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. We have a show that will completely, totally and utterly blow your mind. Run for some things. Amanda Lippman will tell us about how they're preparing to win local races in twenty twenty four. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post Ben Terris about his new book, The Big Break, The Gamblers, Party, Animals and True Believers
trying to win in Washington. Will America loses its mind? But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, The One, the Only, the Lincoln Projects, Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Rick Wilson, Good morning, Molly.
How are you today?
We're all just recovering from the White House Correspondence Dinner.
I too, am recovering for the White House Correspondence Dinner. Our various witnesses to history and drama and amusements. We're well noted across a variety of media platforms. This week.
We're not going to talk about Kelly and Conway.
I'm not talking about Kelly and Conway.
I am absolutely not talking about Kelly and Conway.
I'm totally not going to mention Kelly and Conway's egregious behavior. Yes, I would never, as an eyewitness to her egregious behavior, mention her egregious behavior.
I'm glad we've cleared that up. Yes, so now we will not talk about Kelly and Conway, but we will talk about this dead ceiling fuckery. Here we are. The Republicans have passed a budget. Can you pass a budget for not paying your bills?
Well, not for long? I mean, this is like the guy who's out spending money on hookers and yachts, and he sits down in his kitchen and makes a perfectly rational budget on a spreadsheet, but leaves out the lines that say hookers and yachts.
Here's the thing, Like if I called American Express right now and was like, look, man, April, I have something else. Can I just send you something else?
Right?
I mean? Is this even normal behavior to pass a budget for some money that you already No.
It's really not. What they're doing here is they want to look away from the spending binge that happened under Trump, for which this debt ceiling is what we're paying for, and basically burn down the rest of the economy in the meantime so that they can score political points before for twenty four and beat Joe Biden. There is a profoundly nihilistic nature to today's Republican Party where they believe
that they're going to win for the first time. And by the way, they got their ass handed to them on the debt ceiling shit back in nineteen ninety five, they got their ass handed to them on the debt ceiling in twenty eleven. It goes on and on. It's never a smart strategy politically speaking. But they believe that their audience now is so destructive and so profoundly shitty that they would accept the economic consequences if it was a chance to own the Libs and blame Joe Biden.
Yes, I'm not convinced that these Republicans even understand the consequences of their actions.
Well, look, I will tell you McCarthy actually does understand it. He's been around long enough to see how badly it
fucked the Republicans right in twenty eleven. And never forget Kevin McCarthy's best friend, his chief advisor, his number one bro is a lobbyist named Jeff Miller, whose clients include all kinds of major private equity people, Wall Street banks, hedge fund brows who all understand that once you blow up the full faith in credit of the American government and blow up our credit rating, their bottom lines taken
immediate and consequential and really ugly strike against them. That is not where he wants to be or his clients want to be. And Kevin actually he's weak and he's stupid, but he's not completely like eating lead paint chips. This is a guy who understands that this hurt the Republicans in the past and can certainly hurt them again.
So let's talk about right now where this goes. Because we saw Jenny Yellen saying that the government has money till we had heard July. She said June first, which seems bad.
Yeah, you know because at the time we're recording this, there are eight total days in which both the House and Senate are in session. They are a bajillion gajillion miles apart, and partly because Joe Biden's position is I would like a clean debt sailing limit like you guys voted for three times during Trump so we can get on with the business at hand. And their position is we want to burn it all down and live in
the radioactive ruins while our children eat rats over open fires. Yeah, it is the nihilist versus the adult position once again, and this it should You can't underestimate the degree to which the Republican Party now is profoundly nihilistic about all these things. They understand at the grown up level how
bad this is going to be. But there are some of them, like you know, Matt Gates and Margie Taylor Green and Paul Gosar and the rest of the weirdo caucus who think, wow, this will be fun man, this is going to be great, And people like Steve Bannon who think, yes, we will burn it all down and then I can replace with my authoritarian nationalism in the form of my best friend again, Donald Trump.
Right right, It's funny because it's like we just cannot move past this reality that the Republican Party has completely lost its mind.
Yeah, I mean, look, and the profound realization that a lot of us have had over the last few years is that there is no policy left. They've kept the branding of the old Republican policy, like we want to be fiscally responsible, they want to be fiscally responsible unless they're spending like a drunken sailor in the Philippines. They want to be fiscally responsible until it's to pay for
things like infrastructure. When it was to do shit like Trump's wall, these guys were like blank check twenty four to seven. And now suddenly it's like, my god, I'm not going to spend that much money on cocon hookers. I've got to stop this right now, because well I feel guilty. No, they have no guilt, they have no shame. They are completely nihilist, and they are completely going to run the car over the cliff. And here's the problem
for Kevin. Okay, here's why he's doing this. His deal to get through the after the fifteenth vote, his deal with Matt Gates and the Jihati caucus was that he would not vote for a clean debt ceiling. Ever, he would kill the debt ceiling and crash the economy before he'd vote for clean debt ceiling. And they are gonna take his job away if he votes for it. And here's the thing. He loves his job more than he loves anything else in the world. Right. He loves being
speaker more than anything. He would be happy to be speaker in the radioactive ruins, eating rats over and open fire than to lose his job. He cannot, in his mind conceive of an action where where he had to be brave enough to say, fuck it, it's not worth keeping this job if I'm gonna crash the economy and destroy the country.
Yeah, it is very republican circa twenty twenty three. Let's talk about Tucker Carlton, who got fired last week. Merry Christmas, rip, yes, thoughts and prayers out? Yeah, I mean I won't, but okay.
Want to me and one for my who mees.
So let's talk about this for a second. Tucker Carlson is out. He has a non compete. I mean, we don't know that he has a non compete because I'm sure he's ND eight on it, but I think we can all assume that he has a non compete. Arena Braganti has a OPO file that she's not afraid to use. What happens now?
So first off, let me address Arena Burganti because that is the most overpriced fucking stock in America. Why people are so chicken shit about her is astounding to me.
Arena Callreck. Don't call me, okay please.
Oh he's so mean, it is so fucking oh. Oh, you're gonna say shit about me in the New York Post. Oh my god, the world is ending. You know, these people who live in this fucking bubble who are afraid of this woman, and guess what.
Don't call me, Arena, call reck, call wreck.
Everything in her fucking OPO file about Tucker Carlson would make him more money and get him more viewers. Fox is not the one in the catbird seat here. They've already started to crash out their ratings. And here's the thing. They think it's Bill O'Reilly, But the world has changed since twenty seventeen. They think, oh, well, we'll just disappear Bill O'Reilly or Megan Kelly or whoever, and they'll never be important again. Listen, that is not how it works.
In twenty twenty three, the media landscape has profoundly and fundamentally changed. And so Tucker now legally and contractually, okay, that's the kind of shit that gets negotiated out by mediators and lawyers. Okay, But every time you see Tucker now, you can see these couple little video clips that have come out. You can see that this is a guy that's kind of struggling with the desire for relevance. Skin For Tucker, it's not about the money at this point.
And I think there's a part of Tucker that he enjoys the show, voting transgressive things that he always has liked to do and be I was one of the first people out of the gate last week to say, you know, Tucker might want to hear this tune very frequently. Bum bum bum boom boo bom. Imagine for a moment the weird fucking scenario of Tucker Crosson entering in the
Republican primary. I gotta tell you, first off, it sucks the remaining liquid out of the desiccated corpse of Ron DeSantis's political career, like right then and there, like Santa's just like turns into a husk and blows away in the dust, Ron in the wind? Oh is Ron okay? This idea of Tucker Crosson running for president, It's absurd, it's insane, it's cuckoo. Yes, And of course, you know
what America would never do. We would never elect an adulterous, corrupt, venal, fucking scumbag idiot bewigged reality TV hosts real estate investment scammer named Donald Trump. Either. I don't think anything's impossible in my world anymore. I don't ever count on anything to not go fucking sideways in this country, and so you have to plan out. I mean, the worst thing you can do these days is ignore what the worst case scenario really is.
We need to stop the tape here. So are you saying that Tucker Carlson's going to run for president?
I'm not saying he's going to run for president. I'm saying you can't write off the possibility, because look, if you're Tucker right now, what do you get if you do a new streaming show or a new a new podcast. I mean, he's not going to do a podcast. He might, but it's not.
I actually think he could. I mean, oh, he.
Could be very successful. So okay, what's he gonna do? Go work for Ben Shapiro at The Daily Wire get the fuck out of here, right, or or form his own streaming show. Maybe if Elon gives him a streaming channel on Twitter and somehow some fuck aery there. But he's done that now, He's been that guy for years now. I don't know how many years he had a show? What eight seven, eight years, right, whatever it was. If you're Tucker, now, why not go for the big troll.
Why not go for the for the real transgression. Why not blow everything the fuck up and run for president. I'm not encouraging it.
Yeah, I was gonna say, what is happening here?
I'm also not going to write it off, because again, this is a country that has gotten fucked for the last eight years because we kept thinking the worst can't happen twenty sixteen. The time loop of twenty sixteen keeps coming back to bite us on the ass. Oh no, there's no way that Trump could ever beat a real conservative like Jeb Bush. There's no way that Ted Cruz will be defeated by Trump. Ted's a brilliant debate. There's no way Marco can be beaten. And then, of course
Hillary will of course be president. I'm picking up my curtains for my office in the West Wing. I've heard that shit from one hundred fucking people. And then they'll
rain Trump in. Don't worry, Paul Ryan and Mitch mcconaugh will get control of them, and they'll make him a normal president, and he could never ignore a horrible disease or all the shit I've been told over and over again in the last eight years about why the worst case scenario can't happen, and then it always fucking happens, right, I mean, the one time the worst case scenario didn't happen was in twenty twenty, and the consequences of not having Trump re elected we're still pretty damn dark.
Right.
You can't just say it won't happen, because, frankly, the barriers to entry for running for president are surprisingly fucking low. I mean, I think rfk's entire campaign is on Steve Bannon's credit card.
So let's talk about RFK. So clearly Republicans have decided that they're going to support Marion Williamson and RFK in the hopes that that will somehow derail Biden.
And No Labels.
I feel like you don't want to talk about no Labels.
No. Look, all these groups, okay, every single one of them are backed by a bunch of Republican billionaires. No labels Republican billionaires including Harlan Crowe, Steve Bannon, whatever, weird, like God knows what, Grifty Sugar Daddy bullshit he's got this time, but there seems to always be some random Chinese billionaire or Ecuadorian drug lord or whatever the fuck Steve Bannon gets his money from that he can somehow like con into say this is my secret plan and
it works brilliantly. And bye. By the way, just a sidebar on Steve Bannon once more. You notice that Scabby was there with Donald Trump again this week. He was with Donald Trump again this week, like, oh, mister President, So you know you've got no labels. You've got Steve Bannon doing RFK Junior, You've got Mary and Williamson. I'm running because of whatever spirit guy told.
Her to my cousin. I'm my first person. That's her spirit guy. Yes, continue, yes.
And the absurdity of it is that Democrats should recognize what happens when you put third party candidates on the ballot. Now you're going to ask yourself, wow, was that really happened in America. I'm not going to say I've done it, but I am going to say that if you were to look at a bunch of races in the state of Florida where the Green Party candidates suddenly drew four or five percent away, from the Democrats. I mean I might know who did it. I might know the guys who did it.
Right. No, And that's a good point. And I mean I think that's the danger of RFK.
Republicans of the ship all the fucking time. Okay, Ralph Nader was a product basically that campaign basically was a Carl Roe flimflam. Yeah, Jesus, Democrats don't understand this. If I were the Democrats, I'm not saying I would do this, but I might consider possibility of doing this is go out in a bunch of states and register the fucking Maga Party on the ballot. Wait, explain the process of registering a political party in the States ranges from extremely
difficult to extremely trivial. Right, That's what no labels to do. They're going to the states where they're going to hurt by the most, and a lot of those states also happen to have a pretty easy access to the ballot. So why wouldn't you go out and register the Maga Party in twenty states and you run some fucking moke for president? It's dirty politics, right, And people are like, oh,
this isn't Marcus of Queensberry rules. The Marcus of Queensberry rules are all fine and good and they're lovely there and they're wonderful unless you're fighting somebody who wants to gut you and eat your fucking liver.
And that's what the other team is doing right now, right, which Republicans do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's unbelievable.
We're in a very consequential moment right now, Molly, and all the joking aside. I mean, the combination of the debt crisis which could blow up the economy, which is what they want, the re emergence of Trump as the main candidate and the Republican Party and giving him basically a longer time window to attack Joe Biden, the presence of these third party candidates and third party ballot lines.
We're entering a time where everybody better take this seriously, because the twenty twenty four campaign is in full effect. It is in full swing right now.
Yeah, we're forever living in twenty sixteen.
It is. I'm telling you. I keep calling it the time loop because I feel like I felt in twenty sixteen. All these people making, all these smart, well intentioned people who keep saying like I can't believe this is happening. You can't, it's happened before.
But you do think that Biden can get reelected.
Absolutely, And I have to say this weekend in DC, I detected from a lot of conversations with reporters before the event, Right, well, Biden's so old, he's not sharp, And I gotta tell you, he walked out into the event and he blew people the fuck away.
Every time, you know, the anxiety that people have, and then every time he's great. Yeah, yeah, I.
Mean, look, the speech writers got his tone perfectly, but that was only half of it he delivered. Yeah, he was sharp, he was witty, he was funny. He had good timing and cadence and pacing and all that stuff. And wrapping up with the dark Brandon joke of inverting a favorite Republican meme right and Republican talking point of inverting it and owning it was really spot on his
performance in that room that night. A lot of people and folks I was talking to in both you know, the press and the political worlds were like, wow, I didn't I didn't know he still had it in him.
So stupid They do that every time, though, every time they're like, oh, it's going to be so bad. I was getting texts from a political friend. Oh it's so late. Will he be okay? You know he's fine. He did this State of the Union like you can't fucking believe.
He set the fucking hook for the State of the Union and reeled those fuckers in on Social Security. Nobody be included saw it coming.
Yeah, exactly. Thank you Rick Wilson for joining us.
You are more than welcome, ass always.
Amanda Lipman is the co founder of Run for Something. Welcome back to fast Politics, Amanda Lipmn.
Thanks for having me, Molly always fun.
I am always delighted to have you. Tell us what you're working on right now.
Okay, So Run for Something is doing two things right now. As a reminder of Run for Something recruits and supports young, diverse progressives run for local office all across the country.
And brag to us about some of your successes.
Some of our amazing successes include Representative Zoe zephyr Out in Montana, who is right now belief unbelievable. Senator Meghan Hunt in Nebraska, who has been leading some of the work to the abortione ban there, who's been currently under an ethics complaint because she has a trans kid and therefore has a conflict of interest.
So they say, oh, that's right, I remember that.
Yeah, books like Lena Hidalgo, the Harris County executive, who is unbelievable, a whole bunch of members of the New York State Legislature, Pennsylvania State Legislature, Representative Anna Escamani down in Florida, and Representative Fantry Striscoll who's the minority leader in the Florida State House, who are fighting truth and nail against Ron DeSantis, and nearly eight hundred others who all across the country are just getting shit done in
this unbelievable way. So, in short, we're doing two big things right now. One, we are working with candidates for twenty twenty three elections. This is not an off year. There are more elections in twenty twenty three than there were in twenty twenty two.
Tell us what those elections look like.
Okay, so we've got for share of some state legislative races, including critically in Virginia, we were trying to flip back a chamber and push some real accountability against the Republican governor. We also have tons of municipal races, school board races. There are something like twenty nine thousand school board seats up this year. Only half of those elections are in November.
It's election day. We're recording this on Tuesday. It's election day today for ten run for Something candidates in Texas, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana. So we're working with a bunch of folks running for local races this year. We are also proactively recruiting for twenty twenty four.
Oh interesting, so tell us what that looks like.
So we are running events to get people thinking we're running for office. We just did some really cool ones running for about school board races in Pennsylvania. We're doing some work in Arkansas to get more people talking about running for office. We're doing work in Texas and Wisconsin and Michigan as well as all other states to get people getting ready to get on the ballot. The earlier
we can work with folks, the better. It allows us to really help people set up strong campaigns, to build out their staff in the right way, to raise money in the most efficient way possible, and to make sure that we are finding, you know, honestly the best possible folks to be on the ballot in a year where it's.
Never mattered more. How many times does a woman need to be told to run for office? If you're listening to this podcast right now and you are a woman and you're thinking like maybe I should run for office, can you just talk about that for a minute.
So it has been said that women need to be asked seven times to run for office, and the joke goes, you ask women seven times, a man is just going to tell you right and then ask you for money. But what we have found more broadly is that especially young women right now, are really eager to step up. They want to solve these problems that women and more broadly other people are facing, and they are fucking furious leadership that they don't feel like is fighting for them.
So twenty twenty three, so it's these state races. What are the ones you really where you feel like Democrats could move the needle.
Well, we've obviously got the Virginia State legislature, which will be critical, but we are also looking at count as school board races across the country. One thing that really keeps me up at night as a new parent, there is so much aggression coming from the far right. Any school board races in the form of Moms for Liberty in particular, but as well as Americans for Prosperity and
a number of other organizations. When I say aggression, I mean like they're putting in money and time and effort into these races, but they're also making them very hostile. They're hard, They are progressing and attacking candidates and scaring people out of them, and that's a tactic.
Can you explain to me what Moms for Liberty is and just a little bit about it?
Yes, So, Moms for Liberty was an organization that came to be a base out of Florida. Is all both good and terrible things tend to be after In fact, one of the run for Something along we worked with down there of our county, Jennifer Jenkins ran and won against an incumbent school board member in her county. The school board member, after losing, was furious. One of the big issues in that race at the time was both equity and schools, as well as cold policies. Field recall
this was a really hot topic around schools. After twenty twenty one twenty nine two, they decided that one of the things they wanted to do was create an organization to bring moms united against what has become an umbrella organization to push against LGBT equity and schools, against school safety,
against diverse reading curriculums. They are working to ban books, They're working to shut down libraries, They're working to get teachers fired, and in many places there if they're explicitly or implicitly encouraging harassment against school board members and candidates who are against them. It is funded by Republican mega donors. The Florida State Republican Chair has a direct connection to it.
Who is the Florida State Republican Chair.
So there's this woman, Bridgitt Ziegler, who is the wife of one of the vice chairs of the Florida Republican Party. She is a co founder and former co director of Moms for Liberty, also a school board member. She also is running as part of the Leadership Institute, which is one of like the Koch Brothers funded conservative training programs that does basically what Run for Something does, but has been doing it for decades and.
Has billions of dollars right.
Of millions of dollars over thirty some odd years. Bridget runs their school board Leadership program. So they have been doing things like trainings for school board candidates. They had ted Cruz to potential school board candidates, and they've been working in partnership with Moms for Liberty. So it is a full Republican Party effort to take over school boards from the bottom up and to really put a button
on this. Ralph Reid, who is one of the sort of infamous leaders of the quote unquote moral majority of far a Christian leader, has said, I would rather have a thousand school board members than a single president.
Wow.
It's powerful.
Can make a difference.
Yeah, wow. So the school board races really are where it's at. Talk to me about this Virginia Board of Delegates, because that I feel like we've been here before with Thisgia.
With Virginia, we absolutely the Virginia State Legislature. We flipped it. We Democrats, but also run for something candidates in particular flip the Virginia State House.
That's right. In twenty eighteen, right, well.
Twenty seventeen we won to the five seats. We flipped it. In twenty nineteen, Republicans took it back. We have forty eight seats, they have fifty two. This is really really close. In the Virginia State Senate, Democrats have control, but we need to flip back the state House and we have an opportunity to do that this year, which is really exciting. So we're gonna be working with a bunch of candidates in Virginia to make sure that we are flipping as many of these seats as possible.
Let's talk about this twenty twenty four recruitment effort. What are you looking for? Who do you need? What states tell us about your hope streams, et cetera.
Well, we are looking everywhere. That what makes this work so fun, especially at this point in the cycle. The earliest filing deadlines for twenty twenty four, some of them haven't been sad yet but are likely to start hitting in as soon as December twenty twenty three. Historically, Texas campaign filing deadlines have been the December before the election year, so it's not too early to start thinking about these races. We are looking for especially young people, so for us,
that's folks forty and under. We're especially looking for young women, young people of color, young LGBTQIA folks, but really anyone who doesn't see themselves reflected in leadership who is pissed about a problem or excited about a solution, and who sees a way for local office And for us, that's everything in state house, state Senate and below. Take the way for them to solve it, to take leadership there.
And I am especially pumped about some of the work that we are doing in these states that a lot of people write off, like I'm really pumped about Indiana, I'm pumped about Oklahoma.
I want to hear about pumped about Indiana because one of the things that's really shaped my most recent podcasting is that we had a man, Adam Fresh who ran again and you'll remember, ran against Lauren Boepert. Everyone said, you're crazy we had him and he lost by seven into votes. So I'm now very excited about seats that people think you're crazy to be excited about. So let's talk about Indiana.
Well, I think you know, Indiana falls into the bucket of states where as people will call Barack Obama one Indiana in two thousand and eight, it's so crazy, right, But there is an open US Senate race in Indiana. Mike Brown is retiring, and for a while that they was trying to find a Democrat to run in that race. And I don't know, if the top of my head if we have identified one just yet, but it's the kind of place where it's really worth building democratic infrastructure.
There are and this has turned so many of these red states blue cities, and I think we should keep that in mind because they are going to become more and more powerful. So we're looking especially in places where they're going to be competitive or could be competitive or should be competitive US Sunate elections. That includes places like Montana, where we've now seen an uprising of young people standing
with representative's effort. Police is like Nebraska, where there will be two US Senate seats on the ballot and a whole bunch of furious people mad about the bills they've passed against trans kids. Josh Holly is on the ballot in Missouri, they have again passed some egregious legislation against trans people.
There.
It is worth thinking holistically. You know, where's Joe binding in a campaign? Probably Pennsylvania, with consin Michigan, Arizona, Georgia. Great awesome. Where else can we be and what else can we be doing to lift up the entire ticket without counting on the top of the ticket to do the work.
I want to talk about this a little more because what you're saying is basically that you think that what happened in Kansas in the twenty tens could happen you could have this kind of seismic blowback. And you are not the first person to come on this podcast to talk about a seismic blowback. In fact, a few weeks ago we had James car on here and he was talking about the Mississippi governorship.
Yeah, that's a perfect example here. People also forget like Kansas has a democratic governor, Luisiana has a democratic governor. Kentucky had a democratic state legislature as recently as twenty sixteen and still has a democratic governor. These are places where democrats can win if it's the right democrat and if they're willing to invest in it.
This Mississippi governor's race is really on the horizon. It's a candidate called Presley. He is relative of Elvis Presley. Talk to me about that a little bit.
I think it's a really compelling race. That's a great candidate, and he's not just like the relative at Elvis Presley experience. He's the Mississippi Public Service Commits Center.
He's the highest elected Democrat in the state right now. Just yeah, like in Florida where Nikki Fried was the AG chair.
This is what you want. You want a Democrat who has roots, who has ties to the community. It also helps that he has a name. A fun fact about Brandon Presley is when he ran in the early two thousands in one office at twenty three, he was the youngest mayor in Mississippi's history. Big deal. Kind of folks who love to work with had run for something, been around in the early two thousands. It's the kind of race that we shouldn't ran off just because it seems
like a long shot. And it's certainly the kind of place that I hope the candidate that Presley is able to keep it really local. You know, governor's races in particular, it can be about the problems the communities themselves are facing. It's easy to keep them centered. So I hope that he's able to do that successfully.
Can you tell me something you're seeing that other people aren't at the state level.
Well, one of the things that I think is really exciting about the twenty twenty four races and twenty twoty three writ large is that we are building on the work we've done since twenty sixteen and twenty seventeen, that none of that was for not so whether it's black quoters matter.
Oh yeah, that's a great organization. Sorry, go on, yeah, or state.
Parties or county parties, like all of these folks who've been doing this work for a while. They did to register black voters in twenty twenty or twenty twenty two will also help twenty twenty four. It's why I think it's so important that this year Democrats can't take our foot off the gas. I've hurt for too many people who have said, oh, I'm just hired of politics. They don't want to spend any more money, i don't want to pay any more attention. I'm just let me have
a break. Come back to me next year. It's like, no, we don't have the luxury of that. That's not how this works, because if we'll lose momentum, we can lose it all.
Yeah. The school boards seem really I mean, that is something where you really could end up like your school could end up being completely crazy.
Yeah, and you're not going to know it until it's too late for you to get involved. Like that's actually the really scary part about school boards is it is often too late to feel the challenger, or get on the ballot, or stop or even like contest some of these races until the absolutely bananas people have geared themselves that revealed themselves to be as bad shit as they are.
So that's the thing that we really have to think about in terms of as an organization, can we flood this zone good really good people running for these races.
So do you think I mean, is it fair to say if you have a kid in public school you should run for school board?
Absolutely, if you have a kid in public school, if you're thinking about having a kid in public school, even if you haven't, and because you made that decision for a particular reason, like that's also a compelling part of a campaign. I would say it's definitely worth noting that the median school board member is fifty nine years old. We are especially looking for younger parents, who are people
who currently have kids. That's often retirees who run for school board and are a little bit distanced from the work itself. But that's not to say that anyone and everyone who cares about their schools, which is ultimately a way of saying I care about my community, whether I have a kid in the system or not. I should get engaged.
Talk to me about like sort of the races that you think our listeners should be like really supporting, you know, giving money too. I mean what, like, what's a lot of bang for your boy?
I think you can't go wrong engaging with whatever the local races near you. I know it's not always a helpful answers. People are like, you know, I can't really like flip it. It's like one you don't know. The best way to future the other side can take control, or to to let them keep holding control is to not engage with it. I think it's really important important
that people invest in the places they live. The cool thing about it is when you do, and then the people you help elect or people you prevent from winning, make a difference, you get to live the results of that. You get to bake down the bike path that your elected official helped open, you get to go regress that they made possible, or send your kids to the school
that you helped fund more teachers for. I think that's really special and it creates sort of a virtuous cycle of wanting to stay engaged because you see why it matters, which is not to say you also shouldn't send money to state parties and groups that organize young people in communities of color all across the country. But investing where you live, you like, really can't go wrong.
That's a great answer. Do you have any hope for this Florida State Party right now? Like, I mean, where are the sort of states where Democrats are kind of rebuilding and where you have some hope there?
Well, I think the state party, you know, there's nowhere, nowhere works to go. But I think there's some incredible Democrats in Florida. Fantry's Driscoll, Anna Escamani, Maxwell Frost, Ashley Gant who are really amazing. And even more local, there's some incredible school board members across Florida who are showing what fighting really looks, like Maria Salamanca and Orange County,
Luisa Santos and Lucy Abiaz Geller in Miami Dade. These are amazing, And you'll know, it's mostly women, mostly people of color, who are really unafraid to fight for their values. And I think that's what we need moving forward. There are so many state parties across the country that are sort of winnowing on the vine, unfortunately, and the way to rescue them is to invest in them. We cannot abandon this critical infrastructure, especially going into a national electioneer.
Yeah, that's a really good point. And there really are volunteer opportunities on the state party level.
Too, totally, and especially as you live in a place where the presidential campaign is not likely to have as much infrastructure. But your doors knocked for your city council race, your school board race, your state house race will help the full ticket, right, it all helps. It doesn't matter necessarily what Democrats you are going to.
The doors for. Will you remind me of that statistic that you like to quote or that you have quoted in the past with me about how meaningful it is to have someone run on the ticket even if they don't win in a red state.
So we have this theory called reverse code tails, which is basically that running people locally, whether or not they win or lose, those campaigns have a really galvanizing effort
in those communities. They bring voters out, they bring volunteers out, and they help volks up the ticket either win by bigger margins or lose by a little bit less, both of which is progress towards eventually flipping in some places, and I think especially in places where you're thinking about, like rural Pennsylvania or rural Michigan or the redder parts of Wisconsin. In some places, the local Democrat is just
looking to move the margin from seventy thirty to sixty forty. Right, That's okay, and that's how you eventually get to fifty to fifty. You don't go from seventy thirty to fifty to fifty overnight. You do it by losing by lass a little bit each time. And that I think is really about thinking long term. You know, we got to look beyond the singular election cycle. Well, only winning is winning eventually, in order to win big, we do have to lose a little bit first. So it's not that
folks are sacrificial lambs. It's that they're in service of a broader, longer term mission.
So good, Amanda Liman. I hope you'll come back anytime.
Molly, thanks for having me.
Hi, it's Mollie, and I am wildly excited that for the first time Fast Politics the show you're listening to right now is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it. And now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support.
Ben Terris is a reporter at The Washington Post and author of The Big Break, The Gamblers Party, Animals and True Believers Trying to Win in Washington Wall America Loses its Mind. Welcome to Fast Politics, ben Terris, thanks so much for having me talk about the book first, and then we'll talk about poor Shawn mguilwack.
Sure, I have a book coming out. It's my first book. Could be my last book, because writing a book is incredibly hard. It turns out, and it nearly killed me. It took two years, and I'm very very excited about it, very proud of it. It's called The Big Break, The Gamblers Party, Animals and True Believers trying to Win in Washington while America loses its mind, and it comes out
on June sixth, and it's a Washington book. It's kind of you know, we've all seen and read and sometimes loved, sometimes hated all these Trump books that have come out, and this is sort of like a Donald Trump book without him being in it really at all. It's a book about the Washington that he left behind, the Washington that he might be returning to, a wild cast of characters behind the scenes, folks, people you've heard of, people you haven't heard of, all kind of trying to make
it work in this new new normal. And I got to tell you, having been and reported in Washington for you know, ten twelve years now, it even shocked me the kinds of stuff that I was learning about and reporting on, as I know, really delved into the process.
Okay, you can't say that, because now I'm going to ask you, here's this is good training. What you don't want to do in an interview. What were the things that shocked you?
Well? I mean, you know, this excerpt that I had come out in the Washington Post out Sean mcley is a good example. This was a story about a Democratic operative named Sean who was this real rising star Democrat and he had a polling and think tank organization that he started in twenty eighteen called Data for Progress. And you know, he was a hot shot, like he was really on the rise. His polls were getting tweeted out
by the White House. He was getting meetings with Chuck Schumer and his staff and going to the White House for meeting Apparently Joe Biden would cite his polling and you know in private meetings. And he was also this real showman like character and so for me, I thought, Okay, this is a guy who is kind of taking some of the Trump lessons and using it on the Democratic side. He's quotable, he you know, likes to say things that
get him in the newspapery. Was in a pro pried a lot of the time with his jokes, but like people kind of dug it because he was good at what he did. And so in spending time with him, I got to learn about his gambling habit, which started at poker nights. For me, I would go to his poker nights.
Oh, he went to his poker knights.
Yeah. And the gambling habit wasn't just poker. He would bet kind of pretty big sums of money on politics, including on races that he was polling, and for me, I was like.
I'm a cynical guy.
I'm a cynical guy, but like seeing the Pete Rose of politics in action and kind of bragging about it. Oh, I'm gonna win fourteen thousand dollars on this chan Tell Brown Nina Turner race. If Nina Turner loses, even though he was doing polling for Nina Turner super Pack.
That seems really bad.
Yeah. When I heard that, I was like, man, why is nobody nobody's questioning this. People around the poker table just were kind of like, oh, like, what other bets you got? And some people were making best with them. It was kind of a cynical scene.
Right, So when you were reporting this, you're embedded, and then the scandal breaks later, did you have a sense of because micla he was brought down by a number of scandals, is that fair?
Yeah, that's right, that's right. And so I did not know any of that was going to break, right, So at first, when I'm reporting on him, I have this kind of story of his gambling and betting on politics, and I feel like I sort of have it to myself as a reporter, which is a great place to be in a way, it's like I'm going to report of something that nobody's ever heard about, and it's going to change the way that people think about politics to a degree, or though people will be surprised by it,
or people be amused by it, or people will be angered by it, and it will sort of be my story. What happened with Sean is his entire world kind of imploded by the end of the year. And you know, his rides included teaming up with Gabe Bankman Freed, the
brother of Sam Bankman Freed, the crypto former billionaire. He was kind of helping advise the bank Men Freed on how to, you know, on how to spend their money in Washington, among other things, what can mandidates to endorse and having the ear of people like that can make you very powerful in Washington. The gambling was a story too. By the end of the year, what happened was he got on the wrong side of a number of people.
Sam Bankman Freed had his implosion, a lot of Sean's bets went the wrong way, and all of that combined kind of forced the situation at Data for Progress where all of these young staffers that when I first got to know them, really looked up to Sean as kind of a big brother figure, somebody who could inspire them politically and get them inside the room in Washington and just danced their careers and made them think about politics in a different way. And they all kind of thought
into his project. When all of these things happened, at the end of the year, it just became unsustainable and there was basically a staff coup and he was fired. They found out, you know, even more details later about things he was doing that they did not like as a organization, and so at first she has to kind of negotiate for a severance, and by the end of the year they just fired him on the spot. And you know, he's out there somewhere now, probably trying to
plot a comeback. But it's it's a pretty pretty steep fall for somebody like Sean.
So I want to like just pull back for a minute, because I feel like this is a larger issue. We see it's not a larger issue, but there certainly is a fair amount of, I want to say, polling problems. I'm going to be generous here. You know, every time I have a polster on this podcast. I say you guys are wrong about this, wrong about that, and they say things like, well, you're not reading the polls, right.
Poles are a vibe some of Sean's polls we always thought on this podcast seemed a little optimistic.
So my big takeaway from my year and a half with Sean and also just kind of embedded in Washington in general, is that nobody really knows anything. Everybody in Washington makes money and gets influenced by convincing people that they kind of have the secret, they know how things are going to play out, they know how to couch it. Nobody ever says it's a guarantee. They always have ways to say. Look, if you read the poll, it means that, like you know, ninety percent chance that so and so
could win, the other thing happens. It doesn't mean we're wrong because ten percent is still a possibility. Like you don't understand probability, and maybe I don't, But also I feel like there's a lot of people who make a living by convincing people they know things and really nobody does.
Maybe they have a slightly better chance at understanding how the electorate is going to go based on their data, but really this last midterm was so confusing and so unexpected that you'd like to think that people would chill out on their confidence about what they can and can't predict. But also, Washington has been doing this forever. Nobody really saw Obama coming, nobody really saw Trump coming, and yet
everybody still claims to know what's what I mean. I spent the beginning of my time at these poker knights, and I remember Sean talking about Donald Trump is cooked, He's a cook turkey. He said he's ever going to run again, He's ever going to win again. And that might be right, but he's going to run again. He's certainly running, and he could win. I mean, anyone who says otherwise is you know, what are they basing that on? It's nothing.
I think that's a really good point that there's a sort of culture of like convincing people, you know, sort of almost the unknowable right.
That's right. And also I feel like a lot of people in that industry are very good at explaining away how they were wrong. So I don't think, you know, any of us would disagree that. Right before the midterms, everyone seemed to be saying Republicans are going to have a red wave right, and it turned out not to quite be that way, and so therefore the people who said that are wrong. And yet if you talk to them, there's so many ways that they can explain the ways
in which they were right. Oh well, we got the actual electorate correct, predicted how many people in America were basically you were going to vote for Republicans versus Democrats. We just didn't have it geographically figured out. And it's like, okay, well what does that do for me? I don't really care.
What I thought going into terms was everybody saying the Republicans are going to have these huge games everywhere, and then when it didn't happen, I sort of feel like people should say, my bad, I got itron instead of showing all the ways in which they were technically right, because being technically right, like, who cares?
Tell us what other Washington weirdnesses you've observed.
When I set out to write this book, the idea was to try to answer the question, how did Trump change Washington?
Right?
It was a very chaotic obviously four year presidency. It was chaotic during the election. Before that, people really got to know Washington or what they thought Washington was during these years. You know, like people in America knew the names of counselors to the President, like Kelly and Conway, or you know, the Commerce Secretary and Wilbur Ross. These were characters all of a sudden in the national drama,
and so people thought they understood Washington. This book is sort of a look at the Washington below that surface. And I think it's more interesting because it's just the people who are always around. There's lots of drama. There's people who have these really serious professional and personal relationships
at break because of the Trump presidency. There's stories of people who are desperately trying to make change in spite of it or because of it, and just the headwinds that you're up against when a place like Washington that is often not really interested in change. So basically, I spent time with a cast of I don't know twelve people or so, and I feel like it's a pretty broad slice of Washington.
Tell us who the people are.
Well, I can tell you that Matt Slapp is a character.
Oh yes, you really got people right before they crashed.
Yeah. That was also not something I expected. A leged groping scandal that Matt Slap found himself in by the end of the year that is in the book. Did not expect it. Also, just to be clear, I did not have that information before it was published. It wasn't like I knew about a groping incident and sat on it. I would have reported it in the paper if I had known at the time. But after I was reported
it was something I continued to report. The Matt Slap story, A big part of that thread is actually not even about that scandal. It's about him and his right hand man at Sea Pack, the organization.
That conservative political action.
That's right, and he and Matt Slap is the head of that. He had a spokesman for years. They were so close that when the spokesman was Ian, when Ian was having a family, he thought about having Matt and Mercedes Slap as godparents.
That's how close they got.
But over the course of the last couple of years, really their relationship prad into white where now you know they're not even speaking, and so stories like that I feel like capture this moment.
You know.
It's a story about the personal dramas that that happened in Washington, about the political dramas that happened about the waves in which they are connected. Right, People don't just break up because of politics, and people's politics don't change just because of politics. Sometimes it's personal, Sometimes it's petty and about workplace drama or about weird situations at Seapack.
And I feel like that story, if you read that, you're going to kind of understand some of the psychodrama happening within the Republican Party right now.
And so that's fascinating. A match lap, so you really did find yourself in the middle of drama.
Yes, I was always a little surprised by the access some of these people gave me. I mean, I went to Seapac and I went to match Slaps after Seapack presidential sweep.
Did you get COVID there?
You know, I didn't get COVID there?
What year was it? You didn't go the year when the guy had COVID?
Well I went last year, So presumably everybody had COVID, right, okay, but nobody was testing for it really, and somehow I didn't get I kind of just assumed they'd have like all the varieties there, like you could go into the bar and order, like you know, the first strain of COVID. But no, it didn't hit me somehow.
Yeah, I mean it is interesting to me that we're talking about this journalist and the murderer Janet Malcolm. You know, the thing where the subjects cannot resist the journalist.
Yeah, I mean, Washington is filled with people like that. To be honest, take Sean, he kind of was of this all preciss good press mentality.
Right.
Well, here's a good example of that. He made a joke to me once on September tenth that nobody understood the power of earned media better than Osama bin Lauden.
Yikes, because I have a teenager who might make that joke, and I would then take them aside and be like you guys like k not gol.
And I'd like to think your teenager probably wouldn't make that joke in front of a journalist on the record, right, all right, you know that joke just to explain it to people who don't get earned media as one of these political jargonterns for like free press. And basically what he's saying is nobody was able to get more press attention than Osama bin Laden and do more with it.
And when he made that joke, his press person was right next to me and she was like, you know, she sighed, and she's like, you know, it's gotten to the point where he says so many controversial things that journalists like won't even print them anymore, Jesus, because it's like it's not even worth it, you know. He called himself a Clarence Thomas Democrat because he believed that more money in politics was a good thing for his party,
his bank account. He said, Lee Atwater was his political idol, lee Atwater being the you know, infamous Republican strategist to encourage Republicans to kind of dog whistle their racism instead of being blatant about it.
Yeah, it's really bad, he once said to.
Me, not even to me, he said to a whole poker table. All the zoomers that work for him have long COVID and are bisexual, and that he believes that long COVID is a real thing when someone who isn't bisexual has it. Like he just would say things because he thought all press attention was good press attention, and for him it was for a while. It really helped him rise. But the same thing that can help you rise in Washington can also be the cause of your downfall, right, And.
I think that's a really good point. Thank you, Ben. I hope you'll come back anytime.
I'd love to come back.
No, Rick Wilson, Yes, Molly Jung Fast.
I know mine. What is this saying that has your moment of fucker.
Certain cable networks not learning the lessons of the past and putting Donald Trump on their air in a way where he will go on the TV and lie like a fucking rug for half an hour.
Yeah, you want to hear mine.
Go.
You go to a party. Yeah, and this crazy person is following you around all weekend.
I've been to that party and seen that crazy. I mean, I gotta be honest. When I saw her see you because I looked back on that when we were all walking to the hill. I saw you like twenty people back from him. I raven at you, and I saw her like behind you, and I'm like, oh my god, what is that a fucking like gaunt valkyrie.
Rah. I'm just telling you that scream is real. All right, guys, Thanks.
Rick, thanks for having me. As always.
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.