Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Governor Ronda Santis, or as he's known Tiny D. His ban on gender affirming care has been overturned by a federal judge. We have a great show today. Representative Yavette Clark stops by to talk to us about the need to regulate AI and it's actually a really fun interview. Then we'll talk to historian Kevin Cruz about the precedent of third party candidates and.
How it works out not well.
But first we have the host of the Time of Monsters, the Nation's get here.
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Geet here, welcome back to having me on Fast Politics. Weally you Foster.
Yes, very excited to have you, and especially because I feel like everything and again, I feel like every time I say this, I'm like tempting the gods. But it seems very much like everything has actually gotten stupid since the last time we talked.
Yes, you know, there's a victimating philosophy. Are we living in the best of all possible worlds? Are we living in the worst of all possible worlds, and I've come to the collusion. Yes, we are living in the stupidest
of all possible worlds. And that was really shaped by a news idea I saw earlier this week where Cardie b is fighting with the submarine steps On and I thought, like, in what possible universe could like this happened and be a good news story, except in the stupidest of all possible worlds.
I'm going to raise you one here because I want to get involved in little Bitchgate. Marjorie Taylor Green, who as you know, is known for her racism, her stupidity, her or whatever, is in a fight with Lauren Bobert and called her a little bit discuss.
Well, I'm gonna talk a little bit of turns, just as the Father of Three Girls, although this would be the same as I about the Father of Three Boys, which is if you deal with children, you're forced to deal with cigama and a social interaction where they get into these petty fights, which is like you're copying me, you're idiot, you're stupid, you're a little words that we
don't want our kids to use. I was like reminded those and like, it really does seem like this is sort of like a junior high school drama played out in the halls of Congress. I mean having said that, like this is like no worse than anything else that Republicans could be doing, and perhaps even a little bit better because at least it's entertaining.
Yeah, I have to say, as stupid crap goes, I mean, they're also like booing McCarthy. I mean, I know we say this every day, but like, has McCarthy completely lost control of his caucus?
Yeah, I don't think that he has control. And they can really unite in a negative way, right, Like we're in the age of negative polarization. I think there's even more true of Republicans and the Democrats, and so they can unite to what they did with Adam Schiff, you know, like I to impeach Joe Biden.
Isn't the beginning of this fight that they both wanted to impeach.
Biden and had different mechanisms for it.
Well, that's why I brought the junior grade school because that is actually a conversation I hear in among young people, like you're copying me, you know, like I was doing that first, you know, like I was drawing snoopy and then now you're drawing snoopy right. You know, in the absence of substantive politics, all you have are like free floating petty grudges and narcissism and partisanship. And that's what we're seeing play out right, Like it just that's all they have.
It seems kind of amazing. So we have this house.
They can't pass their messaging bills, they can't figure out what they're going to do, these Republicans in the House. McCarthy, you think he ends up getting to stay or you think this is the.
End of it?
Hard to predict. I mean, if I would to say anything, I don't see how he can stay for a long day. Yeah, I do kind of see an implosion coming. I mean, I think the longer, more positive thing is that this gives the Democrats a really great thing to run on to regain the House.
So I want to talk to you about something that I think you'll appreciate. I just read a little article about how much cable news networks, even the non right leaning, the normal ones, spend a lot of time. And it's funny because I've been on panels like this too, and mainstream media does this a lot where they spend a lot of time talking about Biden's age, doue, like that's a favorite topic, and he is incredibly old, but they don't talk about the fact that he is three years older than Trump.
I mean, do you think that's strange?
Yeah, I kind of think that's except that I think a lot of these things are driven by polgical messaging from the parties. So the demo creds have not really made Trump's age and issue because it's surprise, surprise. There's like a hundred other things about the guy that right to me, right, you know, like he tried to pull a coup. You know, he's corrupted as well, he's under criminal investigation and indictment. You don't need to talk about his age. The Republicans have really hammered on his age
and they keep doing it. They have a lot of ads and had tweets. Their people talk about Biden's age all the time. And this is really an example of which how the media follows the messaging cues of the Republican Party.
Yeah, I mean, just unbelievable, right, I mean, sort of shocking.
It's shocking, except that I think this is what Josh Marshall talks about a lot, which is that the Republican Party and the media have a symbiotic relationship where going back to the Reagan era, where there I think a lot of people a mainstream party have just decided the Republicans are, despite all evidence and despite all elections, the mainstream American political party, and if they say something then that's like, well, that's something that has to dominate the
Sunday talk shows. You know. I think there's a sector of the media that is very geared despite everything, to treating the Republicans as the serious, growing up mainstream party.
I mean, is it that sort of brilliant lie that Republicans have convinced the media they're too lefty and so they have to sort of go along with a Republican narrative and the way they might not if they weren't worried about appearing to lefty.
Yeah. No, I think there's a bit of brilliant sort of working of the refs. But I mean a lot
of it. I mean, if you look at what's happening as CNN, a lot of because of the fact that a lot of media is just corporate and so you know, the people working there including the hosts or whatever might be lean liberal or lean funterest even, but the people owning these companies are you know, they're they're pretty standard Republicans, and they're always putting pressure, you know, like, why are I hearing you know, these GOP talking points.
I went to a party the other night and there are a lot of wealthy, very wealthy people, and this conversation moved to a thing that I hear a lot of wealthy people talk about, which is how little they're allowed to talk about that they can't they don't have free speed. I wondered if this was just bullshit they say in order because they just don't want to pay taxes, or if they really do feel like any kind of accountability on speech is somehow censorship.
Well, I think it's the old saying that you know, like if you're privileged, then you know, a quality looks like a person. Right. They've been used to get, you know, having their speech dominate for years and not get challenged. I mean that's the thing. Now they can still say all the things they believe, but they're going to get challenged and they're going.
To be made fun of it.
I think this is the sort of way in which social media led to this panic about wokeness, which is really a paic about the fact that if you say something dumb, right wing things then you will actually get people like people made fun of funny. Yeah, I think there's you know, there's a class of rich people that find that intolerable that you know, like the peasants are revolting as well.
Brooks likes to say.
Yeah, I mean, just unbelievable.
And in fact, I've been listening to Gorvidal's essays from a million years ago and they're very and there's a lot of stuff in there that's, you know, that is not how we write.
Or talk anymore.
But what I think is so interesting is he talks about the people who were so against the Equal Rights Amendment being passed and the kind of scare tactics they used women using men's bathrooms.
Right, it's all the same stuff.
No, exactly. I know, the panic has come back a long time and there's nothing new under the sun for all that. I think the new aspect is what you have zero did on, which is that I think the rich in particular feel imperiled, and I think that they're the ones that are funding a lot of these sort of anti Wook campaigns and making that part of politics because they do feel threatened that, you know, they're not getting their way on everything as they're used to.
Yeah, I mean that was what I was struck by.
And the you know, the seriousness with which these people take themselves was I mean good for them, you know.
But well you know, I mean I mean, like, honestly, I think for rich people's actually I think you know, the sort of revolt that we're seeing, this sort of you know, uprising and challenging is actually good for them. But they're not going to appreciate it. But I mean
it's good to have. If you're used to always getting your own way, that makes you a very poor judge of things in life, and you know, you actually need someone to say, like, you shouldn't get into this like submarine that's just like a tin cab operated by a little computer module.
It just makes no sense.
Like if you're used to getting your own way and always being surrounded by yes people, you're you're not going to have that you know, common sense grounding in reality that the rest of us have.
I mean, it is it's I mean, I do think that thing you just said we're fairness, The quest for fairness, the interest in fairness looks like oppression to them. I mean, right, none of us is fair, right, We're just trying to you know, have a little bit less wealth inequality.
And that is infuriating to them.
I do think it's interesting because like we see, you know, what we've seen with Twitter is what happens when very rich people get the platform, right, get famous, and get to say whatever they want. And what I think is so interesting is like they are really surprised how much the rest of us don't like them.
Oh absolutely, absolutely, yeah. I mean that this is the whole be al Musk story as well, right, you know, I mean he was okay with being a Democrat as long as that nothing he was interested in it was being challenged, you know. But you know, once you add like black Lives Matter and trans right and even if people talking about taxation, he feels like under thread and so you know, like, okay, I'm gonna buy Twitter and make it like ebegal to use the word cis.
That whole illegal to use the word cis thing. He has a trans kid.
He has a tran kid who he does not speak to. And you know who has decided not to be part of his life anymore. I mean, when the biography of Elon must gets thridden, I think it'll be fascinating. But I think it is a case of one of these privileged people that could not get what he wanted and could not deal with alternative points of view, and it
really drove him crazy. It is an amazing thing that, Yeah, the fact that Elon Musk could not handle having a trans kid like drove him to like this insanity of like, you know, like losing billions of dollars by buying Twitter, and then also wrecking it and destroying his reputation by you know, like you like, really openly aligning with the far right. It's just like an amazing kind of thing to happen. It is just what we've been talking about
throughout this whole conversation. Just a little bit of challenge is too much for them.
It really does feel like the Telltale Heart or something some kind of Victorian novel where somebody goes insane from nothing.
Oh yeah, I know, absolutely, absolutely, yeah, except I think a lot is preemptive. I just said, we're only just talking about fairness. But I think that they can imagine, like well, what if people actually did something and I think they're really preemptively trying to prevent like further social change.
Oh yes, I think that's right now.
The question I have is like, we're you know, it's another one of these really really scary hot summers where it's too hot and the Texas power grid is hanging by a thread and we have tornadoes and you know, it's the warmest the Atlantic has ever been. I mean I just saw someone right like people aren't going to be able to survive summers in Texas soon.
I mean, does this just keep going on?
Does anyone ever stop and go like, oh my god, we're so fucked we have to do something or no, never.
Yeah, I don't know. I mean it's very hard to say, except that I want to say that there are some positive developments, like I do think like you know, renewables are getting better and better, and I think we should fall under dumrism. But yeah, they're very heading for very bad times. I think that you have to just write off a certain check of the population that you know, like even if it gets like one hundred and fifty degrees, they're going to be like doctor Foci, did this you know, like, well.
That's what we've seen from COVID.
Yeah, and they will come up with these weird conspiracy theories, you know, like facts themselves don't change. Yet. I think the only hope is that we do see the kind of social movements we've seen, like you know, on climate action, with people like Greta Thenberg, and you know, like, oh, I think that's the only hope that if you have bachel movements of people that try to change ploysical thinking,
then you can get that. But I think that break from the start, you have to write off thirty three percent of the populis shure never gonna acknowledge what's happening.
Right, But I mean, can you fix climate change if you have such a large percentage in the country that doesn't believe it's happening.
I think that's really hard. And I think in some ways, I mean, you went to the COVID, and COVID kind of shows the problem with a collective action in a society where a big chunk of the population rejects rational science. I don't know. I think that's the great challenge of our time.
Yeah, you don't feel as doo Marie as I do.
Right, I mean, I think, you know, like the science is pretty rough in terms of what we're heading for. On the other hand, I do actually see like there's a lot of people are organizing, and I think that's the one all that if you can get a sort of a political place where people are like pushing for positive change, then I think a lot of these problems are actually not totally solvable, but we can get to a livable future with the technology that we have.
What are the things you're watching right now.
Well, I mean the courts and what's happening with the courts. June is the month of court decisions where see some really bad ones coming out, especially like no, I think this doesn't get as much attention because it's a lot of sex seep with the law, criminal justice stuff, terrible stuff. I mean, like basically the current decision that came out today, like even if you're innocent, you're not gonna yeah, you get your right strip. I just think that's terrible stuff.
And then the good point is that the political reputation of the court is an all time low. I just saw it's only like twenty nine percent of Americans have faith in the courts.
They're very unpopular yeah, and.
You know, like as they said in the Wolf of Wall Street, those are rookie numbers. You know, let's be getting about there. Well, let's get the you know, let's get them to zero percent.
Right. But I mean, what's happening.
I think that we're heading towards a real like constitutional crisis with the courts if they keep putting out like unpopular decisions and are also blatantly corrupt, you know, as we saw with this recent Leito story. Yeah, I'm hoping that even though the Democrats are reluctant to have this fight, I think public opinion might drive them to this, that there's going to be a reckoning with the courts.
I think there's no way that they that doesn't happen. Yeah, I mean it's their job, you know, it's Democrats job. Like people are so angry about the courts.
Yeah, it's their job. But I mean, you know, the current leadership, I don't know if what they're going to do. I mean, Dick Durbin, he doesn't have a fighter's instinct. His instinct is to write an angry letter, or not even angry letter, mildly annoyed letter to John Roberts, Right, but with new leadership.
I think things could change so interesting. Thank you so much, Cheat, I hope you will come back.
Yeah, of course, I always enjoyed BEINGR.
Congresswoman of Vet Clark represents New York's ninth district. Welcome to Fast Politics, Representative Clark.
Well, thank you for having me, Molly, great to be with you.
I'm really glad to have you, and I am really interested in talking to you about AI regulation, which is I feel like this is like another opportunity to for Congress to finally do some tech regulation that they've shied away from before.
Can you talk to me about.
This, Juel or Well, let me just say that I've introduced legislation that I think is, you know, really critical, particularly moving into this election season, and it's called the
Real Political Ads Act. It dawned on me because I've been doing some work in legislating around deep fake technology and some other concerns that I've had with the rapid deployment of AI that with this upcoming election cycle, this will be one of the first elections that we've had where AI will be an integral part of what people use to advertise their positions politically during a campaign. And I thought about the fact that, you know, we're in
a very toxic political environment. Yes, as those who want to be deceptive, who want to harm their opponents for the sake of winning an election, can really do some damage with AI generated advertising.
And we've already seen this happen with the Trump campaign.
Absolutely.
Can you talk a little bit about that or was it the DeSantis campaign that did it?
Actually it was the r n C.
Oh, that's right, the RNC did. Jesus Christ, there was the RNC.
And what they decided to do was create a video using AI AI generated that really depicted President Biden in this dystopian us and you know, presiding over a nation that you know, was just totally out of control and.
Oh yeah, I remember.
And so it's just critical.
What they did, to their credit, was they did provide a disclaimer, right.
Which there's no regulation that says they.
Have to exactly, but that's what my legislation does.
It essentially says, just like we have required in broadcasts and you know, radio, there needs to be a disclaimer so the American people and not the themed into believing that what they're seeing in terms of political ads are real.
I'm just fact checking this Desanta's campaign shares a parent AI generated fake images of Trump and Faucci. So yes, the Desanta's campaign also did it.
Shockingly, You're correct, My legislation doesn't necessarily address this, but the audio AI where people's voices are mimiced to you know, the ultimate tone of someone sounding real. Right, there's a lot for us to be concerned about in this moment. I think that my legislation starts the ball rolling because you know, I think that people are far.
More sensitive to be bombarded.
By average I thing during you know, the highest political seasons that you know, it can be very detrimental. It's detrimental in it of itself when people are unable to distnguish between what is real and what is spictitious and generated by AI.
So there's a lot of work for us to do in this space.
But I think that you know, we can be gettn by at least requiring disclaimers in this period of time where we are going to be you know, engaged politically and where we know that they unfortunately has been violently sparked in the context of our political seasons.
Does it seem like the Republicans in Congress seem very busy fighting with each other and fighting with Kevin McCarthy and calling each other terrible names. I mean, do you think that you could conceivably get this through the House?
I was happy to hear that Senator Schumer and a bipartisan group of senators are beginning to move at least with.
An examination of AI.
I think that that high level of engagement may spark some movement in the House. I'm going to push for it as hard as I can, because you know, at the end of the day, I'm in the minority.
I've introduced the legislation.
It's going to, you know, require colleagues on the other side of the aisle seeing the significance of this, because you know, the sword cuts both ways.
They seem like they're in disarray. They are Nancy Pelosi when she was like that speech where she was.
Like, you all look miserable.
Er.
Yeah, it's a rough situation.
The thing about it is that we all pay the price for their dysfunction, right.
You know, I.
Would love to be able to sit back and just laugh and you know, but I know you know as well, you do, Molly, what's in state here?
We've seen political violence in our lifetime.
Oh yeah, recently.
Aside from all the other you know, dangers that have out here, the self inflicted danger of people being deceived into actions that they.
Control is not a good look for the United States.
Just talk us through because I think our people, actually our listeners will be really interested in this. When you have a house like this where it's very tight, there's a five seat majority if you wanted to theoretically, I mean, we did pass a debt ceiling bill, so like their bipartisan legislation can be passed, maybe with bad consequences towards
Kevin McCarthy, but I mean, life is life. But my question to you is if you needed to get this passed, and it does seem in my mind like a bipartisan thing a little bit, because you do have Republicans who are you know, they hate TikTok, they have, you know, some anxieties about tech as well. They should do you think it would work better to pass it in the Senate first.
You know, Like I said, I think that remains to be seen.
However, with sort of the announcement by Chuck Schumer of this bipartisan working that is taking it up, I think it provides more pressure on the House to deal with this and to deal with it like immediately, and like I said, I think the lowest hanging group for us would be dealing with political advertising, because that's right now.
You know, that's right in front of us right now.
And what we're asking is not something that's far effected because we already required disclaimers in political advertising, like I said, it either broadcasts or radio that we're just extending it now to other platforms that you know didn't exist at the point in time where that law went into effect.
It's not a heavy lift, Molly.
It's just getting sort of the right folks, starting with the chairwoman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, you know, to mark up the bill and to get some you know, Republican colleagues as coach sponsors, right.
And do you feel like there's an appetite for that.
I think that we can generate the right argument for it now what's happening on the other side of the island terms of their political strategized because they're not doing a whole lot of governance. No will, we'll we'll dictate it now. If they were in a governance mode, this would be a no brainer. That wouldn't exist if they were in a governance mode right exactly. So you know, listen, we've got a truck at the end of the day. That's why we introduced the legislation. I'm not a defeatist
person by any stretch of the imagination. We're gonna cheep probing colleagues on the other side of the isle. If we can get them to focus, you know, for a moment on doing the right thing, not only by the nation, but you know, by each other, perhaps we can you know, get this bill of moving in committee, and you know that there'll be a Eureka moment where both the House and the Senate can move to make this law.
The thing I'm struck by about AI is that, like there was not the tech regulation we desperately needed in this country, right, and there has been in Europe to a certain extent a little bit better, but we really, like government really sort of just flew it on that. I feel like there's a feeling that this could be a way to sort of make it right.
I hope.
So, I mean, there are a number of steps that proceeded AI that we haven't dealt, right, So, just the whole idea of privacy, data ownership things of that nature.
I mean, all of this thing.
Exists because the American people are basically, you know, giving way their data in order to use the utility that is the Internet. And every time we search, you know, we go into big data and algorithms are deployed. We have no just level of engagement with what is happening to us.
And so it was really up to I believe.
Congress to set up the Guard to protect the American people. And so we've done a number of hearings on privacy, but nothing has moved yet. I've got a piece of legislation in on you know, algorithmic bias at what damage that can do to our society that hasn't been dealt with yet. And AI is the convergence of both the exposure to data and the algorithms that ultimately, you know,
govern sort of what we consume. It's sort of the perfect marriage of both that at the end of the day will give guidance to sort of the behaviors of a civil society if we don't put up these gold colts.
If you will, right, so, let me ask you, your New York congresswoman. We have a lot of problems here with housing, but we also have these migrants who have come here, who are being resettled here. Can we absorb these people as we should and how? And are there people on the ground who are helping this happen or do you feel that they are being used as political bonds?
Both are correct.
I think that you use as political bonds, but I also believe that we can absorb them.
I don't think it has to be a New York solution. I think it needs to be a national solution. There are you know, there are parts of.
This country where their poise for expansion right.
Most of the country is I mean, we have a tight, tight labor market.
Absolutely we need people, yeah.
Absolutely absolutely.
I mean I think they're just sort of this false construct of scarcity that has been erected to scare people when you know.
We know for a fact that right now that their.
Labor shortages, they have more jobs and more opportunities than we have people to fill them. And that's assuming that we don't give migrants opportunity. You know, I think that if you know, we were honest, we could create you know, pathways or work authorization while these individuals sort of get their documentation and everything in order and adjudicate it. You know, at the end of the day, yes, this is a nation of laws, but it's also a nation of immigrants.
So you know, if that either or.
All the evidence shows that we desperately need people in this country, right. We need them to pay into social Security, we need them to work jobs. We have these Republican governors in the middle of the country who are loosening child labor laws because they don't have anyone to work in the factor is I mean, so clearly this is a situation where we actually really do need people and by keeping them out it just to makes no sense.
Yeah, and we're not keeping them out, we're trapping.
Them in a no win situation, you know, a very unhealthy situation, unhealthy for them and unhealthy for the greatest civil society. There's a lot of work that we get doing that space that unfortunately, you know, it's become a political football. But for some of our colleagues they've been able to use very successfully, you know, fear tactics, you know around sort of these individuals who who are making their way to the United States, who have made be
away to the United States. But you know, the data statistics demonstrate that you know, all of the propaganda that my colleagues are using don't beer out in terms of you know what they're peddling in terms of fear tactics in a civil society like ours, and in a city like New York where you know where an immigrant portal, if you will, we can make it work.
We just need the tools to make it work.
Yeah.
It makes me wonder what we're doing here, right, because Republicans used to be for immigrants. I mean, all of this stuff that they're so against, they used to be for.
This is a different brand.
This is Maga and Maga, the disciples of Donald Trump, who, if you know his political history, you know was not a Republican until very recent right, right, right. This is a group of cult followers that are linked to a cult of personality around Donald Trump, who puts his finger in the air in whichever direction blows the meanest. That's the direction he's moving it right right, and a lot of people with him.
Yeah, I mean, just unbelievable.
I mean, do you think that Democrats have shot to take back the House and do you feel like they have a plan?
And New York, even more importantly than that, as a new Yorker.
I have been disappointed that Democrats lost seats in New York and that j. Jacobs continues to be the chair of the Democratic Party in New York.
Well, let me say that last year was a very unique year, and that it was a redistricting year, and I think that no one could have been anticipated. You know what ultimately took place with the courts in New York State around a special Master and a whole host of other things that really swung the pendulum in an extreme direction that made far more of the I think sinks in the state the right leaning than had ever
been before. We were caught somewhat flat footed there, and I think work for preed to sort of pivot ghost
of Andrew Cuomo. Right, Well, that's part of it. But the other was, you know, the really competitive and spirited governor's race at the same time, right, so far more people who historically have not faced such a spirited contest for a governor, I mean Leans, Bill Lean Velden, I think created a ripple in the state that made it possible, after mean district thing under the special mass for I guess more Republicans to be pulled out in some of
these districts than had been well, these were new districts.
Now, your question was do I believe me can regain them? And I do.
The brands for the Republicans right now in our state is topic.
You know. We have a.
George Santos dynamic that's only gonna get worse, you know, and those Republican members are in with the madness here in Washington hook line and see. I've not heard any of them distinguished themselves from these maga Republicans and balloon me.
I serve on chie committees with the number.
Of these colleagues, and it astounds me to hear them espouse those values, knowing that they come from New York State.
Crazy.
Even our Republicans in New York State tended to be level headed.
These folks are off the ramp.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming on. I hope you'll come back.
Absolutely, Thank you for having me.
Molly Hi, It's Mollie, and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now.
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Kevin Cruz is a historian at Princeton University and author of myth America.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Kevin Cruz.
Great to be here.
I think of you as a history professor, among other things. What's happening right now where we're seeing this Republicans pump up a third party candidate. So you could talk to us a little bit about third party candidates and how that's gone down in sort of recent American history.
I mean they've usually gone down. I mean they don't do much. You make arguments that maybe at best a spoiler. I'll start endlest fights online. You can talk about Ralph Nader in two thousand, bleeding away just enough support for the Gore campaign in Floridas to flip that politics is a game of many different moving parts, and so that's just one. But yeah, certainly that might have been an effect. But that's the best they can do as a spoiler, and that's just the nature of the two party system.
It's very rare for a third party candidate to break free, especially in the modern era. Ross Perreaut did extremely well in two racism in nineties, and even then it was barely a dent. And he only did well because he had a personal fortune to set on fire from the third party campaign. And unless you're doing that, you're not going to get any But you do.
Have to wonder with Ross Perrau, I mean, he acted as a spoiler. He is part of the reason why HW didn't get re elected.
Yeah, yeah, he absolutely is. But in a lot of ways it was because he, in that one particular moment, was really coinciding with what Clinton was already saying that the policies of Reagan and Bush and economics had failed, right, and they had. They kind of together represented a real majority pushback against that. So in a lot of ways, Perrot helped make the case for Clinton. But again it didn't rebound to his own benefit.
It only helped the Democrats exactly. So this period is such a strange period. What would you say the historical precedent is for.
The period we're living in. I mean, we're kind of at a crossroads, as we always are. It's difficult to tell where the past is going to leave until we're a few bits out, so I'm reluctant to kind of state authoritatively where we are now. It does seem like things are in flux. I mean, we've seen the Republican Party, certainly over the last ten years, definitely the last since twenty sixteen, with the direction of Trump, has really moved into a much more a reactionary, much more kind of
white nationalist politics. This has always been a minor theme in the party for at least the last fifty sixty years,
but a minor theme. And what Trump has done is kind of flipped the script and put that part of the Republican coalition of a driver's seat, and seems to be now, you know, just doubling down and doubling down over again and again on this kind of politics of white reaction that appeals to an increasingly thin slice of the electorate, but it's enough currently to win the Republican nomination, and that makes it a kind of a jump ball
for a general election given our politics. What that means for the long term Republican Party, I don't think you have to be an actuary to read the graphics and know that this is not going to be sustainable long term, and eventually the fever will have to break. But for the immediate future, I think they're wedded to the best.
Yeah, I mean they clearly see the writing on the wall here right.
Well, you know we've had multiple you know, they do these post mortems after everyone.
Yeah, the best.
They usually have a clear eyed assessment of what went wrong, what they need to do better, and then they file that away and ignore it. And they do so because I think the party analysts have a very long term view of the party and are very I think astute
about what doom lies ahead? Do they keep following this path? Politicians, though, are always looking one election ahead, and in the current climate, that's all they have to care about, and they are committed to that kind of politics and white reaction for the foreseeable future.
Eventually they'll get sick of losing.
Theoretically, it depends on what is losing, right, So they've lost the popular vote in I can't even remember how many out of the last eight elections that they've been on the losing end. They've managed to hang on to the Senate due to the advantages they've got in that system.
They managed to I mean they don't have the Senate now, I.
Mean they managed to have a real presence of a Senate throughout a lot of these years. Right, They've taken the White House through the electoral college, and so, yeah, they're losing, But as long as they actually win some levers of power, I think that's coming enough to keep him in play. And the system, as says that, it rewards the winners, you know, and so whoever's got the power will find a way to hang on to it.
If you were to sort of go back in history, have there been times when a political party has been this fucked?
I mean yeah, I mean you could look at the Whigs fifty Yeah, I mean you could actually look at the Democrats in the nineteen twenties. They had won the White House with what Cleveland and Wilson since the Civil War, and that was it. They didn't have control of virtually anything. In the nineteen twenties. Will Rogers famously said, you know, I don't belong to an organized political Partymocrat and they
just got their asses kicked time and time again. It was ultimately the Depression and the real discrediting of Republican policies that changed all that. But from the perspective of the nineteen twenties, it looked like the Democrats were, you know, on the way out.
Looking at this sort of historical precedent predict the future.
Go look, I mean I often say that, you know, and I get why people want to ask historians to make these predictions. But my training is in hindsight, I'm not butits And also I write about all these people who made bad predictions in the past. When you know, LBJ was elected in a landslide at sixty four, said that's it. Conservatism is dead, well, not so much. Reagan elected in nineteen eighty a landslight Well, liberalism has gone well,
not so much. So it's tempting in the moment to kind of have these catastrophic takes, but I'm real worried about saying them. I will say, I do think we're in a moment of reckoning. How long it's going to take to come to pass really is going to depend on how these next feel shakeout. If it really is a series of wipeout for the Republicans, they'll be forced to change pace. If they can hang on and eke out something close to a fifty to fifty existence. They'll stay on this as long as they can.
Yeah, I think it sounds right. I'm wondering about this sort of world in which we find ourselves in. There is no precedent for a political candidate who is the front right of a party being indicted both on state charges and federal charges, and likely more state charges to come.
There's no precedent, right, I mean.
I mean, you know, not a major Eugene Debs ran from prison. That's closely done, and it hadn't happened because usually parties weed out the candidates with all this baggage, and it's a there's a kind of a self regulating aspect to the party structure in which you want to have the candidate with the biggest chance of winning a
general election be your nominee and believed or not molly. Traditionally, when a candidate was indicted for crimes at the federal or state level, that was sort of a deal breaker. They would not nominate that person. They would have said, find somebody who had the same kind of policy beliefs but did not have a long criminal record to be
the standard bearer for the party. So we're in an unprecedented place solely because Republican voters have apparently turned into a cult where it's got to be this one man and only this one man.
Yeah, he does have a hold on the party. I mean, I'm trying to think of like predent presidents. I mean maybe where a sort of one candidate has had a sort of death part on a political party. I mean you could say like George Washington.
Right, sure, sure, but even then Washington above anyone else, made it clear it wasn't about him. The pattern for serving only two terms and kind of kind of the modern day Cincinnatus, So he doesn't have that. I mean, death grip is the right term here, because there have been parties that have really been beholden to major political figures. Think of the Democrats and FDR.
Right, that's what I was. Actually the FDR ran for three terms, so ran for four turns on terms, right, and was really committed there.
But he was a winner. Right. Reagan had some some low points in his presidency, but you know, won the first election one reelection was regarded as a winner. Trump really is a death grip because he's going to kill him They really have convinced themselves that he's some sort
of winner. He didn't win a majority of the popular vote in twenty sixteen or twenty twenty, he lost the House, lost the Senate on his watch, He's got negative coat tails, and yet they are convinced that he is the one knownly It's really bizarre.
Do you think that there's a president that's not a political president that's sort of more of like a celebrity president, Like I'm thinking of.
Like, is it is he Elvis? Is he? Do you know what I mean?
Like, Yeah, is there some like pied piper like celebrity figure that Donald Trump could sort of track to in real life?
Yeah?
I mean, I mean there is a sense that it is all celebrity. And for all the criticisms Republicans had about Barack Obama being a celebrity president, I mean this is kind of the host of Celebrity Apprentice. This is a guy who's done pitches for sharp image, and you know, this is not someone who has kind of a deep, you know, a serious kind of gravitas behind them. It's
all image and that's what they like. And so I mean, I'm not the first one to draw a comparison, but always reminds me of character of lonesome roads facing the crowd. The Eliot Cazenne. Yeah, you know about a TV huckster who gets to political following. I mean, that's kind of what we've got here. Or if you want to be darker, you know, it's Jim Jones in Guyana having his followers drink the flavor aid like a cult. I mean, that's the kind of real commitment to a single political leader.
I mean, if you want to go big, it's kind of the cult of personality. We've seen authoritarian dictatorships across the twentieth century. Yeah, that is really a sense that whatever the leader says, that is what we believe. And it seemed like that was an exaggeration until we got to the twenty twenty campaign when the Republican Party didn't even put together a platform. I mean, that is amazing, and all they said was basically, whatever Donald Trump says,
that's what we believe. I mean, that shows how far they've got in from principles to personality.
Last night, Brettbair did this interview with Donald Trump. What's happening at Fox is defies explanation, but basically they got fined, you know, almost a billion do for lying about the election, and now they're sort of trying to push back against some of the lying about the election that has happened on their network.
Again, I don't think you get a medal for that, but.
I'm curious what your sort of take on that is. I'm curious also, like, as a student of history, this situation we find ourselves in now with a media that is really largely unregulated and a social media that is almost completely unregulated. Does it just end in tears or is there some kind of self regulation that happens or some kind of right spot.
If you look at history, the.
Movie Network came out in nineteen seventy six and was you know, seems surreal and fantastical back then, but we're living in it. I mean, it really is that news outlets are treated like any other form of entertainment and they're looking for ratings, and that's the financial model we've set up. Those are the incentives they have. It used to be that they thought they could get ratings by being the most respected name in news. Now it's just
whatever gets eyeballs. I don't think there's a real chance of any kind of self regulation as long as there's still an audience demand for this kind of stuff. But I will say what Fox has done recently, and they've been, you know, wildly uneven in their approach. What the bread Bear interview I think showed was that they do see there are certain lines they cannot cross. They cannot allow the kind of election lies to go on challenge or they know there's going to be a price for them
to pay. They didn't care about the country paying a price, but now, but there's a price for them to pay. I think they absolutely care. So they're going to do what they can to shoot that down. And it's a good thing for us because there are certain people inside the kind of the Trump coult who are never going to turn in to hear CNN or NPR or MSNBC or anything else from the so called you know, lamestream media boxes is becoming more suspect in their eyes, there's
a chance to hear it. If the only thing that comes out of this is that maybe Trump learns he can't spread those lies is easily on Fox. I think he started down on it. Down that ando of itself is a good.
Thing, right, but it is I mean, they are also to cable carriage fees.
There's a lot of self interest here, but it is a bit I mean.
One of the things that I think is pretty interesting what's happened with Rubert Murdock is he was one of the sort of creators of a sort of media complex that runs on opinion and far right opinion.
That is not new. Those kind of newspapers, magazines and television.
Channels not all no, no, they've always been there, but what is new is the centrality that they play out. You had the kind of things that would have been spewed on Fox News or OA and N or Newsmax or in these channels kind of on the right, far right. They'd always been there, but they came out as you know, a mimiograph newsletter or an AM radio program. Right. The reach was fairly small, and there was a real draw on the part of so called respectable conservatives to draw
a line between those people and themselves, right. William F. Buckley was a master of this constantly, you know, fighting with the John Birch Society in public to make people in the National Review seem respectable. By comparison, there's a lot of Cowrick that shows that that's largely overblown, but he knew the value of that right that you had
to signal publicly I am not one of these wackos. Well, now it's the exact opposite, right, You've got Republican leaders in the House, presidential aspirates who are trying to say I'll pardon the January sixth in directionist are giving nods and winks to chewing on to all kinds of conspiracies on the far right. They want to make sure that the voters out there who believe in these crazy things think that they're at least sympathetic, if not one of them.
One last question, who was the dumbest member of the Senate? Though?
Oh god, it's so tough. I mean, come on, I mean, I gotta say Tommy Tuberville at the moment.
Yeah, absolutely, that is correct. You win the podcast.
Yeah, it's amazing.
It's got to be Tuberville. It's got to be Tuville, right, the Louis Gohmert of the Senate.
He really is, he really is.
Yeah, the best. Thank you, thank you, thank you. I hope you'll come back anytime.
Always great to be here. No mo Jesse Cannon, my junk fast, that supreme Court is like singing that song Hello, can you go about their approval rating just every day.
Here's the thing about the conservative justices Alito and Thomas the worst too. They cannot fly commercial. The problem is they cannot fly commercial. They are unable and sadly because they only make a couple hundred thousand dollars or maybe
a little less. As Supreme Court justice is the most powerful job in the land, they have to fly commercial, so they must take these donations, these gifts quote unquote from rich conservatives who often have cases in front of the Court, like Paul Singer, and they have to do it because they really don't like flying commercial. And I have to say, I respect the hell out of the grift.
We're going to see how unpopular the Supreme Court is going to be. I think we're just scraping the bottom and there's more to go. And for that, that is our moment of fuckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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