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 Peter Navarro has become the first Trump White House official to report to prison. Over January sixth, we have such a great show for you Today, Congresswoman re Lisa Blunt Rockchester talks to us about her Senate run as well as being a co chair of the Biden campaign.
Then we'll talk to former political reporter.
Amy Chosek about her new MAC show The Girls on the Bus, which is inspired by her time on the twenty sixteen campaign tail. But first we have the host of the Bulwarks daily podcast, The Bulwarks, Tim Miller. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Tim.
Miller, Boom, ready to be here. Let's do this.
You know, it's funny because it's like I was thinking we're just chatting before, I was like, I really do like you so much. When I ever end up on a panel with you, I'm always just delighted to talk to you.
But I also like, I think that watching the RNC be destroyed with a sledgehammer must be a little bit uncomfortable for you.
No, it's a little satisfying actually, so thank you for asking.
Yeah.
I love being on with you always too. You know, it's been nice to be doing the Board podcast where I'm asking people questions and it's, as you know, it's like a new skill. You're trying to draw people out and all that. But you know, sometimes I just like to let it rip, and you know, we can come over here and you can just put it on a tee for me and let me let it rip. And like in this situation, which is yeah, these fuckers are getting exactly what they've deserved for a long time now,
and it's been a long time coming. And what they have done to the RNC during the Rona Romney years was absolutely shameful. They should all feel ashamed. And I'm glad that they're running out of money and I'm glad that they are now officially a cult to like the daughter in law of the president, which is a former president, excuse me, which is very bizarre and very freakish, and it's everything they deserve.
It is interesting to me, and I'm curious what you think about this. Like, so Rona gets in trouble because she can't raise money, so they decide to put someone in there, who absolutely doesn't know any of the donors. I mean, maybe she knows a few of them, but who does not have nearly the same kind of experience raising money.
Yeah, I mean, Rona was just a classic fall girl in this thing. The question is why it took so long, really, you know, because she had just had loss after loss after loss. You know how I monitor my MAGA Twitter feeds and all these guys, and I saw a funny quote from somebody where I guess my old boss, rites was on Sean Hannity saying, Okay, this is what Lauren
Lara needs to do. It's easy. You just got to raise forty million in the first month, and then you do this, and then you do that, and then you do the other thing. And one of one of the MAGA guys I followed was like, well, maybe this guy should have been in charge, And I was like, yeah, exactly, yeah, okay, good luck Lara. Just it's just gonna be so easy, girl. Well you just gonna have to RaSE forty million, No big deal. You've never done anything, You've never really had
a job in your life. Here you go, good luck.
You think about Mike Johnson, it's a similar situation. You know, Democrats are always like, we didn't put our fifth or sixth guy in there.
Yeah, it is similar situation.
You know.
It's funny. I saw so they had this little confab out that the Greenbrier in West Virginia. Yeah, weekend. A lot of weird stuff was leaking out of that. Like Tom Memer was like, Joe Brden was too mean to us at the State of the Union. We shouldn't invite him back next year if he wins. I was like, what what is wrong with you guys? Okay, So that
was one. Then Patrick McHenry, you know, the little guy at the bow Tie, who was the heir apparent to McCarthy that they passed over from being two establishment or whatever. He's been ripping Johnson ever since Johnson took over, and and you know, he was saying, reporter, it's like, well he's doing a little bit better.
You know.
It's kind of like how you're talking about your kids. They're learning how to read, or learning how to ride a bike or something like, well, we're taking the training wheels off now. And uh, you know, he can go a full block by himself without any help. And so I guess I haven't seen a lot of evidence that he's doing better. You know, he hasn't had to actually make any of the hard decisions that he keeps kicking the can with these little mini extensions.
For a few weeks.
Yeah, and it's like eventually, you know, the rubber is going to meet the road and they're they're going to they're either going to have to vote to fund Ukraine and need Democrats to get it passed, or they're not. And they're gonna either have to vote to keep the government open and need Democrats to get it passed, or they're not going to keep the government open. And at those moments, we'll see how little Mike Johnson is doing, how much he's improved.
Yeah, it doesn't seem like he is still able to like he really is one of those people sort of thinking that he can pull the rabbit out of the hat. The good news is that they somehow managed not to shut down the government.
Yeah, yeah, I guess it's good news. So I just want to be abundantly clear about this and nobody misunderstands. And the crazy Nazi right, there's this thing since called accelerationism. They're accelerationists. They like want the race war. They're rooting for it. I am not rooting for the race war. I am kind of an accelerationist when it comes to
the Republican's demise. So, you know this whole let's let's let them give him a little more leash, give a little more leash, give a little time, let's work with them. I interviewed a couple of weeks ago Jake Auchincloss from Massachusetts, So I really like and that guy is just a Democrat. He's basically just like I'm not voting for these little extensions, you know, like put up or shut up, like either let's either fund the government and fund Ukraine or not.
And I kind of side with him on that. And so I guess it's good that the government hasn't been shut down, but I think it's time to put the screws to this guy and say, Okay, look, you're either going to be with the crazies in your caucus and you're gonna cut off your nose despite your face by shutting down the government, or you're going to be an adult and a grown up and you're gonna work with Democrats to fund our obligations and to support our friends in Ukraine and deal with the consequences.
Yeah, I mean those are the choices.
I mean, ultimately, Republicans are sort of hoping that there's some third choice. At the end of the day, the Republican Party is still very much run by Trump.
Oh oh my god. Yeah, And obviously the party is still controlled by Trump. You can see it with Johnson, you can see it in all these primaries. I mean, maybe not every single one. There could be some weird exceptions, but look, I mean, Johnson can't do anything. None of these guys can do anything without knowing that Trump will
have their back. And the TikTok thing will be an interesting another example of this, right, Like, it passes fifty to zero initially in committee, and then Trump comes out and is like, no, I'm not for it anymore because some billionaire that wants to give me money and I'm despert for money says I shouldn't be for it anymore. And so now like the rubber is going to meet the road on that right, it's going to be like,
are are these Republicans going to back down again? Just like they did on immigration, just like they did on all these other things, but to appease mister Trump, or are there any areas where he doesn't control it?
Trump is having kind of an incredible cash crunch. I mean, and it's one thing not to be liquid.
It's another thing, like so he owes half a billion dollars again. My favorite tweet of the week was that Republican from Fox, the guy Mark Levin.
Like Leavin, Yeah, they call him the great one?
Do they really? And why?
Yeah?
They call him the great one. I don't know. Bar the bar is so well over there that you know, somebody can do four syllable words. They think they're a genius.
I don't know. I'm going to read you this quote.
I know you've seen it because I feel that you will have hilarious things to say about it. Why are there no Republican multi billionaires offering to lend President Trump the funds to file his appeal in the outrageous case in your state? And none of them liquid enough to help or join with others to help.
This is an outrage.
You first, Mark, Let's see how much you got here saving the coup. Let's put it up off a coup. I don't know, why not, Mark Levin? Yeah, I mean I think that the obvious thing answer for the listeners of this podcast know is that generally rich people do not like to loan money to like one of the
greatest welchers in the history of the world. So, you know, it's another example of the fuck around and find out principle of Trump, right, which is like eventually the build these bills come due in this case literally and a lot of these guys aren't don't want to give money. And it's astonishing, frankly, how much money he has got from Rubes to fund his various legal defenses, given his track record of scams and bankruptcies and screwing over people
that loaned the money or did work for him. So no, I don't think that a couple of billions have come to his defense. But here's the thing I'm worried about, and I think everybody should be worried about, is who might come to his defense. Who might come to his aid here and give him some loans? Foreign interests, right, yeah, Saudis people with big deals before the government, you know, people that are going to want bailouts from the government
on the back end. I don't don't know, Like I think that it's a big, big question and a big big vulnerability to have a presidential candidate that is like desperate for bond cash. You know. I think that there is just some potential leverages, you know, and this is why, like we have, if you want to go work in the White House, you have to have a background check.
And let me tell you. If you want to go work in the National Security Agency, one of the NATSAC agencies, and you had hundreds of billions of dollars in leans, you know out against you, you're not going to get the job. All right. There's going to be concerns that you could be a right target for foreign influence operations, and so that should be concerning meut ofresidential candidates. So you know the types of Republicans that pretend to care
about this stuff. Your Marco Rubio is, your Tom Cotton's, they've just been completely castrated and are just unwilling to say anything if it fit Boss Trump.
Right again, I'm going to ask you an impossible question, but I'm just curious what you how if you'll answer it, and what you think about it. Do you think that in their heart of hearts, these people think this is going to work or do you think they know that they just have to go along with Trump.
Yeah, I have to tell you. I mean, obviously it's different for different people, but just as a broad brush, something that's been pretty alarming to me is I think that a lot of them have now gotten very deep into a bubble and a kind of resentment fueled bubble where they look out and they say, oh, man, you know, these media people are so unfair to us. The never trumpers are so unfair to us. And we survived the
first Trump administration. Well there was the one that one day with the Capital starring, but if you just forward past that, like, most of it was pretty good, right, most of it was fine. We got our tax cuts, and you know that they've all just kind of rationalized this.
I guess.
One of the most revealing the insights into the mind of this crowd that I've listened to recently, which I'd recommend, is Jamie Weinstein over at The Dispatch interviewed Dan Crenshaw.
And I would love to enview Dan Crenshaw, but he's too scared to come into Bolwerk podcast, But he was willing to do the Dispatch podcast, and it was like he has you could just hear him kind of convincing himself in real time that the never trumpers were overstating what happened on January sixth, and it wasn't really that bad. And Trump's sport policy was pretty good.
It was just his.
Words that were bad. And the words don't matter and the actions right, you can just and it's like, oh, everybody's so mean to me for trying to apologize him, and I did my best. Like it's just you can just hear this real time rationalization happening. And I kind of think that is pretty representative of where most of
these guys are. And I think they all have legitimate fears and concerns at some level, but they're more intense feeling is of resentment towards you know, DEM's libs sil eat the media however you ought to put it.
Yeah, and maybe that's why they want to stick it to Dems and they feel that nominating Trump will do that. Yeah.
I mean, I don't know some of these I wouldn't have wanted to dominate Trump if they could wave a wand but they just couldn't, didn't have any power to and didn't want to waste any more political capital. And their cowards. I think maybe last I was on this podcast, I was talking about how few of them had indorsed Nikki Alen, you know, and they'd all convinced themselves as like, there's no point, there's no point in tried the campaign,
Why should I even do it? And so, you know, anythink if you gave any of them, you know, three magic beans, they would they would use the first one to get rid of Donald Trump, right, But they don't have magic beans, and so instead they coward, right, And I think that's basically their their mindset these days.
One of the problems that Trump has that I have noticed is that he's really having trouble raising money. Right. He's got his donor numbers, he's hemorrhaged.
Small dollar donors are even bad.
Yeah, small dollar donors a big dollar nobody's willing to write him a half billion dollar check.
I mean, I'm curious, Like I've argued. I have a friend who's a straight journalist who I like to argue with, and he said, well, Trump doesn't need as much money as by does, as a normal political candidate does. But don't you think this is a sign that MAGA they might be all tapped out?
Yeah? You know, I've been spent a lot of time thinking about this, and I just I don't know that we're going to really know the answer for a few months. And at the one level, I just want to say this, I am not of the view that whoever raises the more money in presidential races like really matters. I think that there's a law of diminishing returns on presidential money, right that tv ads. There's a certain group of people can be reached with tv ads. These guys are bon
the presidents. A lot of this stuff is kind of baked in with people, and so I think money matters, but I don't think it matters as much as some commentators do. Now. Having this big of a gap, though, is pretty noteworthy, and like it's one thing, it's like, oh, well, whatever, Biden raised fifty million more, and if you divide that between the five states, it's not really that munch on balance. But if it's like he's already raised fifty million more,
that you know the gap is going to expand. And Trump doesn't have enough money to run his operations, and you know he's also stressed about the money in his personal life because he can't pay these bonds and he's redirecting money from the RNC that should be going to grassroots instead it's going to pay his lawyers. At some
point that has to matter. And at some point, only raising three million online in the month of January or whatever it was has to show that, Yeah, some of these small dollar dollars are like they don't have any more to give. Eventually, you do run into a limit on this. So I'm not ready to kind of dance on his grave over it yet, but I do think it's a really concerning sign.
Maybe this is just blewing on, but don't you think that. And again, like poor Jesse has heard me bring this up a number of times, and probably the most embarrassing time was when I brought up to Paul Krugman.
But I do bring this up a lot. So, you have a million people who died of COVID right two hundred thousand before the vaccine. Approximately, These are approximate numbers
because I don't have them in front of me. Then, significantly more after many of whom had been encouraged right wing media to take Horse de Warmer to not take the vaccine, you know, many of which were like really preventable, Dace, I had a theory that I could never prove that there was some economic fallout from that just having less people.
And I do wonder, I mean, even though those people maybe didn't turn on Trump, there has to be some voter or the possibility of some voter fallout from that, don't you think.
Yeah, it's a complicated ecosystem, right like our politics, it's always evolving and changing a little bit. It's not a static as people want it to want to think it is.
It's funny for the focus group podcasts so long while we're listening to like the twenty twenty focus groups of swing voters and COVID and just how terrible Trump was at handling that was so front of their mind that that's obvious now in retrospect, Like listening to it, it was pretty jarring to hear them talk about him then versus kind of how much you hear about it now with swing voters. So I do think that there was some impact there that it really hurt him in twenty twenty,
his mishandling. Then I think that pressing forward, you had the vaccine desks and how they were over indexed in red areas. That's been well documented or over indexed among older voters who Trump does better with. And so you know, I do think that there is potentially some impact about that. I know is just you know, thinking about Georgia for example, you know you've had still four more years of like people from blue states moving into Atlanta. You know, you
had an over indexing of I think death rate. That's just something that we know happened. And the more conservative parts of Georgia. Now, how does all of that kind of demographic change, which like marginally accruised to Biden's benefit, is that offset by if there's some bleed among black voters, right, if he goes from ninety two to eight to eighty seven thirteen, right, is that more people than the demographic change.
Right.
It's kind of tough to do the Ledger on all that, but I do think that it makes it made a marginal difference for sure.
Yeah.
And again like enthusiasm, with these elections we have are such small margins.
The enthusiasm is so it's such an important element. Thank you, Tim Miller, Ollie.
Jong Fast, thank you. I'm sure I'll be back soon. I'm still I'm waiting for that chart on who's been guests the most times. I just want to kind of see where I look where I am on the power rankings. That's some homework for ester.
Congresswoman Lisa Blunt Rothchester represents Delaware's first district. Welcome too Fast Politics, Congresswoman Lisa, Wait, do you say your whole last name?
So a lot of times we go by LBR. Sometimes it's the ho Lisa Blunt Rochester.
I feel like LBR is good because like when you're going by initials, you know you've hit the big time.
Well, I definitely feel like an LBR. I love it.
So I want to talk to you.
You are the congresswoman from Delaware and running for the Senate. You will be This is like an obsession of mine. Will you only be the fourth black woman senator or the third?
The fourth in the history of the country and insane? Yeah, like think about it, and only two of them have been elected. And then that would be Carol Moseley Braun who was the first, and then you've got the Vice President Kamala Harris as the second. And then the third
is appointed and currently serving. That's Lafonza Butler, who was appointed after the passing of Dianne Feinstein by Governor Newsom So there's only been three in the history of the country, and you know, hopefully I will be number four.
It's what my people call a Shonda. It's just so blatantly incredibly infuriating to me that you will be the fourth black woman ever to be in the Senate is crazy.
It truly is mind blowing. I mean, even in twenty sixteen when I won my in Congress, I was the first woman and first person of color elected to Congress from Delaware, And so you know, you would think in this day and age, we wouldn't still be hearing about first. But it's all the more reason why we've got to keep going. It's all the more reason why you got
to break those ceilings, bust down those doors. And is the late great Shirley chisen On, the first black woman in the House, said if they don't give you a seat a the table, we can bring a folding chair.
Yeah.
Can we talk for two seconds about how inherently racist and sexist America is and how much harder black women have to work. You know, it's true for white women, but not the way it's true for black women. Like I just see KJP is judged just at a totally on a much harsher level than someone like Kirby. And I know that you have prevailed and you're, you know, now running for the Senate, but it just is so shocking to me how much it's so baked into everything.
You know, It's interesting, Molly. Years ago, I went to this black women's conference and I heard this term that like stuck with me. It's be conscious but not consumed. And what that meant, especially to me because even in Delaware, I was the first black woman Secretary of Labor. I've had these positions where you sometimes walk into a room and you are the only one. And in that conference, what they talked about is that you got to be
conscious of it. Yeah, isms exist, racism, classism, sexismisms exist, but to the extent that I get consumed by that, I'm ineffective. I'm not breaking that door open. And so part of it is you got to be conscious of it. Because when it's time to do things, we do feel the difference, you know, whether it's walking into a room and feeling I'd better be ten times better or smarter or whatever. But at the same time, I'm knowing that I've got to be effective, and in order for me
to be effective. I've got to be conscious but not consumed. And so for me, that's sort of how I operate, and I think it gives me a different lens for other folks that walk in the room, and maybe they're
the only ones. I worked for a think tank that focused on the inclusion of people with disabilities, and you think about how, you know, we do things with bias that we don't even know sometimes that we have, or you know, I've lived in over thirty you know, and traveled and worked and played in over thirty countries in the world. My son was born in France, I lived
in Shanghai. How it feels to be the other coming into a place, and so I think I try to bring those lived experiences with me to the work, you know. And that's so valuable about having representation in the Senate is that we have different lived experiences. I know what it's like to have a son who stopped by the police at night as a black mom. But at the same time, as a congresswoman, I helped to bring together community activists and law enforcement and get body war on
cameras in my state. It's because I had those lived experiences and those relationships, so I always say conscious but not consumed.
Really important point and I think that's so interesting. So now you are the national co chair of the Biden reelection campaign.
What does that mean?
Are you a surrogate and are you out there and what does that look like?
Yeah, well, this is actually my second time being a co chair of the Biden Harris campaign. It was so nice they asked me twice and so I am very excited about being on the campaign trail. As a co chair, I do a little bit of everything, you know, from
providing advice. We have co chair meetings, to actually being in different parts of the country, whether it's being on radio or TV, or opening up a grand opening for one of our offices, you know, and kind of motivating those folks and also helping with fundraising and then just again giving advice on things that we see and you know, I will tell you when I first was asked by President Biden in the first term to come on board and be a you know and dorset them right out
the gate, it was really after having a one on one conversation with him and you know, seeing and feeling and hearing what his motivation was and that motivation of you know, restoring the soul of this country, making sure that everybody gets a fair chance and gets opportunity. Those
things are still relevant today. And as somebody who has lived through one term of Donald Trump and one term of Joe Biden, I can tell you there is a serious and real difference between the two of them and who they stand for and how they operate and how effected they've been. And so I am excited again to be a national CoA chair and we're doing and everything we can to make sure they are reelected.
Do you think Black voters are still with Biden? Do you think it's a challenge to win them back? What are you seeing in that group? Do you think that he's speak enough to those voters?
Yeah, I mean, I think one of the things that is important for us as a campaign, and is one of the hallmarks of who he is and who they are as a team, is that we don't take any
vote for granted. And I think that's really important that we want to hear from people, want to We want them to see, feel and hear the things that we've accomplished, but also know that there's a vision for the future that includes things like voting rights, that includes reproductive freedoms, and you know, I had heard a recent data point that even for something like reproductive rights and abortion rights.
The Ohio election, I had heard that black men showed up and voted in more in favor than any other group. Because I think sometimes people make assumptions about groups based on polls instead of really talking to people and the things that are important to our communities. First of all, we're not monolithic. Different people have, you know, different backgrounds
and different motivations. But access to capital and the fact that we now have you know, the lowest unemployment rate in the Black community, the greatest investment in hbc US. My two kids and my daughter in law, they all graduated from HBCUs. And so to actually like put their money where their mouth is, meaning you know what the
Biden Harris administration, that's important to people. And then in Delaware, we have a lot of people don't realize we're the lowest mean elevation state in the country, and so climate is important, and you know, like we got the beaches, but we also have farmers, we also have environmental justice communities. And so this president again has put his money where his mouth is and really invested in those communities, clean
drinking water, air quality monitors. Those are two of the things that I've worked on personally because I heard it from my constituents. And so I think for us, we take nobody for granted. We're going to work hard for everyone's vote, and we're also going to like meet people where they are and that's important as well. You know. So I'm excited about being on the road and talking
to people and hearing from them. And I'm really excited that President Biden and Vice President Harris have really listened, even on things like the Safer Community dropped. You know, I was able to get piece of legislation in that's called break the cycle of violence, which because one of the inspirations for me running in the first place was because my city of Wilmington was being called Murdertown because
of gun violence. And so they're listening, and you know, like I said, for me, it was a weird situation that propelled me to run. But the inspiration and the ability to do the work makes me even more want to go to the Senate and do it on a deeper level.
It is so interesting when we talk about climac and we talk about these little states because Rhode Island two Senator white House is one of the great I feel like a climate senators Rhode Island two has done a lot of really interesting stuff with climate. Gina Romando now and the Admin. But another person who I think of as someone who's very focused on this sort of transition to clean energy and a sort of more sustainable way of living.
So I'm curious in Delaware, what is.
The sort of what do you feel like are the priorities when it comes to climate.
One of the great things that I was able to work on with my senior Senator, who is actually the Chairman of Environment and Public Works, Tom Carper, is a bill called the Shore Act, and it really is about the resiliency and protection of not just our shores, but our riverbanks. I mean, I went to towns like Inland that because of the flooding, they were feeling it not
just on the beach but in off of riverbanks. And so part of what we are working on is legislation that deals with that, you know, making sure that we are looking at the prevention side of it, but then we got to mitigate the risks and so you know, we are doing I also am on the Health Subcommittee, so we have a health aspect to this as well when it pertains to clean air and clean air monitors to make sure you know that our air is okay.
And then working with the administration, with the President. One of the bills I had was called the Alert Act, is that if there's an environmental spill, if there's something that happens, communities need to and have a right to be notified, notified of what happened, when it happened, and what the plan is for it. And so doing those kind of things I think is really important. But it kind of takes me back, like Molly when I first
decided to run. It's kind of First of all, the guy that I just mentioned, Tom Carper, I worked for him back in nineteen eighty eight. I went to a town hall meeting with my two year old son on
my head. I was a grad student and I didn't even realize that I was pregnant at the time, and he told me they had internships, and that internship turned into me being a caseworker in a congressional office, to being in his cabinet, his deputy Secretary of Health and Social Services and Secretary of Labor, and then going on to work for our first woman governor and you know, working for the Urban League. But it was really after this story, but after a twenty year marriage. And I
always quote Beyonce because I love Beyonce. But in her song you Won't Break My Soul, there's a line that says, I just fell in love, I just quit my job. Well, in two thousand and three, I think it was I fell in love. I quit my job, I sold my house and sold my car, and I moved to Shanghai for love and love of my life a guy named Charles Rochester. And you know, Charles and I were living. I wrote a book with two other women. We came back to the States and he went on a business
trip before his meetings. I'm sure his achilles ten then and blood clots went to his heart and lungs. And at fifty two, the love of my life passed away. I did not know what was next. I knew that I was, you know, sad and mad. And some days I tell people just getting up in the morning was a success, and I was. It was maybe eight nine
months later. I was on autopilot in the supermarket and I saw a dad in front of me with two I think it was two or three kids, and he put back grapes because they were nine dollars, and it just snapped me out of my own pain. Like I said, I'm blessed. I'm okay. I got a house, I've got family, I've got mental health care. But a lot of other people were struggling, and it was like, I don't have anything to lose. My city was being called murdered child.
I was like, I'm going to run. And I decided to run for Congress and I was in a six way primary debating lawyers. I had never even been in a debate before, let alone run for anything, and we won. And I guess part of my message is to me, the Senate is an opportunity to do all this work in an even deeper level, to be able to work on the planet, to be able to work on giving people jobs and making sure we have a strong economy and healthcare. It's also the police where I can fight
for democracy. And that's to me, having been trapped in the gallery on January sixth, this moment is real, you know, And I want people to feel that sense of urgency about the choice that we have between Donald Trump and Joe Biden, this moment is real. Who you put in the Senate, who you put in the House, who you put on your school board. This moment is real, and we've got to make sure that we take advantage of it and that we use our power.
Yeah. I think that's such an important point.
And also, you know something that I write a lot about this idea that it is one of the most important elections of our lifetime. I can't believe we keep
having these elections. I just want to have normal elections where we beat Mitt Romney, you and me both, right, who is a very nice guy, but you know, right, talk to us about January sixth for a second, because I mean, it must be hard to be a member of Congress to have lived through this, to have seen Republican members run for their lives and then the cognitive dissidence.
Yeah, it's so strange because that day, you know, as I shared, I have served as a co chair of the campaign. So for me, this was the culmination and of all that work on the campaign trail with you know, Joe Biden and Kamala and being a part of the team. And I was like, okay, I will be there to witness the certification, and Nancy Pelosi said, the members, you can volunteer to take ships up in the gallery, up
like the balcony area, to watch what is going to happen. Well, we never got to shift number two because while we were up there, we could hear the banging. We could see people skirted off of the floor, all of the leadership first and then all of the members. And then I don't know if people forgot that we were up in that gallery, but we were trapped. We could hear
the noises outside of those doors. We were told to put on gas masks, that the hoods that were under our chairs that we didn't even know were there or didn't even know how to open them. And we were crawling up and down, just trying to get to someplace that we thought was safe. And I will never forget
it because I feel it like it was yesterday. It was I could look down and see guns being pointed at one door, and I could hear the gunshot at the other door, and you know, in that moment, and I tell people, it was almost out of body thing. I could feel history, I could feel our ancestors, I could feel like time going by, and all I could think to do. I was pray and I prayed for everybody, you know. I didn't just pray for one group of people, you know. And I could feel other members touching my
back or touching my arm as I prayed. And then they let us out of that room. And I will tell you on the anniversary, it was important to me to not forget what happened, so to remember to reflect on how close we were to losing it, and then to recommit to our democracy. Like I felt more on fire to do the work than ever before. And I think that this moment again, it is important for people to know we were close. And when Donald Trump starts talking about words like blood bath, that ain't about cars
as far as I'm concerned. I mean, he was talking about American carnage in the first one. And there's a great Maya Angelo quote, when somebody shows you who they are, we'll leave him. He's telling us who he is, he's telling us what he will do. We also know that Joe Biden is telling us what he would do in a second term, and so we just need to see what people have done. Think about it. I've been one president who talked about him for structure Joe Biden did infrastructure.
You know one president who talked about a fair tax code. Joe Biden really is doing a fair tax code, not just for rich people, but for all of us. Just look at the record, look at who they are, and look at how they even talk. I believe that as this election goes and the more people here and remember who Donald Trump is, they'll remember why they need to have that sense of urgency, not only for Joe's campaign, but even for people like me to support people like me.
The theme of my campaign is Fright Hope, which was the church my grandmother attended for seventy years. And it is not just the church name. It is a way of being when you feel dark. And in this moment, people feel dark. But I'm like, look, if you just got to match side light, our match flights coming together can create something bright. And that's what I'm trying to
bring to the Senate. Fright Hope and so so yeah, and hey, hey, if anybody out there likes with you here, go to least a Bluff Rochester dot com, Little shameless plug.
Yes, that's good, that was great, Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I hope that you will come back.
I hope you will have me back, Molly. I really enjoyed this.
Amy Chosen is the creator of the New MAC series The Girls on the Bus and author of the New York Times bestseller Chasing Hillary.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Amy.
Chose, Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be.
Here, delighted to have you so talk to us about how you got to this book and then to the show The Girls on the Bus.
Sure Well, I was a political reporter for many years.
I covered Hillary Clinton and Obama in two thousand and eight when I was at the Well Street Journal, and then when I was at the New York Times for many years I covered the twenty sixteen campaign Hillary Trump. All that, I wrote a book What came out in twenty eighteen, a memoir about covering both of Hillary's campaign and how that sort of took over my life, that ended up.
Getting optioned by Warner Brothers.
Landing with the producer Grin Burlanti, and we got together and started scheming up a fictional backdrop that would be inspired by my book for female journalists covering a fictional Democratic primary. That became The Girls on the Bus, a Max series that came out last week. So that's a I guess a short version of how I came about that is like the dream having your memoir made into a television show.
So explained to us, you covered the sort of campaign that broke all our brands twenty sixteen. How have you sort of moved on in your life from that moment? Because, I mean, it's one thing to have watched it from the outside. I can't even imagine the level of feeling you must have had from living it on the inside.
Yeah, I mean it is. It was hard to move on.
And actually, I think one of the beautiful things about the process of turning it into fiction, turning in I know it's a TV show, but I you know, it's turning it into a form of art, like is cathartic?
You know?
It was very cathartic for me, and I think being able to very initially from the very first conversation we said, nobody wants to really live the twenty sixteen campaign.
This has to be fiction. But in a way I was able to kind of.
Explore all of the themes, all of the things still kicking around in my head.
Every day i'd come to the writer's room.
A lot of people say like, what were you adamant about keeping in the book, And it was much less like this thing from the book has to be in the show, and much more my partner asking me, what's the conversation you wish you would have had, or what's the thing you wish you would have done that you didn't, And so being able to play in this fictional world,
I got to have all of these. If you get to watch the whole season, in the finale that I wrote, in particular, there's a conversation between the journalist and a female candidate. You know, these are conversations you never get to have in real life. So it was actually very cathartic to be able to do that. We we created a democratic mash convention and I got some of my friends from real the real political world, Jen Palmery and
Eric Schultz and some others to make cameos. It was so fun, but Jen Jen Palmery was like pretending to check pressing at the stake.
It looks so real.
Our production value was amazing, and we looked at each other and it was just like the weirdest, most meta feeling because I'm like, oh, the last time you were doing this, It was at the real one, and it's so strange, we like sort of rewritten history here in our in our fictional world.
So it's been it's a great question, and it's been a pretty casartic process.
So one of the things that readers always get upset about, and I say this is someone who's married to a normal, furious Democrat, is that they get mad at conventional political reporting because they feel that it doesn't necessarily meet the moment with journalism. What do you think about that now that you're not you're sort of in a completely different world.
You live in La.
Yeah, that's true.
I do live in LA. If you ask me about the specifics, I'll be like, I don't know. It was Barber's Market, Like you know that.
I mean, but what do you think about the idea that normal political reporting can't meet the moment?
I mean, that is something that I think so much about.
And given we made a light dramedy, but this is sort of the central premise of what we were exploring. If we covered politics differently, would we have different politics?
Right, that's a great line though, if we covered politics differently, would we have different politics?
Well, what do you think would we?
Yeah?
Well, no, it's a great question.
It's like I think that Genie's out of the bottle.
So it's not like I'm gear professing to know the answer, but it is a great question. It's something I think about, whether it's the fact that you know, whether it's a false balance. Obama used to always complain about false balance, but I think those complaints have even gotten much more heightened when you're comparing of candidate to Tropsa or other Republicans. But so I think the fust balanced debate is And also, I you know, something that frustrated me. And by the
way I'm taking I take responsibility for this. But the idea that like no policy, nothing that actually impacts people's lives ever broke through, And I don't you know, I would get I would like fly to Landsing, Michigan to cover a speech on economics or or a public private partnership, you know, some kind of interesting wonky thing that Hillary loves to talk about.
It, and I would write like two thousand words on it.
And then people would be like, oh, you write about his emails, and I'm like, I actually write about the other things.
They just don't break through.
I mean, I think the Daily has done a good job of like biting off a policy thing going deep in it. So I really think the emphasis is on us. But that was a frustration, Like I did an event here for frank Yeah, Franklin Force's book is filled with policies that the Biden administration accomplished that And this is my own la ignorance.
I guess. I'm like, I had no idea about the chips, So, like, how do we do that? How does that break through? I just don't know in this current ecosystem.
That's a really good point about how important policy is and how how hard it is to get readers interested in it. But also I would say to cover it in a way that makes it feel germane to their lives, right, I mean that's the you know, for example, like people, I mean, I've talked so much about fucking chips, and it's because it's like it is a paradigm shift, right, the idea to bring that we're going to bring ship manufacturing back to the United States from Taiwan because of the danger of China.
I mean, really that's what it is.
So like it's two part right to bring American manufacturing back, but also because of the enormous threat that China poses, and because everything we own has got these chips. So I wonder though a lot about like the larger shift of chips, right, is that it will eventually if you live in a you know, a town in Michigan or Wisconsin or wherever it is they're putting the factories.
I think some.
Are in Ohio. You know that you now go work in a chip factory.
It also a lot of this stuff has these very complicated tax incentive structures that are not something readers like can grasp a few lines, right, I mean that is a larger question is It's just hard to convey that, but it is interesting and I do think like how anxious do you feel?
And now I feel like you're so are in a totally different world. So I feel like this is I think it's like actually quite.
Useful to think of this stuff in hindsight sometimes how much anxiety did you feel about the worry of seeming partisan? You know what?
I've The more I think about it, the more I feel like it's how many people really think that the New York Times or CNN reporters are running around and they're actually Republicans.
Like I just don't know.
I think we really, you know, it's very important as serious news people to project objectivity. I just think it's a it's sort of a false contra it's a contradiction in terms I just don't And you know what, partly that's because of the way.
Newsrooms have been hiring for the last twenty years.
When I started at the Wall Street Journal, as the news is, some of the best investigative journalists did not have a college, didn't go to college. It was still it was still sort of a trade, and it was still yeah, and it was still like a mid middle class trade, and it recruited from people from all over
the country. I think mostly newsrooms are from elite universities now and anyway, I think that I think the structure of who populates the media has changed, and I think kind of pretending that you're not biased is actually sort of dishonest in a way.
I mean, that's sort of the debate.
That's a debate that we get into this kind of objectivity versus authenticity. But you know, in my and when I started at The Times, a lot of the senior political journalists didn't vote in elections they covered because you had to declare your party, and I understand, but I don't know.
I just feel like now.
To to pretend that you're going into a Trump rally and you're just as sympathetic to the people you're interviewing as when you're going to I just like, who are we kidding?
That's kind of my.
I don't know the answer, but I feel like there is something about being honest with readers.
This is how I feel about women's rights, because I'm a woman. That's it.
I'm still going to be tough on this candidate who's screwed up. Like I think you can be fair and still be honest that like you're a human being with opinions, you know.
Yeah, I think that's right. It's really interesting to just sort of talk about this stuff.
You know.
I wrote a piece about like the Autocrat stuff yesterday, and like my editor, who I love so much, was like, there are many many questions in this piece because like, you know, if you want to just do more opinion of your opinion and less of that, And it's like, because there are so many questions about like modern political reporting, there aren't like really clear answers for any of this, right, I mean, the larger question is, how does a free press cover in autocracy and you know or want to
be autocrat?
And I don't know the answer to that.
We're all operating under the guys of objectivity because it makes us more trustworthy.
Like, guys, it's not working, like we've never been trusted with.
It's true, it's true, that's a good void.
I mean, I don't want everything to descend.
I would hate for everything to descend into like a hot take opinion piece.
I firmly believe in in journalism and reporting.
I just think that this whole idea that I don't know, Like it's like it's the trust that they trust us less than they ever did.
Yeah, I mean, it's the problem of American institutions, right, Like there's always a sense in which we're always having
this argument like have the guardrails held? And like the reality is that, you know, you know, if you can work for different trials to put them off so you can run for president, then obviously the guardrails haven't held, right, And the question is, like, you know, our American institutions as as safe as we think they are, and obviously they're not, or they've always been, you know, a cryptocracy and the affluent white men will always be able to bend them to their will.
Well that's dark, that's dark.
Sorry, and it's always been that way. Now, should talking about your show?
No, No, it's okay because in our show, you know, we wrote it for several years. We went and Julie Black and I created it with her. We went to the Caucuses in twenty twenty. We were on the Warren Boss bouncer around to Bernie and you know, we kept rewriting things. You know, it's fiction, but we still wanted to be a little bit you know, accurate, and.
We were like, still, no woman president, that one. We don't have to rewrite. That's fine, that's all.
We're like, like, the only thing that really fucks up our show is if they elect a woman.
And they were like, no, it's fine, that didn't happen.
I shouldn't laugh, but I laughed to keep from crying.
It gott a laugh.
It is so incredibly fucked up.
How you know, We're gone through so many machinations and the one thing that Democrats seem to have agreed on is that it's just completely impossible to elect a woman president. Please, when you listen to this, please don't write me mean emails. I want to have a woman president, probably more than anyone in the world. But the anxiety, I think is such that, you know, we're more likely to have a Nikki Haley candidate than.
I was just about to say that.
I've been saying that, like, if there's a first woman presence, she's probably gonna be a Republican.
I kind of steel that way.
It's so dark, or it isn't dark. It's subversive in a weird way.
After twenty sixteen, there was a feeling that nobody ever wanted to relive it. And when you said that, I was thinking about it because like I've definitely heard from like publishers and this and.
That, and the reality is like, yes, and we are still stuck re fucking living twenty sixteen.
Yeah.
Now, yeah, So like nobody wants to relive it, and yet we.
Are an ammobius strip of it discussed.
Totally, totally, No, it's fascinating.
It's actually like I think about that a lot because that was when I got out of political coverage, right see the book ends of My Little I was Ayeah, I went the poor reporter with Obama in two thousand and eight, so like we watched elections come in, we wrote into Grant Park, rode to Grant Park with him in the motorcade, like I just happened to be the pull reporter, and then the book and the Javit Center her her speech the next day.
So I'm like, Okay, I'm good. Those are the bookends of my political coverage.
But but no, I think it was such a watershed that it is still reverberating. I think that it's less reverberating like Hillary and Trump, and it's more reverberating of all of the themes that we did. I mean, it was such a wake up moment and nobody thought that was going to happen, right, and then it happened, and it feels like it's still happening, and there's still like a trauma associated with it. I think for a lot of people who didn't think this could possibly happen, and
now it's happening, and it's going to happen again. I mean, so I think that it was such it was such a watershed moment that You're right.
I didn't want to I didn't want.
To do like game change the twenty sixteen version. I didn't want to like cat that makes.
Me want to die.
Yeah, I think primary colors and Emma Thompson like killed it as Hillary in that movie, and like I didn't want to cast tru like I don't want to. I didn't want to do that. But I think you're absolutely right that, like all of the themes that were exposed in twenty sixteen are absolutely things that we're still thinking about, and you can't make a show about politics without leaving those in. And that's certainly kind of the underpinnings of our dramedy are the themes?
Right.
I had somebody on this podcast who wrote a book about the election that ruined all our lives, and the hot take was it was two thousand oh that was the election that ruined all our lives. I was like waxes thing, what but it did? It ruined a different generation of lives.
No, And certainly when people and I don't have a fast answer like some people like I've been asked like, well, why do you think people don't trust the Media'm like, oh God, where do I start? But I do think certainly the Bush years and the lead up to Iraq, Like I think all these things, I don't think twenty sixteen happened, and distrusting the media happened just because of Trump and a.
Vacuum, right.
I agree. I also think though that it's been covered. I don't think it's covered as causality as much as it should. Is that some of what happened to the mainstream media is that tech used us for free content and then got mad at us when they got so rich.
You know, like Elon is a great example, Like.
Twitter grows on free content and then all of a sudden, Elon's like, I don't like any of this, and just because I take a little kenemy and that's not a big story, and fuck the Wall Street journal.
And then you know, he's like, we don't need journalists.
We need random anonymous accounts on acts that post videos from two.
Thousand and eight. You know. I mean that's some of it.
Right, No, I A thousand percent.
And that's what's kind of fascinating and terrifying, right, because the changing economics of the news business. I don't think it's a coincidence that the kind of different economic incentives that have really gutted newsrooms are coinciding with a feeling that media can be trusted and all of these things and allowing for, as you said, these right wing forces.
To take hold.
It actually gets back to our policy conversation. You're not going to write a story about the Chips plan if you're chasing clicks. And I don't think we're chasing clicks anymore. I think we've got to move past that because that doesn't even work.
That's right, clicks have died, that's right. We are pivoting. We're pivoting to video.
Again, We're a pivoting now. I've heard podcasts with video is the thing.
Yeah, except you say this on a podcast with that video, thank god face.
Now.
And I also feel for newsrooms that are incredibly understaffed, like I think that's you know, it's like it's all feeding into this. I mean I think about that sometimes because I do think there's like a nostalgia to the show in that it's like a robust press score following a you know, a crowded democratic primary, like oh, what's that?
Like?
You know, I think post post COVID and now you have basically two incumbents running and it's still expensive to send reporters out in the road. That some of that traditional way of covering gut or bat traditional wave covering campaigns has changed to.
Yeah, Amy chose. The show is on Max. You can stream it right now. How many episodes?
There's two episodes out now and another one drops on Thursday. Yes, all right, doing weekly weekly? How many have episodes all together?
There's ten episodes.
Oh fantastic, Yeah, thank you, thanks great target to you.
Now, Jesse Cannon, Maley, Jung Fast I hear there's a whole lot.
The fuck are you going on down in Louisiana? What are you seeing here?
So?
I want to talk about this rh Impact report that has been released. It's been released by a think tank. It's from rh Impact and it is a report it's called Criminalizing Care How Louisiana's abortion bands in danger patients and clinics. And it's really important statistics about how the
state of Louisiana has criminalized women's healthcare. They have made it more likely there are less hospitals, less doctors, less options for treatment, and one of the many findings they have found is that women are less likely to get treated, more likely to die, more likely to die in childbirth.
They have theirs, basically existing federal statutes put in place to protect patient access to emergency care, including the federal law called m TALA, are being nullified by Louisiana's abortion bands, which means, if you are dying, you can die in a Louisiana hospital because they don't care.
That is our moment of Fuckray.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.