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 Senator Tommy Tuberville still won't lift his military blockade even as the death toll rises in the Middle East. We have a star studded show today live from the Texas Tribune Fest. We have a super fun forum I was part of, featuring MSNBC's Katie Fang and Ali Batally, former New York City mayoral candidate and the mayor of My Heart, Maya Wiley, and Sisters in
Law's host Joyce fans. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List fan favorite and my friend the Lincoln Projects, Rick Wilson. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Rick Wilson.
Hey, MOLLI joung Fast. How are you this afternoon?
Well, so I've been up since three am Mountain time. I think it's mountain time, so that's ten thousand hours.
Yes, and I rarely, I rarely sleep late, but I was in bent till nine am this morning. It's a beautiful fall Sunday day here in Florida. It got cool and breezy, and I think the technical term for what we've done all day today is a fuck all.
Nothing well. Our own lives may be okay, the state of the world seems just absolutely beyond the pale. Everything is just so incredibly fucked up.
In the last two days, Yeah, and look, I mean, the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel have really emphasized two things in my mind, my usual snark in joking aside. For a second, we had a rules based international order for seventy years that worked, and when Trump took office, he abandoned that. And while Joe Biden is president now, the Republicans that are in the Trump Party have continued to behave as if Trump is still president, and they've abandoned it again. As much as they pay lip service
to Israel. The first thing they're doing at a moment where there are American dead murder by Hamas and hostages taken by Hamas, what are the Republicans doing. They're trying to blame Joe Biden for some imaginary like, oh, we paid for it tax dollars, American tax dollars.
It paints it's a travesing dollars.
And just to emphasize once again for the audience who already know this, that is a lie told by the August and right, it's.
From the Iran Deal nuclear deal, it was, it's money that's in a South Korean bank account.
Money that's South Korea, right, owed Iran is it is in a bank account in Qatar, and it is administered for humanitarian and food aid only by the US Treasury. None of it has actually been released yet. And the idea that this attack somehow happened like three weeks ago and they go, yeah, we got six billion dollars, let's attack Israel. Oh bullshit. This attack wasn't planning for a very life.
And I think what's important here is that what it did. And I want to get to the Republican Congress right now because that I think is the net of it is a lot of Republicans were like, this is the worst thing that's ever happened. Also, it's it's Joe Biden's fault. And you had Sarah Ronda Rona, McDaniel, ray Romney on television saying this carnage is a great opportunity for Republicans. It was like there wasn't even a second of like, oh my god. It went straight to like how can
we politicize this? So I want you to talk about there is right now no Speaker of the House. There is a pro templar speaker who is very adorable and stands on a crate. His politics suck, but he is very short.
He isn't a magical tree.
He's very cute. Patrick McHenry, he's teeny teeny, stands on a little crate. We're not making fun of him because he's short. We're making fun of him because he's inevitably a horrendous human being. But he could be the speaker if he had the votes, but he doesn't. So it looks like Keem Jeff was briefed. So now you have two people, neither of whom are the speaker, neither of whom are running the House of Representatives.
Discuss This is an example of the fundamental unseriousness of today's maga Republican Party to go through a couple of you and I talked about the separately the other day. The fact that Republicans are trying to blame the Democrats for Matt Gates and his hoarde Austin Kevin McCarthy is amazing,
first off, ludicrous to the extreme. The second part you're seeing here is these are the same people who have been all buddied up to Vladimir Putin for the last year and a half since the initial invasion of Ukraine, you know, calling Ukrainians Nazis and every other way to please Putin in the book, and suddenly you know they
see something. Well, you know, Putin's terrorist attacks are fine, but the Hamas terrorist attacks, those draw they're so hypocritical and so disconnected from again going back to what I talked about in the beginning, a rules based world order where American could be counted on to support its allies and to stand up against its enemies, and to stand up against nations and leaders and countries that behave like
either Russia or Hamas is doing right now. We're not going to settle the Israeli Palestinian crisis on this podcast. But what you have here is a moment where the alliance between Hamas and Iran and between Hamas and Russia, which they visited Russia, the leadership, the Hamas leadership visited Russia in the spring of this year, and you ended up with what clearly looks like a lot of Russian drones being used. This thing was planned well in advance. It did not come from.
But I don't want to get too stuck on foreign policy just because I don't want to get over our skis here and I don't think the people as much as people love us for our foreign policy bona fides, I would like to more move back to the republic House because this week is going to be what they say, what they say, what they call in French, a tremendous shit show of the most epic precortions and only made worse by what's not going.
To get just rusty, but I believe it's Imma de Monte, which is like throwing shit around. Yeah, so let's.
Talk about that, because so there's going to be first, there was going to be a televised debate on Fox News, which I have to say, like they clearly were just like, how can we get the most attention for this? Oh, I know Brent Behar will host a televised debate. And then they were like, oh, that seems like too much. Okay, we're not going to do that. I mean even that, when I said that, I was like, has that ever happened before? No, completely unprecedented.
Look, the idea, the idea that the Republican Caucus is going to do anything except support Trump's Trump's weird trained monkey. Jim Jordan is utterly ridiculous. Yes, they would prefer Scalise. Yes, they'll go in the in the caucus room and they'll say, Steve, you're the greatest guy ever, and I love you. And when it comes down to it, they recognize that the bass looks at Scalise, who is by no means a moderate, a little centrist. He's out there on the god damn
ragged edge. David without the baggage. Yeah, he's out there on the ragged edge. He's not crazy enough.
Yeah.
Jim Jordan, though, man, that is the pure shit. That is the uncut coke coming up from Bogata in the fast boats. That is the real dude. That is the stuff.
So let's talk about the uncut pure Jim Jordan. Jacket list Jim the sort of rumpel Stiltskin of our current healthscape.
Another we fell up.
Either way, it's a secret ballad the voting, So theoretically it's.
A secret ballot in the caucus. They're gonna know, believe me that, But where they're gonna go to the floor, they have to go to the floor. So it's gonna be a ballot on the floor. They're gonna vote for the guy on the floor.
So you think they really will make Jim Jordan the speaker because and I mean, if that happens, see, I feel like it's too much of a democratic fever dream, Like come on, elect the craziest person you've ever fucking thought of. Like it seems too crazy, but you think they're gonna do it.
Let me tell you what's gonna happen, every fucking one, Because here's the theory that everybody should internalize in their heads. And it took me a long time to get there as a former Republican. Okay, there are no good guys left in the party, none of them, even the ones in Joe Biden districts. Oh, Don Bacon's a good guy. No, he's not a piece of shit. Okay, Don Bacon is going to be just like the rest of them. They're all gonna vote for this guy. They're all gonna unify together.
Their Republicans will always pull together. If they really meant their shit, if they really really really wanted to talk the talk, and they were real problem which they are supposed to bullshit, they would go out and go you know what a team. Here's the deal. We need three committee chairmanships, right, and you put us on three committees. They don't have to be the big ones. You give us three committees, okay, to show that it's going to be bipartisan. You put us in leadership and some we
work some kind of symbolic blah blah blah. But you know what they won't do. They won't do that. And right now, I don't think Jeffies could have pulled this off in the initial run up, in the first round of voting for Kevin, right, But I almost think you could get it now because now they really know who's in charge. It's not our buddy Coove. It's Matt Gates and Paul Gosar and all these other whack a dudies.
The real Nazis, as opposed to the practical, as opposed to this sort of partial Nazis.
It's the Halloween favorite practical Nazis starry.
But I mean, let's just go through here for a second. See, I mean, you think there's a world in which they're like, Okay, this is our guy, Jim Jordan.
Really, no one ever wakes up and says, hey, Jim Jordan's my guy. He's just a creature of the of the bizarro world, Republican Demi Mond, of kooks and freaks and weirdos. And look, if you want to hire a guy who's really good at ignoring screams coming from a locker room, that's your choice. Okay. If you want to hire a guy who's going to actually be a leader in the House or in the Republican Party, you're out of your mind.
But they don't need a they don't want a leader. I mean, this is not what they want. A side show. So and I want to talk about Nancy Mace.
Now, Oh, Nancy Mace. You know what, let me tell you Nancy may story for you. A few months ago, I am talking to a former Republican donor who said to me, because you know that we were talking about like all the good wines are gone, like Adam's gone, Liz is gone, No one's going to stand up to one six stuff anymore. And he's, well, I'm really hopeful Nancy Mace is going to be become the new leadership, the new leader and congressman never Trump. And I'm like,
are you kidding me? Come on? And as always as the Cassandra of the Republican Party. I told him, I said, she is going to do something so outrageous and break your heart. This is also a guy who was like a fan of Nikki Haley, who today said, oh yeah, I could live with the idea of Millie being assassinated or executed.
Yeah, that was really really I mean, what was the need for it?
You know?
Here she is. They ask her, would it be okay? What do you think of putting your the biggest general, the most you know, the most important general of the death And she's like, I don't think it's disqualifying, threatening his life.
And now what do you say to a person like that, who honestly is is right now having her moment as the donor bait of October twenty three where they're where these Republican donors that are just desperate, they're small desperate. Well, Ron didn't work out, so maybe maybe Tim Scott will be the one. You No, he's too busy with his Canadian girlfriend and she's very shy, but she's a supermodel. But they thought for a minute it was going to
be Nikki Haley. And what has Nicki Haley done since she had a decent debate two.
Weeks ago, destroyed herself.
She's gone off the damn cliff. Yeah, I mean, call me crazy, But if you're making a principal argument that there should be a conservative president who doesn't act like a maniac, don't endorse his positions of the former president who acts like a maniac.
I think that's a good call. We have almost no one in this Republican party now right who, especially in
the House, like there are no grown ups. If they, if I want you to like sort of game this out with me, they If Jim Jordan does get to two seventeen, which again would mean that eighteen Biden Republicans had to vote for him, right, which would mean that by voting for him, that is like the kind of disqualifying vote that Nancy Pelosi used to that she used to be horrified by the idea of making horror swing candidate her swingy Congress. People vote for these kind of
disqualifying votes. So if eighteen Republicans have to vote for him, he hurts the Republicans more than he helps them. Right, Oh, by far, Because you just run against Jim Jordan jumping up and down looking.
Like listen to right, and you run against Jim Jordan, whose number one priority is not inflation, jazz prices, the economy, foreign policy education. You run against Jim Jordan, whose number one priority is I want to see more dick picks from Hunter Biden's right. I mean, it's just a if they elect Jim Jordan, which they will now because Trump has told them to, you.
Think that they will though you think he has the vote.
Here's the thing they know. They are now facing Donald Trump at his most weird and depressively shitty vindicta's moment. Yeah, here's the grotesque reality of the Republican Party for them.
If right, the extra got more grotesque ish. They know that if Donald Trump either somehow lost the primary, or if Donald Trump somehow he won't but he just hypothetically went to jail, or if somehow Donald Trump said, oh God, I've got dick cancer and I'm going to get off the ballotive, percent of Republican voters will simply not vote
at all. My son, who is a very brilliant polster, has just come out of the field with a gigantic survey anstrument on this and depending on the states, between twenty and twenty six percent of Republican voters who literally won't vote at all if Trump's not on the ballot. And so if Trump doesn't get his way with Jim Jordan, He's going to throw a ship. Maybe maybe we'd be best and not vote for the House, and then I
will just make King Jeffries do what I want. He win, I know it, and so you end up with a lose lose if it's Jim Jordan. Look, I will tell you this. Kevin McCarthy, for all of his many, many, many personal faults and by that I mean all of his personal faults in every moral and personal dimension and political, Jim Jordan cannot do one thing that Kevin McCarthy could do. Kevin could put on normy draft yeah yeah, and go out and sit in a conference room or on a golf course, right.
And seemed like lunatic. I mean, it's the difference between, you know, a more functional looking Republican and Jim Jordan. And it's funny because I was arguing with someone about this last week and he was saying, well, now Democrats have done it right. They've Kevin was their shot. But Kevin did all the same things Jim Jordan will do right. Impeach Biden. I mean, there's no daylight between the two of them. It's just that Jim Jordan seems like a complete lunatug.
Okay, Kevin McCarthy brought impeachment right without a vote on it.
Right and trying to cut the federal baidity that cut the federal government.
Kevin's bullshit, Okay. Kevin's bullshit was that he could fake normal. He could go in and look. Last year, he's at a fundraiser in Texas and a friend of ours calls us from it. Literally while Kevin's talking, he goes, this fucking guy just stood up here and he said, in this group of very wealthy moderate Republicans, he goes, you know, I need you guys to help me, because if I can get twenty or thirty more anti MAGA, non crazy Republicans in the House, we can turn it all around.
The guy is a lying liar and lies. He is a he is. The mendacity of Kevin is amazing, but he was good at faking it right. And now with Jim Jordan, like politically it sucks for them and financially it sucks for them because here's the thing you've got.
You think, Jim Jordan is going to go sit in a room at some private equity firm in New York and say to everybody around the board, at the table of the board, I need your maximum contribution because now they're not given to their old buddy keV right, the young gun Ryan School. Now they're giving their money to the guy who's in He might have rabies.
It is true, I mean, it's but you know that is another thing about trump Ism, which I think is pretty interesting, is that you have this very favorable Senate map for Republicans. You have Mitch McConnell almost completely signed, maybe not completely sidelined, but certainly sidelined, right, I mean, that guy is not healthy enough to go out and fundraise the way he used.
To do well. And there's been a big dispute inside McConnell world, Like all the teams inside McConnell world are now fragmenting and splitting, and there are some that are going like, we're going to bring Thune up now, and we're the succession battle has started has started. And you know, so.
You have that is the problem in the Senate, where there are seats that would theoretically be winnable if Republicans had their shit together. But they don't, right. I mean, is there even anyone announced who's running against Jared Brown?
Not yet. I think you're gonna go high out, Yeah, I think you're gonna get There's a there's a maga guy out there who's been making some noise. I can't remember his name off the top of my head. But he's not He's not going to beat Shared Brown. You've got You've got Carrie Lake.
And she's already governor, so it could be a problem. Jesse reminds me via text message that Josh Mandell may in fact run again.
Hello, if I may quote the philosopher Willow from the Great Tentacle of Buffy Board now.
Well, Hello, Welcome to women and twenty twenty four. At the Texas Tribune Festival twenty twenty three, we got some dieharts hare getting to Saturday afternoon.
I do want to thank the Texas Tribune and all of the.
Amazing sponsors for this incredible weekend and especially for our panel today.
Our panel grew, which I was very proud to do.
I mean, there really cannot be a more incredible group of I was going to say a word, I'm not allowed to say here amazing women and really is my honor to spend this time with them. I'm also going to let you guys know this panel is going to last about forty five minutes and then we'll have about fifteen minutes for Q and A. As you see, there is a microphone here, so I'll let you guys know when to que up in line to be able to ask the questions towards the end, Please silence your cell phones.
And for those of you that are social media Maven's the hashtag is hashtag trip Fest twenty three. But without further ado, I am Katie Fang from MSNBC. This is not the Katie Fang Show, but we are live from Austin in Texas. There's lots of news to cover and lots of questions to answer, so let's get started. I want to introduce very briefly our panelists for today.
Joyce Vance right there in the beautiful.
Red MSNBC Legal Analysts, law professor at the Nursity of Alabama, co host of the hashtag Sisters of Law podcast.
She's also the author of the popular.
Substact Civil Discourse, which takes on the intersection of law and politics. And she is the keeper of the chickens. And then to her left is Mollie.
Jong Fast.
Special correspondent at Vanity Fair, host of the Fast Politices podcast, and the keeper of the hair. In the middle, we have Maya Wiley, MSNBC Legal Analysts, President.
And CEO of.
The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights and keeper of the grace is what I am saying today, the grace and the elegance always, and certainly not least as Ali Vitally.
And they see Capitol Hill correspondent.
And the author of Electable Why America hasn't put a woman in the White House yet?
She's keeper of the glam ladies and gentlemen. That's Ali Vittally.
So I want to dive straight into two of the biggest hot button topics I think that are going into twenty twenty four. Abortion and guns. I call it, well abortions and gun violence. I call it guy knows and guns. But we also want to talk about good government too, So that's kind of what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to start actually with Joyce because we had a conversation about this earlier today and I thought it was important to share with our audience. So we're living
in a post Dobbs world. We are in the state of Texas. I am in the state of Florida, which is always a hold the beer moment with.
The state of Texas.
But we here in Texas right now as we sit here, it's a fetal heartbeat state.
There's a lot of ridiculous that's going on.
But the scary thing is it's not just going to stop with Postdobbs. We're now looking at the potential from your state, Joyce, your Alabama Attorney General announcing it a court filing that prosecution of people that provide transportation for women in Alabama to leave the state to get an
abortion is the same as a criminal conspiracy. So, Joyce, how much should we be looking at the prospect of when we get to those ballots in twenty twenty four, looking at what the candidates are standing for when it comes to getting further down the road from Roe v.
Wade.
You know, I can remember my mother in law telling me when I was first getting to know her, this is a long time ago, in the late nineteen eighties,
and she said, I'm a single issue voter. I remember when abortion was illegal, and I am a single issue voter, and I remember thinking that it was both remarkable for a night lady in Mountain Brook, Alabama and a member of polite society to be very upfront about saying that, and also it struck me as being surprising that that was still her single issue, because of course abortion was
well established as something that women had access to. I have increasingly come to understand the fierceness of her views because Dobbs and the end of Roe Versus weighed that was not enough, right, that long term Republican goal was not enough. And now as they begin to realize that a national ban is maybe politically unfeasible, the question is
what more can the states do? States like Idaho, where there's ongoing litigation with DOJ and the attorney general has walked it back a little bit, but like Alabama, where the attorney general, who wants to be the governor is aggressively positioning himself like officials in other states, Texas is one of them to prosecute women if they choose to leave the confines of Alabama to access medical care which
they are entitled to access in other states. Right, the rhetoric of Dobs is the rhetoric of states' rights and states choices and let each state make up its own mind. So this action by Alabama and other states would appear to be clearly unconstitutional. You have the right to go to Colorado and smoke weed if you want to, You just can't take it back to Alabama.
Right.
Lots of things in this country work like that. A normal Supreme court there should be no question. But this Supreme Court, with its special jurisprudence for Alabama, I am deeply worried. I think this issue should be on all of our radar screens, and we probably live in a moment when we all need to be, like my mother in law, single issue voters.
I want to ask you, Oh, there you go.
But Molly, I want to follow up and ask you, because you also have your finger on the pulse of all things politics, do you think that the single issue voter is going to come out enough to be able to carry us across the finish line in twenty twenty four when it comes to the issue singularly of abortion access.
You know, it's funny because we're here in Texas, the state where Roe was functionally overturned by SB eight a year before the Dobbs decision came down, and I actually when it happened, you saw a lot of people, smart people said, oh, they're never going to let it stand. The Supreme Court is never going to let it stand. And in fact they did, and they saw it on the shadow dock. At September first, the law came into effect.
It was a heartbeat bill. There is no fetal heartbeat in six weeks, right, like we you know, by calling it a heartbeat bill, we are selling their line that it's not true. Six week you know, it's not even a blastula or whatever it is, doesn't have a hard it doesn't even have you know, it's a number of cells at that point. So I think that it's a
very scary time, I think for reproductive health. And the thing that I have been so struck by with the people I have talked to who are doctors and women and you know, people who's you know, a hospital, people who who report on hospitals and things like that, is that you're seeing pregnant women unable to get medical care. So it is really we are really seeing firsthand that abortion is healthcare. And you have women in parking lots being told to bleed out before the doctors will touch them.
So you have doctors who are afraid to treat, doctors who are afraid to go to jail and are afraid to lose their licenses. And what's funny is when you think back to nineteen seventy three and my mom uh was for a second wave familyst Erika Johngan. In nineteen seventy three, she published Fear Flying, And so I always think about, like, nineteen seventy three was the year that Roe was decided, and it was a very conservative core and they did this because besides women dying, doctors were
being put in these terrible positions. And so I really think we're seeing that again. And in a country where you know, we have these rural hospital closures, we have women of color being you know, subjected to much worse medical treatment, higher maternal fetal health rates. I mean, we really are seeing a sort of healthcare emergency around doms.
And you know, Maya, it's statistically proven that the disproportionate burden when it comes to maternal healthcare when it comes to communities of color, it's remarkably just terrifying when you look at the numbers.
How does the messaging work, though, How does the message.
Work to be able to tell people that they have to prioritize certain things right now when you want fundamental rights like access to healthcare, but you also still.
Need to be able to put food on the table.
You still need to be able to explain to people that it makes a difference for them to get to the ballots. But especially when you're trying to get the messaging to be uniformly across, so it resonates with all different communities, not just a certain one.
So and look, I'm trying to actually thread this needle because so many important things have been said and they're all connected. One is, I think we've already seen what happens when you piss a lot of women off, right, Because what happened in the midterms, what happened in the midterms,
Wisconsin was denied a trifecta, Michigan got a trifecta. We saw ballot initiatives up and down the line, some of them in very red states where the ballot initiative was to prevent protection from abortion in a constitution like Kentucky get shot down in a red state, not the only one, and it was because it was absolutely motivating, mobilizing, and we also saw young people, especially gen Z, who under participate in terms of their numbers in power, get really
engaged in those states where the battle lines were clearly drawn. So I just want to say we should not ignore that. But I also want to go back to this notion of should we be single issue and let me because I actually agree with all these points, so this isn't a point of disagreement. But I want to remind us of something. Now, my mother is from Abling, Texas. Yeah, the Abilene like that. Okay, Ableinge, Texas. Grew up in
the Southern Baptist Church in Abling. Okay, many of you should know that means she's a white woman by definition. Because the Southern Baptists actively, formally and as a matter of dectrinal position, was opposed to integracial integration, was supportive of essentially racist policies. In nineteen seventy three, they were pro abortion. Six years later they become anti abortion. What happened?
What happened in those six years? The Justice Department came for them for their segregated schools, and then they saw the wedge. Then they found the edge. Alis Hoague, who used to be the president of NAYRAL has actually written about this. It was very important reproductive freedom community. I'm elevating this issue before we got here. And then let's go to the other part of the point that you so rightly ask about, Katie, which is so black women
in New York City, which is a blue state. Okay, all right, ignore the midterm that has abortion right is Blueish, Bluish has abortion rights, standing up for abortion rights, trying to figure out how to be a sanctuary state for women looking for abortion right. Well, if you are black in New York City, you have you are eleven, not four, three or four times more likely to die in childbirth or from pregnancy related causes. Eleven times has nothing to
do with Republicans, not a damn thing. It has everything to do with whether or not you get true access to health care, reproductive and whether you're allowed to be a mother, whether you are allowed to be a mother.
At the same time, we see what abortion does. And by the way, the states, the states that rushed to do this spanning of abortion and fetal heartbeat laws and criminalization, they actually guess what were some of the same states that refuse to expand medicaid refuse to expand it called Obamacare, refused to expand it. It was before we lost row. So the reason I'm saying this is because all these issues are so deeply connected and on our powers recognizing the
connection voting rights. So when I said to a group of our allies, seriously wonderful act people have said, like every fight that we have for abortion rights or to stop the criminalization of health care. And by the way, thanks to black people, we had to have a constitution that said you can cross state lines was because of
black chattel slavery. We should remember this right, We should remember the very legal underpinnings of our constitutional order that we're now fighting about in the abortion fight, on the criminalization of crossing state lines, we have because we had black chattel slavery and had to try to undo it. So the truth is all our issues are so deeply linked.
They're so deeply and that's our power. Because when we still start talking about voting rights, and I said to my voting rights on my reproductive justice allies, I said, all these states are the same states that are talking about voter fraud and claiming that we have to make it hard for people to vote, and that's the only way they can hold onto power. It's the only way is by cheating. And so we've got to recognize that
no matter our race. And frankly, and thank you to the men in the audience that came to hear about the war on women, it's bad for men. It is bad for men. And so I actually think that the incredible importance of the messaging, the messaging point is it's not only about abortion. It's about our very democratic rights and whether or not we are allowed to make decisions for ourselves, our families, our communities. And it doesn't matter
what your personal views are about abortion. But it does matter if you want to see a doctor when you're sick. It does matter if you want to be able to choose to have a healthy baby. It does matter if you think you should get to have easy access to a ballot in order to decide who's going to make decision over your lives and over your communities. And that is all of us.
Ali vitally.
You are a Capitol Hill correspondent.
You are in the seat of power.
You are around the people that are making these important decisions that are affecting all of us across the United States. But you are also in embed in the Elizabeth Warren campaign. And the reason why I being that up though, is because you've been on the road, You've been to the rallies, You've been to all of these different important stops on these tours for these campaign tours. And what is the disconnect? Because Maya talks about the connection, but there seems to
be a disconnect from the people to Washington, DC. And it transcends just the inability to get the people into the office that we want to be in the offices, But what's happening with the people that are on the ground, that are the grassroots voters that are out there trying to make sure that what Maya talks about and what Molly talks about, what Joyce talks about, that all of that is making sense.
So I think, look, there's so many amazing points that have been made up here. And I would never presume to speak for Maya, but what I felt so deeply when you were talking about what reproductive care is to me, it boils down to an economics issue. And so when you want to be a voter who says, Okay, I'm a single issue voter who cares about what it costs when I go to the grocery store, and also how I put my life together.
Because I can.
Choose how and when to control my reproductive health. That's a dollars and cents issue. And so that's maybe a matter of disconnect when we talk about this as if it's a niche thing, as if it's a women's issue.
This is something that touches everyone, and I think that in my ten years covering reproductive health as sort of a chosen side beat in addition to campaigns and Congress and whatever else, this idea of being post row, up until two years ago, had always been something that people could just theorize about, but it was always a theory, and Republicans never thought we'd get there, and Democrats never thought we'd get there, and everyone was sort of secure
in their echo chambers of what those talking points meant. And I think that's what we saw in twenty twenty when I was following the Elizabeth Warren campaign, is yes, there was a push to expand reproductive freedom on the Warren campaign and other campaigns, but it was all pretty theoretical. And then I with Dobbs, what's been fascinating to watch
as someone who really does see themselves. As a student of politics and demographic trends is watching the ways that in each of the seven or eight crucial moments that repro has been on the ballot, in some way, it has overwhelmingly shown that people want to be able to access this care and they want to be able to
access it freely. And look, that shouldn't be shocking. The polling around this has been consistent in that roughly six and ten Americans always over time have wanted abortion to be safe.
And legal in most cases.
I think most instructive is a few weeks ago when I was in Ohio, you talked about red states where this is happening. Yes, you mentioned Kentucky rightly, Kansas as well. That was really the first kind of canary in the coal mine for Republicans who I increasingly get the sense or the dogs that caught the car and now.
May get run over by it.
But three million people do not turn out in August special elections for one ballot measure that does not reference the word abortion, but is very much about that, And I think that's instructive for everyone trying to chart the still actively being charted post row environment, and it's why when I'm on the road with my twenty twenty four Republican candidates, they get very squeamish. Unless you're Mike Pence,
who has clearly staked out this place. They get pretty squeamish talking about where the weak markers should be and because they have to in that primary. But in general it becomes much tougher because of the environment that we've seen in the few plot points that we have of what it actually means to be post Row.
We're going to move on from.
This topic because a we're running out of time, but I want to get to some other stuff. But I am because I always have an opinion, just ask my husband. I want to emphasize vigilance because, to Ali's point, this was this was not some surprise event that happened with the overturning of Row.
Let's be very clear.
This was a This was a train that was coming and we all saw it coming, and we were asleep at the switch some of us when it came to it. So I want to make sure this is part of why we're all here today, the vigilance on making sure that we pay attention to these issues, because this was something that we definitely saw the red flags for I want to go now because I want to turn to
gun violence. We're in the state of Texas, and Joyce and I were walking down the street and we kept un noticing the signs of the warnings about don't bring your gun into this place. But Florida now has permitless carry, and you know a lot of the states are dealing with that right now. And obviously your state has had more than its share of tragedy, a disproportionate share of tragedy when it comes to gun violence.
I'm going to read a couple of statistics that I were stunning to me.
Four point five million women in the United States have been threatened with a gun.
Okay, nearly one.
Million women have been shot or shot at by an intimate partner, and over fifty percent of all intimate partner homicides are.
Committed with guns.
So, Joyce, we got that's in front of a Supreme Court post bruin now a post bruin America. We have a challenge to whether or not, if you have a domestic violence injunction, whether you should be allowed to be able to possess a firearm. Putting aside all of the other conditions and terms inclusive of the Hunter Biden issues that deal with drugs and substance abuse. What's the prospect for twenty twenty four? And again the focus this is women,
the war on women. What is the prospect with Rahemi in front of the Supreme Court when it comes to these because these are startling numbers.
So Raheemi is one of the cases the Supreme Court will hear oral argument in this term. I'm a former federal prosecutor in Alabama. One of our bread and butter statues is eighteen US Code nine two G, which is a laundry list of people who are prohibited from using firearms. The most frequently used part of the statute is the part that prohibits people who have of prior felony convictions
from possessing a firearm. As Hunter Biden has learned, a portion of that statute also prohibits people he used drugs from possessing firearms. But Raheemi is a very interesting case because often these.
Are people who are told they.
Can't possess guns, and there are attractive reasons for letting them have them. Someone with a ten year old felony conviction or someone who used to be addicted or maybe is currently addicted to pills but has a hunting weapon. Mister Raheemi is not in that category. He is a repeated abuser of women. He is someone who engages in domestic violence. He is trying to challenge the constitutionality of a law that says he cannot possess a firearm. And
we know what the statistics tell us. They tell us, and Katie relays some of this that domestic abusers who have access to firearms are far more likely to kill their partners. It should be a no brainer, right. Bruin is the Supreme Court case from two terms ago where the Supreme Court applied new rules for evaluating gun laws, and it comes down to this. They said, unless a restriction on Second Amendment rights was something that was in existence at the time the founders wrote the Constitution, we
will not enforce it. There was no prohibition at the time the founding fathers wrote the Constitution and domestic violence abusers being able to possess firearms. In fact, the laws and the Constitution explicitly contemplated that women were second class citizens at that point in time. So look, I don't have high hopes for Rahimi. I would like to think that this Supreme Court would have some common sense left. So far, they've shown no designs that they possess it.
I think the.
Interesting point, Katie and you sort of flag it is what happens if Hunter Biden is convicted on gun charges in that case goes up on appeal, and what will sam Alito do when he has to decide between the Second Amendment and Hunter Biden. Boy, is that going to be tough for sam Alita.
But Molly, this is again a single issue voter driver, isn't it. I mean putting aside, putting aside these numbers, putting aside the true reality and the grim reality of what we have to suffer in America from gun violence. A lot of people are still looking at gun control as being a single issue vote going into twenty twenty four.
I mean, I would say this is a Supreme Court problem, right, And if we look at that term two years ago, there was and I mean they have really done a lot of stuff that's really unbelievable. I mean, they overturned brow bruin epa versus West Virginia. I mean, limiting the scope of the federal government when it comes to pollution. I mean, they have just you know, they are remaking
this country. So I'm not sure that. And again, what you can do with this, what we've seen with Bruin is what you can do at the state level can be overturned by this rogue court, right you have you know,
governors don't have the final say here. And so I think the question is I think is it you know, if you're going to vote for Biden again, which I would assume that would be good because we otherwise we're going to have bad whatever we're going to I mean, otherwise a Trump I don't know how long a Trump
presidency would last, perhaps forever. If you're going to there really needs to be pressure put on Biden to either expand the court or to have term limits for the court, or because this court is going to go the they you know, these three Trump justices are young, right, they are young, and they are ready, and they do not have any interest in the status quo. And we saw
them again and again lie about starry decisives. So and they will go and and so I do think Biden is very uncomfortable trying to you know, we I talked to people who are on his Supreme Court Committee. You know, they they really does not want to touch this, but term limits are very popular, and he that is something he really could do in a second term. And so
I think the more that people can pressure him. You know, this is an administration that really does respond to pressure, as we saw with you know, some of the things they've done recently with the Office of Gun Violence. And so I do think that voters really do have power here.
So Maya, this is the perfect segue into my kind of next topic. And I wanted to speak to you because number one, your position at the leadership conference.
But number two, why is it that? And I'm proud to say that I'm a woman of color, Why is it.
That it is women of color that have become the stalwart defenders of democracy these days?
Why is it?
I mean, and I appreciate all of our male allies, don't get me wrong, right, well, why is it that that is the case? Because we see it it runs the gamut from the Tis James's to the FAWNI Willis's to the Tanya Chuckkins. I mean, we're seeing this be the case. But I wanted to kind of expand it a little bit out though, and talk about getting to the ballot box.
Right, I want to talk about voter access.
I want to talk about voter disenfranchisement, voter suppression. We're seeing it happen. We're seeing the Jerry manderin. These are all important. Is she's going in twenty twenty four And if anybody needs super reminded, if you elect a president who puts Supreme Court justices on the bench like we saw with Donald Trump, you're going to get dobbs, You're going to get bruined, You're going to get these decisions. So, especially in your role at the leadership conference, what's going
on to be able to combat voter suppression? And then again, why is it taking the women of color to make sure that we still got democracy going on?
Okay, I feel like every question, I feel like whoop, okay. So well, one, I just want to remind us the reason we have the Supreme Court we have is despite the fact that we had a president who would have appointed a justice who would have protected Roe, we don't because the rules were rigged by Mitch McConnell to deny Barack Obama even a hearing on his nominee, even a hearing because it was a year before elections, so important
to remember these things. They just changed the rules and act like it's you know, normal, and then they revert them back right with an explicit not implicit, because Donald Trump ran on a platform of reversing Row to get anti Row justices on the bench. And that also relates to citizens United. Dark money in politics because Leonard Leo one point six billion dollars because somebody handed him a corporation. If you give me a corporation, I swear I'll do
good things with it. So I just want to remind us. That's just a reminder. But on the question of women of color, it's always been women of color. And nothing new about this, y'all. You know, it's new that we're one out of every five people. That's what's new. It's the change in our visibility because of our numbers, because this country has been diversifying. And by the way, white
women too, Like I don't want to make this. It's like women have for a very long time, right, for a very long time been kind of the center of pushing for change in America, even when we haven't gotten the credit. And women of color, as I said, yes always, and I'm going to go back to it. You all, don't yell at me because I'm going to vote Bill Maher, don't yell at me. Hear me out, hear me out,
hear me out. This is just a story. Remember when you may remember this, back when Barack Obama was a primary candidate and like number five, right, nobody thought he was even going to arise to the top three, and Moe's death and Cornell West were on Bill Maher, and Bill Maher says to Cornell West and Mo's deaf, but I'm folks. On Mo's death, he says, well, is it really is America really ready for a black president? I mean, are Americans really going to vote for a black man?
And Most Death said, can I curse? Okay, I'm just it's a quote. I'm okay. So Mo's Death says, oh yeah, because they're gonna say shit's fucked up. Let the nigga run it. I didn't say it. Most quotes for the records quotes that is. And I've a reason I remember it is like he's said that. But I'm just gonna say a black person was like that. That could be true.
But I do feel a little bit like the country is in such a bad place that I'm seeing women of color being given leadership positions we were never given before. And I want to say that Lafonza Butler at Emma's List, at Emily's List, Mimi timraju At now no longer nay Raw, but Reproductive Freedom for All. It just rebranded all member organizations of the Leadership Conference. So I'm just saying that even in spaces and places where we have not traditionally
been running the show, we're seeing a change. And some of that is because I think based on sheer, frankly, like, no matter how bad it gets and how exhausted and how angry, we just keep it moving because we have no choice we have as women, we have no choice across rate. We don't have no choice. You know why, because they are babies. They are our babies, and we know they're all our babies, like whether we gave birth
to them or not. And so, you know, I think we're at a time when things are so bad that they're saying, let her run it. Notice the word I left, I know.
And then this is the perfect segue to Ali Vittally, Ali Vittally, you're.
Not gonna curse Honny and it's gonna be okay.
No, I'm a lapse Catholic, but I'm still a Catholic.
If y'all haven't read Electable, y'all are missing out. It's an exceptional book written by Ali Vittally, but the message is just so profound, and it's disturbing that we're still having this conversation. We had this conversation a year ago when the book came out. We're gonna have another conversation about it now. Gender double standards placed on women presidential candidates, we understand twenty twenty four is a different beast. We're all Biden Harris, yes, but but I'm troubled too.
Prong question to you.
First one is why is the Vice president Kamala Harris getting such a short thrift?
One?
And then two kind of dovetailing what Maya said, why don't we have a female president of the United States?
Woo. It's very easy with me, and these are friends. You can imagine if these weren't friends, what these questions would be like.
I am It's all good.
I mean so, first of all, I do think it's really important to punctuate from a reporter perspective something that maya was saying, which is the idea that women of color not the end We're no.
No.
I do think it's important, though, to punctuate the way that I think media have done well in finally giving women of color their flowers when they have put the work in.
I mean, you could not talk about.
The games that Democrats made in Georgia without talking about the work that Stacy Abrams did in eighteen and twenty two. And I think that those of us who covered those races knew that that was work, and those were seeds that were being planted, maybe not for them, but certainly for later. And I think that women in researching my book as well, every woman candidate who runs for anything knows that she's laying brickwork in the ground for someone.
Else to walk over it with more ease than she did.
And I think that that's true of both Republicans and Democrats. But Democrats have done it. Their road is much longer right, They've invested, They found that upside earlier than Republican women did. The good news across the board, and eventually it becomes a numbers game. To answer the question of why haven't we had a female president yet? Is because the pipeline just hasn't been full. Thankfully, the last few decades, we have seen the number of women in Congress steadily rising.
The more women that are elected to federal and exacsative office at the state wide level means that they have a better resume that can then usher them onto.
Those presidential tickets.
We have then seen in twenty sixteen, in twenty twenty, when you had more women running for the Democratic nomination than at any point in any other primary that took until twenty twenty. The good news is that I don't think that we will see another primary on either side where at least one woman isn't in the mix. And what that means is that the imagination barrier for voters is less. They don't have to wonder, well, what would it feel like to vote for this woman, to entertain
what she looks like in that office. That means that there's muscle memory of voting for women, and that is so critically important because there was a really long gap in the two thousands on where women, if they ran Elizabeth Dole, for example, they dropped out before votes were cast, so people didn't even have to think about what would it look like to have a woman in this office,
Kamala Harris presents both an opportunity and a difficulty. And I think Democrats and Republicans alike have made these points, but Democrats certainly are the ones that I most here who are grappling with this. I spent a whole chapter on it because it was so complex. She is someone who doesn't look like anyone who has held that office before. That is both an amazing opportunity and it also means that people look at her and expect her to redefine the job of vice president.
And if she were doing that, she's not being a very good vice president.
And therein is the paradox, because you've got people looking at her saying, gosh, I just wish she would do more, And no one asked that of Mike pen.
Like Dan Quayle.
Did quail No one asked that of Pence. When Biden stepped out of line and did more, it was a moment, because that's not the job of being vice president. Do I, as the reporter here, take into account that the interviews sometimes lack she's write words. Sure, yes, that's a problem. That was a problem when Kamala Harris ran for president.
But if you take her in the totality.
What I often see in the criticism of her is that people's expectations were just so high because she's history making that it's almost unfair to set her to those expectations because no vice president will ever meet them.
That's not their job.
Yes, Maya, what she said, Okay, as a as a person who ran for office in a city that has.
Never had a woman, Molly's gonna cry.
Now, Yes, I just want to say that I've voted for you. I would vote for you again. We have as a New York resident who has who knows very well of the New York mayor curse. I just can't every day. I am just she's my mayor. She's the mayor of my heart. I'm sorry.
So, okay, thank you. That is I'm not gonna cry. But the reason I raised my hand is because everything Ali you said is so true and really needs to be underscored. And then there's one thing we have to say explicitly, she and a woman of color we cannot shy away. So the double standards there. Remember Hillary Clinton got a spanking because she was trying to run policy as the first lady, right, Remember that remember the cookie monster, right, So there's no question that the gender thing is real,
no matter the race of the woman. But we cannot because I'm going to tell you what the problem the Democrats have. Why did Joe Biden promise he was going to pay black women back? And he said it explicitly and it was the first time we got recognition, and it is the Stacy Abrams factor for sure. But what Stacy Abrams did is she showed America what black women
had been doing since including suffragettes. Need I remind anybody, I don't think I have to mind name by this room, black women were so for jets, so it's like always been the case. But but but he explicitly said I owe my seat to black women, uh, which is part of Kamala Harris becoming is running mate. It was also why Katanji Brown Jackson is now one of the most fabulous Supreme Court justice we've saved.
But I I want to piggyback on you for a minute because this is something that I've talked about and I've interviewed the Vice President twice and that I actually believe that there is an innate sexism and racism that she bases that is impossible for us to put our fingers on. And I think that it really affects the way people see her, the way they treat her, the
questions they ask her. I mean, I really see this, and I've talked to you know, I've actually even talked to you know that she has this there, and you know, I've talked to people who are like, I just don't know why I don't like her, and I'm like, I know why. There's just something about her and I so that I think that I just wanted.
To add that, you know, Can I just add one Morrison, because I think this is the important data point about Kamala Harris. He's a lovely human being who faces challenges that are unfair.
She is a knitter, I mean.
And a cook she that too, But I mean she is not She is not, you know, a pedestrian knitter. She is an accomplished knitter. And the thing that I know about knitters being one of them and seeing a number of y'all out in the audience, knitters get shit done right.
I mean, I now know why, I now know why I lost the mayor's race.
But Maya, to your point, we live in we live in difficult times. We live in troubling times. I want to see Kamala Harris, not next term, but the term after in the White House because we need and it comes found to out.
So I want to invite if you guys have questions. No, no stampeding, but there isn't open mic here, so please feel free.
To come up and queue in line. Please, And why are not a question?
Why are open mike? Because I want it just a little insider perspective on Allie's point about pipeline for women. And first of all is if you try to put yourself in a pipeline, I tell you don't deserve to be there. Okay, I just want to say that as someone who ran and was told wait, you don't you didn't get in line, You're you weren't up. I was like, Smorry, it's not and they don't give you money. You do need money to win. You need money to win, and women have a very hard time of any race raising
the dollars. None of that is about the quality of the candidate.
So if this is a knitting question, Joyce, we'll take that separately at the end of the panel.
No, I need to know how to knit.
Do you need to learn how to honey.
I tried.
We can start a little circle, because I want to do if we can tell you.
Some stories about them.
It was me Mary Trump, Joyce Vance, Aging Carroll and Gentile praying for me to learn how to knit. There may have been some boosoma anyway, please go ahead.
Well, I just wanted to say, first of all, thank you. It's been such an empowering panel but also just really joyful, which is awesome.
Thank you.
And my question was going back to the idea of there's just something about Kamalade that you just can't put my finger on it, Like I've definitely also felt that, and it was hard for me to articulate, especially as I'm continuing to try and do the work to break
down internalize misogyny, internalized racism. And so I'm curious if you think that there's a space going into twenty twenty four to address the internalized issues like as a you know, four of the people who are consistently voting blue, Like, where does that conversation come in where it's not just I'm showing up as a Democrat, but I'm actually like the doing the personal work so that in the future we can get her, you know a president president question.
So well one, I really appreciate you raising up point. It takes a lot of bravery. And you know, the truth is we all have internalized stuff. Can't grow up in America not so just thank you for that. But I think that's a big part of it, is just calling it out, like if you don't if you can't find a reason, then you have a reason that you're just not confronting. And the other thing i'd say, and it's very hard. You can do it running for a mayoral office, it's really hard doing it when you're running
a national race. Is if y'all met Kamala, it's like she is the most lovely person. She really is. She will hook you want to talk about joyful. That woman is joyful. She's brilliant, she's joyful, she's loving. So is Hillary Clinton? Like you know, everybody asks like she's some monster, say like if you met her, to be like, I like her. I want to have dinner with her. But we in national racism in particular, you know, we don't
get that. And women have a harder time being seen as relatable, right, especially in women of color, and so that relatable is that nonverbal? I just don't know. And what people looking for is I want to feel I want to feel something, but you know when it's harder to feel it with women, that's what That's what really And then it's like just posing that question was like, well, if you can't find a reason, is there one?
I will add, just as the reporter here who believes that it's the politician's job to get themselves across the way that they want to be perceived. Yes, I think it's on voters and all of us to ask these questions of our implicit bias, of why don't we accept a certain level of authenticity from people like Hillary Clinton, from people like Kamala Harris. I think all of those are very valid questions, and we don't allow women to showcase all of themselves because by b too likable, they're
not strong enough. If they're too strong, then they're too shrill. All of those things are real. And also, you'll run within the environment that you run. It's not a secret that Harris has these problems. Her team is well aware.
She is well aware. She ran a presidential that ended.
Quite badly for a whole myriad number of reasons, but among them was the fact that she just at certain points, as the reporter asking the questions, didn't necessarily know her stuff. So it's on us to deal with our implicit biases and the way that we look at these candidates, and it is very much on them to get it together and get them points across the way that they need to be seen.
But I will say again, inside of you, if you don't have money, you because how do you get that? How do you get how do you get the team that can give you and feed you. So I'm just saying that I'm just going to.
Yes, literally part of that equation that we have to acknowledge to the point of your question, and it's this, Yes, their societal obligations. Yes, the candidate has obligations. This country has enemies that do not want to see democracy prevail, and social media disinformation misinformation from those enemies plays an enormous role in negative characterizations of women like Hillary Clinton and.
Kamala Harris Good.
Please, thank you tough for all of us.
And it means we need to push back and stay aware.
So thank you all so much for being here.
So while I'm closer to retirement now, I started off my career. I spent seven years running two abortion clinics in Dallas and in Fort Worth.
And thank you.
I remember the day that Bill Clinton was inaugurated. It was an off.
We didn't have any patients that day, and I'm in the clinic by myself. My Angelou is doing her poem and I'm crying because I'm thinking, finally, it's okay, right, We're done, and here we be. So in the light of not being surprised, you know, we a couple of years ago and continuing, we have had national organizations that have propagated anti abortion legislation like the actual wording, so that it makes it very easy for state.
Legislators to pass this.
This past year we had anti trans youth issues, same wording across the multiple states. There's been some talk that the next step is contraception and the possibility of us living in a I guess of post Griswold world.
What do you think about that?
Or is the fact that ballot measures have been that Republicans have lost in ballot measures going to make that less likely?
Or what do you think?
So I'll just say one short thing, which is this, I'm from Alabama. Chris Kobak is the individual that you're referring to that put the groups together that wrote this legislation, anti immigration legislation, voter suppression legislation. It continues to be a serious threat. We need to be aware of it if we don't want to end up in a post Griswold, post vote right Zach world, which I am very frightened.
Of, also posts marriage equality. I mean, so I just it's all the things right, and I'll just say the one, the really most important pushback to all of this, because I don't want us to leave thinking that there we don't have power, is we are the majority. We are the majority, and the we looks like the country in all of its gorgeous beauty. And that is what we have to mobilize to. And it goes back to that hope, right is And the hope isn't inevitability. The hope is possibility.
But that hope comes from being able to come together and seeing the organizing that's happening both here in Texas, in Alabama, in other states Alabama Forward and all these other like it's happening. So we just have to figure out how to wrap our arms around that and support that.
Thank you go ahead these right, Thank you.
My name is Jana Silms. I'm an organizer, and so in organizing, defining the narrative is very important and you never want to let the opposition define the narrative. But my question is, have we done a good job of defining the narrative? Is pro choice the right narrative when you're trying to compete with you know, killing babies? I mean, And so I'm curious what y'all think about how we're doing undefining the narrative.
I'll take this one. So I would say I have really a problem with this the late term abortion discussion, because right, people are not having a people are not carrying children, and then being like at thirty weeks, you know, oh, I change my mind, right, like the people who are having abortions at that time. And I know because with my oldest son, he had a genetic disease and we we might have to have a second trimester abortion because he was going to die, and it turned out he
didn't have it. But my doctor was like, I don't do second trimester, and then she started telling me the horror stories of patients she had had who had, you know, a dead fetus and had to go to California because there was no doctor who did abortions that late. And so I think that it's really, really really important that we do not do enough defining like these these bands
are not. They they end up preventing people who you know, they end up causing people who have dead babies to be walking coffins, right, I mean that's what this is. This is not you know, nobody is getting a kind of an abortion that late unless there is some you know, either they're gonna die or the baby's gonna die. And
so we definitely don't do enough messaging on that. I would say with some of the other things, like we you know, it's popular, like voters are out there voting for choice, right they and you know, with birth control, like you start saying Republicans are coming for your birth control,
that's very effective messaging. I mean, just like with pornography, like Americans don't want Republicans coming for their pornography or their birth control, and so you know, I will I think that's a fight that Democrats should definitely have and that they can win.
Can I just say the one thing I agree totally women of color, though I have a much more complicated relationship to it. So this is where I think values messaging is so important, and it's one of the things we have not been good enough at. You know, we become so issue focused and I see self reflection. So I mean, I think we and what the right has done so well is not right. That's why they can say war on woke and like attack banking regulations, like what the heck does that have to do with woke?
But you know, so, but they can use that right for everything, and you know in this fight, because I do think and going back to this point is you know what people are upset about is wait, you trying to get between me and making some really personal decisions. Like that's why we have a lot of religious women who are deeply religious and actually have very strong feelings about abortion being a sin, saying but that's not okay.
So I do think like finding the value that really is redefining freedom because one of the things that the right has done really effectively is redefined freedom as a weapon for what is truly freedom right, And so we have to take back that value of what freedom really is, and freedom is the right to make decisions about your own body. Freedom is about the right to get the care you want, make the decisions you want. Freedom is
about the marry whoever the hell you love. You know, it's all these things, and it's our kind of underpinning. But it's a shared value across politics, and we have to animate that more and then that enables us to also talk to our particular communities where it's not pro choice for a lot of black women, but it is pro freedom. It is pro freedom to make your own decisions about your family, including to have healthy babies. If you choose, please go ahead.
Kay.
I think the question we're asking about Kamala Harris is wrong. It's not what she is doing wrong that's blaming her. I'm tired of that, tired of blameing women. The question is what is Biden doing wrong. A good leader in any setting uses the people that he has chosen and has put around him. He's not giving her the opportunity
to shine. And I think if he gave her the opportunity, and if every president before him had given their vice president the opportunity to shine, maybe it'd be a different place. But he's just doing what every president before has done, which is not letting your vice president do anything so I just was wondering what your thoughts are.
So I, well, this is a complicated question because there's a whole bunch of inside baseball that I won't pretend I know all of and what I do know is it's complicated. What I will say, though, is I think we are seeing her both being utilized and being much more of a presence than she was a year ago on these unreally critical from from Roe from abortion to voting rights. And actually she's taking a very active role now I'm missing disinformation and what to do about artificial intelligence,
and she's taking leaderships. So I hear that, and I think there's a legitimate conversation to have around what is the empowerment, what is how is the president you know, organizing his cabinet. I mean, that's really it's that's a that's a broader question as well. And there's a lot of, for instance, consternation about whether it's cabinet secretaries are being given enough independence to do the things they want to do because there's so much fear sometimes about the politics.
So it's a legitimate thing to raise. I just want to say we it's important for us to recognize she's doing a lot more of it, and she's doing it a lot better. And it's this is an a static situation.
Hi, what one baby ad is It's still politics. You know, you're not going to tee up the next coming or whoever's next. Even though Biden says that he's going to pass the torch kind of leader. This is a guy that's wanted to be president for three decades. He tried three times, He's finally there. This explains a lot of the current moment. And as much as I think he wants to be a torch bearer within the party.
It's still politics. At the end of the day.
You're not going to tee up your best competition and overshadow yourself.
But can I add one last thing about that. I think it's a very interesting question because it goes to the issue of management style and leadership style, and the point that presidents for time immemorial have not pushed forward their vice presidents for the reasons that Ali identified. I think that's absolutely accurate. So I am intrigued by this news we got this week that Kamala Harris is running
point on this new gun control office. You know, it seemed like she got sidelined sidelined, and whether it was the fault of her staff or just something dysfunctional going on on tough issues like the border that no Democratic can ever win on, right. I mean that was just don't please, don't send her to the border, this gun control issue.
I am fascinated to see.
What she makes of it, because I think she's a strong and a forceful leader, and I think Joe Biden actually appreciates her. The relationship seems to be genuine. So I would just put that asterisk to the question and say, let's see what happens.
So I think we're technically out of time, but I did want to let you ask a question.
Yeah, I'm sharing from Ohio, and I appreciate Allie's shout out. We worked really hard to defeat that little slide in special election in August. So since most elections, you know, you have your left and your right, and people are dug in, so most of it is in the middle. I know a lot of anti abortion people are just anti choice to begin with. There are some that are
truly religiously anti abortion. David French, I'm sure all you know, evangelical, very pro life, brought up some really interesting points when I was talking to him this morning, if that I think might be convincing to pro life people to vote for a Democrat. His points were, he posed the questions, who do you think had the most reduced rate of abortions of any administration? It was the Obama administration, he said, by like three hundred thousand a year less abortions because
of the infrastructure of trying to support families. He said, what administration do you think had the most abortions for the last twenty year? The Trumpump exactly exactly. So if you're concern really is so he talked about like just trying to legislate is not going to work. So if your concern really is to prevent abortion and you are pro life, then maybe you should consider expanding support for
people to be able to choose that. So I just thought maybe that could change people that aren't dug in, you know, either way, that they could say, yes, I'm pro life, I'm supporting this candidate. They're pro choice, but in the end, what they support is going to cause fewer abortions. So what are your thoughts on that?
Quickly does somebody want to answer?
I mean, I think the supposition here is that these people are not hypocrites, right, I mean there's not you know, look the child tax credit right lifted all these children out of poverty. Now they're all support it. This is not about this is about power and control. This is not about you know, these people and a lot of these people, you know, payper If their daughters need an abortion, they'll pay for it in a minute. So I just think, like what, I love David and I think he's very
smart and a good writer. But you know, he truly believes this, whereas I think a lot of these people don't.
So I just want to thank all of you for being here.
I want to thank Molly, John Fast, Joyce, Fan Smyle Wiley, Hallie VI's Hallie.
Thank you guys all for being here. Thank you.
No moment, Rick Wilson, Yes, do you have a moment of fuckery for us?
I always have a moment of fuckery for you, Molly.
Let's hear the moment.
Here's the moment of fuckery. Matt Gates is the Dobbs decision of Republican inter party politics. On the one hand, he got everything he wanted. He got the chaos, he got the monkey show, he got the insanity and he got the guy he hated the most killed off. But now, just like with Dobbs, when Republicans caught when the dog caught the car, the consequences of it are going to be catastrophic because, let me tell you, Matt Gates doesn't
want to be in the minority. Matt Gates doesn't want to be the guy who who will go down most likely as the guy that costs Republicans their majority in the House. That's a rarity, that's something that you just don't get that frequently. Nobody fucks up that badly. But it looks like Matthew has.
That is a really good point. That is I hadn't even thought of that, but it is. He is the Dobbs decision of the Republican Party, which is a little bit ironic. What I might say one might I'm going to say that my moment of fuckery is JD Vance
because Jdvans lied about that. I mean, it was like there was so little time between the like horrendous, horrendous kidnapping videos we saw and the horrible violence we saw and these like children and women and old ladies being kidnapped to Jdvance being like this is all Joe Biden's fault because of the nuclear deal, and Jadvance is like has multiple Ivy League degrees, Like the man is just a fucking liar.
Yeah, I can't really debate that part. His mendacity is stratospheric.
Thank you so much for coming on. I hope you'll come here.
You are very welcome as always.
My friend.
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.