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 Donald Trump is now calling people vermin This is something that the Nazis did and a really scary sign of authoritarianism. We have an amazing show today. ABC News is Chief Washington correspondent Jonathan Carl stops by to talk to us all about his new book, Tired of Winning, Donald Trump and the End of the Grand
Old Party. Then we'll talk to Brian Stelter about his new Fox News Tell All Network of Lies, the epic saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the battle for American democracy. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson. Welcome, two Best Politics.
Rick Wilson, Molli Jong Fast back with you. Was always has been of the hits of the seventies, eighties, and nineties.
Here are the hits. Karl Rove had a good idea the Democrat should do, and I'm talking about ballot initiatives, Rick Wilson, do a little TLDR on ballot initiatives in your former party because you're a Democrat now sorry.
Ballot initiatives are used by the Republican Party very frequently to do what we call shaping the battlefield. And so in two thousand and four, and remember, folks, try to look at this through the eyes of two thousand and four, the Republican Party, to a bunche of surveys.
Rick Wilson is letting us into his naughty past. Continue, sir, my dirty, dirty past stories that can only be told after dark or here on Fast Politics, or for people who I love him despite his previously fascist leanings. Continue.
Have you ever had fascist leanings? Per se per se?
It's like in South Park and said, I'm not a seguinary of Empire per se.
Yes.
So long story short, back in two thousand and four and some very smart researchers because by the way, Democrats never underestimate the fact that Republican Party has a gigantic number of really fucking smart people working for it. It's something you fail on a lot and you think, oh, there must be old dumb Bubba's.
Cousins.
There's a lot of fucking PhD numerical analysis people who do voterfil analysis.
In Boweling, we call those people evil because yes, continue that.
We have long story short. In two thousand and four, there was a discovery made that a lot of conservative Democrats, including a lot of African American women, were very turned off by the idea of gay marriage. Now, this was an era, by the way, where even Barack Obama was opposed to gay marriage, and everyone else in the democratic world was also opposed to gay marriage. The world changes. But but but Carl Rove said, hey, assholes, and the assholes were like a thousand guys like me go out.
And I didn't actually do the ballot initiative in Florida. I knew of it. I didn't pitch it. I didn't do it. I had a huge other thing I was doing. So long story short, the ballot initiatives went on the ballot. I f Florida, North Carolina, a couple other places banning gay marriage. This whole idea seems anathema to us now
and repugnant and all that other business. But for politics at that moment, it gave Republicans, as specifically evangelical Republicans, a hook to talk to an audience they could never otherwise talk to, which was African American evangelicals.
African Americans like Baptist Church.
Ladies would be the shortcut, as we would say it in the South, the ladies with the fancy hats on Sunday. Okay, if you have never really like explored African American church lady hats, it is an entire subculture in America.
It is delightful. It is delightful, wonderful people.
But they realized that was a weak part of the Democratic Party.
They did they found a hole in the Democratic base and they drove a truck through it. Now, it motivated white evangelicals through the roof, because of course, you know they're white evangelicals. That what else they want to do except make sure nobody else has an orgasm or enjoys.
Their life and give everyone a go on and make sure they have to carry a dead fetus Jesus Christ.
But for all that, these ballot initiatives ended up having a net positive effect for Republican turnout. This is a lesson Republicans have learned in many states over the years. They either exploit a Democratic ballot initiative to scare their people or they build their own ballot initiative to motivate their people. Okay, what you're going to see right now is the Democrats have learned in Kansas, Ohio twice, Kentucky, and Virginia this in the last so since Dobbs passed
in those states. Okay, and in Wisconsin's there's a lot of it in Wisconsin in twenty twenty two's state wides. But they've learned in every place it's been tested that the idea that Republicans are going and it's not just about abortion itself. It's about them using the power of government to tell you how to live your life. They're going to tell you you can't travel, They're going to tell you you have to report your period to the state just in case you're using that naughty birth control.
And they're expanding and expanding and expanding and expanding government overreach right the scope of power they want to apply to individual lives, and it's pissing people the hell off. I have a great story a few miles I have not told publicly yet. We'll call this person, at least an acquaintance.
We'll call this person Liz Chaining continue.
No one lives, but it's somebody who was traveling with Glenn Youngkin in the last week of the campaign. Okay, somebody who was a prominent person traveling with Youngkin, and the description of this to me was was fascinating, and I knew. I didn't say it out loud, but I knew. I heard this about a week before, eight days before the election. This person said to me, when Youngkin's out there raw rawing about they're going to kick the Democrats
ass and we're going to be a conservative state. He said, the whole audience they're going crazy, they're cheering. Everybody's going nuts because they also think Glenn Younkin is going to be president someday. Right, And then Youngkin would go and say, we're gonna pass a fifteen week abortion. Man, and he said, the guys in the audience are you know, hands in the air leaping out. And he goes in every woman's face in the in the audience and these are maga women.
These are conservative women. He goes, you can see their faces like switch off, like that that look you know when you walk in the house and you've done something really fucking stupid, and says, we need to talk.
That's the look.
It was the we need to talk look, and it was killing Republicans when you look at the math. Okay, when you look at the math in Ohio, the number that you end up with at the end of the day, by deductive math alone, means that about twenty five percent of Republican women crossed over to vote for this thing, and probably more. Right, and it means about sixty percent of unregistered or independent women had to vote for this thing, or probably more so.
Here's my question for you. This is like intellectual dishonesty comes home to roost. Right. The part of small government is very involved with women's menstrual cycles, right, They.
Really want to know exactly when you're going to have your cycle, because obviously we can't have women out there using credit cards or bank accounts to perhaps buy an airplane ticket or drive a car to a state where they might possibly be able to violate the laws of Gilead or whatever.
The fucking we're.
Hitting like a Fugitive Slave Act kind of moment here right where we're seeing different states trying to open the door to something where if we know, you know, if you drove someone to get an abortion and you live in Texas.
The most fascinating piece of news out of this week was the Ohio Republican Party. The speaker of the Republican House representatives. Essentially on election night, his answer to a statewide ballot insie that massed with fifty seven point seventy percent of the vote was.
Fuck you, fuck you women, right exactly. And here's the thing.
If a state was run by Muslims expressing this kind of thing, Republicans would rule tanks through the fucking streets. Okay, here's the thing. They have said, our religious beliefs absolutely override the Constitution of the United States, the courts of the United States, the constitution of their individual states, the courts of their individual states, the laws of their individual states.
They have decided that they're going to pursue. And look, Molly, I think for years and years and years, I've said this a lot. The side that overreaches on culture war issues is the side that loses, right.
And that's what Republicans have done this whole time.
And these people aren't like overreaching now, they're like bundling themselves up into a freight train, slapping a bunch of coal in the engine, pushing the throttles to the maximum limit,
and crashing through a fucking daycare center. The insanity level has reached the point where a very thoughtful Catholic conservative friend of mine the other day said to me, he goes, I have fought for life for a long time, not with laws or not to overturn row, but to change hearts and minds and to make adoption more available and to make support services more available.
And he said, I.
Am in hears he's because the work of my life. I will never convince another person that I'm doing this for reasons that can enrich the world. They're going to always think you don't like my vagina.
Yeah.
And then and this is a person, by the way, who is a honest to God, thoughtful, smart, well educated, truly kind person who has given of himself. I'm going to guesstimate several million dollars into the adoption space over the years. And craziness, it's just crazy.
Yeah, what I want to talk to you about with these Tuesday results as opposed to the fucking pulling, which I could honestly give two shits about. And I'm telling you the three thousand, six hundred people who answered unknown numbers on their cell phones and then proceeded to tell them how mad they were about Joe Biden.
And by the way, they oversampled the shit out of Republicans in.
The whole space.
They did, of course, But you know Dean Phillips and he needs the cash and soda, Steve Smith. But here's my question for you.
And you're trying to tempt me, are you.
I don't know what you're so here's the question. Though, when you're looking at Youngkin. One of the things I'm struck by, and I'm not sure we've seen the end of this, is that Youngkin said I'm a moderate. I'm a mega moderate, right, which is an oxymoron pobastor. That's the biggest lie they have going. But I'm a maga motterate. But here's the thing. Voters were not fooled, right, And even like a great example with Andy Buruscherer. Andy Bsherer
also ran against a quote unquote mega matter right. He was black, you know, he came from McConnell world. He was a little more mega moderate. He lost by more than Broucheer won the last time. So I do think there's a real thing happening here where voters are not being fooled by the idea of a MAGA moderate.
Discuss First off, the idea of a MAGA moderate is like a vegan cannibal It doesn't work, it's absurd.
But Youngkin shopped himself as that.
So Glenn Youngkin is advised by a guy named Jeff Row. Jeff Row is the biggest Republican consultant in the country.
Right, He makes a ton of money.
He made a hundred million dollars and lost eleven races in twenty twenty two.
So that's the kind of hit rate that that's the Republican Party.
With this listen, I wish I had that track record, that would be I would cry all the way to the bank with that track record. But he was Glenn Youngkin's consultant, still is Glen Youngkin's consultant. He's also contemporaneously advising Rond de Santis and has spent something like eighty million dollars of Rond de Santis's money. To see Rohnd de Santis crash in the polls, good work, Jeff.
To see a whole discourse on does Rond de Santis where heels or not?
Yeah, when you spent a week fighting about whether you were drag boots, you're not doing well as.
A campaign killing it. No, no no good.
So long story, short money, Jeff Row has been telling every major donor in the country and telling all these Republican activists. Young can can split the difference. He can go through the eye of the needle. He's the one who can get the magas and get the gentry Republicans. And it's all gonna And then it turns out that because to get the magas, you have to adopt a set of policy proposals, beliefs, worship of Donald Trump, a
whole set of rituals and statements that voters hate. So no, Glenn, you can't get the mogas and still get the normies. It doesn't work that way.
Again.
It's like being a vegan cannibal. There is no world where you can cross the two streams. There's no world where the horrific, grotesque, unacceptable nature of what the MAGA base wants. Eg you know, stay home in the kitchen, Honey, you're not pregnant again. It's been three three weeks that shit and all the craziness of conspiracies and immigrations.
If you don't accept all of it, they will kill you.
It's like those things in zombie movies where if people don't move too fast as zombies won't see them. But to win anybody else outside of the Maga base, you have to give away a signal and the magabase then will turn and you will destroy you. That's what happened to youngkin Well.
I also think the problem is this is not a policy. Donald Trump is not running on policy and he never has been. This is not a policy proposition. This is a certain kind of personality proposition for all of.
Donald Trump's five billion, seven hundred and nineteen thousand, three hundred and sixty three moral, personal, mental, social, ethical, political deficiencies. Donald Trump has a kind of crude, grunting charisma, and the people that love him love him because he's a dick. They love him because he's on your retribution. Donald Trump is the human permission to say the inWORD for his followers.
He's the human permission to tell everybody else to fuck off, and they'll burn it down if they don't get their way. And you know what, it's worked for him. It's worked as a political tool for him now for almost nine years. And I've been doing it since twenty fifteen, and I'm so old.
I feel like we just went right into like Rick Wilson therapy session, Like we were like and then he was like, and I'm so old.
The thing about it is no, there's no policy around Trump. It's all personality, it's all affect. It's all a show, it's all performance, and none of these other people can even get close to doing it.
Because they don't have the charisma. I mean, ultimately, this is like it comes back to the weird truth about presidential races, which is the guy who you want to have a beer with wins, and for some god unknown reason, people in the republic Party want to have a beer with the orange guy and the implanted wig.
There's been a long time since Trump beat every Republican in twenty sixteen, where very smart people have sat in focus groups and sat in conference rooms and tried to devise the secret sauce we're going to lure back the Republican base from Donald Trump. And this idea you can have a magical word or phrase that breaks the spell of Donald Trump is wrong. He's a necromancer. He is going to kill the party before he gives it up, and it's almost dead as it is. I mean, look,
they have had consecutive election losses. If you take an in aggregate national scale, and that's Congress, Senate, state houses, state senates, local officials. They've lost almost two thousand seats since twenty sixteen. They're smaller and weaker and crazier. And if redistricting wasn't so incredibly powerful, the Republicans would be basically a rump regional sort of political party. But they're
not because of the Electoral College and redistricting. And so that's why we're in a position where a madman who is promising to burn America to the ground has people going, that's what I want more of.
That for a dollar.
Who do you think Trump picks as a vice president chill nominee candidate?
My money right now, And I will tell you why my money is right now, because of the obvious makeo her, the and the and the low cut blouses lately. And I mean that in the exactly the sexist way Donald Trump does. Is Nancy Macey. She's out there being like the biggest Trump girly. The two people inside the Republican Party who desperately want to be vice president okay, who are obvious about it, who are campaigning for it every day,
are at least staphonic. And Nancy Mace Carrie Lake had her moment, and you know, Trump said, the money's on the nightstand, Get the fuck out.
Okay, Yeah, I was hoping we could plumb the depths of sexism, and I see we have.
Yes, Well what I am channeling Donald Trump?
No, no, I appreciate it.
He was notoriously not not a man who has ever treated women with shall we say respect or fairness. But Stephanic and Mace right now are the two that everybody said the GP is talking about. Mace is trying to work it. Remember how they made Sarah Huckabe get a makeover when she was Press secretary. Nancy mace is doing the same thing, and she's like the wide eyed makeup look and the whole big hair thing. Now she's really working on him from what we're hearing, like her people
are like down at mar A Lago. My goodness, mister Trump, you look handsome today. All the usual ass kissing crap. Now, look does South Carolina? If he's worried about South Carolina, it's not going to exactly help him. But it's amazing to me that Nancy Macell used to be on calls about never Trump stuff with me back about five years ago. So good looking out, Nancy, don't think I forgot Thank you, Rick Wilson, you are as always tremendously Welcome.
Jonathan Carl is the chief Washington correspondent for ABC News and author of Tired of Winning, Donald Trump and the End of the Grand Old Party. Welcome back to Fast Politics, John.
Carl, Thanks for having me back. It's great to be here.
Well, you write books very fast, so we have to be back. But so let's talk about this book. It must be so strange when you started this book, did you think that Trump would be the Republican front runner?
The honest answer is now, I started this book thinking that I would be writing about the kind of sad demise of a disgraced former president. I was there, I'd described in the book. I was there for his announcement in November of twenty twenty two, when he announced his third presidential campaign, and it was a pathetic affair. I mean, nobody of any consequence from the Trump White House or
even the other two Trump campaigns was there. Most of his family skipped the event, as you remember, couldn't show up. Don Junior apparently had some flight troubles even though he been there. Just a couple of days earl. None of the former confirmed cabinet secretaries were there, none of his former chiefs of staff, none of his former press secretaries, none of his former campaign managers. It was as if they had all kind of washed their hands of him
and thought that he was going to fade away. And it sure looked that way. But by the way, Molly, it got worse in the coming weeks. If you remember, it was about a week later that he dined with Kanye Nick Fuentes was about a week or two after that that he said, you'd be proposed suspending the constitution.
If you look at the polls from December of twenty twenty two, a month after he announced his presidential campaign, he was actually losing to Ron DeSantis, who had an anounced he was running yet, and he was losing pretty decisively. There was a Wall Street Journal poll that had DeSantis in the fifties and Trump at thirty eight percent. This did not look like a guy that was going to be the front runner for anything.
Yeah, let's talk about Ron de Santis for a minute, because he could have been the Republican nominee. I mean, last January it really seemed like he could have this and he was running on this sort of trumpsm without the charisma, a sort of deluded you know, sort of putting in policy that the sort of policies that Trump might have supported, had he supported policies.
Yeah, and I think that there are multiple factors that have led to Trump going from being a disgraced former president on his way to oblivion to being the clear front runner for the Republican nomination. One of those things is the utter weakness of the Ron DeSantis campaign. The appeal of Trump was never about policy. There are no real Trump policies. I mean, you know, he talks about the border, he talks about making our allies pay more
for defense. If you've spent any time with him at the White House, he spend more time talking about his new color scheme for Air Force one. He got very excited about. Yes, yes, you know, so here comes DeSantis. Trump is engaging. I mean, people watch the guy. They want to know what's going to happen next DeSantis. There's nothing anything you collude to a Ron dessiontist speech.
That is true. I mean, he's the front runner. Last week he was in court, he acted out pretty crazily. We've never had a front run on our goog will spend the year he's running for president in and out of court facing ninety one indictments. How do you cover this? How do you look down the barrel of a year of what is so profoundly abnormal and also how profoundly abnormal he was as president.
I don't think any of us really know what this is going to look like. But I will tell you this because I just had to go back to make sure that the math was correct on this. But his testimony in New York in the civil case against his company was the eighth day that he has spent in that courtroom over the last month. So he has spent more days in court before any of these actual criminal
indictments have gone to trial. This is the civil case against his company, where he has not required to be there. He was required to testify, but he wasn't required to be there when Michael Cohen took the stand or sons took the stance, or any of that. And yet he spent more time in that courtroom then he spent on actual campaign events. And that will continue, I mean, it will accelerate likely. Obviously, their main legal strategy is to
delay and postpone any trials until after the election. They're not going to be able to do that across the board. It sure seems like the January sixth federal case is going to happen in early twenty twenty four. That's a major trial. He's going to have Tybee in court. This
is nothing approaching a traditional campaign. This is a guy who has spent very little time actually going out and doing the rallies that animated his campaigns six in twenty twenty, he has spent much time either playing golf, meeting with his lawyers, or now in court.
Yeah, have you seen a shift in the rallies. I've read reporting that he's quieter in some rallies anyway, and that though I've seen both, and that there's this contradiction because these rallies are not as blustrous as they once were, at least some of them. And also there are lass and also his message is this bizarre message of retribution. So explain to me what to make of any of those.
Well, the message is retributions. So one thing he didn't have when he launched last November was a coherent message. It was teleprompter Trump, and they had encouraged him not to talk about the twenty twenty campaign, because if you remember, they had just come out of the midterms where Republicans had lost so decisively, especially that we're obsessed with stop
the Steal in twenty twenty. So he delivered this kind of mix of policy stuff that he doesn't care about and has a little interest in, and a few old stories. I mean, it was a really dull and lackluster speech. But as the indictments approached, he found a new message, and I think Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, was a big part of helping him find this message. And that message is in the words of his Seapac speech earlier this year, I am your retribution. This is a
campaign of retribution against his enemies. And he's not really talking about the Democrats here. In some cases, he's not even really talking about the prosecutors. He's talking about Republicans who have dared tried to get in his way or haven't been sufficiently loyal. It's an odd message for a presidential campaign. It has very little to do with the concerns of most voters right now, which are questions about the economy, real concerns about Biden and his abilities going forward.
This is a weird message of let's go out and destroy our enemies. His first campaign rally, which I devoted some time to and it was months after his announcement, but his first actual rally was in Waco, Texas. As Steve Bannon told me when I call him, weako, are you kidding me? What Branch Davidians? And his answer was, we are the Trump Davidians.
Yikes, do two seconds on the Branch Davidians. For those who.
Don't remember, the Branch Davidians were a cult whose headquarters called Mount Carmel, was in Waco. They had a legendarily awful showdown with federal law enforcement. The Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco bire ARMS had mentioned a siezure of Waco because they believed that the group was stockpiling weapons, and the siege lasted for some time, and as federal law enforcement encircled the place, they eventually went in and there was a massive inferno and more than fifty people were killed.
Very strange thing to say we are the Trump Davidians, given what happened there. But Waco became this symbol to the far right of government, of a government out of control of government out to get its people. So it spawned a whole movement of armed militia groups who felt that they needed to stockpile weapons, do some basic training in parking lots and out in the woods, just in case the Feds came after them, they would be ready
to fight back for real. One of those inspired by all this was Timothy McVeigh, who, a year after Waco, a year to the day after the inferno in Waco, bombed of the federal building in Oklahoma City, killing one hundred and sixty eight people, the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in American history. So this is a strange place to begin your presidential campaign. Now, when you talk to the Trump people as the data approach, they said, oh, no,
it's just a coincidence. We're going to Texas because Texas is an important state. As you know, Molly, Texas is not an important state in the Republican primary process. It's not a battleground state and the general election. There's no reason have your launch at Texas. And if you're going to be in Texas, Wacos. I mean, it's quite a
coincidence to be in Waco. So to hear Bannon, who is really the guy who I think is given Trump this new message that has given a rebirth to his third presidential campaign to hear him just declare we are the Trump Davidians. It is not by accident. It is because Trump this new message is to portray our own federal government as the true enemy, the deep state. Anybody who is can be portrayed as going after Trump.
It's such a scary idea, right because it does feel and again, you know, we can't ever talk about what's in people's hearts and minds, but it certainly feels like this is sort of playing on the kind of anti government impulses. They could really turn dangerous, There's no question.
I mean, we saw the anti government impulses turned dangerous on January sixth. Obviously, we also saw them turn dangerous in you know, shortly after the FBI did the search at mar A Lago, when he saw Gunman go into an FBI field office in Ohio. The undertones of violence are all there. I at another point, I talked to everybody around Trump and the writing of this book to try to understand where they were coming from and what they were doing. And Bannon spoke to me for quite
a bit on the record and one state. One thing he said to me really stood out, which is I asked him, aren't you worried that all this will lead to violence? And without missing a beat, his answer was no, because we are going to win.
Yes, it's really scary.
And the apocalyptic way in which this election is described by Trump. You know, we called this, he says, twenty twenty four is our final battle. I mean, it sounds like they're building up for something bigger than January sixth. You know that if this all ends in a Trump loss, either in the Republican primary, which I think is still possible, by the way, or in a general election, it's not going to end with a Trump concession.
No, He's never conceded to anything ever, and he never will tell me why You think he could still not get the nomination, because that's totally fascinating.
Because I think that he is incredibly volatile, more volatile than he has ever been. I think he is more divorced from reality than he has ever been. We just don't know how he's going to react as we head into the actual criminal trials. I think that those are necessarily what's you know, there's one theory that you know these Republicans that will vote for an indicted residential candidate
won't vote for a convicted one. I'm not sure that's true, but look, I don't think that people have paid much attention to Trump over the past two and a half years. May sounds strange to say.
No, I think that's completely right.
You know, the trials have gotten all kinds of attention, and we've all, you know, January sixth hearings and all that, but Trump himself and what he has been up to and what he's talking about now and where his head is at A good chunk of the two years after he left, two years after he left the White House, truly pursuing this insane QAnon notion that there was a way that Joe Biden would be evicted from the White House, that the twenty twenty election would be somehow overturned even
after it was certified, even after the inauguration, after all of that, and that he would go back into the White House before the next presidential election. I first saw some of this stuff, just you know, the kind of whack jobs like Michae Lindell and I mean Trump. I learned as I was saying, what is he up to what's he talking to people about what's going on behind
the walls in mar A Lago. And he was, you know, tracking the cyber Ninja's recount out in Arizona like it was really something that was going to overturn the election results there. I mean, we're talking long after the election was over. This is crazy stuff, and that it was going to lead to this kind of domino effect in the other states, that he was going to be back
in the White House. So and now you see, you know, just the other day speech in Texas, he's talking about the people that are that have been convicted of attacking police officers on January sixth, of breaking into the US Capitol building. He's talking about them as hostages. Now he
says that they're not they're not prisoners, they're hostages. He is more divorced from reality than he was on January six And I don't think that the polls in any way reflect that, don't I don't think even the vast majority of Republican primary voters are quite aware of what Trump has become. And as you get closer, there will need to be more scrutiny, They'll need to be more coverage. I mean, Fox stopped covering him. This is not just
the so called mainstream media. I mean, you know, Fox basically turned away from him, and that actually helped him because people didn't see I.
Think that's such a great point, and I also think that Fox actually did him a favor. We don't know, you know, obviously, who is to know what's happening in the hearts and minds of the Fox empire where it stands now. But I do think that as we talk about this, I mean, when you watch these rallies that
aren't getting that much coverage. The thing I've been bringing up recently is this idea he confused Jeb Bush with w Bush like it wasn't even you know, he said he ran against the guy who started the Iraq War. So there certainly does seem like his time lapse problems that he's never had before.
I mean, he thinks that the guy he ran against was Obama. I mean, it's right exactly. So, yeah, the mental acuity is not solely a question that Biden has to address, but it's more than that. It's this extreme agenda. It's an agenda I think a lot of what is driving the poles. You know, all these kinds of hypothetical,
which doesn't seem so hypothetical anymore. Trump Biden rematch polls, whether it be the New York Times battleground state, you know, polls over the weekend, or you know, any number of the general election matchups, would show that Trump is either tied with Biden or beating Biden. A lot of that is based on the fact that the overwhelming majority of Americans like the country is on the wrong track. This is not some well this people suddenly think, you know,
Trump is the savior. But I've spent a fair amount of time in Iowa with the various candidates, have been at some Trump events, have been at some DeSantis events, you know how notoriously unreliable pulling in the Iowa CAU. Because this has been over the years, especially a couple of months out, it really wouldn't surprise me to see
Trump not win in Iowa. And then the question is, given this volatility, given where his head is at, and given that he'll be staring down the beginning of his first Special Council trial, how does he react to that? How to Republican voters react to his reaction? I mean again, we'll see, certainly, look he's the overwhelming front runner. Obviously, he's talked about by most people as the presumptive nominee. It's almost like he's an incumbent. But I am not convinced.
John.
I hope you will come back. Thank you so much.
Thank you for having me, Molly. It's great to talk to you.
Brian Stelter is the author of Network of Lies, The Epic Saga of Fox News, Donald Trump, and the Battle for American Democracy. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Brian Stelder.
It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you.
The book is called Network of Lies, but I love this excerpt in Rolling Stone with Laura Ingram on the Fox News division. They aren't smart. Just explain to us where that comes from.
It comes from this amazing treasure trove of materials that Dominion Voting Systems obtained through its lawsuit against Fox. That treasure trove is why I had to write this book. I was not out there looking to write about Fox anymore. I was enjoying my time off after being haustiff from CNN. I've been living the dream Molly told you about that last time we talked. But then these emails and text messages surfaced through the Dominion case, and they were so
damning and so revealing. I have never seen a media company expose like this on the record before. So yeah, you have lor Ingram complaining, bitching and moaning about the journalists of Fox, the correspondents saying they're not smart, Hannity doing the same thing.
The serious people right, like the foreign policy people.
Right. You have these primetime stars saying the news division breaks no news. Ever, Hannity says they hate all three of us, And you know what, Hannity wasn't wrong. The tension was very real, and the tension still is very real between the propagandists and the people who they come from a conservative point of view. Yeah, they're flawed, but at least they're trying to be in the news business.
No, I mean, I think that's a really good point, and I would love it if you could just talk about that more. There are these people right there are kind of know, you know, some of them are very very good even you know, there are real reporters in that network.
Yeah, I would say there are fewer and fewer every year, but there are some people still putting up a fight. Jackie Heinrich is one of them. She's a White House correspondent. I write about the text messages disparaging her, and you have Hannity saying, she's a twenty seven year old fake reporter wrecking our network. You know, he wants to fight with these people, he wants to fight with his own colleagues. And by the way, the head of Fox News, Suzanne Scott,
she sides with the opinion people. She sides with the propagandists, so the big liars of the Big lie, she sides with them over the reporters. There's a remarkable email that I think kind of got missed in the initial coverage last spring. Remember when Dominion Fox settled, some of these emails and texts came out and there was some attention around it. But because I spent months reconstructing this and going through all all the emails, I found these other
examples that were just mind blowing to me. You had Suzanne Scott, the head of Fox News, saying that a fact check, some random reporter fact checking handed and fact checking Trump was quote bad for business. It has to stop. Like it was that kind of stuff that was going on inside Fox where the management was siding with the liars over the truth tellers.
Because it's for ratings.
Because it's for ratings, it's for profits. I would say, ultimately, Susann Scott, you know, she has to hit her profit targets, keep the money flowing in. And here's the kind of sad but true part of the story. It worked, She worked, They succeeded. You know, Fox's audience bounced back. The network remains the beating heart of the GOP, for better and for worse.
Oftentimes for worse does feel like Fox is a little bit quieter lightly.
I think that is because of Tarer Carlson's oulster, and that's how Fox wants it. Fox wanted to lower the volume. Laughlin Murdoch wanted to lower the volume because he thinks at the end it goes back to the profit targets. He thinks it's better for business to be, you know, a little less scandalous, a little less controversial. I hesitate to say this, Molly, because when I look at the network, I see scandalous and misinformation all the time. Right there
is nonsense on the air on any given day. Is a whole lot to fact check. You know, you could have an entire department trying to debunk the bs on Fox every day. But that said, at least Tucker Carlson's not on the air doing what Tarer Carlson did, you know what I mean, there is a market change from what happened when Tucker was there.
Yeah, it's still the lie, right, It's just the lie is quieter. You're not seeing sort of your friends. I mean, the thing I was always shocked by was you would just see people like Ben Collins or Taylor or this one or that one just you know, Tucker would just go after them and say these insane things and then they're you know, they'd have to basically go and dide it.
Maybe this is the wrong analogy. I haven't tried it out before, but it's a difference between like an F and a D minus. You know, like Fox is still failing, but it's not doing it in as explosive and in crazy a way. And I think that's intentional on the part of Lachlan and Suzann Scott. They want the tone to be slightly different so that the likes of Media Matters or you know, More and Joe are not talking about them as much. And again I think that's the strategy.
If that's true, right, They're trying to be sort of quieter but still run this sort of thing, this sort of the tension is make Trump happy, but don't make Trump too happy.
Oh, the Trump Fox relationship is so twisted, and he keeps getting more and more and more twisted, because I would argue, you know, Fox is fundamentally in Trump's camp. They think they're better at being Trump than Trump. Like they think they do. Trump isn't better than Trump, you know, And there's a conflict there. For sure. Trump will never be satisfied with what he hears and sees on Fox. It's not in his DNA to be satisfied by the
media coverage of his campaign. But that said, Fox is doing tremendous favors every day, whether he wants to admit that and see that or not. Like what I think, every day, Fox is accepting his status as the lifely nominee. I think Fox is not putting up the roadblocks that we saw year or two ago, you know, where there was a lot of attention and promotion of Ron de Santis. There is an acceptance of Trump and doesn't have to
be that way. You know, do you think I'm crazy to say that no, Fox could put up more of a fight, I guess is what I'm trying to sell. Ultimately, Trump is the leader and Fox is just the follower, and it doesn't have to be that way. Yes, he rants about Fox on True's social Yes he complains, but he also gives interviews to the network. And he may not admit this, but it's.
Clear to me.
Fox is doing him favors every day. They're helping him to support him in so many ways. I had a source say to me as I was finishing the book, and so I added this at the very end. Murdoch family friends say to me, Rupert hates Trump. He can't believe we're going to end up back with Trump. But the thing about that quote, it was so frustrating when I heard. I believe it's true. I think that is the true posture of Ruper Murdoc and his son Lachlin.
They've accepted Trump is going to be the nominemos lya. But Fox's programming moves and rhetorical postures. They're not resisting. They're accommodating. You know, they're not putting up a fight. They're going along with this.
The sequel, isn't that because they think, at least again, I don't want to give anyone any credit here, but basically they did sort of try after January six and the viewers were like, no, we're going along with Trump.
That's right. I think it's important to recognize and when Trump perceives the Fox was against him, he's right. That's not a conspiracy theory. There was a conspiracy, Ruper Murdock said, and we now know it thanks to the dominion treasure trove. He said, we want to make Trump a non person.
We're pivoting away from Trump. There was a great email I found from Suzanne Scott to Rupert in the weeks after January sixth, saying, Hannity is is going to lead the seventy five million away from Trump meeting those seventy five million voters vote for Trump handed, He's going to lead them away from Trump. This was very much a concerted effort inside Fox, but it fizzled. It fizzled.
He couldn't do it. He wasn't more powerful than Trump.
Ultimately, I suppose that's right, although there's a part of me that thinks if Fox was more reality based, if the hosts were held accountable by the management, I think there could have been a very different path.
But once they got to that point, they couldn't pull back.
If Fox viewers heard every day a more truthful account of what Trump is and what he says and what he represents, if there was a focus on the most incendiary and dangerous comments he makes as opposed to you know, like a frat boy party atmosphere when talking about Trump, there was a more reality based assessment of Trump by right wing media, we might be in a different place, but I understand that that's an impossibility.
Yeah, it's interesting, though. Tell me about what you see now at CNN, because I'm curious so much has happened at that network. I'm curious what your take is. Since you've been in it, you've been out of it, you've been in it, what's your take.
My take is in CNN is firing in all cylinders, you know. I think CNN, MSNBC, and NBC, ABC, CBS. With this election, there's going to be networks that are reality based and networks that are not. And you know, it seems to me CNN is right the right in the place it should be saying the truth about what's happening. I think some of the attempts last year, which again, I only I perceived, just like you, from the outside, attempts to show that the network was open to Trump.
That was obviously very fraud very stressful for staffers who felt like they weren't able to speak truth to power. But it feels to me, and maybe I'm wrong, it feels to me that that period or that phase, whatever that was, is over. That's just me as a viewer, But I think when it comes to Trump or other want to be autocrats, networks like CNN have to be louder than the liars. And that's what I think CNN was doing in the Trump ears, That's what I think
hosts like, surely we're trying to do. We weren't always getting it right, but we were trying to be louder than the liars, and we were trying to speak truth to power. And that's what I see CNN doing now.
And you don't feel like they're still a sort of Trump is not a normal Republican candidate, but he does seem like he's being largely treated that way.
I guess I might take that comment and turn it around and say, Trump now is the normal Republican party and that's the store. Perhaps is that he is now what the party is.
I mean, I agree with that to a certain extent, But like I think you and I can both agree that if you elected a Tim Scott or Nikki Haley. I mean, certainly those two people are very problematic with very problematic views, but they will not in democracy with quite the same zeal as a Donald Trump.
There's definitely a market difference, right, I.
Mean, Donald Trump is planning to execute Mark Milly. I mean, this is not normal stuff. Maybe Vivak would also execute Mark Milly. He did call Zelenski a Nazi, so and he is Jewish. That's pretty disgusting, But he doesn't have a sort of plan to kill people who were in his administration.
You may have made me speechless, Molly, because when you say it that way, you know, it makes makes me think.
I mean, I just don't know how you horse race this when he is clearly planning something that we've ever seen.
Well, part of me wonders if what we're seeing is just very very early stage coverage because there have not been votes yet, because we have not had primaries yet. I would like to think, I would like to hope, I would like to believe that there will be more intensive and more challenging coverage of those claims of Trump's plans in twenty twenty four, you know, when there's an
actual primary season. But that might let the media off the hook to say that we're still in the pregame mode because all of this, as you said, is actively happening.
I'm thinking about Margaret Sullivan's really good piece today. We saw this polang again. Three thousand people, six states, but they are the six states that matter, you know, saying that Trump had better mental acuity. It doesn't matter how cute you are if you're sending people the gitmo because
they drew an unflattering court sketch of you. I mean, I think that the gravity of what Donald Trump is has not been accurately explained to people, people who read the mainstream media, and that is a problem.
I'm with you, But I think the bigger problem is that the likes of Fox and Newsmax don't even flinch when they hear about some of these stories, don't even bother to spend the time. I'm backing it. And then the even more troubling part is there's a lot of Americans who apparently want what Trump is selling.
He's a charismatic charlatan who even cares if he's a psychobouther or not. He's a Charlotte, and he's shopping something that the American people, some of the American people, think they want. What I'm struck by, though, if we're gonna journey back to twenty sixteen twenty fifteen, is that you know, you'd watch those rallies and they would be so unhinged. But the thing that he would offer people that Hillary would not. And obviously I'm not two citing this voted
for Hillary. But the thing that I think is really relevant is he was offering people something. Right. He was saying, come with me, I will bring your jobs back, I will do this, I will do that. He didn't do any of those things. But these people nobody like explained to them that he didn't do any of those things. Right, So isn't now a failing on the mainstream media like he says? And even now you'll say, you know, we're
going to build a wall with Mexico. Actually we've already built it and it's there, right, We've already built it into there.
Okay.
And then now Congress Mike Johnson is like, we need to get going on this wall. Are the people who are supposed to tell Donald Trump, to tell Donald Trump's people that there is no wall, right.
I mean, I think this gets to more of a profound psychological problem. And that's maybe why I'm less critical of the media and more interested in what's going on in people's brains about this. Like I end Network of Lies with this quote from a guy that was at the Iowa State Fair in August. Trump had just been indicted again. So an NBC reporter came up to this guy named Jeff, a school custodian in Iowa, and said,
do you care that he's been indicted four times? And the man said no, it just makes me want to vote for him more. And the reporter said why and the man said, And this, to me is the whole ballgame, he said, because whoever the Democrats hate is who I like. And I think we need to cover politics more through that prism and less through the you know, who's who's spending the most. I mean, it's all important, who's spending the most money, what are the policy positions? All that's important.
But I think it's like we need more, We need more psychologists on television to explain this to us, because what we're going through is a battle of the soul and the heart and the brain. Do you know what I'm saying. There's no fact check that's going to change his thinking about politics.
I mean, yes, except that he doesn't understand that the Trump's legal problems are of Trump zone making and not of the Democratic Party zone maker.
Right.
But no, We're amount of reporting or fact checking your narrative, debunking or anything is going to is going to get through to a wide swath of voters who only trust Jesse Waters and only trust Eric Bowling and only trust our Carlson.
Again, when we were talking about this earlier, I mean you did say that if Eric Bowling and Tucker Carlson and Greg Gottfeld explanation point. I mean, if they were to go on television and say like, look, here are the other Republicans and Democrats who have committed fraud with their accounting, and this is what happened to them, right.
I mean part of it is there's a certain lack of knowledge where people don't understand that there's precedent for all of this stuff, right, Like if you leak classified documents, even if you're just showing off at a dinner, you go to jail no matter who you are, right, I mean, think of all the military generals and the captains and the lower level people even who ended up spending the rest of their lives in jail because they took a document that they weren't supposed to do and sent it
to someone. I mean, I do think there's a lack of explanation here about precedent. And what you said before is if the right wing media were able to you know, if they just explained this again and again and again, people would get it.
And that is why, like in Network of Lise, I come to this idea of followers versus leaders that people think Fox is leading. I think Fox should be leading. I think Rubert and Lochla Murdock have an ethical and moral responsibility to share truthful information to an audience that is starving for truth. However, Fox is not leading, they're just following. People think they're leaders, they think they're in
the driver's seat and they're actually the passenger. And that's why the car keeps crashing, right, That's why the car keeps crashing because they're not driving. They should be driving. But that said, there's going to be a moment where there's going to be a trial and there's going to be a verdict. In that moment, the verdict will be read and people will hear it. Maybe that matters still right because your point about class, about ever reason, Maybe
the verdict will still matter. Or maybe the propagandists will just shout so loudly that people can ignore the verdict and tell themselves are about themselves.
Brian Stelter, thank you for joining me.
Thank you. I don't know if this made us feel better or worse, but it's important to talk about.
No moment.
Rick Wilson, you are a special fackery gas.
I try to always bring the fuckery is all right, listen, this is a sort of not national politics fuckery, but I have to say it. I really thought New York could not have a worse mayor than build a Blasio, and.
Yet somehow.
I feel attacked.
How is it that your mayor has somehow gotten swept up in an FBI rate about Turkish influence money?
I mean, get the fuck out of what is going on.
My favorite part of this story is that no one is surprised, literally if you the fact that they talk our mayor's cell phone that the FBI decided they needed to confiscate both his cell phone and his iPads. There is not a person who we know, Jesse Cannon. Do you know anyone who was surprised by that bit?
Absolutely, DoD Look, I'm not surprised.
I'm just fascinated, Like, how is it that he combines like so much obvious grifting and incompetence and tone deafness in one package early in his term.
It really does amaze me.
The mayoral curse, it's real, man, it's real.
Listen as a former senior advisor to the mayor of New York City and w Giuliani.
Who makes them all look pretty good. And by the way, I'm no fan of Rudy Juliani.
Rudy's problem is the mayoral curse and the everything Trump touches dies curse.
Had a dirty weekend.
I produced the single worst set of outcomes for any individual.
Yeah, I think that's right. Oh, you want to know what my moment of fucker is?
I do. I was just going to ask.
It is the laddered cr so mega Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House. It's about to be Thanksgiving. He's already shopped this idea that he's going to do his laddered CR. Everyone, including I think Mitch McConnell, told him to shut the fuck up once again.
When Mitch McConnell is the the most serious person in Washington and the Republicans hate him more than they hate Chuck Schumer or HACKEM Jefferies. I'm not standing for Mitch McConnell. I'm just saying, may he live at least another year to continue torturing Mike Johnson.
I'm not sure that he weighed in on this, but everyone else has weighed in and said that a laddered CR is a last minute patch to keep the government from shutting down. Mike Johnson said, We're going to do it in a laddered way so it keeps coming up at different times to make everyone come back from vacation. Not only do Republicans hate it, Democrats hate it. Everyone hates it. Where are like seven more days of government funding until a shut down? Right?
I was also told by a donor about this. You guys sent me an email this morning. They said, you understand that the rating agencies will lose their fucking minds if he does.
This is nobody's never happening.
It's madness.
It's madness. So and by the way, I would like to point out the Republicans who were so pro Israel and obsessed with Israel. No funding they have done, no funding.
Is that a damn thing.
If you think they give a shit about anyone, you're wrong. I think we're going to see a government shut down, or somebody's going to scramble, or five Republicans are going to vote with the Democrats. Seems unlikely to May.
This was inevitable when Johnson was elected Speaker. The rule that would kill him if Matt Gates or any of these other morons gets a hard on to say, oh.
Look him anymore. He's voted for them big lib TRD budgets. He'll go.
The one person motion to vacate is still there.
We're ungovernable. That's really something you want to hear from your from from the leaders of the the body of the legislative body that represents the vast majority of the American people.
Good luck and that is our moment of fuckery. Thank you, Rick Wilson.
As always, I am delighted to be with you, and I will see you again next week here on Fast Politics.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday on 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.