stuff, this stuff is.
Harder than it looks. You know, right now, we have some thing that threatens search engines. Right for people that don't really care if the results are true or not. You know, you can you can use an AI and get something digested.
But it's really bad.
I mean, you go to chat GPT whatever it is right now, and you type in which is heavier a pound of feathers or five pounds of lead?
And it will say, oh, they weigh.
The same because because it's not thinking, and you know, and so where we are now basically we're training a parrot, you know. And the parrot's listening to a whole bunch of stuff and will parrot back whenever it thinks it heard. And that's a really dumb thing, right, that's a dumb thing to depend on in any way. Where the danger is is think of it this way. If what you tell AIS doesn't matter, right, they're not doing what you're telling them. They're like kids in the backseat of the car.
You could tell them they be nice to other people and then someone cuts you off and you go, hey, fuck you. The kid is watching what you actually do, right, So AIS are modeling based on what we've done online for the last ten years. That's what they're looking at. So if you're training the things that are going to make our decisions based on the aggregate behavior of human beings on the Internet for the last decade. You know, watch out.
You know. This is like that the Jim Morrison thing.
You know, father, I'm going to kill you, right, That's what the a That's what the AI AI guys are thinking. It's like, oh shit, these are little AI children have been trained on the worst of the worst, and they are going to come for us in our sleep.
Right right right.
But they're not. These are just like lava lamps. You know.
They're like lava lamps, and it's like, oh, look, you know, and it's not even interesting. Do you go to someone the next day, Oh my LoVa lamp did a really interesting combination of stuff last night.
I don't care about your chet Gypt results. I don't care about you.
You're whatever, you're the picture that you made on whichever one that is your generated AI picture. It's like I really hearing about someone's AI generated picture that oh it's a wolf and a breast and a thing. It's like listening to someone's acid trip. It was like it was good for you, but I really couldn't care less.
Yeah, I think that's right. I think we got to end it on that. That was such a good line. Thank you, Doug Rushoff.
Oh thank you. I love you. I love what you're doing.
The no no, Jesse Cannon, Maley, John Fast you know, seems like match Slap. Like many MAGA Republicans, the troubles catching up with them and they're acting accordingly.
Matt Slap, the prominent Trump ally who led the influential conservative political Action Conference which has most recently been in Hungary, has been accused of mismanaging money and staff in a scathing resignation letter from the parent organization's treasurer. Who could have seen it coming. But everyone, you will remember that earlier this year we had a Matchlap accuser on this podcast that has been going on match Lap not a huge shock, but for that he and his many mouthfeasances
are our moment of fuck Ray. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.