Hi, I'm Molly john Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And according to Nnie Fair, Tucker Callson told Trump to pick jd Vance or the deep state would kill him. Just a totally normal exchange. We have such a great show for you today. Senator Al Franken drops by to react to the RNC and let me tell you it's a happy time. Then we'll talk to you Tennessee House Rep. Gloria Johnson about her Senate run
against Marshall Blackburn. But first we have the host of the Enemies lest the Lincoln Project's own, my buddy, Rick Wilson, Fast Politics Emergency Emergency Podcast. After whatever that was? Whatever? What was that? Rick Wilson, the day seven hundred of the RNC.
Okay, listen, the first fifteen minutes, I thought, wow, the x Annix.
Is talking nat.
So the first minutes you were like, oh wow, this is like a real speech.
I'm not gonna lie.
The first time that SID was like, well, maybe he's gonna have some disciplined approach and maybe this will unfold into something interesting. I never believed the lie that oh Trump is going to listen to speech writers and they're going to craft a message to appeal to all Americans, because that is what we referred to in the speech writing business as horseshit. But Molly, I mean, the thing that fucking blew me away is and I'm pissed off about one thing. I'm just gonna tell you this while
we are recording this. As you know, the speech is still going on. Guys, we bailed. We veiled it, like two hours into this fucking thing. I lost the LP office pool. I thought it would be fifty nine minutes out and done. I was not successful.
I've been to so many seapacks where you're sitting there and you're like, but I really thought this would end after an hour.
Somewhere down in hell.
Right now, Fidel Castro is like, wrap it up, bro, come on, let's wrap it up.
Let's just talk about the second the beginning that we had who Kalgan pulling off his shirt to reveal a Trump Vance shirt, right.
Kid rock with the worst lip syncing in the history of mankind. He was like the Millie Vanilli of.
The RNC. It was so bad over a song that's not even his, that was a Metallica song Correck.
Oh all right, well learn something new every day. And but he got Trump into the lyrics.
Yeah, I mean okay, and then you get this Dana White guy, and immediately my my social team at LP posts this video of Dana White the guy giving a speech slapping the shit out of a woman at a bar.
Nice guy, Yeah, nice people, you got there, Donnie.
The speech descended into rambling anecdotal shout outs to weird friends that may or may not have seen in the audience. It's the inevitable sur story space for us. If I was drinking, I mean, by the time I got to the point where you and I got on this podcast, I would have had permanent liver damage with all the callouts on the drinking bingo for Trump campaign events. Yeah, he doesn't want to stop because you know what, he doesn't have to.
These people want the monster.
To do anything for him.
Yeah.
Right now, I just checked, it's still going Molly. The time, folks is eleven forty nine pm on the East coast, and Donald Trump is still fucking talking.
I want to ask you a question about this convention, because before Donald Trump spoke, we had Tucker Carlson, Tucker Ralson used to be the most important person in conservative media. Right, he created nearratives. He got both of us numerous death threats.
Yeah, Rick Wilson.
Yeah, but that was a weird speech too, Like it felt like a few people have seemed more diminished than Tucker Carlson.
I think what you saw, Tucker Carlson. I mean basically, he will be remembered in the same sort of way that Lee Greenwood, Kid Rock and Rando golf course managers, two golf guys. There's the great gift that Donald Trump bought himself about a year and a half ago. He brought in Susie Wiles and Chris Losovita. Okay, two people the national media like and trust and who are smart and who are very smart. And those people have been bullshitting the press for months. Different those this campaign is
completely under our control. They were fucked. Read the tem Alberta article from earlier in the week. They were taking a victory lap. They were picking out curtains in the White House for their offices.
Yeah, they forgot who their candidate was.
And you're like, by the way, you do realize he's insane. And this idea that Donald Trump is insane seems to have somehow escaped them. It should never escape you. If you're in or around the vicinity of Donald Trump, especially in a work situation, you must always bear in mind that he is batshit, bug, fuck ratcrack insane, and it's always struggling to get out. Like tonight, he tried to have a moment where he mentions the injured people at
the event where the kid tried to kill him. He mentions Corey Comparatore, and then he goes over and hugs the guy's bunker gear and helmet and kisses the helmet, and it's it's like he thinks in his mind, like this is a great picture. Everyone will know this, this would be the picture. And yet it just looked fucking weird. It just looked bizarre. And of course they spelled the guy's name wrong on then they spelled his name wrong.
I was like, oh my god, that poor family. But the crazy he is always trying to get out.
Yeah, no, I mean this is the thing I was. I was struck by. It's just the same speech, it's the same issues, it's the same. I mean, he got china virus in there, the guy, you know, chinavirus. I hadn't heard any of that in like, you know whatever, four years. I mean, it just was you realize the guy has only so many things. And the thing that I had been thinking about a lot was when you watch the debate, what you with the debate, When you watch the convention, what you see is that they've tamped
down some of the rhetoric. But since there's no policy, there's nothing right. If there's no rhetoric and there's no policy, you literally have nothing. You just have stories about what a good grandfather he is.
This is chat GPT.
Yeah, when you tell chat GPT, chat GPT generate a greatest hits compilation of Donald Trump reading speeches and the style of the del Castro. It's just this random anecdotal you know. Freight train rolling down the Tracks by friend Ryan Wiggins just posted to this. For those of you who doubted that Trump wrote his own speech tonight, let me assure you he absolutely did. It also represents Trump's state of mind. He is never a cohesive thinker. He
is never a systematic thinker. He is always whatever shiny object is in front of you, Donald Trump is going to grab at it, whatever thought enters his mind. There is no cognitive process beyond now, I will speak those words that are in my head.
Yes, no, and there never has been. Let's just go to Hugo loll our friend, who is actually there on the floor. Trump's speech at the RNC was supposed to last forty minutes. Trump is totally blown past that as he continues to add leb. The prompter has not moved for a couple of minutes, and somewhere Susie Wiles is like, why couldn't I get to Santis not to be terrible? Right?
I mean, listen, Susie Wiles right now is getting her team of young minions to find her a two court wine glass and to fill it to the brim so she can slam down a beautiful hit of unconsciousness.
It's just so painful.
The idea that Trump would ever be anything but Trump is just wish casting. And I think that we all know this. I mean, you and I I feel like we've been covering Trump for eight years, but we've really been covering Trump for fifty years.
At some point right after World War Two, this entire thing started, right, I.
Mean, but we always know who he was, but he blew through the tailprompter is the speech still going now, I think it may still be going.
It looks like it's still going. It is the energizer horror show.
The other thing that I think when you hear him, he really does. He has a few, just sort of a few greatest hits, and he goes back to them again and again and again, and somehow it's Venezuela sending us all their crimina, and We're.
Gonna have the next Republican Convention in Venezuela because it's so safe, okay. And of course, look, the greatest hits really rolled out. We had Hannibal Lecter, we had a sur story.
We had right, we had cheering for Victor orbon right.
Right, we had I in the Terrible Wood in Ukraine. Putin was afraid of me. He was afraid of you sucking his dick too hard. Donald Jesus Christ.
By the way, folks, it's it's it's just about midnight, so I'm getting loose.
I like that he had that moment where he said I'm going to be the president for all Americans, and then he was like, and the radical leftist thugs who.
Right right right, and they're communists. What did you think of the chart Smiley. That was a that was a moment.
The chart had saved his life. He went back to had fifteen times right, he had a.
Chart, and the charts up on the stage.
I'm like, okay, you got nine monitors showing different sizes of the STA.
But it was so funny because it was like that first five minutes, first ten minutes, you really thought, oh my god, this is a new guy. I thought maybe he's and the picture of him, and then it just went off the US.
Every reporter today. I was talking to reporters all day. I have a bunch of friends up there that are at this thing, talking to reporters, to inside LP and outside right, and everybody was hearing this story that was coming out from the campaign. Oh, he's rewritten the speech. He's right, right, right, He's going to talk about family and the and the way that this experience has changed his life.
And what they got.
And I got a text from a national reporter at the top of the food chain who was like, the Rando rallies are better than this shit. What is weird and frustrating? I think probably to the Trump people right now, they have to be very honest with themselves. You cannot control Trump. It's a rule. There is no better version of Trump. It is also a rule. He went in to this speech tonight thinking that he's the greatest entertainer in the world. But I will tell you, the first
half of this speech was so low energy. It was like Jeb Bush on XANAX. This guy was flat, His affect was low, and it didn't feel like it didn't feel like he had a through line in this speech at all other than I'm going to get to the greatest hits. I'm going to walk through the assassination attempt and then get to the greatest hits and try to drag this thing out. And you know, Molly, it is now midnight. He is still talking. He shows no sign
of leaving the stage. I presume that sometime around dawn, you know, Steven tapping on the shoulder and say, boss, listen, I've got to go. I've got to be back in a coffin filled with the soil of my native land.
Yeah. No, I mean, I think that's right. But also the other thing is, you know, once you got into our two of this speech, you really you saw all the political operatives in my Twitter feed saying you know what we could beat this fucking guy, right, like, this guy can lose.
Here's my moment on this. We can beat this fucking guy. I don't care if it's some random person we pull off the street. Okay, I don't care if it's some random person they pull off the street. This guy is is beatable. The sky is weak. This guy is not mentally acute. Look what he's doing up there is the equivalent of a borsch Belt comedian riffing off the jokes you know that he's been telling for thirty five fucking years.
It's boring.
The other thing is that it takes a certain amount of unreality to accept the central premise of this, which is is that you know he's listing that You know he lists these these horrible crimes committed against women. This is a person who does not give a fuck about violence against women, right. We know this from some of his court cases. We know this from his civil case against Egen Carroll. But you know he wants to say
these stories because they're about illegal immigrants. And I, ultimately, I really do think that there is no world in which Donald Trump isn't just a really beatable candidate at the end of the day, because he's not good, and people don't.
Like this and they don't want to back this guy is still the worst president of our lifetimes. Oh god, he's apparently telling the battery story now, but.
He's also saying, like the world is you know, America's filled with violent crime, and you know, he's making it sound like why amar Germany? Right? And he even mentioned that, right, he mentioned stagflation.
There's nowhere in the world that ever's been inflation like this.
I'm like, motherfucker, where I am our Germany, Argentina at any time during the twentieth century, at any random moment, they could have like twenty seven inflation.
England is not inflation. England right now has inflation six times that America has. I mean, the whole thing is crazy.
All right, Well, anybody's just in the LP group chat just said it's genius. Really, no convention has ever broken into day five without a nomination controversy before.
That's very good.
He keeps going to election day. It's just free advertising.
He might, I mean, anyway, So, but Dave Wasserman, I think this is a really important point. Pu're out a reminder that someone is going to have to win the twenty twenty four election, despite their best efforts not to, which feels like, right where we are right.
Now, it's philibustering his own convention. Then you now, Molly, what we saw tonight was the most ridiculous, over the top random. I mean, you don't even have to build the ads around this. This thing is just plain stupid and silly. And it shows you how weak the fact is, how weak this campaign really is, because the man at the top is broken. That is a broken brain man.
I don't know.
Maybe RFK loaned him the brain worm, but he is. There's no cogent underpinning to this whole thing, right.
No, there's nothing. There's no thinking but that said, that brain worm is dead.
Rfk's brainworm is dead.
I just want to point that out. Not to be a scientist here.
But all right, guys, are you concerned with Project twenty twenty five and how awful Trump's second term could be?
Well, so are we, and by the way, we really are, I have to say, which is why we teamed with iHeart to make a limited series. The experts, a lot of academics, really smart people about what a disaster Trump's second term would be for America's future.
Right now.
You can find the first two episodes by looking up Molly Jong Fast That's Me Project twenty twenty five on YouTube. And if you're thinking that you're more of a podcast person and not a YouTuber, you can And now I'm going to explain to you something very complicated. Hit play on YouTube, then put your phone in the lock screen and it will play back so you can listen to it like a podcast. New episodes are dropping in the
next few weeks. We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term would look like and exactly what his plans are for this country. Watch and help us spread the word. Al Franken is a former senator and host of the Al Franken podcast. Welcome back to Fast Politics, My buddy.
Al Franken, Thanks Molly, Why are to be back?
Happy time? When Al Franken joins me on the podcast, it's a happy time. I'm sorry to tell you.
Okay, okay, if that's my charge, I'm not exactly happy. I mean, of course, by this COVID of course he does.
Yeah.
And this whole convention is magical because he survived this assassination attempt, and thank God, thank God, and our sympathies to the family of the firefighter who snave this family. But of course this would happen to Trump and he goes in. They're cocky.
They think they're going to win.
They think they're going to win, and right now we think they're going to win. And that's why I'm a little bit down. I'm sorry to say.
See, I actually don't think they're going to win.
Tell me why not.
To be a contrarian. I still think they don't win. Obviously, we're going to need someone on the top of the ticket. Not to be a political strategist here, but if Joe Biden wants to drop out, which I personally have said that, I actually think he can win again. But if he wants to drop out, which he very well might.
Well last night we got all the news at LOCI and Schumer.
Is this true for you and for Joe Biden, you are creatures of the Senate. I mean, you're technically more a creature of Saturday Alive, but you're probably the only person in the world who's both a creature of Saturday Alive and the Senate.
That is true.
But Joe Biden wants to keep the majority in the Senate and he wants to win the majority in the House. And one of the reasons why Democrats rallied behind him in twenty twenty was because he is a man who comes from the Senate. And I mean, what's so interesting about this moment is I don't want to be happy here because everyone's freaking out, but I just want it for a second. Here. You've got really good people in the Democratic Party and you have abject morons in the Republican Party.
Okay, we saw some of that last night. Tomorrow we saw a lot.
By the way, the theme of the Republican National Convention, I was working the two different themes. I was trying to gauge it out. But I think the real truth theme is getting away with crime.
We can do it, but not any immigrants who's ever committed a crime that will. We'll have someone come and talk about that.
Now, if you're not white, you're going in a camp, or if you're us. I think we should be clear about this. If you're not white, we are technically not white because we're Jews. But we are all going in.
Camps technically according to them. But we're white, Molly.
But the point is we're all going to end up in Enemies of the State camps if Trump wins, which is the good news and the bad news, which is.
Why I want to say some really good things about the Republic there.
That's right. I'm telling you what's happening right now in some dark corners of the mainstream media where they've decided that they're going to just like cover Trump like a normal person and not a person who has been impeached twice, had four criminal cases against him, numerous civil cases, and has been adjudicated to have sexually assaulted Egene Carroll. Trump is going to send you to camps too, man Like, there's not going to be like, well, that person said
something nice on you know June third. I mean, yeah, well they're not that organized.
Well, this is the underside of their belly which they are showing, and the viro showed it. Gilfoyle. Did you see her speech?
I saw her speech.
Wow, it was very loud. She did this last convention too, and I think her lips got swamps a little bit.
Is yet to be Yeah, that's totally natural though, just like Matt Gates, sometimes the face smooths itself.
Didn't you think vance was underwhelming?
I have to tell you. McKinzie has made a few candidates, all of whom are terrible, but he is the worst. But that's the other theme of this convention that I've been thinking about, is this idea that we don't believe any thing we're saying like, and no better example of this than Jadie Vance.
Yeah, well he didn't beer anywhere near. Navarro also said some things that just weren't true. Really no, yes, no, I'm telling you no, it can't be No. I mean he said that I love this that Trump was against the war in rock.
Oh, yeah, except he wasn't.
Well, he said he told Sean Hannity that he was against it. That was his evidence in the last race.
Well, if you can't trust Sean Hannity, who could you trust.
But I thought Vance that his speech was just the Memaw stuff.
When they started chanting Mema, that was my favorite.
The one thing I liked about it was that Mema had nineteen loaded guns around the house when she died, And it was evidently and the explanation was perfect, that she didn't have any mobility. So if an intruder came in, you wanted to make sure there was a gun within. I guess crawling distance.
You want to give your elderly relatives guns, especially if they're starting to lose their vision, because Hilaritay will ensue.
Well, a neighbor came over to use the phone and was shot.
The thing about Jade Vance that absolutely just baffles me. It's like, here's this guy. He is clearly quite smart, right, yeah, and his wife seems really smart.
And by the way, she was so appropriately uncomfortable, I mean, just because suddenly she's dead. The Republican National Convention and introducing her husband. It was like there were a few occasions last night where I went, oh, that's nice. And when fucking Junior brought up his daughter, Yeah, and I want to talk about what people don't know about my grandpa. Holy crap. That was effective. And then Junior got up and it all went away instantly.
Yeah, he's a gifted orator of that. Junior. I can't say anything mean about him because he's like has me like targeted for a death camp, and occasionally he will just like tweet something about me out of nowhere. Now, I actually think he has no idea who I am. I think it's one of his people who really hates me. But like a couple months ago, he was like, Molly
john Fast sucks so much. Also, she's getting a weekend show on Emma's NBC and people call me up and they're like congratulations, and I was like, this is not real. They just made this off.
That's very exciting though, that you got a weekend show.
Yeah, and I'll be broadcasting from the death Camp. But one of the things that I think is interesting about him is that he was very mad when I wrote this piece about fail suns, which is this idea that was actually created by the good fellows over at Chapo Trap House.
And it is this idea that you can from prominent parents who can be a NEPO baby as I am, and you can fail ergo become a fail son.
Well, I wouldn't like that if I were him. Yeah, so if you go to the camp, you didn't have to do that. You didn't have to write that.
That's right. Had I only clearly JD Van's shows that you can at some point recan't, right, but you can say I meant Hitler in the good way when I called you Hitler.
Right right, Yeah, it was maybe he's Hitler. He didn't definitively say he's either Nixon or worse. I guess Hitler.
Yes, I mean exactly, he's Nixon or he's Hitler. I mean, Nixon is considered by some in the Republican Party to still be kind of a good guy. And now the Supreme Court has made it so that what Nixon did would be considered not illegal anymore.
Yeah, they're definition unit. No, he wouldn't have to give up the tapes to Nixon's alive to see that.
Yeah, he would have really been pretty psyched.
Well why did they do? Okay? Yeah, so you're looking forward to Trump tonight?
Yeah, I just nothing better than I love the bandage.
The bandage is a perfect was perfect rectangle.
Yeah. Have you seen that everyone else is wearing bandages? Now?
Yeah, this was in solidarity. That was a joke I would have done. You know, once on Saturday Night Live, Belushi and Buck Henry did a Samurai del Contessen or something, and Blush would swing that sword around and he hit Buck and did a gash in his forehead. You know, he had to wear a bandage for the rest of the show because he was bleeding, and everybody put a bandage on on their head. So I thought right away,
and I would in sympathy put a bandage on. But then I thought that was a bad taste, of course, But.
It turns out that's just now the thing we're all doing.
That's showing your affection for fearless leader and your solidarity with them. So it's a nice little gesture.
You're still going to end up in the camps. It doesn't matter.
Well, not if you hear my next podcasts. You know, they they evidently like people do one.
Yeah, no, they do. I mean, I hope you will engage in self tanner because if we've learned anything from the election of twenty twenty four, it'said self tanner or bronzer or just orange paint is the way to go.
Thank you.
That's a good tip anytime. Solet's get back to creeping authoritarianism for a minute. Jadie Mans was picked by Don jor Don Junior, as you and I both know, has an enormous political acumen and gifted political operator.
Met with Russians, yes, for the Trump chat, but that was because they do all their business with Russia.
That's not politics, that's that's just business.
They're promised dirt.
Right exactly on Hillary Clinton. But it turned out that James Colemy was the person who delivered it in the end. God damn it. We're trying to make people feel less depressed. I think it's working.
Yes, I feel better. I feel so much better. Just a few minutes ago I came to this. That's that's your podcast. You can't leave it not happy.
I'm just waiting for the text from Jesse, which is, like, no one wants to hear this.
Move on.
At some point when I get really insufferable, Jesse will text me. I mean, the good thing about being a woman is that sometimes people tell you the truth. Whereas I think there are certain people where no one ever tells them the truth. Elon Musk is who I'm thinking of, but all of those other people where they just believe they're charming.
So Musk is giving forty five million a month, Yeah, holy shit.
This is a guy who was created by climate incentives now giving money to the guy who is going to just basically destroy the EPA. Like, if that isn't full circle, I don't know what to tell you. Like, you made all your money on electric cars and pretending you cared about the environment. Now you're giving all your money to a guy who's like we're going to have the cleanest H two O.
There are all kinds of talk from speakers about how we aren't oil sufficient in our country.
Yes, because of Biden, we're drowning in oil.
Yeah, and we're explorting it. We have more oil than we've ever had and gas and are selling it overseas.
This R and C is like every single thing they say, right, like immigration, these people coming to the country who are coming illegally. The numbers are way down, right, They're way down since Spiden has put this climate thing, this new executive order, So that's way down. We're net exporting gas. The economy is really good. Inflation is on its way down. You watch this and you think you're in WYMR German A nineteen thirty three and that no one can get jobs.
We're like at almost full employment. The economy is booming.
Yeah. Deporting ten million or twelve million or however many immigrants is insane. I'm aging. I'm seventy three. My generation, this huge generation is aging out and we're losing those workers. We need these people. We desperately need them, and not just to do what you think of as immigrant you know, farm work, but other stuff as well, and this is a history of our country. So this is a really this is really bad economically.
Oh yeah no, I mean, look this is where we are. I mean, first of all, just do two seconds on the deportation squad. You don't have enough people working jobs, right, You're at almost full employment. You need people to work jobs. The reason wages are going up is because there are not enough people to work at these jobs. You're going to deport ten, twenty thirty, they're just making up numbers.
Now people, you can have mass deportation squads. Were are you going to put those people before you get them out of the country. You're going to put them in camps, Camps of concentrated people. You know what happened just the last time America did camps of concentrated people.
Are we talking World War two?
Yeah, we're talking about Japanese internment camps. This is what happens in authoritarian governments. This is not what happens in a pre republic, as people on Twitter like to tell me, not a democracy.
Well, they are not interested in a free republic. And that's what the twenty twenty five report that I listened to, that you put out at video, it's chilling because they have their shit together, and their shit together is to do things like put the Justice Department completely under the president and to prosecute enemies of the state.
That's us, which is you yes, what do you mean? No, exactly. I mean, this is what's coming. If people don't vote, this is what's coming.
You know. Every convention gets its own bounce, right, They got their bounce starting at the botched assassination tempt, which thank god it was botched. I don't know what our convention's going to look like, is what I'm saying, but hopefully, well I'll be there good.
So that's before they I got go on.
Sorry, no, no, no, I shouldn't.
Laugh about myself being said to a camp for concentrations of people, but you know, every couple of generations we have to do that in my family. Al franken my body. I hope this cheered you up.
It has slightly, just a little bit, just enough to get me through, not the whole day, but I'm gonna be fine for the next fifteen to twenty minutes.
I know that, Ol, Frank, Thank.
You, thank you. Mollie.
Gloria Johnson is a member of the Tennessee House of Representatives and a Democratic nominee for Senate. Welcome too fast Politics, Gloria, thank you.
I'm happy to be here.
Gloria Johnson. You are running for the Senate against one of the worst members of the Senate. And I do not say that lately because there are a lot of stupid people in the Senate. But I really do think former Image consultant Marsha Blackburn is one of the worst.
So discuss well, she's actually terrible for Tennessee. There's no question about that. Here we are in a forced birth state in Tennessee, and Marsha Blackburn believes in a central abortion band. She voted against the Violence Against Women Act. She is questioned the Griswold Versus Connecticut decision, which allows access to birth control.
Because people don't want to have sex. I've been told that young people actually don't like having sex, and they're really psyched by the idea of not having birth control because they don't need it. It's fine that they just stop having.
Sex, yeah, exactly. And then, of course we have this presidential candidate in the Republican Party and his VP. So we've got the presidential candidate who is a sexual predator, We've got a VP candidate who believes women should stay with their abusers, and then we've got a woman who believes enforced birth and is against the Violence against Women Acts. We're setting up just horrible situation for women and girls
in Tennessee. I can't imagine the outlook. I'm just horrified at what it's going to be like for Tennessee women if this were to happen. It's just outrageous. It's the trifecta of women haters. It's unbel You know, when Marsha goes around asking people what is a woman? I guess he truly needs to know.
Can you do me a favor here and explain to me you are in Tennessee. It is a red state, but it's a straight filled with interesting and smart people, and you've also had a very fucked up state house. Talk to us about your viral moment and for the people who don't know and sort of the world in which you really became one of the key voices in the Democratic Party of Tennessee.
Sure. Well, it was after the Covenant School shooting and thousands and thousands of people showed at the Capitol every day because they wanted to talk about gun sence legislation because they're tired of children being gunned down in their classrooms. They showed up. It was students, it was parents, it was grandparents, it was people from Nashville, but also those
from Memphis. Came who were concerned about gun violence, from Knoxville, from every part of the state, because they all wanted to unify on this fight against gun violence in our communities, and our legislature refused to do anything. As a matter of fact, on the day that we went to the well, me and my two colleagues were at Pearson and reut Jones.
I hadn't gotten there early that morning and met many mothers who told me they had dropped off their kids at school and just hoped that they would be safe when they met them at the bus or pick them up. That's how parents were feeling. They were just traumatized from this event. And then when we go on to the house floor, our colleagues didn't even look at them as they passed through the crowd to go inside. They wouldn't
even make eye contact with them. And then we weren't allowed to speak, to recognize that they were there and to welcome them and to tell them that we saw them and we heard them, and we cared about this issue, and we cared about the safety of our communities, and so we decided to go to the well anyway to speak to these people who had come to the capitol day after day by the thousands. They deserve to be addressed.
We needed to talk about their issue, and we just felt compelled to go to the well and let them know that we saw them and we heard them.
So this is about gun.
Violence, yes, And what we have been seeing for the longest time, of course in Tennessee is that they are completely removing our right to speak on the House floor when it's against something that they believe in. They don't allow us to speak on bills, they shut our mics down, they don't call on us. I mean, it's true democracy
dies in the state, and it's dying in Tennessee. And what that did was just open it for the world to see, for the country to see people who lived in blue states but didn't really understand what it was like in a super majority legislature, and they got to see it firsthand and they were disgusted.
So explain to us what that means. So you're in a state legislature. You're in the minority, and they just won't let you talk.
Right, Yeah, I like, I stood for forty five minutes with my hand raised and not gotten called on. It's just unbelievable. You know, when we had a super majority in my first session, which was in twenty thirteen, Beth Farewell as speaker, and she was a Republican, yet she didn't cut mikes and she allowed people to speak when they raised their hand. This crew of MAGA men just
don't want to hear opposition speak. They're so afraid, I think of the legislation they're bringing that a full debate on the horrible legislation that they're bringing to the floor would embarrass them. They passed things quickly and as quietly as possible because they can't with a super majority.
So what are the legislations they're trying to pass here?
Of course, there's anti diversity, you know, DEI is just a dirty word in the legislature. It was crt. They passed laws that K twelve and college can't discuss divisive concepts.
Right, college just take a bit into college college can't. I mean, it's also just ridiculous. These people have phones right, I mean, go on.
These people, they're just super confused. It's not divisive to talk about racism. Being racist is divisive. They don't understand that. They think it's okay to be racist, but talking about racism is the thing that's divisive. I mean, they're constantly sending dog whistles. That's why we have Nazis marching in Nashville for the last two months. One group that's supposedly going to be there for two weeks.
Now, wait, you have Nazis marching in.
Nashville, literal Nazis caring Loustica flags and they spoke at the Nashville Metro Council this week. It's outrageous, but they feel like they have an open invitation. Their message is the same as the Supermajority and Marsha Blackburn. Their message is anti immigrant. That's what they're chanting is they walk through the streets literally. It's like the Supermajority and the Tennessee Republicans like Marsha Blackburn have just given them an
open invitation. They feel welcome in Tennessee because of the legislation. We bring the anti LGBTQ legislation to the tune of something like twenty four bills in one session. It's outrageous.
It's funny because it's like, I think about what happened after January sixth, Right like, on January sixth, we had Trumper's doing a similar thing, right like marching through Washington, DC. And I have certainly been in New York when we've seen Nazis march here, because we've certainly seen that. But two weeks of Nazis seems like a lot.
Just a lot of time with Nazis, and I haven't really paid as close attention, but I do believe that they actually there was a bartender in Nashville beat up with one of their swastika flagpoles. This particular group that is there likes to engage people and get them to fight.
I'm told this is just not who Tennessee is. And with the leadership that we have, with someone just xenophobic and racist talking NonStop and with this anti immigrant stuff, is just really making it a safe place for these folks when the majority of Tennesseeans do not want this. That's the problem. Marsha Blackburn voted against capping insulin prices in the state with the highest incidents of diabetes she voted against the child tax credit, she voted against negotiating
drug prices for seniors. She voted to repeal the ACA every time it came up. She's done nothing for regular Tennessee families, just hard working Tennessee families. She works for the wealthy and well connected, and she works for the lobbyists.
It's so insane. What's it like on the ground in Tennessee. Do voters understand what's happening?
Well, voters do understand what's happening. And that's the really great thing. Since over a year ago when we went to the well and they tried to expel me, but did expel my two colleagues, Rep. Jones and Red Pearson, who were black, There's been a movement that is happening, and it's bringing people to the Democratic Party to our values because Tennesseeans are overwhelmingly now eighty percent want some type of gun sense legislation like universal background checks or
safe storage laws or URPO laws. They want these things to happen. They want to keep their communities safe. Eighty percent of Tennesseeans want to see some form of abortion here. We don't all agree on exactly where that line is. But they don't believe we should force ten year olds to carry pregnancies, or that women who have health issues should be able to make that decision based on their health, and that no woman should be forced to carry her
violent rapist baby. I mean, we give more rights to a rapist in forcing a woman to carry their child than we give to a woman who's a victim of a violent front.
Well they're men, you know. Well yeah, but that's absolutely true and really important. So here's my question for you, is Tennessee, like Kansas, have they created a world in which their laws are so extreme that they drive soccer moms to vote Democrat people? Who? I mean, do you think that's what's happening on the ground right now?
Oh?
I know what's happening. I had fifty Republicans in might kickoff. That's never happened before. I know that right now. Currently, in the last Vanderbilt Pole, which is a couple of weeks ago, I'm beating Marshall with women forty nine to forty three.
Yeah, because women hate this because it's so stupid.
Absolutely, and so in the overall I'm not that far behind. And this last time she dropped two points. I increased by four. If that happens again, I'm in the league. I'm out performing Biden by eleven points. So what we're seeing on the ground is people who are fed up. I've got people coming to me all the time. I had a couple come to one of my I'm going to all ninety five counties. I think it's important to talk and to listen to everyone in Tennessee.
But also that's how you win. It's bay going all ninety five counties.
Yeah, and a couple come up, and you know, they said that they had been Republicans their whole lives, they'd never even donated to a candidate, but they donated to me, and that they were voting Democratic this year. And I always ask people when they come, you know, from the other party or from independent or Republican, what brought them there? And they said, well, we're Evangelicals, and You're like, WHOA, we're evangelical Christians and we do not believe that the
Republicans are representing those Christian values. And I was like wow. Typically, though, ninety percent of the time, somebody who comes to the campaign, it's typically because when I ask them the questions, it's usually dobs and gun violence is what they said. Yeah, and then next to that is probably the hatefulness and divisiveness of my party.
Yeah. So Louisiana, which is not that far from you, but is a very different state. There was recently a report that came out from Rise Louisiana, which is a group that talks about abortion rates, and one of the things that they noticed was that in these states that are forced birth states, they do not have adequate medical care for women in the first trimester.
Talk about that, Oh, there's no question. In Tennessee. One third of Tennessee has no obgyn none and then more than a third has no delivery room. So we're talking about forcing a ten year old to carry a pregnancy that may be an hour, two an hour and a half away from a hospital. And we know that children who are pregnant diet two times the rate of women who are pregnant, and Tennessee we go back and forth between number one, two, and three in maternal mortality. So
we're putting women and girls at risk with this. And then on top of that, since dobbs obgyns wanting to do their residency have dropped coming to Tennessee, our applications for residents in OBGYN have dropped twenty one percent because if you want to be at OBGYN, you can't get the full practice there, so you have to do Tennessee plus another state so you can get the rest of your practice to be certified. So obviously people were choosing to go to a state where they can stay in
one place. And what we know about residence is the majority of them stay where they did the residency. So what we're doing is creating this vast you know, it's going to be a loss of Obgyan's where we already have a problem, you know, every year that follows no exactly.
I mean, look, this is the thing that Republicans are doing to their red states, right. They're making it so that you're not going to have doctors that you need. I mean, it's just unbelievable.
Right, And what they don't even understand. I was talking to a friend of mine the other day. Her daughter is finishing up her residency in some very specialized cardiology field and she doesn't even want to come to see Tennessee. She wanted to come back to Tennessee, but she's not going to come because she doesn't want to practice here because of the way they're coming after physicians, whether it's with interocrinologists, with transgender treatments, anything.
It's so funny. It's not funny, but it's funny. It's funny because it's odd. Is that, Like, you know, I'm someone who had two pregnancies, one of twins, and I have seen just how they're perilous, right, I mean, pregnancy is yeah, perilous. Here we have these Republicans who they just don't care.
Right.
We have one member in our state house that literally told a woman she came to him to tell her about her miscarriage and how she had to go out of state to take care of this, and how she had to leave behind her child and her husband, and so that her husband had to take care of her child so she had to go by herself. And he goes, you already have a child, and she said yes, and he said, well, you can only have a miscarriage on your first pregnancy.
I mean, morons, That's what it is, right, I mean, that's the whole thing is that that's how we got here, is that they don't understand women's health. Then they don't want to talk to me about what you need right now to win.
Oh well, what we need are people to get out and vote. Here's what we know in twenty eighteen, Marsha won by two hundred thousand votes. That we know that there are three hundred thousand Democrats who haven't gone to the polls in the last few cycles because they feel, you know, sort of beat down or that their vote doesn't count. So we're getting those people out to vote. We need to get everyone out. But in order to
do that, we need volunteers, we need donations. Campaigns cost money, that's the reality of it, and so we need to get raised enough money to get our message out on all media markets across the state. Marsha's been in DC for twenty one years, hasn't done a thing for the people, but her name is well known and like I said, twenty one years and so we've got some catchup to do in the media and just getting our word out there.
Gloria, I really appreciate you. I think of you as really doing the good work here and it's so important. I hope you'll come back before the election.
Absolutely, thank you so much for having me on. I really appreciate it.
They're all no more perfect on Jesse Cannon, Mali Joung Fast I'm going to shock you here.
The media is buying the bullshit and the messaging.
What are you seeing here?
It's weird to watch this RNC, which was filled with people who have either done time or gotten pardons, people like Peter Navarro. We got Paul Manafort walking around. We have a speaker two nights ago whose parents were arrested for tax fraud. You know, the theme of this year's RNC is getting away with crimes, and you know, Trump is perhaps the real star of this getting away with crimes. But my fuckery involves some mainstream media's wrapped attention and
inability to describe these people as they are. A lot of these people are criminals, right, people who've been charged with crimes, people who sat through jury trials and were found guilty, people like Donald Trump, and we should call people what they are. It's not partisan to describe things accurately. In fact, it's partisan to not describe things accurately, and that is why this is our omen of fuckery. 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.