Sarah Longwell, Jacob Rubashkin & Yvonne Wingett Sanchez

all the fuckory with the votes in Arizona. But first we have the host of the focus group podcast, The Bulwarks, Sarah Longwell. Welcome too, Fast Politics. Sarah Longwell, Hey, thanks for having me. Great to be here, Thank you. I feel like we're weeding through all of these Republican responses to Trump's Nick fuent As dinner, and I was like, we need someone who can explain what the hell is

happening with this Republican party. And I was like, the bolt works, Sarah Longwhile I'm happy to be your serfa through this insanity, let's just I'm gonna set the scene for you. Trump has dinner with a white supremacist and Kanye West, who is in the middle of some kind of epic anti semitted meltdown Tuesday night, right before Thanksgiving the Sleepy Slow newsweek, and now the response is slightly different than what it might have been in two thousands seventeen,

but also oddly the same discuss. Well, boy, where to start? Okay, So let's start with the fact that Kanye, first of all, was kind of setting Trump up here, Like the ostensible reason for Kanye to go to this dinner with Trump, uh and bring Nick flent As was like to ask Trump to be his vice presidential like on his ticket. So like that, the whole thing is insane from from start to finish. But to your point, you're asking a bigger question with like, is the response the same or different?

The response is kind of different in the sense that right now we're in a new moment. We are in a genuinely new moment that is different from after when Trump was elected and he was you know, and he was elected with majorities in both the House and Senate, and basically Republicans decided to get on board, unless you're Paul Ryan, who like tapped out. They basically all got on board with Trump and then he was going to be the nominee. I was trying to recruit people to

primary him. Nobody wanted to do it. Everybody just decided they were going to go all in on this guy again. Most people had made their peace with him. But now after losing in and then you know, dragging through primaries a whole bunch of election deniers basically made in his image, and having all of them in swing states go down in flames, there is a renewed sense among the people who never really liked Trump to begin with but have been carrying his water now for uh seven years, that like,

we gotta get rid of this guy. And the big differences is that now facing an open Republican primary, like there are other places to go. Not only are there other places to go, like Rhonda Santis or Christy Nome or Glenionka or whatever, there's like other people that they

can before and still beyond the team. They can also criticize Trump and still beyond the team, because the criticism is not hey, this guy did a coup, or hey, this guy is repugnant in every aspect of both his person and his policy, but it's that he's a loser, right, He's causing the team to lose, And so you can stay on team on side and criticize Trump now with more impunity than they've been able to do in a

very long time. But what's weird about this flent As thing is that you are seeing sort of rumblings of people condemning it on the Republican side, but for the most part, the way that it's still the same as like they think that even in this moment, that's different.

They don't need to go on offense against Trump, right, Like what you would expect in this moment, just like you would expect in the moment just after January six where they could have impeached him, is for them to be like, let's put the nail in the coffin on this guy's political career. He is destroying us. And like they always sort of take a pass on that opportunity because they want Trump gone, but they've never felt like

it can be by their hands. This is the very important role You have to understand that never Trumper's play is like they want to be able to criticize us so that they can stay on side, but they expect us to be the ones to get rid of Trump for them because they can't do it themselves. Yeah, that is a really interesting thing that I actually was thinking about. It's like they think that somehow they can will him away. But if they don't do this, now Trump will be

the nominee again. Maybe. I mean, I struggle between the idea of knowing that we've kind of seen this movie before and that we have sort of counted Trump out. I had so many people after January sixth day. Man, you know, I slept really good last night because as terrible as that was, I know he's done. And of course, like Trump's never done, Like there will be the nuclear a you know, apocalypse, and there will be Trump and

cockroaches and that's it. And so I think, on one hand, you have to you have to always take seriously the idea that he's he's not done. He will find ways to come back. They appear on the Republican side, like he's just weak enough right now that it seems like there's a number of people gearing up to run against him, in which case you do end up in a sixteen environment where you know, you have people split in the field and Trump's over there with his plurality and his

burn it all down lane. But at the same time, also things are different in the sense that people have learned a bunch of lessons, right, Like I just I have a hard time seeing The reason I say maybe is I have a hard time seeing Chris Christie and Glenn junk In and Nikki Haley and a bunch of them staying intil the bitter end against Trump as opposed to dropping out and consolidating against him behind whoever was

the most seemed the most viable. After Republican primary, and even the fact that I do think there will be a Republican primary, um like there is a bunch of shaking up that's going on. Things are very unsettled internally, whether it's with the leadership of the r n C McCarthy as speaker. You know, there's just like a lot of of infighting, like internescent Republican warfare that we don't

know how it's going to turn out. But like I think, I think it's recently as a month ago, you would have heard some of us be concerned that there would be no primary, like there would be no Trump would just darncy, would just make it so it was him, And I don't think any of us feel that way. Now, is the my pillow guy going to be the head of the r n C. You're well, you know it's it's just from your lips to God's ears. Um, he doesn't trust computers. You know that. You know I have

not followed his trajectory super closely. I think I can say with relative confidence that he will not be the RNC chairman. I do think you know how many how many votes are there actually for RNC chairman. I think it's like a hundred and sixty eight, very difficult to claim that, like a roll call vote of a hundred and sixty eight people is rigged. The real challenge coming from Lee Zelden, who was who just lost the governor's race in New York, became much closer than people expected.

And so the idea though you're hearing the sort of chorus rise up in the party where so you can't lose this many times and keep your job. And so the knives there are knives. I don't know whether enough of them are out for Rana. I don't know whether

enough of them are out for McCarthy. But there are challenges that are bubbling up that and the and the charge is really like we lost on your watch, like we need new blood, we need something different, and It's weird because it's not a it's not like we need Normi's back or we need to even be more trumpy. It's more just like, you guys are the ones who lost this for us, and so now we need new

people right now it seems like it. But it feels like there's more of that towards And again, I'm no fan of anyone of any of the people were talking about here, but it seems like there's more knives out for Rana than there is for Trump. And Trump is actually like caused the party to lose all of these elections. Yeah, I mean institutionally among like elected Republicans, it's easier for them. People still aren't Here's the thing. Here's the here's the

most fundamental thing. No one is sure yet where the voters stand on Trump. So Trump's power emanates from his hardcore base that is never going to leave him, right Like, his leverage over the party is that he could take his hardcore base and walk with them. They will follow him anywhere, and he could cripple the Republican Party and

until like, I don't know that. Just let's talk about Republicans in general think that Trump is actually weak with voters that he no longer commands them with the cult like sort of grip that he has. They're going to be careful about turning on him, but they are going to turn on a lot of his proxies. And that's what we're seeing right now. But I do think Trump is as weak as we've seen him. Like that is

the we should take solace in that. That being said, anybody who thinks that it's just going to take care of itself, he's weak and so we don't have to do anything. We can just pretend like everything is normal again and just be for somebody else and not have to actively take him down is wrong, and that it means that they have learned no lessons from the last seven years, right, And I feel like that is true.

Like we are seeing the people who are criticizing Trump here are like people who are running against him in four Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie, you know, former Vice president pants. And then there is like the crew that always criticizes him, and well they should, you know, the sort of Susan Collins is the few kind of moral Republicans left in the party. But then there's this sort of like the people who are like the tastemakers, right, the kind of

Ted Cruises and Marco Rubios. I mean, hard to consider Marco Rubio anything at this point, but you know those people are still kind of silent. Yeah, right, everyone's waiting to see which way the wind blows. And and this is where going back to the January sixth moment, because this is how I've been thinking about this. I keep looking. I remember the January six sort of pocket before McCarthy

went down and resurrected Trump. I just remember that time really well, and I think that's instructive, and I keep wondering,

are we at that kind of time? And the thing that happened in that moment that I think is sort of not happening right now is if you recall when Lindsey Graham, basically a disavowed Trump after January six, he went to the airport and a bunch of people mobbed him at the airport, screamed at him, and they were they were doing this, they were tracking down Republican elected officials who were condemning Trump and they were just menacing them. And like, that doesn't seem to be happening right now.

Like the normal thing of the way that the voters and the local state parties and the Trump faithful all work really hard to kind of keep regular elected Republicans in line, Like some of the air is out of their balloon with this last lost in no small part because so many of their mouthpieces who have just been running elections all just lost, many of them catastrophically, and so like they don't have the same pep in their step, you know, they don't have the same sense of bravado.

They don't have the sense that they're in charge necessarily anymore. And so the Trump went as Kanye dinner is both a sign that Trump is both relegating himself and being relegated to like the absolute fringes of the right, like that that is his base. He's trying to hold on because that's why is he doing this, right. Trump knows he's got to hold on to a very hardcore base of voters. That's what gives him his leverage, and so he's going to play to them. He's not thinking about

any kind of general election right now. He's thinking, how do I hold on to a hardcore base of voters, preferably the ones that are kind of dangerous and will scare these other Republicans back in line, and he hopes that he can play sort of like a bit of a long game on that where then he gets indicted by d J. He's got, you know, all these Republicans are forced to kind of take his side against the FBI, against the Department of Justice, and that he slowly kind

of works himself back into a dominant position. That's what he trying to do while the other guys and they're saying this right like off the record, on background, deep cover, secret note, will never put our names on it. There spokespeople are all saying things like yeah, de Santa Cianka, they can wait for six months while Trump punches himself out. And I just think we don't know will Trump pumped himself out or will he regain a dominant position, Like

that's the question. I mean, it seems like we've seen this movie before and he regains the dominant position. Yeah again. I do think that the one difference now is that Trump was able to come in as the new guy and the exciting, dangerous, the guy who says all the crazy ship that's right against a bunch of establishment normies that people were really sick of. And the alternatives now are all kind of made in Trump's image, Like when I do the focuser, so I dose focus groups all

the time. Coming off the election, I've been mostly doing independent swing voters, but prior to that did a lot of Damn's, a lot of Republicans, a lot of Trump voters. And the thing is is that when we always ask do you want Trump to run again in two and the number of people saying yes to that was really high and early two, but has been like steadily dropping. And what we're hearing is that they like Rhonda Santist. It's always the number one name that comes up, like

with a bullet, not even close. And then people like Christy Nome or Greg Abbott. Basically, anybody who's willing to put migrants on a plane as a political stunt is somebody that they feel like. You know, people liked Carry Lake, um, we're talking about her. They like people from the Trump cinematic universe, and that doesn't Pence is not from that universe, right, Pence was a stop to the old way, And they look at Marco Rubio or Nicky Haley or Mike Pence

and they think they're boring old guard. And so my point is that the new people that they have as alternatives are embody some of the things that they loved about Trump, right, they are, they are mean, They are fighters. Fighters, I'm gonna put quotation marks are because that's the big thing everybody says. They want someone who's going to fight.

They're not seen as establishment. They have all the right enemies, hate the right people, the right people hate them, and so there is emerging like a trumpy type of alternative that I do think people having somewhere to go so that they can still be on the team but not be for Trump is an important new dynamic that is making things somewhat different. But these people, they're playing by Trump's rules. So the idea is your the thing they like. It's almost as like they like the cruelty, right, as

Adam Server said, the cruelty is the point. But there's a lot of other things besides cruelty that's kind of like embodied in their right. They want somebody who's going to own the lips. They want somebody who's gonna fight the media, which, by the way they see wouldee those two things as synonymous or like a redundancy. They want somebody who's gonna take on their culture war fights. You know, this is Russian expression, the appetite increases while you're eating.

And I think that what you have to understand about Republican voters is Trump changed them in terms of what they expect from elected officials, and so they want the bar uncle brawling, they want the casual cruelty. Those things are features. They are not bugs. And that's why even somebody like a Glenn Yuncan, I'm not sure. You know, he he went around and campaigned with Carrie Lake and the election deniers, but like, I'm not sure that even he has what it takes to get Republican base voters

off their couches to vote for him. I do think it has to be somebody like to Santis or Abbott. But but here's the thing. I'll just so I believe that to be true. But I'll also just say these new candidates are pretty untested. Like everyone's talking about Rhonda Santis, but like I watched him in his debate with Charlie Chris, who is not a particularly good candidate or politician, and to Santis like which just wasn't very good. You know, he like looks awkward, he smiles awkward his suits too big.

When he doesn't want to answer something, he just starts, he kind of freezes and so and he's like he has a notorious glass jaw as reporters down in Florida. No, not good with donors. And so I just think things are as wide open as we've ever seen them. And yet you have to be really clear eyed about the forces that Trump unleashed on the party and how he

changed everything. So people just want different stuff now, and people like Mike Pence are like delusional to think that this version like Mike Pence can't go to a Trump rally without real security, Like they don't. They don't dislike him, like they want to murder him. And so I just I think that the the the idea that we're dealing with like that that there's a big lane for Mike Pence is sort of insane, but there is a lane for alternatives. Well, this is very interesting. I really appreciate

you coming on and just talking about this. It is honestly like it's just strange time and Republican politics, and I'm really glad you came on and just explain this test a little bit. Yeah, you bet, Thanks for having me. Jacob Rubashian is an analyst at inside Election and welcome too fast politics. Jacob, how's it going? You know, it's just always an election, right. I feel like we're just in a state of constant election. It never ends. And once we're done with this one, uh, it's it's already

on scary as it may. See. So Georgia run off, we got herschel Walker, father of many children, and the Reverend Warnock talk to me about what the landscape looks like. Right, So we've got this runoff in Georgia. Neither candidate got to in November in the general election, and so Georgia says, well, you've got to go to overtime in order to decide

who the actual winner is. Of course, Raphael Warnock ended up with about forty nine point four percent, herschell Walker forty eight point four percent, so heading into this both candidates under fifty percent. Look, this is a really tight race. Georgia is still a republican state, even as it's gotten better for Democrats. We saw every single other Democrat on the statewide ticket this year in Georgia lose by anywhere

from you know, really six to nine points. Raphael Warnock was the only Democrat in Georgia actually to get more votes than his opponents, So this is still a Republican state. It is an uphill climb for any Democrat, but there are reasons for Warnock and his allies to feel a little optimistic about how things are. With about a week to go before the last day of voting in the runoff election, let's talk about what the early voting looks like.

What does the early voting look like? So early voting has been robust in Georgia thus far, but I think it's important to remember that with this new election law that was passed last year in Georgia, one of the things that they did was they changed the runoff from a two month period. Right in te we had an election in November and then it was two months before voters returned to the polls on January five to cast their votes in the runoff, and this time around, they

shortened that runoff period by a month. So what that meant is that they also shortened the period available for early voting. So whereas early voting used to be much longer for Georgia voters, now it's literally just this one week. This week plus after some litigation the Saturday and Sunday of last weekend before Thanksgiving, so yes, on on Monday, the States set kind of the single day record for early voting, with just over three hundred thousand people casting

early ballots on Monday. But that's a little deceptive just because the early voting period has been so condensed. I think the Democrats have a lot to be happy about here. They have seen the black share of the vote in early voting above, which is a good sign for Democrats. They are seeing heavy turnout in kind of the democratic areas of the state, and particularly in that Saturday voting question.

The county has had an option of whether to allow voters to cast ballots on Saturday, and what we ended up seeing happened was that it was mostly the Democratic leaning counties in the state that gave those voters the option to vote, and a lot of the Republican leaning counties decided not to do Saturday voting at all. So Democrats had kind of a free head start on the early voting period that has contributed to the positive numbers.

But you know, as we've seen in races across the country over the last two years, early vote is just one component of the overall picture, and with voting methods so polarized these days, with Democrats so clearly favoring early vote, with Republicans so clearly favoring election day vote, there's still a lot of information we don't have, and it it means that Republicans still can make up the gap if they get massive election day turnout. I'm going to push

back on that because and I think you're right. I mean, everything you're saying is right, But it does seem to me that Republicans have really been sort of hurting themselves by I mean, here's a great example. These are Republican districts. They're making it so they can't vote on Saturday, right, and they're saying like, don't vote early, vote the day up. And so yes, theoretically they should make up the ground.

But like I'm hearing a lot, Like I've done a lot of interviews with people where they've said, you know, we were able to bank votes for you know, such and such a number of days, so we had this huge advantage when it came to do you see what I'm saying. No, absolutely, I think you're absolutely right that it is. It is. It is an incredible advantage for Democrats that they have this operation, that they have the

motivation among their voters to bank those votes early. It means not only are you having votes that you can count on, but it means you can direct your resources in the final weeks of the race, in this case, the final week of the race to voters that you know, haven't cast their ballots yet. Right, You can be much more precise about who you're getting to show up on election Day. So I don't mean to say that this is this is a net neutral environment for Republicans when

it comes to the early vote. I think that I talked to Republics all the time who say, why don't our voters, you know, why don't our voters vote early? Why don't they understand? Why why don't the campaigns understand? You know, I was talking to a Florida Republican today and they were saying, you know, in Florida, Republicans vote early, and that's how we do things and we win all the time. And why don't Republicans in the rest of the country understand that this is actually a good thing?

And of course we know why. It's because Donald Trump decided that early voting was was his enemy and so he effective behavior in that way, but certainly it places an immense amount of pressure on Georgia Republicans to show up on election day. My point is just that it doesn't it doesn't lock it in for Democrats, right right, right, right exactly? Is Georgia a state where they count the

early vote later. That's a good question. I don't know off the top of my head where the Georgia rules are now, because then you have those dumps, right, what Trump calls the dumps. Trump has decided he is not going to go on the campaign trip with the candidate that he picked, which I think is interesting. I mean, clearly the thinking is that he is poison right. Yeah, Look, this has not been a good stretch for Trump by

any definition of the word. You know, starting out with the results of the mid term elections disappointing for Republicans, and we saw a lot of these Trump backed candidates lose close and competitive races. So Republicans were always sour on him in general. Coming out of the mid terms.

You add in this insane breaking of bread with white supremacists with Kanye that has only further I think some of the Republican hesitation, especially at kind of the the elite levels, right, the people who can actually pick up the phone and say please come to Georgia or please stay away from Georgia. Those are people who are looking

more askance at the former president. And then the final thing you have to remember is that Georgia is somewhat unique among states, and particularly Georgia Republicans seem to be a little unique among Republican voters and how much they don't care about Trump, right herschel Walker was really the exception in the primaries earlier this year, where he was the Trump backed candidate who didn't really face any major opposition.

That Trump went into a lot of these primaries, endorsed candidates all up and down the statewide ticket and in several congressional districts, and by and large almost all them lost. Right George, Georgia voters seemed to really have moved on Georgia. Republican voters seemed to have really moved on from Trump

in a way that Republican voters in other states haven't. So, you know, I think there's kind of the macro concerns about Trump as a weight on the Republican party, and then there's the more Georgia specific question of just like voters here don't seem to care about him all that much. You know, I think they care a lot more about Brian Kemp. They like Brian Kemp a lot more than

they like Trump. And so when the Walker campaign is trying to do that calculus, they'd rather you know, they'll trade a rally with Kemp instead of a rally for with Trump any any day of the week. So you have Kemp, who never really wanted Walker to be the candidate, out on the stump with Walker, and you have Trump, who picked Walker, hiding at Mara Lago exactly. It is a reflection of the former presidents diminished status in the state, and it's a reflection of the ascendency of Brian Kemp.

You know, I think that we sometimes forget right that Brian Kemp won a very very narrow race in eighteen and for much of this cycle it looked like he was in a very tight race against Stacy Abrahams in that rematch, and ultimately, you know, he wins by over seven points. He has one of the largest victories. He and Brad Raefensberger end up kind of at the running at the top of the ticket for Republicans in Georgia.

They he is really popular in this state. He has triangulated really well, even though politically speaking he's quite conservative, right, I mean, one of those things he may be being rewarded for is that he and Brad both refused to

find the votes that Trump wanted them to find. Right. No, absolutely, he did the right thing in the wake of the election and refused to overturn the results or fraudulently, you know, find those eleven thousand, however, many votes that Trump wanted them to find in order to secure him the win in Georgia. And for that, for that one very important action, but but again kind of limited politically to to this

one question of election integrity. Brian Kemp has won the benefit of the doubt from a wide swath of Georgia voters who otherwise might not align with him politically. Do you think there are split ticket Kemp war Knock voters? There have to be right, Absolutely, there are quite a

few split ticket Kemp Warnock voters. And if you look at them, they are concentrated in the Atlanta metro area, and they are concentrated among white voters, college education aided voters, and independence Raphael Warnock won Independence by sixteen points in Stacy. Abrams lost them by I believe one point. That's a really interesting statistic. Yeah, yeah, and actually sorry about that.

It's it's Rafael Warnock one Independence by eleven points and Abrams lost them by one point, but still a major gap. If you look at the places where Warnock overperformed Abrams, independent voters, moderate voters, Atlanta media market, and white voters with college degrees, Yes, super interesting. You know, they did pretty equally Warnock and Abrams among black voters. Among voters who had never attended college, it was these kind of more educated suburbanites who decided to go with Kemp but

also went with Warnock. We will know on December seventh who has won, and it's possible we will have Democrats having fifty one Steeds Republicans having forty. Yeah, and I think we we will know relatively quickly. Looking back at the one runoff, that January five runoff was more Knock one his race against Kelly Leffler by about two points. That race was called around noon of the next day.

Of course, you know, something else happened January six that prevented significant media coverage of that race call, but that that's about when it happened. And so I would anticipate that, barring any really unforeseen circumstances, we will know fairly quickly, either late on the night of December six, or or sometime in the morning or mid morning December seven, who

has won this race. And and yeah, that will determine whether Democrats, you know, maintain this fifty fifty power sharing arrangement that they've had for the last two years, or if they have a true majority with nine And now what are you looking at after that? I mean, are

there any specials that will flip the House? So this is this is this kind of crazy question, right we we've we've had such a narrow majory already in the House for the last two years, theoretically a four seat majority, but at times it's been down to as narrow as a two seat majority for Democrats. Republicans are now in this position where they have a four seat majority kind of split. But of course we've already seen unfortunately, one

member of Congress has already passed away. Last night, Donald mckeachen from the state of Virginia died of coal erector cancer. Now that's a safe Democratic district and so his seat will be filled by a Democrat whenever that special election takes place. But it does mean Democrats are already operating with one fewer vote. You know, when the House comes into session, it will be four hundred and thirty four members, not four thirty five. So it will be interesting to

see who leaves, right. There always members who leave halfway through their term. Generally they come from the minority party because when faced with the option of being in the minority or taking a seven figure job on K Street, people make the decision that they want to make. But you know, Death's job offers that are too good to

pass up. All of these things contribute to a significant amount of churn in every Congress, and when the majority is so narrow, yeah, there's always the possibility for absolute chaos, or even more possibility for chaos than there already is with such an evenly divided chamber. So interesting, Jacob, this is really, really, really interesting. I hope you will come

back when we begin another season of madness. Yeah, absolutely, what're be happy to Yeah, we got to talk about the primaries and the new DNC cities and the oh God, and emotionally exhausting. Von Winget Sanchez is a democracy reporter at the Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Politics. You are in Arizona, which is like another planet right now where you work for the Washington Post. Talk to me about

what is happening there. Well, we are through the election, but we have one county out of fifteen that has decided not to certify its election results. They have delayed repeatedly their vote to certify. They blew past the deadline of November and they have set up another meeting for

later in the week. They're being taken to court by the Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, who is trying to force them through a court order to certify these elections election results or risk you know, getting sixty thousand plus votes thrown out and not included in the states tally, which could affect the results of some of these really tight statewide races. Explained to me what this district is like. Sure, it is in southeast Arizona. A lot of people might

be familiar with the town of Bisbee. It's a quaint little town southeast of Metro Phoenix. It's near the border. Beautiful area, very very read, very Republican. There are three members of the Board of Supervisors down there to our Republicans, one is a Democrat and English. She's not on board

with delaying this thing. She wants the board to follow its ministerial legal duty of certifying these election results, and she very clearly has been met with quite a bit of resistance, despite being advised by the county attorney down there and various other people that you know, they need to do their jobs. You tweeted out a video yesterday. Explained to me, so this's a very red county in Arizona. They had a kind of meeting yesterday. Explained this meeting.

So this was up in Metro Phoenix. This was the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors. So this is a different board of supervisors. But there are people who sort of believe kind of the same thing. Right in Maricopa County, which is the county home to Metro Phoenix and most of the state's voters, they were under a lot of pressure to not certify, as a lot of these more rural counties have been under. It's unclear if it's a coordinated attempt and who behind the scenes is really pushing

for these guys to not certify very publicly. Though Republican candidates, including Carry Lake, who was projected to lose her race for governor very narrowly by about seventeen thousand votes, they've been on board with this thing and been, you know, essentially saying that because of problems that took place in Maricopa County on election day, which were very real and which affected about a third of polling locations, that you know, Arizona needed to have a revote and it needed to

do its elections all over again, and that these results couldn't be trusted because lots of people around Metro Phoenix heard about these problems, either on the radio or on social media, or when they pulled up to polling sites there were lines, and therefore their supporters were suppressed, that their voters were somehow disenfranchised and not allowed to vote,

and so they're calling for a revote. The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors has noted repeatedly that no one was denied the right to vote, that there were various options that people could have used to vote, including sliding their

ballots into what's called drawer three. And it's a little slot and it's been used for decades, and if the tabulator couldn't read your ballot after you had it printed out, then you would put it in an envelope and you would just deposit it into essentially what is like a dropbox, or you could go to another polling location, and so there were a lot of a lot of different options. The election wasn't per effect, they acknowledge, but no one was denied the right to vote, so they went ahead.

Will you just explain what the sort of thing that happened was with the machines. So what happened on election day about twenty minutes into voting, So around six twenty am, the first call comes in from a polling location. They're having problems with their tabulators. These tabulators are set on top of essentially what is a blue plastic box. It

looks like a drop box. And what was happening and what continued to happen throughout the day at about seventy polling locations, was the printers that print out ballots for voters. After you check in, you give them your I D. The machines are able to recognize what area you're coming from and therefore are able to print the races relevant

to your area. These printers that are responsible for you see in your ballots did not print ink dark enough to be read by the tabulators, and so the printer settings had to be adjusted at all of these polling locations in order for the tabulators to properly work. That

caused lines backups at several voting locations. And you have to keep in mind that, especially in a place like Arizona, Republican activists Republican candidates for two years, led by former President Donald Trump, have stoked mistrust in the early voting system, have told people not to vote by mail and have told people to show up and vote in person. That caused about two hundred and ninety thousand people to show up at polling locations on election day to vote in person.

That is the largest number of voters in person on election day that we have ever seen. And so in some ways this was a problem exacerbated by the messaging around voting and the instructions of these Republican candidates and activists for giving their own voters, which was don't mail your ballots back, show up on election day, drop them off, or vote in person and get your ballot printed out.

And that was a big gamble, and it relied on everything working completely properly, everything going on smoothly, and we all know that that just didn't happen. So in a way, Republicans created this, messed themselves by encouraging their people not to early vote. I mean, obviously they didn't create it, but they made it worse, right, Yeah, they made it worse.

And then once the problems became really clear, so about an hour into voting, when you started to have a lot of these printers go down, and the lines were getting longer, videos were starting to be posted on so social media. You had a lot of people instructing voters, Republicans instructing voters to not put their ballots in drawer three, that somehow drawer three, this little slot in the draw box, couldn't be trusted. And so then you've got a lot

of voters who just already don't trust the system. They're being told not to use the method that has been used for a long time, this backup method, they're telling them not to use it. They exacerbated the problem. The problems did exist, but they exacerbated them. So interesting, So now what happens Now you have most of the county's right, you have fourteen counties willing to certify, and this is

not so what happens now? So Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, she's a Democrat and she beat Carrie Lake in the governor's race. She filed a lawsuit late Monday in Coaches Can me. She's asking a judge to force the county to certify its elections. The state was set to certify all of the election results on December five. It's unclear if they're going to be able to make that deadline.

December eight is the last drop dead deadline that the state has to certify all of its election results were sort of an uncharted territories and the scenario sort of the worst case scenario that could happen, especially for Republicans, is that Governor Doocey, Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, Attorney General Mark Bernovich, and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Robert Brunell, all gather and they certify the results, but only a fourteen of the fifteen counties, throwing out all

of Coaches County's votes because they haven't been certified. And a lot of attorneys that I've talked to expect to happen if we enter into that scenario is someone in Coaches County will file a lawsuit claiming that they have been disenfranchised, that their vote has been disenfranchised, and we'll see what the courts say then. I mean, at some point, perhaps a court does decide to um force the board or act for the board to certify those votes down

in Coaches County. And the problem for Republicans down there, remember this is a very Republican district and a lot of wins for Republicans rested and came in part because of those votes in Coaches County. We've got an attorney General's race that is going to a recount. Only five and ten votes separate the Republican and the Democrat. So you can see that margin probably getting even bigger in favor of the Democrat. We have a us HOW race that includes voters from that area, a very close race

in which a Republican flipped a seat. That race could be affected. We have the statewide school superintendent race where Tom Horne had narrowly won and ousted the incumbent Democrat. That race could be affected. So again, it would not be in Republican's best interests to to not certify these votes.

The other thing that could happen is that these members, these two members of the Bord of Supervisors who refused to certify the results down there, could be held personally liable for legal bills that could arise as a part of this. You know, we had a supervisor up in north west Arizona in Mohave County. They kept delaye certification and finally they decided to go ahead and move move

forward on Monday to meet their deadline. And what one of the Republican supervisors said up there was, you know, I'm going to go ahead and vote for this, but I'm voting for it under dressed because I've been told that I could be arrested if I don't do my duty. That's a real possibility for these supervisors down in Cochise County. There is uh state statute that essentially says that if elected officials fail or refuse to perform duties, that they

could be found guilty of a class ree misdemeanor. And that's what they're facing. Basically, Republicans are again creating problems for themselves. They seem to be yes, I mean, it's just sort of amazing, right, like they could end up having themselves thrown in jail because they refused to participate in something that's their job, right, right, And remember what happened after Trump lost Arizona again very very narrowly by

ten thousand, four d fifty seven votes. We had to litigate that for a year through the Cyberninches audit, and that didn't help Republicans. It exacerbated the election to nihilism issue. It divided the party at a time that they really needed to be united. And ultimately this issue cost them so many statewide seats and they have only maintained very narrow control of the state legislature. It's not a good issue. They know it. Off the record and on background conversations.

They all know that their messaging on this issue is a problem and they need to pivot. They need to pivot quickly, and we'll see what that pivot looks like. But they need to get ahead of game on early voting. Republicans in Arizona created early voting many decades ago. We've been a pioneer in early voting for a long time, you know, John McCain, John Kyle, Jeff fly a dog do see Jan Brewer. I mean all of these candidates used the system and advocated for that system and one

by that system. And it wasn't until eighteen when Donald Trump didn't understand how votes were counted in Arizona that he started to really sort of stoke this distrust in the state's voting systems. And that's the same cycle that South Heirston Cinema beat Republican Martha McSally And ever since then,

the election denialism here has gotten only worse. As we can see, telling your voters to not vote early, to not trust the mail system, and to not trust a protracted, prolonged vote counting process that is accurate has worked against them. This is like incredible stuff. It's just like Trump is um in action. It's amazing. Do you think that Carrie Lake will go quietly now? She's not going to go quietly. There will be more lawsuits. The war room over in

the Scottsdale Resort has been disbanded. Well, she had a war room in the Scottsdale Resort. Yes, all the Republicans were working out of a war room for a couple of weeks and a lot of stuff went down in that war room. What hotel was it in Scottsdale McCormick. Ratify if I recall correctly, and the infrastructure has gone.

The people who for weeks thought that there was you know, with the next drop of ballots they would favor her that you know, the next legal argument would somehow favor Republicans. You know a lot of these people are gone and they're they're not working on these cases. The funding for

some of these legal lawsuits has disappeared. It's I think you have a situation where you have some candidates who are growing increasingly angry, and there's a lot of second guessing about their strategies, and we will see a lot of what we saw from from Donald Trump post really start to grip the state on a on a very local level for a long time. So interesting. Thank you so much. I really appreciate you coming on. Thank you,

Molly John Fast, Jesse Cannon. You know, I don't like seeing anyone say anything anti Semitic, but I do love do you know there can't be a but it has to me just period. I don't, but go on continue. It's the squirre big It's so good. I think you're referring to House Minority leader, the man who dreams of speakership. Kevin McCarthy defending Donald Trump's meeting with a white supremacist, saying that could have happened to anyone, you know, could have happened to anyone who among us has not hung

out with a white supremacist. Not me, But the list just goes on and on. There's so many of them that are just trying to cover this up. Marshall Blackburn's ducking questions on it. Yeah, in fact, I happened to have a handy list right here of some of the Republicans who have been too cowardly to say anything bad about Trump meeting with a neo Nazi. They did not

see it coming. Florida Governor Ron de Santa's silent Senator Marcia Blackburn, silent, Ted Cruz Or as Trump likes to say, Lion ted silent, Lindsey Graham, Ron and On, Mike Lee and Rand, Paul, Alice Stafadix, Steve Scalise, all of those silent members of the Republican Party are our moment of funckery. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to your 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.