Rick Wilson & James Kimmel

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 Lisa Murkowski says it's dangerous for us in the legislative branch. We have such a great show for you today, the Lincoln Projects owen Rick Wilson joins us to discuss the No Kings protest, Trump's sad Birthday parade, and political violence. Then we'll talk to James Kimmel about his new book, The Science of Revenge, Understanding

So, Molly, one of the things I feared the most as being a pro union person is how much progress we were making underbided and that the second Trump got in that they would be doing everything they can to call it back.

Well, we're starting to see that.

I didn't think it would be very high on their priorities, And yeah, it seems like they're getting down to it fively.

And by the way, can I just add the big union right, the auto Workers did not endorse Harris. They refused to endorse right.

Yeah.

One of the things that I think is very interesting about union culture, right, now is that we are seeing such partisanship of their ranks that the leadership is actually fearful of what happens. We're even seeing that at our mayoral election right now with a lot of the unions.

Yeah, so here are unions, a lot of their members are voting for Trump, and there people are getting punished by trump Ism. The arrest and violent man handling of the president of the Service Employees International Union of California suggests that Trump is targeting union leaders for arrest. So this is like right out of the authoritarian playbook, right. You don't want collective fargeting because it makes workers more powerful. You don't want powerful workers because it makes the president

Yeah.

So, speaking of unforeseen consequences, the washingt Post has some great journalism about how vaccine critics appointed by RFK Junior are going to limit access to shots.

This is not even unforeseen, this is foreseen. Well, this fucking guy was going to make it hard to get vaccines.

We saw it.

But I would argue that a lot of people were like, no, no, it's fine.

Well we've had people on this podcast who said you're not going to be able to get somebody. Yes, that's where we are right now. So Robert F. Kennedy Junior's overhaul of the Federal Immunization Panel will create uncertainty about

Yeah, and you know a funny thing would I went to Canada last week. I was very funny the subtle shade that the border crossing through at Americans of like measles is.

Now on the rise in Canada.

I wonder why, please please be sure to not bring it here, Thank you very much.

Yeah, the worst so by.

One of the things we discussed last week is Trump had all these tweets where it's started to seem like he's going a little soft on Steven Miller's vision of a white no state.

And Axios has some interesting reporting here. What do you see?

You'll be shocked to know that rich guy talks to other rich people. Other rich people say, you know, as much as we love the visual of your guys hunting farmers in the field, hunting agriculture workers, as much as that's fun for us, it's hurting our business. These are jobs, and Americans do not want agricultural workers. They're tough jobs, they're hard work, they're in the field. We can get Americans to take like manufacturing jobs, let alone jobs working

Man about town, the whole thing? Thank you? How are you today?

Right? Man? About town? If that town is in Florida, Yes, under kind of kind of undermines the whole thing, kind of Yeah.

Speaking of Florida, I live, as you know, in the middle of a giant ocean of red. Yes, and yet somehow in the capital of Florida yesterday five thousand people turned up at a protest for No Kings like I had never I mean, I've lived here a long time and it ordinarily the progressive world manages to get a protest with about a half a dozen people on the steps of the capitol and one weird sign. This thing was wall to wall blocks around the capitol, which.

Was nuts in Tallahassee.

Tallahassee, a state that has been dominated by the Republican Party for the last twenty five years, managed they managed to have two sort of sort of scrubby looking maga kids three blocks away hold one sign as a counter protest. So I don't know what's going on, but that seemed to be iterating across the whole country. Had a buddy of mine in Billings, Montana, crowds in the street like you couldn't believe he's like he's he goes when I tell you, this is half the city, I mean it, it's crazy.

What do you think that means? The numbers I saw Elliott Morris, h smart guy, used to run five thirty eight, and he had he had sort of calculated the numbers as higher than five million. I saw five million in the New York Times, but Ellie Morris thinks it's closer to more than that.

Yeah he said. I think he said something like it could be up to thirteen million people, yes, which is nuts.

So up to thirteen million people gets us to a level where about we're almost too I think a little bit less than one percent of the of America protesting.

That's what they call the Color Revolution line. When you have one or two percent of the population out protesting, the deer leaders have lost a lot of power.

And some are saying, I'm going to use a jesse Can in fact check here. Uh. Some are saying that this was the biggest protest in American history.

Listen, I could I could make that argument. I think there. I think there was something yesterday in the air across the country. I think there was a little bit of whistling past the graveyard at first, like people are like, oh god, what if it doesn't turn out? What if this doesn't work? And and it was. It was bonkers everywhere.

And I was nuts. So I was in Nantucket because I have a book that just came out, which I don't know if.

Do you do people know about it? Is it a New York Times bestseller? Yes?

It is number six on the combined list. I have to tell you there are no words for the level of thrill. But anyway, I was in it. But you know, it's I'm the meme where it's like the world is burning down and I'm like, so I have a book, but but but I was in Nantucket for this book. For Nantucket is known to be well in the Northeast, a very Republican island, so much so that the guy sitting in front of me was wearing a Trump a Trump golf club a shirt that had a sort of

Right. I think this happened to the surprise of a lot of the Maga folks yesterday because the gigantic Maga media machine was in full throttle, like there's no there are no there, nobody's at the no Kings rallies, there are no no Kings rallies whatsoever. No one's out at all, but five million people are in Washington for President's Military dictatorship Parade.

Right, so let's talk about the military dictatorship parade, because there's a really smart thing. I saw that the individual No Kings Rally organizers wrote on their website which said, and even Axios, which is known to.

Not be not exactly like friend of progressive politics, Axios.

Yes exactly, said that the people they wanted to provide a kind of counter programming and not a competition, and that's why they didn't go to Washington, DC. Right. They stayed away because they didn't because they wanted to sort of dominate the news cycle and provide an alternative narrative versus a sort of combative program, right, program around trump Ism, which I think is really an important thought when you're talking about sort of permeating the discourse.

Look, I think I think that that the grassroots energy in this thing was so unique and it's and I will, I will, you know, went back to my my experience at at one of these yesterday, I actually saw three or four of my Republican friends who aren't even like people I would have thought like, oh, he's a never trumper. I was surprised. I talked to one guy I was like, I'm shocked to see you here, he goes, I'm just done.

I want to talk about UH disinformation because it is really important when we talk about these protests to talk about Twitter and what happened on Twitter and the political violence. The woman and her husband.

Minnesota former former House majority leader in the.

Former House majority leader Melissa Horman and her husband murdered in their bads. Two other members of the Minnesota State House, both Melissa Horman and her husband and John Hoffman and his wife Okay murdered in their bads by a conservative Christian, anti choice, anti right UH worked in private security, carried weapons, et cetera.

Right the all the all the unsurprised, using descriptors of this guy that once you knew them, you were like, of course.

So this happens, he is now on the run. A few thoughts here. One, these were the people who were being watched by the FBI before cash Betel got in charge. Right now, they are no longer You're no longer allowed to watch these people because those people, right, because.

The deep state was watching them in the We can't have anybody monitored by the deep state anymore because obviously they're just they were the same sort of innocent tourists that were just visiting with love on January Seanuary sixth.

So the day this happened, Twitter became a sea of disinformation and the magas works trying to sell a story that these people had voted against healthcare for non citizens and that was why they got murdered by a Marxist.

Right, and so you get guys like Mike Cernovic and Mike Lee and the rest of the sort of Trump is set.

One is an online influencer who started Pizzagate.

Right right, Well, they're basically, look, these these are not they're not sending their best moly, right, but but what we're talking about here, when you get down to it, is this alternate ecosystem that cannot confront reality. They cannot confront what is actually happening here, which is that the right wing maga media ecosystem feeds these people a constant diet of lies and bullshit that that that every Democrat is a is a cannibal, pedophile, child trafficker, blah blah blah.

Okay, yes, is a United States senator.

Yes, let's let's emphasize that point again, a United States senator is out talking the worst weird ass smack about, you know, pretending that this was a political assassination because of wokeness. And it's so disgusting at every level. It's so weak at every level, because they are they recognize that that what they've created as a monster, and that monster is now out roaming the world. And it's frankly,

Officials, but my friend Tim Walls.

Yes, and and folks you know, like Ilhan Omar and a whole variety of other people that does not exactly fit the profile of left wing on a murder spree. This was a right wing assassin. He's been motivated by people like well, by by institutions like Breitbart and Fox News, because they're told over and over again, you're you're being pursued by the evil left wingers. They're trying to destroy you. They're not human. They deserve everything we can give them

First of all, Mark Cuban, if you listen to this podcast, you should buy Twitter, Okay, because somebody rich should buy Twitter and make it normal again, because Elon has made it completely unusable and it has a really good purpose and it's really a public util and you know, Elon is down the rabbit hole now of whatever. It's time to buy Twitter.

Yeah, I mean look and frankly, you could probably get Twitter at a pretty reasonable price at this point.

Yeah, so that is number one, because the site has degraded, But it also is what you see, it's it's completely without use at this point.

But it's also But here's the thing, the degree to which the right values Twitter because it is this normative force for them. It is this powerful thing that keeps them in line, that keeps them on message and over and over again. I don't I've said this to a lot a lot of wealthy people recently. Like the power of Fox, Facebook and Twitter to control what the maga world thinks and does is beyond comprehension. It is. It is super powerful as as a way of shaping what

No, of course, and it's totally ridiculous. But there was also I want to talk about. There was a little bit of violence that happened yesterday that I want to talk about because I think it's really important and it didn't get reported because there's no local news, so you may be listening to this podcast and you may not know about it. So most of the rallies were peaceful, but okay, there were in Salt Lake City somebody got critically injured into the crowd and in Culpeper, Virginia, somebody

Oh you mean political violence.

Yeah, oh, I mean political.

I was told that only happens on the left.

Weird political violence. You know, I don't think it should be brushed over, right.

We should address it more honestly than than the right would like. And they really don't want to talk about this. They want to pretend that they are the set upon victims, they're the they're the the David to the Goliath of some sort of violent progressive action, which is has been and has always been garbage. And look, I believe me if I would if I saw it on the left, I'd call it out because it benefits no one.

Yeah, it's certainly true. I wonder if we could talk for a minute about how Trump actually had to watch the parade. Oh, it was so beautiful, Like, I wonder if he didn't think.

This through No, he never thinks anything through Molly. He has no ability to think outside of his of his like tiny animal brain, and he thought this will be a great triumph. I will look strong, I will I will buy association, absorb the strength of these warriors. And he looked like a dip shit half asleep behind the glass at a poorly attended and by poorly attended folks, I mean poorly attended. Yeah, they were expecting a million people and they maybe got a maybe got fifty thousand.

But also, can we just talk about, like why did this need to be sponsored by Coinbase and Boeing or I think coin Base. It was coin Base and Lockheed Martin.

Yeah, look, it was a bunch of there were a bunch of bunch of corporate sponsors in bold.

But weren't the taxpayers really the sponsors of this?

That was exactly what I was about to say, Mali. But the real the real sponsor was the US taxpayer. The real sponsor was was every American who had to fork over their tax dollars for this eighty five million dollar, eighty nine million dollar horseshit. And and the reality is Trump begged for a missile parade in the first administration.

He was ab he saw one in France, that's right, Steel day.

That he was obsessed with it. And now he finally got one. He didn't have an esper or a Millie who said, no, sir, you can't do this.

Yeah. Millie was like, no dice.

Yeah, Millie was like a no loss, no chief, the same how this works. Yeah, but you know, he he desperately wanted this again. Donald Trump, the draft dodging, chicken shit coward who demeaned diminished John McCain, who called our troop suckers, and losers, who has over and over again essentially except pressed his contempt for the service of others, wanted to absorb the heroism of American military men and women.

Yeah, it was incredible stuff. Incredible stuff. Rick Wilson, John joining.

Me a pleasure as always.

Will you be back?

I will always be back for you. You know that.

James Kimmel is the author of the Science of Revenge, Standing the world's deadliest addiction, and How to overcome it. Welcome to Fast Politics, James.

Thank you, mollly happy to be here and really appreciate it.

So talk to me about this book.

So recent neuroscience revelations have given us some exciting new discoveries, most importantly that your brain on revenge looks like your brain on drugs, which is a big discovery in the sense it is it is it is your brain on revenge. It looks like your brain on drugs. And that's a big discovery because it gives us the first notion of a biological cause of violence and how to prevent and treat it.

So, you know, I'm sober twenty seven years, but who's counting. Will this show us how to treat alcoholism, drug addiction, or revenge?

No, it'll show us that by using alcohol and other substance use, addiction, prevention and treatment strategies, we can prevent and treat violence, which is a big revelation. It's kind of the reverse order where we're bringing those techniques into something that has eluded human prevention and treatment for thousands of years.

I need you to explain this more to me. Neuroscience finds that revenge and addiction look the same. So what you mean by revenge more is the sort of anger impulse, right, So, revenge is.

The desire to punish people who either violate social norms or wrong you in some way, whether it's real or imagined. So you know, it starts with the grievance, and a grievance is a real or imagined perception of having been mistreated, treated unjustly, humiliated, shame betrayed, victimized in any way. That's the beginning point of this process.

Okay, So if revenge is like addiction and it is a similar kind of situation that can prevent violence, but it also perhaps might give us a little insight into what's happening in Trump's second administration.

It does, and what's happening across the country in response. Because this is a it's a human problem, so it transcends, you know, political boundaries. Let's just go into this for

One of the things that I've been interested in as a sober person who comes from a family is they tell my children all the time riddled with alcoholism. As I tell my three teenage children, I got sobern as nineteen. So whenever I see that, I say, you know, you come from a family. I swear to that I am become my grandfather. You come from a family riddled with alcoholism. My grandfather wouldn't say things like that, but he would

It's possible, And I don't want it to be focused on emotions, because this is much more than just what we think of as emotions like I feel happy or sad. This is a brain biological process that drives us toward revenge seeking for pleasure. We seek revenge to make ourselves feel better after we've been hurt. There is a theory that the vulnerable brain that suggests that people who are vulnerable to other forms of addiction are more vulnerable to

Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, I just wonder if you could talk to us about what this larger idea of a culture that is so set on revenge.

Right.

We're seeing a lot of like the cultural questions of revenge.

Yeah, I refer to it as a revenge addicted nation. Right now. America seems like a revenge addicted nation in many ways, and part of that is the advent for which humans have not been prepared for.

At all.

And that's the advent of social networking platforms, and they're a unique ability to spread a grievance, right of feeling of victimization twis of other people at light speed, almost simultaneously. So we are getting perhaps millions of people with real or imagined grievances about the same thing at the same time.

Know, yeah, revenge. Rt I interviewed a guy called to Read Hoffman on Morning Joe. A couple months ago, he was talking about how good the Internet is an AI

I think that's possible, and it's a pretty good analogy. There. There was a lot of warfare and a lot of revenge seeking right back in those days after let's say, the Reformation in Martin Luther was spread by that new technology renting press. And we're seeing something similar to that, but across much bigger population and much more quickly than

So online is obviously making a problem worse. But is the problem existing just because of the internet, or is this a problem that's always happened, And is it getting less bad because it's not happening in real life even though it is sort of happening in real life.

Yeah, I think it's more about it's a problem that's always existed. So evolutionary psychologists theorize the leading theory is is that we developed this pleasurable experience in retaliating maybe eleven thousand years ago or or longer, as humans came to live in societies and needed ways to cooperate and cause people to obey social norms and you know, not steal things from you, your cave, or from your neighbor. So the desire for revenge is natural, and it was

So it makes everything worse, that's right, And this is the hyper polarization.

Thing, right, right, But this is the hyperness of it, yes, correct.

How do you get out of this? Give everyone prozac? Right? The huge doses of prozac.

And that probably the prozac probably wouldn't help because that's going to take down anxiety, which is a great thing, but isn't really this problem so our problem with revenge seeking. Prozac hasn't been found, for instance, to be the cure for addictions. It's not really prescribed for addictions. So that's really not the right one what we need to think about. So we have two options.

Wait, hot, take here for one second, not to hijack this interview with my own mental health problems, but what I've noticed from myself and my own mental health problems is that prozac does not work on me as someone who's sober a long time, but effects or for whatever reason, effects or is just the greatest drug ever.

That is interesting, And I can't comment because you know, I'm not that kind of docs, so I don't know. Are you my doctor, and nor are your doctor? That's correct, for sure, that's right. What is probably more likely to work, right are going to be the addiction prevention and treatment strategies that are already in our toolkit for other addictive disorders. So that can mean to start with, that can be cognitive behavioral therapy, counseling, motivational interviewing, self help strategies, and

So basically everything we do in AA is right.

That whole forgiveness piece and the the you know this, you know kind of owning that. And although AA is really strong about going out right and making that apology to the person you're wrong, and that's nice and it's very powerful, But what we're finding is is that forgiving of yourself is critical.

Which is what you do when you do that?

Yes, right, and if you're forgiving yourself and anybody that is wronging you just internally and your listeners can experience this like right away. I mean, if it's safe to close your eyes right now, think about a grievance that you have against someone, and you know you have them, because we all do. We have maybe hundreds of them every day. But think about that and then think about just imagine what it would feel like. Just imagine what it would feel like if you decide, you know what,

Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.

Fair welcome, No, no moment.

Rick Wilson, Holly Jogfast, I flew here this morning.

And your pilot who flew you there had two certifications, once called an ATP and the others called a commercial pilot certificate.

Why do we bring this up?

Well, the new head of the FAA claimed it turns out you're going to be shocked to hear this from somebody in the Trump administration claimed falsely that he had a commercial pilot certificate. He has an instrument rating as a multi engineer rating, but he does not have a commercial pilot certificate. It's not that hard to get, but it's really stupid to lie about having one when you don't.

But also, why does Trump World keep elevating people who can't tell the truth.

They're not sending their best, They're not the endless parade of weak, weird, shitty, non effective candidates for these jobs. It's not coming because Donald Trump has a rich portfolio of options. This is what he's got. These are the people that will work for him. Now, it's not a great world to live in if you're a Trump appointee at this point, you're in such a group of scales and weirdos and fuck ups that honestly, why bothered a lie? Just say I'm a mid range, middling talent nobody who

That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going Thanks for listening,