Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics. Well, we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds.
And Lara Trump is trying to assemble one hundred thousand poll watchers. We have such a great show for you.
Today.
Janelle Stelson drops by to tell us about her congressional run in Pennsylvania against Scott Perry. That will talk to Lisa Larra and Elizabeth Dias about their new book, The Fall of Row The Rise of a New America. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Projects owned Rick Wilson.
Welcome back, my friend and yours, Rick Wilson. Let's do it, Rick Wilson, So I want to talk about a little bit of Trump. Pretty interesting. Andrew Ross orkin today, who is on squawk Box and writes deal book for the New York Times, very very smart. Happens to be married to my agent, who I'm obsessed with, and he said
something interesting. So there's a lot of anxiety in New York about Trump because besides the fact that he wants to end American democracy, which none of us really like, oh, just that a lot of rich people have pivoted to Trump because he's basically offered to kill all taxes. The other yesterday he said, or maybe was two days ago, he said that he was going to end income tax and just put on a tariff on everything, which is highly inflationary, completely insane and awesome.
The math isn't even conceivable for that to work. There is no math that makes that work ever, ever, in the history of the universe. That math doesn't work unless somehow we start importing solid fucking logs of platinum from another planet and we put a tariff on it.
But it doesn't work. You can't make it work.
It's like a nineteenth century view of economics from a guy who failed economics.
Yes, the fact that Trump doesn't understand economics should be the world's most unsurprising thing. But anyways, so, a lot of rich people very excited about Trump because he's offered to basically do whatever they want in order for him to win. He told the oil companies that he was going to make oil great again. He was going to make sure that they could offshore drill wherever they wanted, because oil is the future. I mean, I can't believe
he's given up on coal. What a long eight years it's been Remember when he was so excited about Cole I'm going to make coal great again. It was Virginia. It's like, no, honey, it's like you're in an R plus forty seven. Just you know, you don't have to make coal gready, and they're going to vote for you anyway.
The idea of Trump's transactional nature is right in the faces of America. But these billionaires that are picking Trump that are going back. Look, you got Steve Schwartzman from Black Rock.
Who right, who was always going to vote for Trump.
Who was always going to go back to Trump in the end.
Even like the fact that his like maybe his kids were like, you can't support him now that he's done insurrection, and he had like a minute where he was like, I think insurrection might be too much, and then he was like, never mind, I'm back.
Yeah, never mind, I'm back.
And my favorite part of see Schwartzman was like, well, I'm worried about anti Semitism. I'm like, have you met Donald Trump's fucking basse.
Dinner with Nick Flints with Nick right for the Jews.
I'm like, if you haven't noticed yet, Kanye and Nick flinte is at for dinner, as well as a whole bunch of these other dipshits around Trump That just blew me up.
I was like, what, that's your reasoning.
But you know what, my guys like Schwartzman, guys like Bernie Marcus, all these people, they go out into the world and they say, let's see if I go from sixteen billion dollars of net worth to fifteen point four, that's the greatest tragedy in all humanity, and I.
Must stop it. So I will allow Trump to burn down the world.
To end American democracy. Yeah, yeah, they use an interesting rank all could we play this clip from Andrew Ross Sorkin.
I will say I was surprised. I spoke to a number of CEOs who I would say walked into the meeting being lump supporter ish or thinking that they might be leaning that direction, who said that he was remarkably meandering, could not keep a straight thought, was all over the map, and that they was maybe not surprising, but was interesting to me because these were people who I think might have been actually predisposed to him, and actually walked out
of the room less predisposed to him, actually predisposed to thinking this is not necessary. As one person said, this may not be any different or better than a Biden thought. If you're thinking that way.
The only thing I because remember, rich people are very mad at Joe Biden, and I think we need to take a minute here to talk about why Joe Biden has put someone in charge of antitrust who is really really smart.
By the way, I just like to point out I am a Lena kh fanboy.
Right, Lena Khan?
Why am I b Yes, tell us.
Why I am a fan of Lina Khan Because I'm a conservative who believe in free markets and not in this goddamn kleptocracy that we've established that allows the people with more lobbyists to win every regulatory fight, and that allows major companies to destroy their competition while it's still in the cradle so that they can retain eighty ninety percent market share. I'm against people who abuse the patent system.
I'm against people who who are engaged in the kabuki dance of we're just a company that competes in the market when they own ninety percent of the fucking market. No, no, no no, and if the market is broken because they've managed to short circuit it by regulatory capture, by lobbying, by political favors, by and by manipulating markets.
That's not a free market.
I approach this from the right, not as like I want the government to run everything. No, No, I want the government to stop giving these corporations everything they want and giving them monopoly power or oligopoly power in the market.
Yes.
So what I think is important here is that some rich kleptocrats are very pissed. They went into this meeting very trump curious. Andrew ross Organ describes their horror at the level of distracted and also disjointed and also demented rhetoric from Donald J. Trump. Seventy eight years old today, Happy birthday, Donald Trump.
All I can say is at the age of seventy eight, where I will be eighteen years from now.
Humbo brag.
I hope I don't feel the same icy hand of death clenching my heart Donald Trump is now experiencing, because I have to tell you, I don't think this has been a good week for the guy. And we joke about the shark thing, but all the reporting out of the hearing yesterday and one of my friends got to read back from a member yesterday who is a Trump supporter, who said, man, that was awkward.
That was fucking weird. That was not great.
Someone said it was like a drum uncle.
Yeah, it was like talking to your drunk uncle at the family reunion. But like I said, a friend of mine spoke to a member who came back and said, that was so awkward.
It was not great.
And it was a lot of like Trump giving them political advice, which.
Is people are like, oh, please God, don't make me do that. Please God, don't make me do that.
They're like, you should have zoom town halls. Yes, you should do that. That'll be fun for me.
What else did they say?
He was on one of his little little revenge things. He was going after Jeff Rowe, who ran santruss billion dollar train wreck of a campaign, and he was going out all these people, you know, you've got to do it my way. And there was also a sense that he was like just crazy, like he's not winning Virginia.
Really in Minnesota.
It's fabulous to think.
But I don't wake up in the morning mill you know, I could worry about any number of things in this campaign. I don't wake up in the morning going, man, what's my strategy to beat Trump in Virginia.
Right, I'm looking at the notice in this nonprofit newsroom that I'm like obsessed with.
I I love them.
They're reporting and they said that Trump suggested that only that abortion only became a complex issue ten years ago, which is probably when he learned about it. I didn't know that.
I just you're telling you me not for the first time.
Right.
He told if he were in office, he would have prevented war in Ukraine and also Hamas's attack on October seventh in Israel. Russian ships off the coast of Cuba were a particular interest to Trump, earning him a standing ovation from the only Cuban born lawmaker, Senator Mario Diaz, who you know. Trump also laid into Jeff Rowe as
a top former strategist for Ron DeSantis' presidential run. Trump said Roe, who directed millions of dollars to firms he controlled, well advising disantist as surgery on candidates wallets.
Let's be clear about something.
Jeff row in twenty twenty two was involved in eleven campaigns that spent a total of one hundred and ten million dollars, and he got blown the fuck out.
I like him for that.
Actually, I think he won one congressional race out of the whole package. Then he jumped over to do Ron DeSantis's inside the campaign and the super pack through some ledger Germaine, which is a word it's under used.
I don't even know what it means.
What is a man like sleight of hand.
His company was representing both the pack and the campaign.
They're like, we have a firewall. Uh huh, I bet you do.
A long story short, as we all know, President DeSantis' campaign went really really well and as the nominee of the Republican Party President Santa oh wait he did, and he got blown the fuck out in Iowa.
Yeah, but he is a terrible, terrible, terrible candidate.
Oh yeah, for sure. But Jeff Row also there's a little inside tweak here. He and Jared had this great relationship for a while, and Jared was trying to bring Jeff Row in at one point to overcome all of the Corey Lewandowski, Brad Parscal, Steve Bannon, Yahoo wing ding weirdos in the situation. But instead the battle was won by Susie Wiles and Chris Losovita, who I am told yesterday I was told there was a Trump team call
or zoom. I'm not sure which one it was, but they were on a call when the news broke about Trump saying that Milwaukee was a horrible place, and we were told that was like you could hear a pin drop on the call, Like, oh fuck, I'm saying, I want to ask you something about this this weird week. So the Supreme Court yesterday comes out on Mithra pristone with a decision that was a setback on the right, but it was only on standing. So first off, I wanted to ask you about this kind of sing about this.
Last night I got to ask Molly about this. What do you think the politics of it mean? And should people be too happy about this? I don't think they should.
No. I actually think what's interesting about it, which I was thinking about last night, was like, I mean, look, they threw it out on standing. There is no standing on this, and again it really speaks the Fifth Circuit right. The fact that the Supreme Court even had to like look at this for the Circus right exactly, that the Supreme Court even had to look at something that's crazy is really like it makes them look good again. We
know from the Supreme Court. They do earlier decisions that make them look less crazy, and then right before they go on vacation they dump the real crazy ones. So expect some crazy shit to go down. This they never had standing, so I think they'll come back with this. I mean, one of the things that this Supreme Court loves to do is to give you a taste of what's going to happen and then bring it back. Remember
Roberts were done with abortion. They have two abortion cases this semester, so I think it's very likely we'll see more on the pills. Look, the pills for them are the worst, right because you know you can have abortions.
They make it private, right, they can't stand outside a clinic and screaming at pregnant women.
But I think we've already seen an introduction that like two of the most crazy justices are ready to use the Commstock Act for whatever they can. And so I think we know where this is going. Unlike Donald Trump, who can't keep it in his pants, they understand that
like abortion is a fucking loser for them. And so while you have like these conferences, say, you know, remember you had the Southern Baptist Convention saying they're going to go after IVF next, which is like just the thing not to say during an election year when Democrats are saying, you're going to go after IVF next, and Republicans are like, we don't want to codify it, but you're good, right.
Can you imagine Katie Brett and Ted Cruz are like cursing the Southern Baptists being like, don't say anything about IVF.
We got to win the Southern Baptists.
They gave Democrats a gift yesterday in this campaign that, as you and I both know, Donald Trump is not a smart man.
Has incredible political instinct.
He has a feral sense of cunning and instincts that are cunning. And that's why Yesterday's like, oh, Bush is now complicated. Some states are good, some states are not. He understands how deadly this can be if he fucks it up, and he's kind of fuck it up. But this whole thing, I was just curious about your take on it, because I really think that this was a very, very very bad week with the Southern Baptist and I don't want people to get too enthusiastic about this court decision.
Thinking, oh, well, they figured it out. They're not going to fuck u. Now, they're gonna.
Still yeah, yeah, oh, no question. I think two things. They are going to fuck you and also they are definitely coming for IBF.
Yeah, and they're coming for birth control. Let's stop pretending they're not.
The goal here is to make it so you can't have an IUD and you can't have the morning after pill right now, right there saying right now the position that is on the sort of starting line. It hasn't been fully expressed, but right now it's this embryonic personhood idea. So that means no more IVF. That means no more IUD because an IUD they consider to be an abortion because they keep the feetus from implanting. No more morning after pills. So these are three things they are like
actively ready to go after. Once they get those. By the way, we will be back in like the eighteen nineties, like Canada won't be normal. Mexico has legalized abortion, right one of.
The largest Catholic countries in the hemisphere is legalized abortion.
Well then, yeah, exactly, but we because the two of these Catholics are progressive compared to the Evangelicals that we are being ruled by right now or the evangelicals that make up the Republican Party, because we are they're not empower though they're trying to get back from power. I think it's a real shit show. But I also think it's we're thinking about this, which is Trump is going
to try to sell this abortion thing. As you know, one of the greatest tricks that Donald Trump ever pulled was that he people convinced that he was a moderate because he had been a Democrat and because he also, you know, has had all these sexual assault delegations. We thought, who wasn't gonna you don't know whether your religious extreme is, But it turns out he is.
Like I said, I just want people to be cautious about that whole thing because I'm convinced that this is basically a Supreme Court headfake, where you know, John Roberts is trying to play his.
His home own little big thing. That ain't it, folks, This Supreme Court.
We have more decisions today. And the other thing is it's June fourteenth, so like we're going to have two weeks of starting some of the really crazy decisions going. And you know, look, this Supreme Court has one goal. It's to remake the country in the image of this very kind of religious, deeply undemocratic, anti government craziness.
It's absolutely true. I think we're now entering the real heat of the campaign. We're coming up on the debate, We're coming up on a lot of moments where people are going to see what the people are made of. I don't think Donald Trump is doing well physically. I don't think he's doing well mentally. I think he is in much deeper trouble than people believe. That doesn't mean we get to take any days off. I don't think
this guy is very stable right now. I think the court cases broke his brain like more than it's usually been broken.
And I'm here for that.
The analogy to nerd out for just a second, this is like Germany in late nineteen forty three. They know they're going to lose the war, but that doesn't mean they're not crazy. And that doesn't mean the fanatic loyalists around Hitler I mean Trump. But I repeat myself, you know the fanatics are going to stay fanatic. But I think they know that the inevitability argument with Trump. They may work with the billionaire class, but it's not working more broadly.
Than that right now, Yeah, no, I agree.
It's Rick Wilson Ram Sunshine.
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Janelle Stelson is a candidate in Pennsylvania's tenth congressional district.
Welcome to Fastpolitics to now, thank you a pleasure, Mollie. So you are running for Congress in Pennsylvania's tenth district. You are running against Scott Perry. I feel like Scott Perry. He's a special kind of Republican candidate to be running against.
Well, and you're very polite.
Explain to us what your district looks like and what you're doing.
You know, my district looks a lot like every other district that wants its needs to be met. For the past twelve years, our sixth term congressman has been doing very little to meet those needs. He has mostly been well, you know, he's kind of dumped in some circles Congressman chaos. These days down in Washington creating a whole wreaking havoc,
basically meaning in large part is an anarchist obstructionist. He's the reason this one hundred and eighteenth Congress had at one point achieved fewer pieces of legislation than at any time since the Great Depression back in the nineteen thirties. Thank you, Congressman Perry. That is not exactly meeting my district's needs. The do nothing Congress, right Amen's sister.
So explain to us, You're in a very tight district in Pennsylvania, but we just saw a poll that has you guys tied. Explain to us how you win in Pennsylvania's.
Tenth Well, I think how you win is something I've been practicing for the past thirty eight years, and that's listening, listening to formally what my viewers had to say were their issues and concerns, and now listening to what I hope will be my constituents say and carrying their voices to the halls of Congress. And that really is why I got into this race, you know, being on air as the Trust did nonpartisan voice for the past thirty eight years, and everybody living rooms is a big deal.
And you know, I went from polling place to polling place on our primary day, which was back in April, the end of April, and I won a six way primary by twenty points against some very good candidates, including
the nominee from last cycle. But what I was saying is at the polling places, the Republicans were going in or shaking my hands because they know me from TV, and some of them would whisper conspiratorially, I'm going to write you in and so is my husband, and others were saying, you know, we can't vote for you this time, but we got you back in November.
Don't worry.
And so, you know, that's always great to hear, particularly from Republicans.
Yeah, there are a lot of people on the progressive side who are mad at Joe Biden. But when you heard that speech that he gave the D Day's speech, there were two different ones, but one of them was an homage to previous president twops spoken on D Day and have spoken about the importance of American democracy. One of the people he gave this homage to was Ronald Reagan. Now, politically, a lot of his policy decisions do not speak to me.
But if you're going to compare Democrats and Republicans, they're much closer to each other than they are to Mega. You know what, at I.
Look at this as American issues. I'm not somebody like Scott Perry who went to the border a couple months ago and was grand standing. You know, he flew there on the taxpayer dime, even though he touts himself as a fiscal conservative.
He off no solutions.
He just pointed fingers of blame, which everybody does when they head to the southern border. You know, this is what's wrong with Washington. This is what is wrong with longtime six term politician, Congressman Scott Perry, Congressman Chaos. He goes down, he offers no solutions. You know, this is an American problem, not a Republican or a democratic problem. We need to secure the border, have a proper amount of people working there. Unlike Scott Perry, who has voted
to cut funding repeatedly for border security. You know, we need to look at this problem and if we do it right, we can be a shining example of democracy around the world. Let's shore up this deeply broken asylum system. You know, if people are not deemed to have legitimate claims to be in this country, send them home expeditiously and humanity in a humanitarian fashion, get them back to
their native countries. And conversely, the people who do have legitimate claims to be here, let's move more quickly to get them assimilated into our communities and work in and pay in taxes and doing the things everybody wants them
to be doing. This crisis of refugees and asylum seekers is not getting any easier as the earth becomes less hospitable after the damage we've done, So we can really show people how to do this right again, an American problem, not something that Republicans or Democrats need to be pointing fingers at the other side all the time. Both parties have been watching it for years.
I also think though, that there's not a path right, Like if you put money into immigration and you have a path for people for whom they are actually legitimately seeking asylum, right, if you had judges on the border, if you could process claims quickly, if you could offer a real legal path to citizenship, you know, I mean there are solves here that they're just money that is not going there.
Yeah, and Mollie This is but one example, and there are many. I know, we only have minutes for our show today, Yeah, but you know, we could probably be here for a month talking about all the egregious votes he's taken during his time in office.
And also Pennsylvania does not share a border with Mexico. It does not.
But we're all affected. Again, it's American problem, you know.
Yes, exactly, but I do think that it is like one of the things that I've been struck by with this crew. But Scott Perry also doesn't really leave in an American democracy. Can you talk about these Republicans who have gone authoritarian?
Well, a lot of people think that Scott Berry is just a bridge too far right.
Now.
You know, the extremest votes he has taken time and time again that in no way resemble the Republican Party at all. He's too extreme for the Republicans now as well, you know, you look at January sixth, he's one of
the architects deeply involved in that day. It is so disappointing that he's just been put on the House Intelligence Committee, which of coursees the FBI, which he was under investigation by the FBI is the agency that seized his phone because of his deep involvement in January sixth and the deadly insurrection. So you know, it's almost like the fox guarding the Henhouse. In terms of the Mall Committee after
eating all the heads. This guy was under investigation, and now he's going to have oversight over the folks who are investigating him. It feels deeply broken as an American, not in a partisan way. It makes me sad, and it sort of seems like we're seeing a little bit, you know, these things that the Supreme Court is looking broken these days. This to me is like Justices Alito and Clarence Thomas not recusing themselves from January sixth cases.
This is just, you know, somebody has shown you who they are and shown you why they should not be involved in whatever structure you're talking about here, we're talking about the Intel Committee. You know, it's just a very very bad fit. And when you have must the Republicans questioning and concerned that he would be on that committee, you know, shame on Speaker Johnson.
Yeah, I mean, Speaker Johnson really serves at the pleasure of Donald Trump, right, I mean that's how he got the job, that's how he keeps the job well.
As I say, I can only handle one extremist at a time. I can only handle one election, Dot Denier. I'm focused on Congressman Perry.
When you are in this moment and you're talking to people in Pennsylvania and you live in this very purple district, what are their concerns, what are they telling you? What do you hear it?
Well, again, Mollie, to have all week, after twelve years of relative inaction, things that should not have been urgent to attend to have become urgent because of the inaction. But I'll tell you probably the top three things I hear a lot of people talking about, for instance, one of the extreme right fringe votes that he took that he was the only one in the Pennsylvanian delegation, no
other Republican, no Democrat. He voted not to give medals to the officers who protected the Capitol, protected his life on January sixth, and the lives of his colleagues, so that in a few hours he could walk back into the chamber and vote to overturn all of our votes. People don't want to have their votes overturned. They want to know that their voices are heard in the halls
of Congress, and this is a really big deal. And then you know he didn't comply with the bipartisan commission that was investigating what happened January sixth to make sure it never happens again. You know, he was one of those He's like, yeah, I'm not talking to them, And he sought a presidential pardon, which now he says he didn't seek, but people in the Trump administration said he did.
And if you haven't done anything wrong, I'm not sure why you have to ask for a pardon, right exactly, this just me.
I'll tell you.
I hear about that. I hear a lot about choice and women's reproductive rights.
Oh you do, that's good? Oh yeah, it's huge.
And that is a Republican and a Democratic issue and every party in between. I was live on the set back in twenty twenty two when the Supreme Court handed down the Dobbs decision, overturning Row, and I was put in the position where I had to look out into the camera in my best at the time, nonpartisan way and tell every woman watching that her rights had been rolled back fifty years.
Were you shocked when it happened?
I think everybody was kind of shocked. Although we you know, at what point do you get desensitized because we're living in a shocking world world. But yes, I mean, and of course we had an inkling that it was going to happen when there was a leap several months before. But something else really important happened that day. The fact that in many cases, depending on your age, your mother had more rights than your daughters or your nieces. That's
a pretty big deal. But I went up to the newsroom afterward and one of my colleagues was sort of hunched down in the corner. And it's somebody who has to deal with a lot of trauma every day. He's the person who sends us out to fires and accidents, and you know, there's a lot of loss of life on the news. And I touched his shoulder and I said, to you, okay, and he looked up at me and he said, Janelle, you don't know this, but my wife was raped and if we had not had abortion available
to us, our lives would be ruined. And it's a very important thing to remember on the campaign trail, you know that it's not just about women, it's about the men and the families who love us. And I also had to seek comment from our local congress people that evening and in the next couple of days, and Congressman
Perry was basically dancing a jig. He wants a nationwide abortion ban sponsored the Life at Conception Act has sponsored that for the past seven years, which would be, you know, a nationwide abortion band with no exceptions, not for rape, not for incest, not for the life or help of the mother. And same thing with IVF. And he keeps trying to walk this back because he's seen how deeply unpopular it was after Alabama made its bands on IVF. And I say, judge a man by his actions, not by his work.
Yeah. And also I feel like one of the things that this Life and Conception Act does, besides making it impossible to get abortions, is it also if this is taken as it's advertised, it would be the end of IVF as we know.
Yeah, it would be.
With some people try to act as a recent phenomenon. You know, IVF has been around for forty years. Members of my family have been conceived by IVF. This is something that you know, when you're talking to a group of people, almost to any group.
It's the kind of thing, you know.
I do a lot of speak at engagements and you say, who here has been touched by cancer? Almost every hand was up. I feel like it's starting to be the same way with IVF. It's so popular. And again this drives home the point we should not have politicians involved in our healthcare decisions. Who wants Scott Perry telling you when to start a family, how to start a family, you know, or expand your family. It's just something that should be between a woman, her doctor and whoever she
brings into the conversation. It's ridiculous and I think, you know, Molly, and for everybody listening, if guys were the ones who had the babies, we probably wouldn't be having this discussion, right of course, I think it's two things. Right, it's like men controlling the conversation about women's health. But I also think it's that a lot of us were in denial that it would go.
I actually was not. I always thought after they passed SBA in Texas, I thought, oh, I know where this is going.
Oh you were right, and it's not going to stop here.
Now we're looking at lg BTQ issues, we're looking at you know, there's an awful lot going on that Scott Perry is all kinds of in favor of restricting, which is very funny because he was head of the Freedom Caucus. Honestly, it should be called the anti Freedom Caucus.
I think that what is interesting too is that you do see this sort of belief on the right, like they are supporting all of these like wildly unpopular ideas right like contraception. Nobody in the world. It's like pornography, like these are two things that Americans are just like, leave us alone. You know. They want the freedom to read what they want to read, and they want the freedom to use birth control because we live in the
world where there's birth control now. And these are two things that the right has in their crosshairs.
It really is. And I have to say, you know, there's a cadre of people or a cabal, whatever you want to call it in congre right now, the obstructionists, the ones who don't do anything for the people in their home districts, like Scott Perry. You know, we have economic issues we should be talking about, but instead we're just you know, it's like you look at these people, they're causing so many problems. They're not tending to the
issues their districts care about. And I got to say, if you look at a Marjorie Taylor Green and think, yes, she's not for me, she doesn't belong in Congress, there's not a lot we can do about that. She's in a solidly Republican district. But I got to tell you, Scott Perry is the most vulnerable maggot extremist in Congress right now, and he's getting more vulnerable all the time as I come after him and our support builds. So
this is really the place, Pennsylvania's tenth district. If you want to flip the US House blue and get rid of some of this nonsense, you get rid of Scott Perry, and you vote me in.
Right. What we've seen with Marjorie Taylor Green and Lauren Vauper too, is that one member of Congress, if it's one like Scott Perry, who's so ideological and nutty, can really cause a lot of damage in American democracy.
Well, you know, Mollie, my estimation of you is rising by the minute because I see that you're very polite, because you use the adjective when I am talking to supporters, whether it's on the phones or knocking doors or just people come up to me on the streets. They use a lot saltier language than knife.
I'm curious. One of the things that causes me a lot of anxiety is this idea that people are not getting the real news, that they're getting this kind of red sludge, that they're getting fake news through TikTok and Instagram. I mean, how much of your job is sort of debunking lies or do you feel that people are actually getting good news through local outlets.
First of all, you hurt my heart when you talk about media that way.
Molly up the rights. Well that's why I said, you're getting good news, good local news.
Yeah, well, I know there are a lot of other outlets. In fact, recently we're hearing, you know, about interference by bots sent by certain countries. And I got to say another nickname, Congressman CHAOSK. Perry has is Putin's Pennsylvania puppet, you know, because he's against the funding for Ukraine and you know a lot of people for them. It's just a foreign relations situation, which he is, by the way, on that committee and wreaking habit as well. But it's
also an economic issue here at home. When you can't get grain out of the port of Odessa in Ukraine, that's going to cause a lot of problems around the world in terms of food insecurity and prices. Here at home, you have people who are struggling. There are a lot of people who are pinched, and they tell me, you know, I'm actually having to make decisions about whether I put food on the table or take my life saving drugs. And I got to say, here's another point against Scott Perry.
He's the one who voted against the government's ability to negotiate prescription drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. You know, right now it's only ten drugs. I'd like to see that expand if I'm lucky enough to get to Washington. And I'd like to see the age limits lowered as well,
but he voted against it. Again, this is a guy who touts himself a fiscal conservative, and it was extrapolated that the move is going to save taxpayers and a government about one hundred and twenty billion dollars in fairly short order, and it will save the average person slash family about one hundred and fifty dollars a month, so they don't have to make those tough decisions about whether to put food on the table or take their drugs. And you know what, here's the dot dot dot, Mollie.
He did it while he was taking money from Big Pharma.
Of course, I'm not surprised. Thank you, so so so much. I hope he'll come back.
Molly.
It was an absolute pleasure.
Thank you for having me.
So there and Elizabeth Dias are the authors of the Fall of Row The Rise of a New America.
Welcome Too Fast Politics, Lisa, Thanks for having me and Elizabeth. It's great to be here. Fantastic. The book is called The Fall of Row, the Rise of a New America. So super interesting. We're talking about this before. Lisa. You are political reporter, national political reporter. Elizabeth your beat is religion. How did you find each other to tell the story.
Well, we both joined the Times around in twenty eighteen, so we sort of joined at the same time, and we found that we liked looking at politics through different but similar lenses, you know, sort of cultural politics, how politics influences the country, you know, not so much the data and the Machia nations and the strategy but more
sort of how politics influences people's lives. And we were both had covered abortion for bits and pieces over our career, and we did a few stories together on end We had been watching the encroachment increasingly restrictive bands of course in the States during the Trump years, and then when it was oral arguments and Dobbs, which was the case that would go on to end Row, we were on the phone together and we were listening and we actually both remember the moment it happened, which was I don't
know if you remember this in the argument but went justice Barrett started talking about safe haven boxes, which are those boxes?
Yeah? Yeah, and then you explain though to our listeners. Yeah.
So she was saying, basically, why do you need abortion when you have these safe haven boxes, which your boxes by fire stations where a new mother can leave the newborn, you know, anonymously, and I'll be adopted. And we were on the phone and one of us said to the other, Oh, they're going to overturn rop This is it, and someone needs to be writing this for history. This is a major major turning moment in like American politics and law and policy. And we're sure someone must be writing this.
How could someone not be writing this? It doesn't tell me don't need to write this, And then nobody was writing it, ed that we were writing it, And there you.
Go, Elizabeth Imian, How did the religion be inform your experience of this story?
Well, this is a topic that we really felt you can't understand it unless you can really see all the strands of the big picture.
In just looking at it through lons.
Of politics leaves out the massive our story of how religion, especially conservative mostly conservative Christianity, was a driving force in even getting to this point. I mean, the roots of the anti abortion movement are deep in the Catholic Church.
Evangelicals were late to that movement.
And while yes, abortion is about the procedure itself and the question of ken a woman and a pregnancy, the meaning of abortion in American life is just so much bigger. Right when people are talking about abortion, what we found that really talking about is what does it mean to be a woman in America and what are all of
the values that go with that. So unless you kind of take a look and examine that bigger meaning, the why right of why this is such a huge issue, we really only get a partial story It's been a really fruitful combination because you know, it leads not only to investigations in areas that have been undercovered, like the a role of religion in Christianity in overturning Row, but also it provides a way to understand what's going on that you just really can't understand where we're going as
a country, the rise of been to America, as we say in the in the subtitle, without understanding these bigger cultural and religious parents.
Right at its core, this is a question abortion, is a question of where women fit into the national project of America. And you know, since that famous Abigail Adams quote, you know where she wrote to John Ams and said,
remember the ladies, like, that question has been unsettled. And what the ruling in that case showed us is that it remains unsettled that there is a very active conservative Christian minority in the country who has one view of what where a woman fits and what a woman should be in America, and there's a broad majority that's more
secular that has a diff from view, right. And so this is really about what does it mean to be a woman in the amic democracy and more than that, in the American project as a whole.
So what do you think, what do you think about this idea that where does fetal personhood and I like to call it embryonic personhood because I'm on the opinion side, Where does that factor into all of this?
Well, that's really where the anti abortion movement is headed. I mean, at its core, it's a movement that believes that a human is a person deserving of rights at conception. That's a certainly a minority view in America. It's quite a minority view. And I think for so many years because the movement was talking about Okay, we have to overturn row, it's sort of obscured that an ultimate end, like what an ultimate end of that would be. So the fallow row was really just the beginning of this
much much bigger goal. I mean, people don't talk a lot of the more main mainstream anti abortion groups try are trying to not talk about quote field personhood right now, especially the.
Relation until they get into play power, right, so and so.
But the but what we are seeing is because kind of the the the edges have been stripped away, right, that that kind of veil of denial that so many people had about what was going on and like wood Row, the very idea that rowe could go away, that that denial has been shattered. And what we're seeing too is the anti abortion movement has been changing so much since the case, and there is an edge that has been increasingly radicalized also through the Trump movement. Right, things that
seem possible before are now suddenly possible. So they are openly trying to pursue rights for an embryo as I go. And you know, we're seeing this be manifested in things like opposing IDF for example.
Is there a religious component to that? Oh yeah, where does that come from?
It's really deep.
In one set of a Christianity's view about what it means to be a human person, right, and when this sort of soul comes into the body, how does all that work.
It's deep in.
Catholic theology that life begins that conception. So not everyone, of course, who is Catholic or who is Christian.
Believes that.
This is where you see a lot of fracturing, but it's very hard. We really think it's impossible to talk about what it means like where this movement is going without understanding those deep roots in one certain Christian worldview. So what we're seeing now even at the Supreme Court, all with the Supreme Court, out of these questions of you know, what does it mean? What might it mean for America to be a Christian nation? Is democracy on its own? Or is America a democracy sort of set
within the Kingdom of God? For example? There's a fringe that is really pushing that. And so it's a major conflict that extends well beyond just abortion. It's all aspects and pick your reach in American life.
Right, what did you find when you were reporting this book? Like, one of the things I'm often surprised by is how I know a lot of stuff because I just read all on the same topics again and again and again. What did you sort of stumble on where you're like, oh, wow.
Well, so I think there's a very macro answer that question, and a bunch of micro ones too.
Sure so.
And the biggest level, like, our book covers a ten year period which we called the Final Decade of Row. And we start with that Republican autopsy that was conducted after around me lost in Obama won re election in twenty twelve, where Republicans basically said we need to dump abortion as an issue. This is a loser for us, and we need to find ways to win more female
voters and voters of color and all of that. We picked that point because it's the lowest point for the anti abortion movement, and we charged their rise over the decade. And this was a story that I had covered, that I had lived. I covered Romy's campaign, I covered Hillaries campaign, I covered Button's campaign. You know, I went a million
campaigns in between, and all the politics. But there was something about putting this all together, that going back and isolating the moments that were just about this issue and looking at them as a whole and re reporting them and getting these additional details that I realized how much even I, as I covered these issues, had missed, and how we didn't really have a narrative, a clear narrative
to explain how ro fell. So, you know, I think when we think about the Republican Party and I write about the Republican Party, everyone kind of knows what happened there, what happened with trump Ism and the MAGA movement and with abortion. You know, there's this simplistic, you know answer, which is Trump won three Supreme Court justices and the
court change and abortion and Roe fell. But in fact, the answer is so much bigger, and the strategy by the anti abortion movement was so much longer and more detailed than just that. So I think what surprised me was how there was no narrative around this issue, how little in a way it had been covered, and how our book really creates the first narrative that explains to people how the country got here and how row felt now.
In terms of the smaller details, another thing that we really wanted to do was dive into the lives of the people on both sides of this policy and this debate, who you know, were most active, and really explore their own lives. So we just learned all these really interesting personal details about people's families and fertility, you know, their childhoods,
and those were things I really hadn't known. And the one that I particularly liked was we discovered that Mike Pence when he was married, it was a secon we you know, it was a second marriage for Karen Pence's wife, and so we were looking around to see like at the time, Mike Pence was Catholic, as was Karen Pens and they were pretty devoutly Catholic, So we were trying to see was the first marriage innulled because you know,
obviously divorced round pound in Catholicism. And we actually found out that the priest who married them shortly after marrying Mike and Karen Pence came out of the closet and went on to lead in deep pride. Good for him, I geah, Yeah, it was kind of a fun little twist. So Mike and Karen Pence were married who, you know, such an opponent same sex marriage and rights, were actually married by gay Price no longer a priest.
Good for them. Elizabeth, What about you? What did you sort of learn writing this book that you were really surprised by macro micro whatever.
Well, everything that Lisa said, I mean, I would add on to it. I think understanding these deep religious influences and how all of this happened, even for me, was pretty powerful. There's, you know, a way to look at this. Everything that's going on is sort of a story within a story within a story, and part of that is why America is changing so much on issues like abortion.
This is happening in a context of rising secularism total, you know, the de christianization of America, the struggle for that, the rising backlash within certain conservative Christian circles to that and what that looks like. It's why you can see both, like you can have these competing things going on of the country becoming more secular and also right wing for conservative Christianity and people trying to express their values. You know that that really is make America great again for them,
like bringing back so that was that's been fascinating. But even beyond that, the way that this story of the Fall of Row fits in for so many of the people who are working to make it happen into a story a religion that goes back to a young woman who likely was a teenager and gave birth to a baby that they worship as the Son of God.
Right, these are such.
Debated storylines and you just can't understand I don't think the states or what it means will mean in the future to be a woman in America without understanding this bigger fight going on between one particular Christian worldview and another majority view in America that is more pluralistic and is increasingly secular.
So it's just part of that.
We can see in a very specific way through Leonard Leo the longtime architect right at the Federalist Society, who's so influential, and picking the judges who would go on to become former President Trump's Supreme Court picks for him. The story of why he's so opposed to abortion personally is deeply rooted in his religious views about suffering and his own story of his daughter who hads fina bifida and die and kind of.
How he dealt religiously with that.
And we found that actually the day that Row found it happened on a certain Catholic holy day, the Feast of the Sacred Heart, which has extreme personal significance to Leonard Leo's. He had named his daughter after the saint. The holy day is devoted to It's like.
The Da Vinci Code, but women suffer instead. Yes, but go on, I don't mean to boil it down in such a way, but it's just, you know, I feel bad for him, but not that bad, But yes, go on, I was sorry.
You get at these sort of epic questions of spiritual versus earthly forces and how power works, and it's just, I think such a much bigger story. It's very hard to confront that now, and especially what that means for you know, the stakes for women, right, that's just very different ideas about the role of women in society and family when it comes to sex, marriage, kids, all of it. You have to kind of spend time exploring that and seeing what the steaks are.
Yeah. No, no, it's so interesting and I didn't mean to make light of it, but I can't help myself because I grew up in a very non religious Hashold. One of the things we talked about when we talked together on Morning Joe was that the left really never
saw this coming. I've talked to other people who've said this very same thing, which was that so much was riding on the election of Hillary Clinton, that Planned Parenthood and a lot of organizations, that there was such a mass sort of belief that she would be the president that certain things maybe didn't get the attention they could have.
Look, I think that's right. I think there was a sense. You have to remember where the country was in twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen, the run ups at Clinton's run, which was you know, it seemed like abortion was this old fight. It was decided like conservative states at that time were passing more restrictive laws, But it just didn't capture the imagination. It wasn't the thing that was driving like liberal activists. It felt like this thing from like
the boomer moms or grandma's or whatever. It was a settled issue. Hillary Clinton was widely expected to win and she was going to expand abortion rights in all of this, and then of course she lost. And I think part of what the left was unprepared for is they thought about this issue in terms of the election cycles and in terms of winning public opinion. If we destigmatize the proposal, we get it in as a plot line in movies like Juno or Gray's Anatomy. If we elect people who
will protect abortion rights, it'll be fine. They'll be forced to roll back these restrictive laws. As Elizabeth was outlining, the anti abortion movement is thinking in generations, right, and they're not thinking about public opinion because they are engaged in this battle for these like spiritual ideas. So you believe that you were engaged in a world battle. It doesn't matter if everyone disagrees with you. So what they
were doing was moving the levers of power everywhere. They could state legislatures, judicial you know, judge ships, all the way up to the Supreme Court. So you reach a point where the left is unable to stop this from happening because the anti abortion movement controls the system, and that's the point at which Trump has those three Supreme
Court justices, and by then it's too late. So I just think like the anti abortion forces were playing chess and the abortion rights side was playing checkers, and the skull of how they were looking at this was just so different. It was asymmetrical in a way, right.
I mean, I think that's a really important point that they had this grand plan that the left just didn't see coming in a certain way.
And I think, like you were mentioning, you know, you grew up in a really secular home, Like I think it can be hard to understand, like you really have to understand the roots of this thing in the anti
abortion movement. And you know, it's been interesting to see all this news with the LEO and the recordings and the flags, and you know, it didn't go unnoticed by Elizabeth and I that the flag his wife wanted to raise to push back on the Pride flag was the flag of the Sacred Heart right, which is that Catholic symbol. We were talking about so this is a thing that's very deep for them can be hard, I think for people who are raised more secularly to wrap their heads
around what that all means. I think it actually helped us that we were raised in more observant homes, and so I think that helped us kind of understand a little bit more and take a wider purview than I think sometimes people do to this issue, which is necessary.
Thank you both so much.
Thank you, ma, thank you for having us.
No moment fuck so Rick Wilson, Yes, ma'am, do you have a moment of fuckery?
I do have a moment of fuckery. My moment of thuckery is yesterday's ritual humiliation session on Capitol Hill where Mitch fuck and McConnell, who I have told you guys a million times loathes and despises Donald Trump with every fiber of his grotesque little being, went out there and once again, once again when he has a chance to break the evil of Trump, and the MAGA movement went out there. Oh well, support the Norman I'm a party
because olverys. If we don't communist Trams, lesbian celebrity abortionist will wound.
I mean God, all.
Fucking mighty, the guy can't stop himself. And I'm sorry, Mitch, you're eighty two years old. Go retire, be done. Try not to make yourself a guy who will end up with a grave that reeks of piss for all eternity by supporting this fucking guy.
Oh yes, I understand the craven desire for power. I respect the hell out of it. But the photos out of that meeting yesterday were so cringe well, they just were so embarrassing, and like, you have this opportunity, even if the guy did win, you could have salvage the tiny bit of your dignity by not There were photos
of them actually, and they weren't bowing on purpose. They were just sort of like, you know, it just looked like they were bowing right, but it looked like, you know, painting is from the Renaissance.
Accidental Renaissance.
Yeah, accidental.
That was awful, awful, awful, awful.
So the accidental Renaissance is our moment of fuck Gray. 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.