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 back and he's using white supremacists, blood and soil rhetoric.
We have a great show today.
Tim Alberta talks about his new book The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory, American Evangelicals and the Age of Extremism. Then we'll talk to Giraldo Cadava about the drifting political alignments of Hispanic voters. But first we have the host of the Enemy's List, the One, the Only, the Lincoln Projects, Rick Wilson.
Welcome back. It's a Sunday, Rick Wilson.
I have a dog on my laps to keep her from barking.
We got Rick Wilson here and baby Boosephalos.
Rick Wilson, Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, whatever the hell time it is. Right now, I'm on my third cup of coffee and I slept until nine o'clock, which is psychotic.
What I myself have been up for fifteen hours.
So Rick Wilson, it is a Shadenfreud Sunday right now.
I'm just pouring one out for the late Desantas super pack head of Jeff Row. Jeff Row, the guy who had twenty twenty two, had eleven candidates and lost ten of them, who spent one hundred million dollars people's money in twenty twenty two, And yet somehow Rod Dessanta's woke up and said, you know, this grifter from Texas seems to me like the guy who could take me all the way to the White House. And they got rid of him yesterday?
Did they fire him yesterday?
My understanding from the Tallahassee rumor mill is that they.
I love that Tallahassee rumor mail.
We grid baby, Oh, I know that they shitcanned him, fired him, kicked his ass to the curb, told him to get the fuck out, pack your shit, have a security guard walk him out of the building. Essentially, now, folks don't cry for Jeff Row.
Yeah, because he has millions of donor docu.
Of the eighty plus a million dollars that have been spent by Ron de Santis, sixty seven cents of every dollar from what I am told, has run through the companies of Jeff Row. So Jeff is okay, He's going to cry his way all to go private jet shopping by the end of vest to Aspen.
Yeah, exactly, that's incredible. Congratulations Jeff Row.
You know, look, I am just happy that money didn't go to making Ron de Santis d president. I want to stop for a minute and just muse on Ron DeSantis's bad judgment for two seconds, because Ron DeSantis, if.
He had didn't have bad judgment, he had no judgment at all.
Right, But I mean, I want to talk about the fact that he wore those cowboy boots to every event because they made him an inch and a half taller, two inches taller.
Did he think that no one would ever notice that?
Look, there's a lot of vanity in all political candidates, and I've seen it in various ways. And I will tell you one of the moments of vanity that is also relevant to another story this week. So, when I worked for Rudy in city Hall as a senior advisor to the mayor, whatever the fuck I did, I don't.
Know, you mean America's mayor.
Yes, this is in nineteen ninety nine. I remember one day.
By the way, I just want to pause for a second and say that while you were working for Rudy, I was hating Rudy for arresting homeless people.
Continue.
I just want to put it out because I get so few moments right here.
Continue.
Well, he mostly wanted to stop pooping on your stoop. But Okay, long story short, right though, to the connection of Vanity to Rudy to DeSantis and Rudy off the
Mayor's office. There was this little tiny like a mini kitchenette kind of like a refrigerator and a sink and a little thing, and the stairs that led down to his secret office in the basement, right And I remember one day I was talking to somebody and we stepped into that little cubicle because there was a big meeting going out of there in the room, We're figuring something out, and I looked over on this little like countertop and I see this thing called topic tpp IK and I'm like,
what the fuck is that. I looked at it, and that was that spray on hair that Rudy Yes was using at the time, and that Stephen Miller showed up on TV using that one day, and as a bald dude, I started to laugh hysterically. But it really tells you what vanity does to these people. It fucks them up. They do things They're like, oh, no one will ever notice I'm wearing platform cowboy boots with lifts inside. No one, We'll never pick up on that.
So let's segue from that to one Rudolph Giuliani.
There have been a number of bad.
Weeks in a row for Rudy, but I think this might be the baddest Rudy.
As I have said for some time now, he is a proofcase for everything Trump touches dies. The rule never fails.
So he owes Ruby, Moss and Shay Friedman one hundred and forty eight million dollars.
And I'm thinking right now that Rudy cannot do enough cameos at s seventy five bucks a whack in the remaining heres of his life to complete this assignment. My rough mathist that he's the actuarial tables will catch up before he gets do enough cameos to be hit the law.
But again, I mean cameos as we've seen from this week from everybody's favorite George Santos, who has a lot of botox. But actually I think looks pretty good. Though I would have skipped out on the lip filler. He looks really good if he's eighty. He looks less good if he's actually.
We're on fast cosmetics now.
Yeah, sorry, I'm in trouble.
Okay, we won't talk about his lip fillers anymore. But George Santos did prove that you can actually make quite a lot of money on cameo, but maybe not forever.
Look, I think George Santos is you know, his fifteen minutes are just about up. The market for people buying ironic cameos is deminimous. I don't think we're going to end up with a an industry segment of former fabulous Brazilian criminal with a secret drag identity. But look, this idea that there's this alternate world on the far right or on the maga right, where they have an economic ability to support the madness of these people, it's just not there.
I was actually thinking about that because this weekend there was a turning point.
Usa.
No, in your state, the great state of maybe it's time to move. And by the way, if I lived in the state where all the bad stuff was happening most of the time personally, you know, but anyway, where Roseanne gave quite a long speech that was quite crazy.
The photo of Roseanne and the QAnon Shaman together. As I tweeted at the time, Oh the hell mouth has opened.
I mean, so those guys, I guess the QAnon. The headline here is the Qnon Shaman is out of check.
He's out of jail, and he's apparently going to Congress.
Oh, he's running for Congress.
Good.
That's good. That's what you want. It's always good.
When you do crimes to then try to build a political platform out of it.
Though it has worked for Trump, So.
There's no bottom in Florida, as you know. So essentially since the chairman of the Republican Party who is in Florida, who is still holding on to his job, Christian Ziegler and his wife Bridget, who is one of the founders of Mills for Liberty.
Yes, I don't think it's called Mills for Liberty. I'm pretty sure it's called Mom's for Liberty. Fact check, Jesse, we need a fact check.
Hmmm.
I like Rick's name better. I am fairly certain that I can get it to catch on where people say it. My job, Mollie is to be able to slip that in on the air somewhere in the next few days and I'm going to do it.
I think that's coming. As long as it's you and not me, that's all I care. But Bridget Ziegler, very attractive involved in a threesome because everyone in Florida is into weird, sketchy sexual shit.
Not that I'm casting aspersions.
That's a throwback too earlier when I said dispersions and ever moon got out of me.
Continue.
We've rot Tenor with a friend a couple of weeks ago, and we're talking about this big bathroom innovation we did this year, and he goes, oh, you have to watch this HBO series called How to Build a Sex Room. I'm like, do we though? Do we though?
Well, that's a series on HBO. What is happening over at HBO?
One of the streamers.
What has happened is Florida is taking over all of my cable channels. You degenerates down in Florida. You guys have to clean it up so you can come to New York. But I do think a really good point here is that chair of the Republican Party of Florida trying to hold up the party for two million dollars, right, that's he wants two million dollars in order to leave right.
Everyone in the state. Okay, how it makes my guts trying to do this. I will give Ronda Santis a tiny little shred of credit. The day the story came out, Ronda Santis or maybe the next next morning, said he should step down.
He could actually make him step.
Down, though right he actually he cannot. Oh, the governor does not have that power under the Florida Party bylaws. It has to be done by the Executive Committee. And here's why it hasn't happened, because Ziegler is now being advised by Steve Bannon and Corey Lewandowski, who are telling him, hold it up, you could be a maga hero. If you sustain this, you'll be a maga hero and everyone will believe that you are. So the next day Ziegler goes out and it's having.
A threesome is wrong. Corey Lubandowski doesn't want to be right. No, indeed yes, continue.
But with Corey's case and if no woman is wrong, I really have to advise Corey that under at least New Hampshire and Massachusetts law, the threesome cannot include a farm animal.
Stop is Christ.
I swear to God the degenerate in Florida. But yes, I agreed, And also I think really important just to take a moment here, as we are joking, we are also serious that there are real allegations of sexual assault.
Yes, and actually wanted to get to that, Molly for one second. As you mentioned, this would be hilarious and hypocritical and dumb and funny if it was a case of a threesome that got experiensed.
But right, that's not what this is.
The reason the story came to light was that Christian Ziegler and his wife had been involved over a long period of time with a woman and I know who she is. I'm not going to reveal it. Oh wow, she is a much lower power status than they are. She's not a peer socially, politically, financially, any of that stuff.
And they used her sexually. And then when his wife couldn't make it one day, he decided that he was going to go to her house, according to police reports, and he filmed himself in what is alleged to the police reports to be a sexual assault any rate, Yeah, and the police have recovered the video.
Right, And I think it's important to remember that, like a lot of these maga are really ultimately about misogyny and hurting women and not treating women. I mean, there's a real kind of anti woman, pro violence, pro sexual assault kind of vein that runs through this Republican party that is really disgusting and also just morally beyond the pale.
If this woman had somehow gotten pregnant, let me tell you something, Christian Ziegler would be raising her like a goddamn rocket sled to get an.
Abortion right right, right exactly, and so hypocritical but also quite evil.
Yep.
But I do think as we're talking about this, the story is just a sort of a kind of horrendous and important and misogynistic story. But also Bridget was one of the founders and moms for Milks for liber Day, we can say it here, and she was trying to remove books from libraries, keep gay teachers from teaching about LGBTQ issues. I mean, really quite committed to misogyny and also you know, anti science, anti education, anti literacy.
Well look, I mean this is a state where the Don't Say Gay bill had a much wider impact than people know. It also led to textbook publishers revising their textbooks to do things like adding a curriculum that says, hey, slavery had some benefits, and to textbook authors, removing the race of Rosa Parks from describing the actions of Rosa Parks, and removing books off the shelves about Hank Aaron and
Rosa Parks and others. This is a state where the massive Republican power differential sale much and stupid.
They're working hard to make the children stupid, like.
All one party states. Okay, hey, man.
Our kids read books here. We're a blue state.
We may have our problems, but let's talk about Ron DeSantis actually said something I agreed with this week.
I swear to god he actually did. Trump will cry fraud.
If he loses in early states, DeSantis warns, discuss.
Listen, let's look get to warm and fozzy on Ron DeSantis. But he's not wrong. Okay, he's not wrong. By the end of the month, DeSantis is going to be facing up to the realities of what's ahead of him, which is and they already know they're about to get humiliated. That's why they fired their super pac director. That's why they're scrambling around trying to find, you know, brand new donors. All this other stuff.
So they published a list of bundlers this week, which I've never ever seen except once with Mitt Romney, and I actually called you up on the phone to ask you what you thought was going on there.
Yeah, it's very strange. She's trying to build this like fake momentum and trying to reboot his campaign and to sort of pressure these guys into giving more a lot of them, and I know some of these people, and a lot of them are like, the fuck is this? They're not coming back in for multiple millions more for a campaign that is now pulling below ten percent.
Maybe Chris Christy can give them some momentum if right.
But the functional reality here of Ronda Santas is he is a young guy politically, he is going to have to make a very quick decision after Iowa when he gets blown the fuck out. Does he try to hold on until March twelfth in Florida where he's going to get blown the fuck out, or does he stop now admit that he's wrong, that he can't be Trump, join the Lincoln project. It was a good setup, you gotta say it was a good setup now, But look, he's
a very stubborn guy. He's a very arrogant guy. And he's been told since he became governor of Florida that he's the tallest, handsomest, smartest man in the room and women want to sleep with him and men want to be him. And that problem in Florida is the governor is a very powerful position and they have a lot of control over money and appointments at every other thing.
And he has used that to The reason Ronda Say has had so much money everybody is that he his staff used that to blackmail every lobbyist and major company in Florida. They're like, you know, I'm going to be Secretary of Commerce. Straighten up and fly right. Make sure the governor gets the maximum donation for his super pack. And that's why they raised eighty million dollars. It wasn't organic. People go, like, my god, he's the leader we've all been waiting for. He usually his Republican.
Everybody.
So he's so normal and natural and himself and human life human, His human ish characteristics are so amazing.
Yeah, he does. He seems like a real boy, a real human boy.
Yeah, someday I'll be a real boy. Right, Casey, shut up, Ron, get back in your hole.
Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Pleasure as always.
Tim Alberta, as a writer at the Atlantic and author of The Kingdom, The Power and the Glory of American Evangelicals, and an Age of Extremism. Welcome to fat Politics.
Tim Alberta, thank you for having.
Me delighted, really delighted.
And you know that you have written so many things where I've wanted to talk to you about them.
Today we're talking about your book.
So I feel like it's so unusual that your whole life and also politics dovetails so neatly in an odd way. Did you think that twenty sixteen would be the beginning of a strange evangelical kind of decade.
I guess, looking back at it, not really.
My own concerns with the evangelical church in which I was raised date back quite a bit farther. But I think obviously a lot of the things that I was seeing and witnessing and worrying about suddenly began to snowball, and the problems accelerated when Trump came on the scenes in ways that I just don't think any of us totally foresaw.
Will you tell us a little bit about your backstory? How did your father get involved.
Was he born an.
Evangelical born any You really have never found a thing that I know less about than Evangelical Christianity, So, I mean except for like Latvian Orthodox, I mean I really don't know any I mean anything. So I assume some of our listeners and probably my father as well, would love us sort of TLDR on it.
Yeah, of course.
So No, my dad was a fascinating, amazing character. He was not born into a Christian home. In fact, his childhood was pretty broken, had a pretty rough family life. He was brilliant, and he became very successful, and he was working in finance in New York in his mid twenties late twenties, and was married to my mother, who was working for ABC Radio in Manhattan, and they were sort of a power couple, and they had a big house and my dad drove a Cadillac, and they were
sort of on top of the world. And neither of them were religious whatsoever. Despite all of those material successes, my dad felt just this gnawing emptiness inside of him that he could not explain, and he tried to see a shrink. He tried to read self help books. He sort of did everything that one might do searching for what was this thing missing in his life, and he considered himself an atheist. He had since college, he'd read all of the books on religion and decided that he
was an atheist. And yet, for reasons that only God can truly explain, one day, my dad wandered into a church up in the Hudson Valley when he was visiting some family up there, and he heard the Gospel of Jesus Christ for the first time, and he that day became born again and gave his life to the Lord. And then that was pretty dramatic. That was pretty like upsetting in his family and with his friends and his social network. People thought he'd sort of lost his mind.
And then what was much more dramatic was pretty shortly thereafter, he felt that the Lord was calling him to enter the ministry, to abandon his career in finance, and to go to seminary and preach. And at that point people were like actually worried about him, like thinking that he'd
pretty much gone off the deep end. But that is sort of the origin story in many ways of my family, because my folks gave up everything there their very lucrative careers and they just followed God's calling to preach, and they traveled around the country and lived a very penniless, modest existence and eventually put down roots at a church in Michigan outside of Detroit.
And that's that's where I grew up.
So I grew up very much steep in the evangelical subculture as a result of my parents' own conversion experience.
Wow.
Yeah, and my parents just drank to fill the emptiness. But I do appreciate that.
Wow.
So you grew up in the church. You had always sort of seen this coming. I mean, there's a story of you at your father's funeral. Would you tell us that story and explain a little bit about what happened there?
Yeah, So I'd grown up in the church. I mean, like physically literally grew up inside the church because my mom was on the staff there as well, And you know, that was my tribe, it was my community, and so my my tired childhood, my entire adolescence was spent in the church. And I love a lot of the people there to this day. There are a lot of really wonderful, amazing people who do not fit the sort of ugly caricature of you know what, it means to be a sort of bloodthirsty, maga evangelical.
But you know, as I said earlier, there were things that I.
Saw that I observed as I was growing up that kind of I don't know, my antenna went up, and it just made me uncomfortable, and I wondered, like, what is the church really? What is it supposed to be? And are we being faithful to that? And so I sort of always kept those things to myself. But you know, I left and I moved to Washington, and I did my work as a reporter, and eventually I wound up writing this book a few years ago on Donald Trump
and his takeover of the Republican Party. And I was very critical of Trump in that book, and critical of many of his sort of evangelical allies for selling out in support of him. And it just so happens, Molly, that right when the book came out, my dad died, like very unexpectedly, just a few days after the book
came out. And so when I went back to Michigan to our home church where he you know, he had been the pastor of this church for more than twenty five years, I went back for the funeral, and because the book was in the news, and because Trump was tweeting about it and Rush Limbaugh was talking about it on a show, and all of this number of people at the funeral, at the visitation just they wanted to argue with me about politics. They just you know, they'd
like they'd come up. And I kept thinking that they were coming up to, you know, give me a hug, or you know, give their condolences or whatever. And lots of people did do that. But then there are also others who sensed an opening there, saw an opportunity to try and kind of stick it to me, and it
was beyond being just sort of gross and inappropriate. It was really eye opening because for me it was this kind of moment of clarity where you realize, oh, wow, like this has gotten like we are not just off the tracks. We are like we are like off the reservation. We've entered a completely different dimension here of what is the evangelical world doing? And have I willingly turned a blind eye to just how bad this has gotten? And
I think the answer was yes. And so in many ways, this book is sort of my trying to make amends for that by really turning my attention to this and trying to answer these difficult questions.
Yeah, so interesting. I mean, I just had a death in my family too. Is people say incredibly insane things to you, But I always think when people say insane things to you, it's always more about them than it is about you. I was listening to an interview you did, and I was thinking, like, did they get a bad deal or did they get a great deal? Like, you know, there's an idea in Judaism and you know, I'm Jewish,
but I'm not very religious. Shabiscoy can do stuff for you on the Sabbath that a religious Jew would not do.
That's what a shabiskoy is.
I wonder if there's a sense with evangelicals that Donald Trump is that man.
Well. I certainly think that Trump's superpower in many ways, as it relates to his ongoing alliance with the evangelical world,
is that he is not bound by biblical ethic. That he is, you know, he doesn't have to play by the rules, which is I think the irony in this relationship is that what was once perceived to be his great weakness, you know, that he couldn't pronounce Second Corinthians and that he couldn't cite a single verse from Scripture and that he talked about how he didn't need to pray for God's forgiveness.
He never had prayed for God's forgiveness.
Why would he write like all of those things that were so cringe worthy to his Christian audience. Is at one point I think, in many ways, is now his strength, because yeah, he can do the dirty work. They can contract out some of the unpleasantness of politics to Donald Trump, things that they themselves might not necessarily want to do or say. He can do them. He can say them on their behalf, and they feel like their hands are clean in some way, which of course is not biblical.
You are not given a pass for enabling and justifying
that sort of behavior. And ultimately, I think the folks who have entered into this sort of mercenary con with Donald Trump, I think not only will they come to regret it, because you know the politically it will wind up backfiring and causing real distress for them down the road, But I think there will be a reckoning here where these people, sooner or later, I think, are going to have to come to terms with the damage this has done to the witness of Jesus Christ that if they
truly are Christians, if they truly are followers of Jesus, then there's going to be a wake up call at some point here when they recognize how much damage they've done to the credibility of the Gospel.
So let me ask you, because I'm going to push back on that a little bit.
You know, this is like this weird saying that people who are good people have where they feel like and I have it too, and I'm not even such a good person, but like where you know, you think, well, eventually this is gonna But so far, evangelicals have gotten a great deal out of Donald Trump.
Like I think he's.
Delivered more than he would have had he actually believed any of the stuff. So I wonder, like, will there be a reckoning? Like, you know, I always talked to George Conway and he's like, well, the Republican Party will eventually destroy itself. But right now they have an evangelical Speaker of the House who is probably the most evangelical House speaker ever, right, I mean, he's super super committed.
They keep winning, don't they.
It's a fair point. I mean I would answer it in two ways.
I'm sorry to be just seem like a jerk here, but I mean, my fantasy is that that happens. But I just if you're an evangelical, don't you just feel like we can't stop winning?
Well, it's okay, No, it's a totally legitimate point. But I would I would say two things in response, one sort of focused on the short term earthly implications, and one on the much longer term eternal implications. I'll take the second part first. In fact, so mark chapter eight, verse thirty six. Jesus says, what doesn't profit a man to gain the whole world world yet forfeit his soul?
And I think that that is the million dollar question that a lot of these folks, even if they're not grappling with it today, even if they're not grappling with it tomorrow or next year or next election cycle, they will sooner or later grapple with that question, even if they refuse to acknowledge that they are grappling with that question, because it is I think, in many ways the mirror that we hold up to ourselves as Christians to say, all of these pursuits in this world, are they of
any eternal consequence? And if the answer is no, and even worse, if the answer is no, and these pursuits have taken me away from taking me farther away from my eternal identity, my true citizenship in heaven, and my relationship with Jesus Christ, then that is there's nothing worse than to come to that realization as a Christian. I think in terms of the ephemeral political pursuits. For fifty years,
evangelicals poured themselves into the anti abortion cause. Now some people have been far more sincere and faithful and invested in that issue not just as a political wedge, but actually invested in it as a matter of believing deeply in the sanctity of human life, and have not just used it as a sort of lazy, lowest common denominator culture war battle, right, No, just taking abortion as an example. For fifty years, they fought this fight, and they finally get what they want.
Roe v.
Wade struck down. And what is the net result.
The net result, according to the data we have now, is that the total number of abortions is higher than it was before. I cite that in answering your question just to say that there's this strange thing that we're warned about throughout scripture that like, the more you long after these things on earth, this political power, this influence, this fame, this self glorification, the more you seek after it, the less of it you actually get, and it becomes
this sort of trap. Whereas if you do the opposite, as Jesus says, if you seek first the kingdom of God, make that your priority, then all of these other things that you think are so important they're really not, but they'll be added unto you. In other words, if you get your priorities straight, then suddenly you don't have to obsess over politics and over culture wars and over trying
to dominate the country this way. And so I do hold on to this optimism that at least at some scale, Molly, that the tail will stop wagging the dog at some point here, and that people who have been engaged in this sort of reckless political idolatry will repent of it and will get their priorities back in order.
Great, so you think that there'll be a moment where evangelic will be like, holy moly, what are we doing.
Well, let's be clear, right like when we talk about evangelicals, when we talk about white evangelicals.
I think we're only talking about white evangelicals here.
Yeah, yeah, And you know this is we're talking about tens of millions of people. The question for me isn't necessarily okay, does that small militant faction of hardcore Christian nationalists who are on the war path and who are hell bent on hijacking the institutions of government and the institutions of Christianity in this country, Like, are we going to convince them to stand down? Probably not, But I also don't invest a ton of my own time worrying about that click. I don't think that it is a
huge percentage of the evangelical world. I think that they are really loud, and they're really well organized. But I'm much more concentrating on the masses of evangelicals who are sort.
Of a little bit homeless right now.
They're not people who are ever going to be like culturally and politically left, but they're also somewhere deep in their psyche and in their spirit, pretty unsettled by what's happened in Republican politics and by who Donald Trump is, and really questioning like, do they have any business any home in this Republican party. I think that identity crisis, that political and cultural identity crisis in the evangelical world
right now. That's what I'm writing the book about. And I'm thinking about the many millions of people who I think are genuinely on the fence and who are in a place where they could sort of break either way, Like they could be convinced to sort of buy into the far right Christian nationalist stuff, or they could be sort of brought back a little bit and with the help of their pastors and with the help of a healthy church environment, could be reminded of where their priorities
really should be. And I think that's the battle here, I really do.
Yeah, thank you so much. Tim.
It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on to talk about it.
Giraldo Cadava is a contributing writer at The New Yorker and author of The Hispanic Republican, The Shaping of an American political Identity From Nisen to Trump.
Welcome to Fast Politics. About that.
Thank you, it's great to be here.
I read your article in The New Yorker. I was like, we have to talk about this right away. So you are a professor of history and Latin studies at Northwestern and you've written books, but this story is really important, and you've been writing about the Donald Trump's push for Latino voters, So talk to me about this.
Yeah, I think it was a major story after the twenty twenty election. One of the main takeaways was that Latino's had different political ideologies that not all Latinos fought or believed the same thing. That was one of the big stories coming out of twenty twenty, I think, and ever since we've been kind of checking.
The temperature of those stories for a while.
With the twenty twenty two mid terms, how would that go special elections in California and elsewhere? And then I think, you know, we're gearing up for the twenty twenty four campaign and trying to see where that story will go. And you know, if it continues, it would be something in germ, represent a shred un court and shift I think in American politics, or a challenge to what many people thought they knew about Latino voters.
Yeah, you have Latino voters in Nevada who are from where and where and what are they what's important to them? Sort of give me the landscape of what the Latino voter block looks like, and it's not a block, But the diaspora is that the right word.
I don't know it's a right word for some Latinos.
I mean, I think that many Latinos are new or recent arrivals, and many others have lived in Texas or Arizona or New Mexico for hundreds of the years. So it's that already kind of suggests some of it is very compon I think it's become pretty customary to say Latinos are not a monool.
But when people say that, I think they primarily mean that we come from different nationality groups. We're Colombia, Ecuadorian, Venezuelan, but we're also spread across the country. We're in California, Arizona, Texas, Florida, and New York Illinois, and what the community looks like
in those different places is different. And I still think though that like mentioning the different places Latinos come from, mentioning the different nationality groups, that only really begins to scratch the surface of all of.
The ways in which we're different. I mean, we're citizens and non citizens. That coulds to your point about diaspora versus people who've been here for hundreds of years. But we're also urban, rural, religious, non religious, Democrat, Republican. So all of these I mean, we're young, we're old, we're all over the place, I mean, which in a lot of ways makes us like any other demographic group in America.
But I think it's still a process of continuing to persuade Americans that we really are different in ary and gosh, I didn't even mentioned like white, black, Indigenous, occupying every point along an ethnic and racial spectrum. So all of
these are the ways in which Latinos are different. I think we do need to dig a little deeper than just noting that we're from different nationality groups and live in different parts of the country, because there are all sorts of occidents even within particular geographies and nationality groups. The important thing right now is that an unfortunate reality of our electoral system is that elections are decided in just a handful of states, right and those states now
are like Georgia, Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin. And these are also places with large enough Latino populations to sway the elections that I'm still not convinced that like when a Democrat or Republican Caunadia goes to Wisconsin, that they realize that they're also talking to like Latino dairy farmers or Latinos who live their whole lives in the West, or when they go to central Pennsylvania, they're also talking to large
Puerto Rican populations. And so I think, you know, the map of Latinos is expanding in places that are important politically. So who are the Latinos Trumps going for. I mean, I'm not sure that in his own mind he's so sophisticated about how to micro target particular Latino groups. I'm not sure, but that's that's actually been true of many Republican candidates.
You know.
I don't think like Mitt Romi even, for example, I don't think they were about picking apart the South Florida
population compared with the Arizona or California population. I think what Republicans try to do is just kind of articulate these broad principles like anti socialism, anti communism, family values, religious liberty, pro business attitudes, those kinds of things, and they it's kind of like a blanket approach, which on the one hand, is sort of offensive in the sense that you know, they're not really trying to pay attention
to what particular Latino communities believe. But on the other hand, I think they are tapping into something that many Latinos will leave across the country.
So I would say, like the strongest suit for Trump when it comes to Latinos of all strike TuS to do with, you know, support for charter schools, support for religious liberty, support for slashing financial regulations giving small business owners, well those kinds of things.
So, and the goal is to sort of get Latino voters in Nevada, Arizona, Florida.
Right, Yeah, that is the goal.
I mean, yeah, I think, you know, the approach for Republicans for a long time has really been to kind of like deal away just enough of the Latino vote to win narrow elections. I do feel like for Republicans generally now that calculus is shifting a little bit and it seems like they really are trying to make a play for Latinos everywhere. And you know, that's interesting because it has never happened. I mean, and that's important probably
for listeners understand. I mean, the reason that there's so much attention to the stories that we're not we're not talking about Republicans winning the Latino vote. We're talking about Republicans just improving their performance among Latinos. You know, historically the average Latino support for Republicans has been somewhere between like a quarter and a third of the Latino population.
And obviously that's not amazing. I mean, that's not something that any party trying to get to fifty percent would be doing somersaults about or anything. But like, as that number creeps up to thirty eight percent, which is what Trump won in twenty twenty, or if recent polls. Oh and by the way, Mali, I know how much you love polls I'm talking about.
Because we should put we should.
Put all of our stock in all of our hopes and dreams and Schudent's polls when we're talking.
About polls, because I do want to like bring this up because I do hate poles. But in that last midterm election, there was a lot of polling that said that Democrats were going to lose the Latino vote, and they didn't.
Right, right, absolutely, And you know, I think they're at has been a lot of arguing about exactly how Latinos voted. You know, I think from the Democrats perspective, between twenty
and twenty twenty two. They had grown so tired and frustrated with this story that Latinos are weleeing from the Democratic Party and running toward Republicans that they were prepared to see even a stalemate as and by stalemate again, I don't mean fifty to fifty, I mean like holding stable between twenty and twenty twenty two, they were prepared
to declare victory. Now, you did see a lot of like Latino advocacy organizations like Nidocus and the Latino pollsters, Democratic pollsters like Matt Barrettel and others talking about, oh, you know, Latinos came home in the twenty twenty two midterm election. They came back. We told you, I think this narrative was crazy. But the more analysis was done of actual voting results after the twenty twenty two mid
terms by firms like ECHI Research, Catalysts and others. The picture that emerged was that, yeah, there was not a red waves as many had been fearing or anticipating. But Democrats or Latinos also did not come home to Democrats. It was as Carlos Odio from Echi's Research and for your listeners, I mean, I think I would just say that Carlos Odio and Echis research, they do amazing work in there. Some Latino analysts high quality. Should you should
be paying attention to them. Nonpartisan? I mean they're Democrats. They were, you know, I think definitely Byalentcia and Carlos Odio, they both worked in the Obama administration. Thing are Democrats, but they aren't I think partisan in their approach to reading data about Latinos.
And you know, their.
Conclusion was that the twenty twenty two mid terms largely offered a picture of stability and that yes, there wasn't further erosion, but nor was there kind of like coming back to the Democratic Party. That might look a little bit different in places like Nevada or Arizona, where Democrats were really eager to say that Latinos won the election there.
But you know, I've also seen interesting analyses that have that the real difference in twenty twenty two in places like Arizona, Nevatta was you know, white liberals, white progressives kind of overperforming for Democrats, and that even in those places, the Latino vote was about the same as it was in twenty twenty.
Right, so you didn't lose them you might not have grown, but you didn't lose them.
If you're talking about Republicans, yes you didn't continue to win Latino support, but you didn't lose them. And if you're talking about Democrats, it didn't come home, but nor did they move further to the right.
It is an off off your election too, which I think is an important data point. But can we talk about Univision? What's happened with Univision? Because this is really interesting. So what has happened with Univision?
It's it is interesting, and you know, I think it's kind of indicative. The Democrats response to that, the liberal Latinos response to what happened at univisuals to my mind nobs like indicative of part of their problem. So basically, what happened is that Univision, for the first time in twenty two years, as their executives that pointed out, didn't interview with a current or former US president or who is a Republican, a former or a current Republican.
Candidate or president.
This is confusing when talking about Trump because he's both a former president and a candidate. So that's why I'm
probably tripping over my words a little bit. But that felt to many Democrats and liberal Latinos like the network had taken a sharp turn to the right and it was now as like the actor John like Guizamo called it Magavision or something else I can't even remember, but anyway, liberal Latinos were like really frustrated, and you know, I talked to Republican strategists who are Latino who said things like, well, you know, their reaction is just because they have had
Boonievcalan in their pockets for so long that any sort of move to the center feels like a betrayal, it feels like opposition. And I do think that Bunibcian also, you know, they began what seems like a pretty reasonable strategy to move to the center, as they claim to represent the interests of their viewers broadly. But they kind of like started that move to the center pretty boldly by having us sit down with Donald Trump and kind
of letting him say whatever he wanted to say. And I also think that liberals have a point when they say that Enrique Acevedo, the anchor the Mexican Ankle from Pelavisa interviewed Trump didn't push back as hard as he might have when it came to, you know, spurious claims about winning the twenty twenty election. I mean a Savelo was not confrontational. Now Unison says that that is going
to be their approach. They would let Biden do the same thing, and the point is to let their audience members hear from candidates themselves.
Yeah, exactly is this.
A new tactic for Univision?
So you know, Wion has explicitly said that in twenty twenty four they're going to not necessarily give equal airtime to Republicans, independents and Democrats, but they're going to I think they called it equity. They're going to certainly air programming with Republican, independent and candidates. I even read that they are next hoping to get Nikki Haley to sit down for so that that is a new approach for unibe stowne I think.
So, I mean, are they getting pushed back and do you think there will be pushback and sort of talk us through that?
Yeah, they've gotten an enormous amount of pushback. I mean John Leguizamo again like called for a boycott of UNIBC on much like Latinos called for a boycott of Goya Bean's after the CEO Robert and Menway, you know, gave gave kind of laudatory remarks about Donald Trump in the summer of twenty twenty. So there's been a lot of
pushback in some local markets. You know, people have been told that you know, local networks that are unibc ON affiliates have you know, decided that they're going to kind of go against the broader company initiative to give kind of Republicans, independence and Democrats school air time. So there
is there is pushback. I think personally, I think the pushback is is risky in the sense that unibcon is still going to be really important as as the network that kind of commands the largest Spanish speaking audience across the nation. I mean, by boycotting UCON, they would risk kind of losing this important platform that they've had for
a long time. Personally, I'm also not convinced yet that the decision to have an interview with Donald Trump means that the network written large, is like moving hard to the right. Yeah, I don't. I don't think so. I mean, I think a lot to watch, a lot to see. I mean, the network had talked about how they had offered Biden an interview months ago and the details were still being negotiated. Now, Biden's team says that they were never offered an interview until right before Trump's interview, So
you know, we'll see, I mean, we'll see. I think there's a lot of suspicion about Televisa, the Mexican company acquiring Unibcon. There's a lot of suspicion about how the head of televis side is a personal acquaintance of Jared Kushner, and Kushner helped arrange the interviews. So there's some suspicion there. But I'm not convinced yet that this symbolizes a sharp
to the right for when neb see on. But the one thing I was going to say that's representative to me in the liberal Latino's reaction to the Universion interview is that their strategy right now seems to be to just express as much outrage as possible about Trump's immigration policies.
The very fact that you are an interview with Donald Trump, and I think it's important for liberal Latinos instead of, you know, expressing outrage about immigration policies and making no mistake about it, these are horrific immigration policies, no doubt about it. I want to be clear about that. But it seems to me like the outrage of liberal Latinos about fronts lies and immigration policies has not really made
a dent in his support from Latinos. And I would also like to say that, you know, I know, there's this whole debate, a really important bit about how to cover Trump and like, do we focus on the threat to democracy, the potential for authoritarian rule, or do we treat him like any other normal Republican candidate out there on the trail, talking about religious freedom and charter schools and pro business policies, things that Republicans have done for decades.
And you know, that's something I wrestle with in my own writing too. But for me, the reason that that question is so important for Latinos is that Latinos are a group that for so long has been ignored and taken for granted that to me, it is important to talk about their kind of regular old policy views as a way of acknowledging that Latinos believe different things, like the fact that Latinos believe different things about charter schools
and business and evangelicalism. That to me is an important part of recognizing their humanity and thinkers as political actors.
Yeah, though important to just say once.
Again that Trump is not He's not a normal candidate, though neither is Ron DeSantis. They're both shopping that same anti democratic, terrifying vision, which is against everything the founders had intended. He yes, thank you so much for joining us. Not to put too fine a point on it.
You're absolutely right, I mean it is thank you, thank you. Yeah, of course, no moment, Rick Wilson, Yes, Wally drunk fast.
It is time to do our favorite slash only segment, What is your moment of fuckery?
My moment of fuckery is the classic the returning champion, the douchebag Supreme, Donald John Trump.
We call him El duche.
L duche This week yesterday, in point of fact, he gave a speech because he can't stop himself in New Hampshire, the Great State of the Granite State, the Great State of New.
Hampshire, where he's pretty convinced he might lose to Nicki Haley. He's always freaking out.
He's a little worried about that. He's out of it. He's getting out of Iowa and going into New Hampshire, and he praised Victor orbon the best, who is a raging authoritarian, not a conservative, he is a dictator. And then he quoted approvingly and lovingly. I look, and I guess it's because the end of the quarter is coming up and he wants his performance. Bonus Vladimir fucking Putin, the.
One international leader he loves.
Vladimir Putin's critiques of America. Trump is reflecting and quoting them, and not in a way saying fuck you Putin, I will stand against you. It's more like, ooh, lad, can I rub your feet? They look so callous?
Ooh the other thing.
He did, And he's been doing this a lot lately, and I'm sorry, I do not give him a pass on this because he's an ignorant, a historical fuck wit.
That's nice.
He has been quoting a line where he says immigrants are poisoning the blood of our country. Oh really, Donald, is there something with the soil as well? Blood in soil? It seems to have a ring to it. I did not see that coming. Like God, listen, guys, everybody used to strap the fuck in because Trump is discovered.
That he's going full Nazi, full Nazi thing.
He's got the works out for him.
White nationalists.
Again, it was another week of people saying that Trump wasn't going to be Hitler, which again, if you have to specify, perhaps you might be in trouble.
A lot of your close friends at an influential journal of opinion believe.
That, called the National Review.
We had Rich Lowry on his podcast, cut up and put on Twitter saying that he thought institutions would once again protect us from Donald Trump. And you know, he's saying the quiet part which everyone behind the scenes is saying, you know.
The Justice League right exactly.
The people who are in the halls of power on the Republican side are trying to convince themselves that Trump won't be the end of democracy, despite the fact that all of us know, including Trump, who says I'm going to end democracy. You know, and then you ask his followers and they go like, oh, we need a dictatorship.
It's time for a dictatorship.
The only thing that will save us from Joe Biden wanting to make chips in the United States and giving poor kids free lunches will be a dictatorship.
This is a moment where if our actual institutions do not wake the fuck up and recognize what is happening, it's going to be like Remember I was told very very confidently by many, many, many people in twenty sixteen though there's no way Trump could win. He's an asshole.
I know.
I was one of those people for a while. But the fact that he is doing this openly now there's folks Google Red Caesar and you will go down the rabbit hole of what is going on here. They're prepping the battlefield not to have a Republican versus democratic fight, but a fight that is do you want a dictator or do you want an American president? And there are unfortunately seventy million Americans who want a dictator or they think it's going to work out for them right exactly.
I don't think they want a dictator, but I don't think they understand what a dictator means.
Yeah, we are not in a great spot right now as a.
Nation, not in a great spot.
We are not in a good place right now. And if people don't start I think the technical term is waking the fuck up, we are going to have a real, bad, bad.
Very Unmarry Christmas Yeah, as many bibars.
E Christmas twenty twenty four might not look like anything you've ever imagined before, because they'll be Yes, they'll be salivating to begin the thousand year Reich of Trump.
The good news is we'll be in Gitmo.
Well speak for yourself. I have a getaway plan. Thanks, Rick, all right, have a great one.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in pology 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.