March 25, 2024 • 50 mins
Media Matters' Angelo Carusone examines Fox’s noticeably absent coverage of Mike Pence refusing to endorse Donald Trump. Democracy Docket’s Marc Elias details the RNC’s new shenanigans with our voting rolls. The New York Times' Katie Rogers details her new book 'American Woman: The Transformation of the Modern First Lady, from Hillary Clinton to Jill Biden.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And Tammy Murphy is dropped out of the New Jersey
setate race. We have such a great show for you today.
Democracy duckets Mark Elias stops by to talk the latest
fuckery with our voting laws. Then we'll talk to New
York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers about her new book,
American Woman, the transformation of the modern First Lady from
Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden. But first we have Media
(00:31):
Matter CEO Angela Kirosne.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Angelo, thanks for having me.
I'm really delighted to have you because I feel like
the mainstream media world has caught up with just how
important media matters is. It's sort of interesting, right, because, like,
your organization is not new, right, No.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
No, we're twenty years old this year. We started right
around the time of the swift boats attacks against John
Carrey in two thousand and four, and that was like
the first time that Democrats and the leftmore broadly felt
like they needed to have a more structured and systematic
response to conservative misinformation. It's talk radio and Fox News
in the nineties and early two thousands, wasn't enough of
(01:18):
a tell they needed something like really specific like that
to kind of help focus it.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Weirdly enough, Yeah, I mean, I think that's right, and
I also think it's just really so interesting. So you
see what the right is running with. And I'm hoping
that you could talk a little bit about the Hunter Biden,
Joe Biden, James Comer, Jim Jordan, whatever that was yesterday,
(01:45):
because it seems like it was meant to create content
for Fox News, and yet Fox News did not cover.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
The part that's so interesting about what's happening right now.
And it's worth you know, sort of taking a step
back and just getting a little bit of context here,
is that we are in this moment where, for the
first time in thirty years, like the right wing media
is not the way it's always been. You know, one
of the things that you know, the right wing media
has always functioned as is an echo chamber, and you
sort of had, you know, two centers of gravity at
(02:13):
Limbaugh and Vock Radio and then Fox News, and they
would kind of provide agenda setting that would then get
echoed into the larger, larger landscape. Then you'd have these
political figures, as you noted, sort of take actions official actions,
or say comments that would get them to help advance
the story and then get them booked back on those
(02:34):
programs or talked about on Limbaugh. And that was sort
of the way the cycle worked, and you sort of
just keep moving the story along and investing in it.
And it was handing bluff as long as you know
you and your official capacity or political capacity sort of
picked up the right wing media narrative, typically Foxes, you
would be rewarded with Fox's coverage and attention. I mean,
that's honestly how Ron DeSantis went from the bottom of
(02:56):
the pack during their theatorial primary in Florida the top
of the primary when he was running for governor is
that he picked up Fox's dog food and ran with it,
and they kept giving him more bookings and that's how
he ascend it. All. That's to say that cycle's basically
broken down over the last year. Part of it is
that there's no center of gravity. They're a course that
a conductor. You know, Fox obviously on the heels of
the dominion lawsuit and losing Tucker, they're sort of in
(03:18):
this weird, wobbly place where they don't have a lot
of clarities what they are. Trump is sort of essentially
the assignment editor over there now and is kind of
setting the tone for some of the programs. And it's
kind of broken up into factions. So you have had
a a you have sort of you know, a couple
of the Day Side people, the Fox and Friends of Universe.
It's just weird. And so one of the things to
keep in mind is that things like yesterday is that
(03:41):
you have people like Jim Jim Jordan who are still
trying to play by old ruled where, you know, and
it worked for them. I mean they you know, Fox
News did hype up a lot of this impeachment stuff
and they literally manufactured a lot of these impetriment narratives
and some of the more specific claims, like you know,
that informant Smirnoff who is claiming that, you know, there
was a five million dollar to the Bidens that completely
(04:01):
fell apart, turned out to use an informant that had
ties to Russia. Hadley alone had hyped that particular claim
eighty five times in his monologues, I mean, and that
was just Handy's show. You know, the rest of the
network is on board. So if you're a cultmbar and Jordan,
you you're like, oh, this is it. We're still going
with this. You sort of created the demand of the
appetite for an impeachment. You built the wise of the
narrative that we then used as justification for why we
(04:24):
needed to move forward here. And we were responding to
our right wing audiences. So we did this thing, and
then Fox basically just kind of left him holding the bat.
And one is that's the consistency is out there anymore.
They're not functioning the same. And the second important point,
and this ties into how Fox has been handling a
lot of these things lately, is that they just stop.
So this is not the only instance where Fox has
(04:45):
really pushed something and then when it kind of got
you know, a little bit of a hot potato, they
completely and totally walked away from it. That has been
broadly their m up for the last ten year or
so is that whenever they push the story and it
gets a little bit attraction, they're like, ah, you know what,
We're done with this. So, you know, they helped push
this idea of cutting of raising the retirement, it's just
so security, and then Republicans go and do it. They're like, yeah,
(05:06):
you know, and we're just not going to talk about
it anymore. Or the Mike Pence thing right where they
were hyping Trump's opponents and then Mike Pence goes on
the network and says, oh, yeah, I'm not going to
know just as weak it says, I'm not going to
endorse Trump, and everybody else talks about it except for
Fox Naps, even though they're the ones that broke the story.
So there is this sort of weird thing where they
just walk away from stuff. They're kind of like starting
(05:28):
fires and walking away. And I think it is largely
a reflection of that the landscape has shifted so much
and they're just not as powerful and influential as they were,
or rather, they're not as reliable of a partner as
they had been, and that that's not going to go away.
That's going to be the new norm and the default,
and you're going to see a lot more Republicans kind
of scrambling and getting embarrassed, like Jim Jordan was.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Are they scared of like legal pushback? Is this Fox News'
response to Dominion or is this something. Are the Murdochs
playing three dimensional chess?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
They're definitely not playing three dim They don't know what
game they're playing right now. And it's not so much
about risk aversion for lawsuits that has affected some of
the coverage a little bit, where they're a little more
careful about claims they push. It's mostly that they don't
know who they are. You know. When President Obama came
into office in two thousand and nine, Fox declared themselves
the voice of the opposition, and when Trump got into
(06:20):
office in twenty seventeen, they very clearly became an organ
of the administration, sort of an adjacent sort of you know,
para communication structure, that's what they were, and you know,
had a shadow chief of staff. They just don't know
what they are anymore. They don't have the same influence
over the rest of the right wing media now, so
when they talk about something, not everybody will try to
push it. They hadn't been able to tamp down a lot.
(06:42):
I mean, just look at the way the speaker fights
have played out. That would not have happened five or
six years ago because their Fox and the rest of
the right wing media were in lockstep. They had some
worder still. I mean, Fox has tried to make Jim
Jordan the speaker this year, and that horrendeously blew up
and was again really embarrassing for him. So I think
it's that what they're trying not to do is lose
any more of their audience, which they've lost about twenty percent,
(07:04):
but they're also trying not to So they're trying not
to lose their audience, but they're also trying to not
have to be the sole entity responsible for carrying all
of the weight of like the Maga world, because that's
also not sustainable for them from a financial perspective. Either.
They have to renegotiate these cable deals. They still need
to have some political influence. The Murdocks are still kind
(07:24):
of mad, so there's like, you know, then there's internal
tensions too, whereas he's trying to jockey for who's going
to be the real influential player.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Get back to Petence for a second, because I think
it's meaningful. Pence said he wasn't going to endorse Trump.
This is like pretty big deal, even despite the fact,
I mean, look, look, Trump had his supporters chanting hang
Mike pens so again, it's not abnormal to not want
(07:55):
to endorse that person, but for Trump world, it is
actually abnormal. So is that not getting covered because it's
such a paradigm shift and it could unravel the whole
apparatus if you were to sort of look down the
rabbit hole of people who served in the Trump admin
who now refuse to aendorse him, like they broke huge news,
(08:19):
which is kind of the job of a news network.
And not to put too fine a point on it here,
but are they hiding it because they just think it's
too detrimental to Trump or is there some other reason
they're not covering probably the biggest scoop they've had in
the last six months.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I think it's two things. One is that they don't
want to make Truck mad because he will then attack
the network more, and that means that you'll they'll hemmrhage
more of their audience. That is one part of it
is that they just they don't want to inflame him
as much as they because by extension, that's that is
the equivalent of inflaming their audience, and they are pretty
desperate to make sure that they at least keep whatever
sort of soft datent exists between them right now because
(08:58):
of the fact that they do need that audio. It's
like that is important from a revenue perspective for them,
and that is just and also a relevancy perspective. I
think the second thing though, is that ultimately, at the
end of the day, and this is I think the
same thing with like the pop Pens endorsement stuff, is
like they're all going to vote for Trump. What we're
really talking about here is not as you ask, it's
not a full paradigm shift. It's a paradigm shift in
terms of like how they orient themselves publicly, at how
(09:19):
much public you know, weight they're willing to carry. But
ultimately they're going to vote for Trump then, and they
want him to win reelection. That is the world that
they want, and so they don't want to shoot themselves
in the foot by advancing narratives that fundamentally or could
could seriously wound Trump in any way amongst his audience.
And that means you can't because again, this is still
(09:40):
a bubble. The audience is still a bubble. And if
you have Mike Pence, who even if they have issues
with it's a different messenger. It's not just somebody who's
running against him. It's like it's his former vice president
who's making a rational argument. Trump is trying to make
inroads and in the Christian spaces right now, Like there's
real reasons why you just want to bury that.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
How could he make more inroads? I mean, doesn't he
have all the way evangelicals.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
He basically does, Yes, totally. I mean he's got them
and that is it. I mean they will all come home.
And you know, what Fox has been doing though, has
been bringing on more pastors in the last few weeks
to speak to that, to that exact thing. So when
I say, and I was like, guess what I really
mean is locking it down. And Fox has been a
conduit for that, where they have been bringing on promined
(10:22):
evangelical pastors to essentially say, despite all of his flaws,
like we still need to vote for Trump and that
that's an important thing that Fox is doing is kind
of helping make sure that they lock down that evangelical
support for Trump now hence in a way can cut
against that and that is you know, it's not going
to be a game changer, but like they did want
to put any more bananas on the fields, you know,
(10:43):
you don't have to get let this guy potentially slip
by anything. They know it's going to be a tight race,
and and they get the fact that it's margins. So
that's what I think is really motivating. This is they
still want and that's why I think they held their
punches when they supposedly turned on Trump. You know, two
years ago and the murdocks were seeing all those stories.
They never really hit up, you know, when all the
indictment stuff came down, and every time there was a
(11:03):
negative story, all they did was talk about Hunter Biden
and Joe Biden every time those moments came up. They
never actually tried to draw any blood from Trump. They
never really tried to say this somehow changes his orientation
into the space. They just did some passive aggressive like
they're no longer allowed to come on the air or
call in anymore for a little while. Ultimately, they still
advanced what was a Prochrump position, which is to help
(11:26):
make sure that he wasn't mortally wounded by these stories.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Talk to me about the TikTok legislation. It zipped through
the House, it is in the Senate. They got they're
having these security briefings. Clearly, whatever they're seeing in these
security briefings is a big convincer, right, I mean, what
do we think they're seeing in the security briefing and
doesn't make it through the Senate.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I think it has a very good chance of getting
through the Senate. But I also have real concerns about this.
I think that assuming and this gets into your question
what they're seeing in the security briefings, I think what
they're seeing in the security briefings is a combination of
the follower that TikTok has the enormous ability to influence,
to saturate, and to change position and perspective quickly amongst
an audience, in particularly young audience, so that it could
(12:09):
be a beachhead for foreign attacks. But that's one extension,
and two that it's already been deployed to clue great effect,
in this case not entirely by the Chinese, but also
by by Russian active measures, and the Chinese obviously let
it happen, but that that it's already been deployed. We
saw that it played out during the initial days in
the Ukraine invasion and sort of helping see the ground
(12:30):
there and changing some of opinions in Europe around this
like it's been effective, it's consistently been a tool, and
I think they're just seeing more about that and a
little bit obviously about China's potential plans. Here's where my
issue with the legislation comes in, and I think because
they don't actually have to worry about the mess. This
is what I don't think they're thinking about. So let's
say everything that they're seeing without even knowing the specifics,
is that this is a this is as some of
(12:51):
the I think some of them described it as a
gun to our head. Then all they've basically done, because
of the way the legislation is structured, is make it
so that either two things happen. Either China allows this
ticking time bombs to be detonated right before the election,
because at minimum we're talking about a six month period,
so TikTok is going to be around. So there's our
October surprise. It's already been demonstrated to be a useful
(13:11):
tool for active measures, and the truth is is that
we've relied on TikTok, the public has relied on TikTok
to actually take away the active measures that have been
deployed on the platform. There have been more active measures
removed on the platform than allowed to proliferate, I would
point out, and the leverage point there is not the
goodness of China's arts, but that they still wanted the
platform to exist and didn't want to elicit an enormous
(13:32):
amount of or give any more fuel to the fire
to sort of burg or undermine TikTok. But there were
leverages and pressure points that were keeping TikTok to some
extent constrained. And what they've basically done with this legislation,
especially if it goes through, is say, oh, nope, you
don't have those constraints anymore, because there's nothing in the
bill that actually allows for what is essentially an event
trigger or kill switch where the app stores have to
(13:54):
act sooner. So there's nothing that says, oh, well, in June,
if the platform suddenly becomes a cess pool of the
verifiable fact foreign active measures and disinformation campaigns, that the
app stores have to remove it immediately, which is a
simple thing to add that's not in there right. So
what they've basically done is say this time bomb go
ahead and deignated right before the election. So independent what
(14:15):
people think about the ban or not the ban, or
trying to force it to spin off the way that
it's structured right now, it basically creates all the incentives
for trying to allow it to be used as a
tool for disinformation and information warfare, and it doesn't give
any meaningful stop gap, and it sort of hopes that
some entity is going to fly out of the sky
and buy this, and the reality is that entity will
(14:37):
almost certainly be right wing. And so even on the
other side of this, under the best case scenario, we
are now dealing with a new right wing media outlet.
And we saw how well that's worked out for X.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, let's talk about what's happening with you guys and
acts elon everybody's favorite billionaire, who richest man in the world,
second richest man in the world, exact in now, I
guess yeah, government subsidies. The irony is rich has become
despite the fact that he got government subsidies, largely from
(15:08):
Democrats trying to fight climate change, he's become a person
who is I think the phrase is red pilled. Let's
talk about what he's declared war on media matters. Talk
to me about what that looks like or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
You can say, yes, I mean what I can say
is that he has sued us in the North District
of Texas, but there's currently a lawsuit moving forward there,
so exisuing us for accurate reporting. You know, we reported
that there was an increase of ads or there's a
bunch of high profile ads had been running alongside Nazi
content and Hitler enthusiasm content. So we didn't even try
(15:43):
to like debate, you know, the broader contours of white
nationals or white supremacy. We just focused in on Hitler
enthusiasm and Nazi accounts to show that these ads were
running there contrary to what EX had been telling advertisers.
They don't really dispute that, so that they're not saying
that we define them. We're alive that there's something inaccurate
in the boarding. They just don't like the reflection in
the mirror, basically because it's not about the laws, it's
(16:04):
about bearing us on legal fees. There also did lible tourism,
so they're currently suing us in Ireland. X is currently
suing us in Ireland and then threatening to sue in
Singapore and the UK. But then aside from that, and
I think this is the bigger warning sign for the
media more broadly, and sort of where we're heading is
that in response to Stephen Miller saying that state AG's
(16:24):
Republican state AG's should go after media matters criminally for
these reports, that they should use their power to investigate,
you know, the underlying research and efforts that went into
publishing these news reports. Ken Paxson was the first out
of the gate to start that. The Missouri Louisiana kind
of followed suit, and it was to launch a pretty
broad scale investigation under his consumer fraud statute. That obviously
(16:48):
is pretty destructive for news reporting because if you're going
to go after every article you don't like, that could
have a devastating chilling effect on news information. We sued KEM.
Paxson in dc AF before a restraining order against it.
We're still waiting on the decision there. But you know,
he talks about us at least once a week or so,
maybe more, calls us evil on a regular basis. I mean,
in his mind, we are responsible for so much attack
(17:10):
on free speech, and I think you know, if I
take it the media matters pie sadicals is obviously it's
having the efforts to barrier so that we can't be effective.
And part of the way that we got here is
that you basically had every right being media figure from
Glenn Beck to Temper Carlson to Laura Wogan and you know,
Meg and Kelly and then everybody truly messaging him basically saying,
here's how media matters hurt me. They're the most destructive
(17:32):
and evil organization in the country. Look how much damage
they cause through these reports that they need to be stopped.
And ultimately, I think it is a reflection of the
work that we do. And I also think though that
what we've seen with must not just with us, but
also as you noted, this sort of red pilling was
a process that happened over time as a result of
his own social media interactions, like he became red billed,
(17:53):
and he is just an example of what's happening across
the board on x and on other platforms that I
think make this a real, you know, a real threat
beyond just like whatever whatever happens with us is that
we are still going to have to grab them. The
reality that our society right now, in a weird way,
is kind of having a reset moment and instead of
talk radio, which really transformed our politics, our culture, and
(18:13):
our news in the nineties, We're going to be confronting
a new reality, which I think is sort of akin
to this new platform called Rumble, which is like a
YouTube alternative, and I think it's going to similarly transform
the country and our politics and our culture, you know,
for the worst. And so I think that what we're
seeing with Musk is just sort of a keyhold view
as to where the rest of the landscape is going.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Honestly, Hi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Thanks yea good way.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And Mark Oyas is the founder of Democracy Docket.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Mar thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
We were on the show together this week and I
just read what you wrote about. I'm just so struck
by how incredibly important or what's happening right now. It's
like the Trump RNC takeover. We covered it from the
sort of it's an autocracy angle, but we haven't covered
it from probably the most scary and disturbing angle, which
(19:14):
is it's a voter suppression play. So talk to me
about that.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah, first of all, it was great seeing you earlier
this week. I wish we could always be on together.
Maybe if someone's listening with power. As you say, there
was a lot of coverage of the takeover of the
R and C that focused on the fact that Donald
Trump might use it as a piggybank for his legal fees.
(19:39):
That they got it a lot of people. But I
think what was not focused on as much as it
should was they actually added effectively for lawyers, right, Michael
Watley himself the chair, is a lawyer from North Carolina, and.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Then they hired three others.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Charlie Spies, who is a professional Republican. Frankly, I would
have said he was a never Trumper if you had
asked me a a year or so ago. He worked
for mid Romney and then DeSantis, and Jeb Bush is
super packing in the middle, and Bill McGinley, who is
much more maggot he was in the White House. Question
I pose is that we know that they are launching
(20:14):
now a new attack on voting because we see them
filing new lawsuits. The question that we don't know is
will it be more effective than it was in twenty
twenty when they had the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Jenna
Ellis and Sidney Palinchark.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, I mean This is such a good point, which
is the thing that saved democracy so far, is that
most of the people who are doing this are very
stupid and also not particularly well trained. You make the
case here that the crew who were working on trying
to overturn the election, we're largely not very good at
this and not very smart. Your case here is that
(20:50):
these people are actually good at this and smart.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah, that's right, and I think you know you see this.
I think one of the most underappreciated names in Trump
world right now is Chris Lasovita, who is also himself
a professional campaign operative who did not originate in the
Trump be part of the Republican Party. He was frankly
largely known for running races in Virginia, and I think
he saw this opportunity to the RNC as not only
(21:16):
to placate Donald Trump's wishes, but also to bring in
a legal team that would not embarrass him and the
RNC the same way. Now, that doesn't mean they'll have
more success, by the way, I think it's an open
question whether they'll have any more success because they still
are dealt the hand that Donald Trump has given them,
which is to oppose voting rights in Court and to
poste by mail, I think those are ultimately losers of
(21:38):
a position, But I do think we shouldn't gloss over
the fact that they have added seemingly normal or formerly
normal Republican lawyers to the mix.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Well.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And I also think the point here is that you
have one party that no longer believes in democracy, right,
And so when you have people like Chris La Sevida,
or you have people who are like guilled Republican operatives
going like, this is our shot, let's go. Even if
it doesn't happen this time, it could happen next time.
(22:09):
And that was always my anxiety with DeSantis. I mean,
he turned out to be a spectacularly terrible candidate, but
he believed everything Trump believed, but was smarter and better organized.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Right, And this is a great threat, Molly.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
I mean, this is what I think you and I
and others have been talking about that I think people
need to hear, is that, you know, we right now
have a system in which essentially only one party can
win or else we lose democracy. And that is just
an untenable position because eventually, even if it's not Donald Trump,
you know, if it's Ron DeSantis, you know, or someone
else in that same mold. The country's going to be
(22:45):
in a world of hurt. So the question I always
pose to some of the never trumpers, who I appreciate
their work in some respects is how do we get
out of this? Like how do we get to a
place in which we are not careening from one anti
democracy candidate to another? Because you know, Ron DeSantis opposed
voting rights, he was in favor of book banning right
in Florida. He's not exactly not exactly a pillar of
(23:07):
liberal democracy.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
It does strike me, and again I'm being a Pollyanna
and Charlie Sykes already just said that. I said as
much as you would, But there is a sense in
which Nikki Haley did not seem in my mind to
be as anti democratic as the other ones.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, but she also didn't come very close to winning,
Like this is this is the only place where I
would be a little bit mildly critical.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Right, she didn't come close to winning.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Yeah, yeahs are mildly critical of the left on this around.
Nikki Haley is Nicki Haley was never going to be
the nominee. So it's all well and good to say
she ran and she was the last one left. But
she essentially was just a vessel for protesting Donald Trump.
But she wasn't gonna win.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, she couldn't get the critical mass because her ideas
were largely more jab than Donald.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Right, right.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
And that's look, that's been the tension within the Republican
Party now, going all the way back to their autopsy
report after twenty twelve, when they said we need candidates
to appeal more to young voters, women, Hispanics, and others.
And Jeb Bush was intended to be that candidate, but
he got thrashed by Donald Trump. And the problem, Molly is,
ever since then, it's not clear that there is a
(24:20):
majority of Republican voters who will vote for someone who
is not in that Trump mold. So I don't feel
like we're out of the box that we've all been
put in where democracy is at stake, and it's just
the Republicans are just circling around the various versions of Trumpiness.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
No, now, I think that's right. I also think when
we are talking about this voter suppression stuff, Republicans have
a long history of voter suppression. I mean, we did
not Robert started stripping the voting rights act, you know,
pre Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
And look, this is one of the places where I
think candidly some of the never Trumper's think I was
too hard on some of them.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
They'll be okay, Yeah, they'll be fine.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Like, the fact is that Republicans have been suppressing the
votes of blackbrand and young voters for a very long time,
and there is very little evidence that they are distancing
themselves from that, even in the never Trump camp. I mean,
let's not forget that Rusty Bauers, who is the guy
from Arizona who everyone fawned over. He oversaw the enactment
of all of the voter suppression legislation in Arizona. Brian
(25:27):
Kemp and Brad Rothenberger oversaw and champion voter expression all
the bad voter expression laws that we have seen in Georgia.
So the anti voting ethos really stems in the Republican
Party from the fact that they have been losing ground
with the popular vote in America and they have internalized
(25:48):
the need to limit who can participate in order to win.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, this is the last gasp of a dying party
that cannot survive in a multiracial demand. Right because their
policies are terrible, right, And.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
I think the place where I have taken it, probably
a step further than maybe some others, is that I
then point out when the Freedom to Vote Act and
the Genre Lewis Vote as Advancement Act aim before Congress,
every Republican voted against it. And I mean every Republican
that includes as people a some on the right eight.
When I point out that includes Ris Cheney and that
includes Adam Kinsick, like, there is no constituency in the
(26:25):
Republican Party to expand voting whatever else you may think
about them for other issues. When it comes to voter
supression of voting rights, there are no Republicans. There are
more Republicans in the House who have it f rating
from the NA than there are who would support a
voting rights bill.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So depressing, I mean, and really quite depressing, But I
do think really an important point. One of the things
that I read that really scared me last week was
this idea that they are trying to purge the roles.
So I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about
what that means, to purge the roles where it's happening,
where it's that's not happening, and how many lawsuits you're
(27:03):
working on right now about that.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, so it's a really good question. Voter purgase is
one of the tried and true tactics that Republicans have
used now for many decades. If you don't like who
they vote against you, one of the things is you
go and you try to remove people from being able
to vote by having their voter registrations canceled. This was
a big problem for many, many decades. You may remember
(27:25):
the RNC found itself under a court order, a consent
decree that prohibited them from engaging in certain activities. One
of the reasons why they found themselves in that trouble
was because of racially targeted voter purchase. Now, Congress addressed
this in a couple of different bills in the nineties
and in the early two thousands to try to curb
the abilities of states to engage in these mass removal
(27:49):
of voters in ways that were harmful and illegal. Obviously,
states should be able to remove dead people, they should
be able to remove people who moved out of the jurisdiction,
they should be able to do listings. But the kind
of the targeted purges really had to go.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So we saw a quieting of voter purges. But what's
interesting is we've now kind.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Of seen it resurge, and I think there are a
couple of reasons for it, which I'm happy to go into,
but it's worth noting to answer your question. You know,
the first two cases that were filed by the RNC
after Mike Whatley took over, so I'm talking literally in
the last ten days, they filed two voter purge cases,
so it is very much top of their mind.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, And I mean the idea of a voter purge
is you go to vote. You know, you are a
voter in Georgia who has gotten the day off to vote,
and you are not on the rolls anymore.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
And so what the Republicans are doing with their conservative
allies is a two pronged strategy, and you neique to
understand both of them to understand what we're in for
this fall, because I believe this is going to be
one of the, if not the dominant theme of this
fall election when we get there. The first is that
Republicans want to weaken the apparatus of the state to
(29:06):
have accurate voter rules. That they do this Molly in
both directions, both by trying to get them to purge
voters who shouldn't be removed, right, But at the same time,
remember they also pulled a number of their states out
of ERIC, which is an interestate compact between blue, red
and purple states to share information between them to allow
them to remove people who should be The first step
(29:28):
of this two prong is you both keep people on
who shouldn't be on. You try to purge people off
who shouldn't be off. Right, you basically create chaos, which
won't surprise you since it's a Donald Trump inspired effort. Right,
you create chaos at the state involving who is on
the voter lists. And the second part of the program though,
and this is the one that we have started to
(29:50):
see more and more in the newspaper. The New York
Times did a good story on this as well as
some other outlets, is these private election right wing election
agilantes who are basically engaging in private purges by compiling
their own lists of voters who they think should be
removed so and then submitting them to counties and insisting
(30:12):
that the counties remove those voters. So, the first is
the urge lawsuits we've been talking about are where the
RNC and others sue the state and say, hey, state,
you need to conduct a voter purge. But this second
effort is where right wing organizations, using big data and
using artificial intelligence generate their own lists of people who
(30:33):
they say should be removed, and then they challenge those people.
They engage in what's called mass voter challenges, where they
submit lists of thousands and thousands of people who they've
never met and tell the companies these people are illegal
and they have to be removed. And it is it
is the interplay of those two things that I fear
is going to really negatively impact voters this November.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, that seems really bad. How can Democrats push back
on that?
Speaker 5 (30:59):
And all?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Also, I really need you to talk about this carry
Lake Supreme Court madness, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Okay, So Democrats can to push back out a couple
of ways. The first is every state that is controlled
by Democrats should remove the ability from their state law
for private individuals to challenge voters. There is no reason, Molly,
why you should be able to go to a big
data company and generate a list of ten thousand people
you don't know and then submitted for challenge. Okay, so
(31:27):
number one states controlled by Democrats should do awigh with
private voter challenges. The second is that everyone listening should
check their own voter registration and make sure they're properly registered,
you know, but making sure it's going to be a
part of good hygiene. This fall is for people to
check with their counties and states to make sure that
they have not been removed and that they are otherwise
eligible to vote. Now on Kerry Lake, you know, Molly,
(31:50):
so much of what I do is very stressful, and
you know, and I feel, you know, under a lot
of it's humorless. And then it is often Mike Lindell
and Kerry Lake get together. If you think about it, Molly,
it's kind of a match made inhabitat right, two of them.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Curry Lake had run for governor.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
She lost. She brought a series of lawsuits over the
fact that she lost, which she continues to litigate. One
of them is to say that the voting machines in
Arizona were you know, rigged against her. She and her lawyers,
by the way, have already been sanctioned amazing. But yet
she managed to find common ally ship with the pillow salesman,
Mike Lindell the mast. Yeah, and they decided they were
(32:33):
going to take you to the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
And so that circus has now come to town. If
you live in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
That is amazing the Supreme Court, I mean, they still
have a tiny tiny bit of dignity left, right or now.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
To go back to the first topic we talked about,
you know about the lawyers.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
At one end of the spectrum, you have Rudy Juliana
dripping hair dye office standing in front of a landscaping
company between a porn.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Shop and yes, right, right, go on.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
But like at one in those re interview of that,
at the other end of the spectrum, you know, you
have more respectable lawyers like the one you know, who
just want to otherwise like undermine, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Abortion rights. But Mike Lindell, Kerry Lake, they're definitely in
that first category. And the Springcourt Supremecourt will do will
do business with the second group. You know, they're happy
to undermine basic individual freedoms and democracy, but they're not
here for the Kerry Lake hair you know, Rue Juliani Kroud.
So this lass is not going anywhere but it does
show that, you know, and I thought that Bill Crystal
(33:35):
actually had an interesting article this morning in which he
kind of says, you know, the RNC not only hired
the people I was talking about, they also hired the
for uh, you know, the former anchor from Owaan News, right,
So they know how to play that sort of both
sides of They want to play both sides of this,
and there's no question. Mike Lindell and Kerry lak Aer
in the circus side.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Thank you so much. Mark, really fun to talk to
you and also oh so worrying.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Rogers is the New York Times White House correspondent and
author of American Woman, The Transformation of the Modern First
Lady From Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Katie Rogers.
Speaker 5 (34:15):
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
We're so happy to have you so talk to me
about this book you write for The New York Times.
You decided to sort of pause and take a minute
to write a book. Why did you write this book?
And explain to us a little bit about the origin.
Are you still the White House correspondent the New York Times?
Speaker 5 (34:35):
I am. I've been doing that for six years which
is everyone tells me is like a year longer than
any sane person to do the Bob. So that tells
you a lot about me.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, and you've really been through some of the Trump years.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
Yeah, so I kind of gravitated, I guess, going back
to the Trump era. I got moved down from the
New York newsroom the week of Donald Trump's inauguration. My
assignment was to write features about like Washington, this very
democratic city being like overtaken by the Trump presidency and
the administration and all these conservatives of moving accounts. So
I started with that, but I kind of gravitated toward
(35:11):
malaniat Trump too, because she was such a mysterious figure.
She hadn't moved to Washington yet, so really I started
covering her right off the bat. I got named to
the White House Beed a year later, covered President Trump,
but also kept a pretty close eye on the first Lady.
And I was actually on maternity leave and got approached
to do a biography of Jill Biden and I had
(35:32):
been approached to do Malania books, and I didn't really
want to do anything that was about Jill because I
didn't know her. I hadn't covered her I'd just stopped
covering my Trump administration. I wasn't sure if there would
be enough about her to even fill a book, just
because I think to a lot of Americans, she's kind
of like an opaque figure and she's been around a
long time. People don't really know a lot about her.
(35:54):
And I was just like, I don't know if I
want to do that. But I saw her story as
kind of modern because I I think it's you know
anything about her and Joe Biden, it's that like he
lost his first wife in a terrible tragedy right in
nineteen seventy two, and it's his youngest daughter, and the
woman who came in and fixed all that and needed
that family back together was Jill Bidden And I was
(36:18):
I really thought that was karad of a modern thing, right,
Like she has a non traditional family, Like it was
a really singular story in American politics, and so I
just really was like, who is this woman who would
A do that and b be it her husband's side
for decades as he pursued this presidency. So really like
I kind of thought about her as I guess a
(36:40):
really modern figure, which is kind of not what you
would think of her. I think at First Blood she
kept her job. She's the first first lady to keep
her job, And then I kind of thought it's probably
easier for her to have gone to work because her
predecessor kind of unraveling the role completely, yeah, run of
(37:00):
everyone and showing everybody that it was optional. Well, then
I kind of thought of this as sort of a
scare slop. So every first lady kind of has changed
the role in her own way. So I kind of
decided to do first Ladies back for Return of the Century,
and it was Hillri Clinton, of course, and she really
was the most ambitious, the most educated, the most able
(37:23):
to sort of be a policy partner for her husband,
and she got a lot of scar to shoot from that, right,
she got a lot of pushback from what she tried
to do. So I kind of started with hers as
the first bookend and focused on each first lady since
and kind of culminated with Jill's story, which is a
very long winded answered to your question, But yeah, it
got more competuated as I worked on it. But I
(37:44):
think it really tells the story of this role that
has kind of stayed preserved in Amber as the culture
around it begins to have these, like, you know, pretty
fulsome conversations about what women's roles are in society and
in marriages.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Such an interesting experiment, and it is. Yeah, I mean,
you do really see with Hillary that she took a
lot of abuse for her trying to use the role
to enact policy, right, and then Michelle Obama takes a
lot of abuse for being black and everyone being racist.
(38:21):
There was a lot of pressure, right, but she didn't
do anything policy wise. She was, you know, did much
more of the traditional first lady job. I have a
theory that black women just get the most abuse from
the mainstream media and there's so much inherent racism and sexism.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
I think there is some truth to that, and I
think people had to learn in real time how to
write about a woman who has a completely different set
of experiences that she is bringing to not only the
role but as a candidate's wife, as a politanential candidate's wife.
I write in the book that you can sort of
see she has a really dry sense of humor, right,
and she would make sort of one liners or craps,
(39:03):
you know, wise packs on the campaign, and people just
would take that like in the media, you're right, would
take it completely differently than if it were white woman
candidates spouse saying these things. And I think she learned
on the campaign trail that she had to be really
buttoned up, the perfect wife, be a supportive wife. She
actually considered not moving to Washington right away too, which
(39:25):
is an interesting sort of recal.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
To pull the girls out of school, right.
Speaker 5 (39:29):
Yeah, right, And then so like she had to not
only be this sort of perfect, you know, spouse, she
gave up her career, she also had to readjust like
two young girls to Washington. So she was up against
a lot. She had a lot to prove. And yeah,
I think that the media had to sort of much
like I think a lot of the covered around Kamala Harris,
(39:51):
the vice President, has sort of gone a little bit
harder and harsher at times because she is the first
to ever have this role and have background.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, it's such an interesting and important thing. And I mean,
you did see that President Obama had to be ten
times more careful about everything because of that inherent racism.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
And Harris's advisors tell us all the time, you know,
former and current advisors of hers say like she asked
to be better all the time, Like black women have
to work twice as hard. So we have somebody in
public life right now, one of the highest offices of
the land, who is dealing with the same kind of
thing in a different role, but you know, in the
same sort of close circle of principles that Michelle Obama
(40:34):
dealt with, same thing she dealt with.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, so interesting. And then you get to Milania. Did
you feel there were hopes that Milania might be I mean,
I know there were so many times during the beginning
of the Trump administration where there was a hope that
someone would be a moderating force that never really happened.
But can talk about that.
Speaker 5 (40:56):
Yeah, I remember, I'm sure you do too.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Like that.
Speaker 5 (40:59):
People, well maybe it's Ivanka. Maybe it'll be it'll be Ivanka,
and maybe you'll be Jared. And then finally was you know,
maybe Milania, maybe Millennia will do something. She slaps his
hand away. She sent a tweet out after the Charlottesville,
you know, that horrible white nationalist rally that ended up
with a woman being killed. She you know, sent a
tweet to you know, calling for an onto violence while
(41:20):
her husband praised people were on both sides of the issue.
So I think there was a lot of hope basically
that first year that she dared views that were different
from her husband and maybe would have an ability to
mediate him, as you say. But the more I covered her,
and I think the more she showed as time went on,
she was much more willing to kind of like channel
(41:42):
what he was mad about. I would learn that she
would oftentimes be the person saying, you know, well, if
they're punching my husband, he's going to punch back, which
is kind of rooted in both how both Trumps feel
about being attacked and being scrutinized. Really, she wasn't a
moderating force. You know that the Charlottesville tweets, you know,
(42:05):
things like that amounted to kind of ephemeraa and we're
done at the suggestion of AIDS. It wasn't a reflection
of her having any sort of moderating influence on him,
at least not in a regular way in the way
that critics of the Trump administration would hope.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, it's interesting to me because it's like, as someone
who has known maybe not women exactly like Milania, but
you know, had certainly known trophy wives. And I mean
that not in a sexist way, but in a majorative way,
but not in a sexist wife. I thought she had
a little more or I hoped she had a little
more agency than it turned out she did.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
What's interesting, though, is like I talked to Stephanie Gersham
for this book, and you know, she wrote that sort
of tell all about her time there, but I had
talked to her about a year after that book came out,
and there was still so much more to share. I
think about the East Wing that I kind of picked
up my book. And it's funny that you say agency though,
(43:06):
because Stephanie pointed out that so many times Milania would
tell her this is our East Wing. We do what
we want. We don't pay attention to what they're doing
over there. So her point was that this is the
first time that she had ever had like a buffer
from him and from his world. Yeah, and she would
(43:26):
just she enjoyed that. And Stephanie Grisham kind of said
to me, she said to me that toward the end
of the first term, she said this realization quin of
sudden with Malania Trump, that she was going to go
have to live with her husband again and she wouldn't
have this buffer, and her behavior kind of change she
got more closed in, she became a little bit more
(43:47):
chucked out. It was a really interesting like this was
one of the closest people to her. Not that Lalania
Trump really lets anybody in, but Stephanie Gersham was certainly
a loyalist and was certainly you know, around for almost
all of it until January sixth, and just watched that
behavior change from you know, when the story Daniel's Story's
published in around twenty eighteen, you know, we recorded she
(44:10):
just took off tumor labia for a weekend and nobody
knew what she was doing. And Stephanie Gresham was like,
that was to embarrass him. She was pissed off and
wanted to humiliate him, is what she told me. But
toward the end of that term she then sort of
reverted back into this sort of quiet, insular figure. It
was that was an interesting trajectory to hear about.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, I mean so interesting and also so disappointing in
my mind. So now we have this current administration. One
of the things I'm struck by with the first lady
at ChIL Biden and I don't know her, never have
met her, but here she is. She comes in with
(44:53):
the boys, they end up having their own child together,
so they raised the three kids. Biden was sort of
grown into the presidency in a certain way in my mind,
because he had run many times, but he was never
sort of the right person for the moment. And then
it became like very clear to a lot of Democrats
that he was the only person who could beat Trump,
(45:14):
and when things look darkest, he is the most committed
to just you know, sort of this singular vision of
just beating Trump. Right. You know, Obama was the dream candidate, right,
gifted orator, just so smart, and he's incredible writer.
Speaker 5 (45:32):
He represented the future for people finally.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, and I feel like Democrats that were just like,
we just need a white guy to run against the
other white guy. You know, he's not a gifted orator,
he's not a genius, but he's functional.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
And he's decent.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
But I also think ultimately, and again, there certainly have
been things that anyone could be not happy with, but
there's a lot of the legislation has been kind of incredible.
But I'm hoping that you could talk to us a
little bit about where her places Joe Biden, because she
is more of a traditional first lady role of the
sort of fifties, but she still teaches. And then also
(46:09):
she has this incredible stressor of having one son who
was sober and then having this right wing media monster,
this machine that is obsessed with those of her children. Right,
So I'm hoping you talk about that, because that is
an unusual dynamic.
Speaker 5 (46:28):
I think, yeah, I mean, I think everything you just
laid out, I think one of the main things to
understand about her, and I love that the idea of
pixotic because she shares that same nature, whether she had
it when she married him or developed it over time,
she developed this sort of I think I call it
her in a book, like she's not a Biden by blood,
(46:51):
but over time she has come to represent the family's
defiant backbone. And I think that both of them are
driven by being talented out and even being attacked at
some rate by the right and it kind of creates
this mentality where they view even criticism from their own
party as an attack. Though like that, it can create
(47:14):
this sort of trench mentality that isn't necessarily helpful helpful exactly,
they're incredibly defiant. They're likely to dig in against adversity
and see the misinformation from the right that he's got dementia,
that the attacks about Hunter's business dealings and how enmeshed
Joe Biden is with that, and there is mussiness there,
(47:35):
but not to the degree of course that the right
has claimed. So I think all of it creates this
like very closed, insular trench kind of mentality, and she
is at the center of that, right alongside her husband.
The one thing he didn't say about her, which I
think is important and interesting, is and this is kind
(47:56):
of like one of my story obsessions, but I don't
know that I'm going to get around to it or
if my editors like it. But she's the most successful
surrogate he has. Oh interesting, She's also the only one
in the family who is wearing and or able to
do that right. Like if you think about the Bidens,
they think of themselves or thought of themselves as the
(48:17):
political dynasty, you know, back to the seventies when his
first wife was telling reporters that the Kennedys would have
nothing on the Bidens. They believed that their family has
something special to offer American life, right, and Bo was
really the heirs to that. And when Bo died in
twenty fifteen, there was just Hunter and Ashley, as you said,
(48:37):
I have had their own issues. They've both dealt with substance
addiction and problems to that effect. And really, at the
end of the day, Jill Biden is the only one
who is able to go out there and put this
sort of lens on Biden and sort of bring him
out and bring him back amidst all of this criticism
as the man that he believes he is. Tells the
(48:59):
story that the Bidens want America to know about them,
which is that he is resilient. He has been through
so much tragedy in his life, he understands what that's like.
He has passed legislation that is bipartisan, that is you know, expansive,
and was meant her all Americans, not just some of them.
She's incredibly effective at that. And she's also attacking Donald Trump,
(49:23):
you know, by name, about his track record, particularly on
women's rights and reproductive rights. And people think of her
as a helpmate, maybe in a housewife or somebody who
is you know, just there to support her husband, and
she she truly is that. But she's also a tireless
campaigner and we've never really seen a first lady like
that who is willing to sort of get into these
(49:45):
political fights. And that is because she believes that her
husband is the only one that can beat Trump. And
she doesn't like Trump at all. She you know, has
a deep dislike for him and she's alarmed by his policies.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, I mean she's not the only one. Katie Rogers,
thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5 (50:02):
Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
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.
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.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
And Tammy Murphy is dropped out of the New Jersey
setate race. We have such a great show for you today.
Democracy duckets Mark Elias stops by to talk the latest
fuckery with our voting laws. Then we'll talk to New
York Times White House correspondent Katie Rogers about her new book,
American Woman, the transformation of the modern First Lady from
Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden. But first we have Media
(00:31):
Matter CEO Angela Kirosne.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
Welcome back to Fast Politics. Angelo, thanks for having me.
I'm really delighted to have you because I feel like
the mainstream media world has caught up with just how
important media matters is. It's sort of interesting, right, because, like,
your organization is not new, right, No.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
No, we're twenty years old this year. We started right
around the time of the swift boats attacks against John
Carrey in two thousand and four, and that was like
the first time that Democrats and the leftmore broadly felt
like they needed to have a more structured and systematic
response to conservative misinformation. It's talk radio and Fox News
in the nineties and early two thousands, wasn't enough of
(01:18):
a tell they needed something like really specific like that
to kind of help focus it.
Speaker 1 (01:22):
Weirdly enough, Yeah, I mean, I think that's right, and
I also think it's just really so interesting. So you
see what the right is running with. And I'm hoping
that you could talk a little bit about the Hunter Biden,
Joe Biden, James Comer, Jim Jordan, whatever that was yesterday,
(01:45):
because it seems like it was meant to create content
for Fox News, and yet Fox News did not cover.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
The part that's so interesting about what's happening right now.
And it's worth you know, sort of taking a step
back and just getting a little bit of context here,
is that we are in this moment where, for the
first time in thirty years, like the right wing media
is not the way it's always been. You know, one
of the things that you know, the right wing media
has always functioned as is an echo chamber, and you
sort of had, you know, two centers of gravity at
(02:13):
Limbaugh and Vock Radio and then Fox News, and they
would kind of provide agenda setting that would then get
echoed into the larger, larger landscape. Then you'd have these
political figures, as you noted, sort of take actions official actions,
or say comments that would get them to help advance
the story and then get them booked back on those
(02:34):
programs or talked about on Limbaugh. And that was sort
of the way the cycle worked, and you sort of
just keep moving the story along and investing in it.
And it was handing bluff as long as you know
you and your official capacity or political capacity sort of
picked up the right wing media narrative, typically Foxes, you
would be rewarded with Fox's coverage and attention. I mean,
that's honestly how Ron DeSantis went from the bottom of
(02:56):
the pack during their theatorial primary in Florida the top
of the primary when he was running for governor is
that he picked up Fox's dog food and ran with it,
and they kept giving him more bookings and that's how
he ascend it. All. That's to say that cycle's basically
broken down over the last year. Part of it is
that there's no center of gravity. They're a course that
a conductor. You know, Fox obviously on the heels of
the dominion lawsuit and losing Tucker, they're sort of in
(03:18):
this weird, wobbly place where they don't have a lot
of clarities what they are. Trump is sort of essentially
the assignment editor over there now and is kind of
setting the tone for some of the programs. And it's
kind of broken up into factions. So you have had
a a you have sort of you know, a couple
of the Day Side people, the Fox and Friends of Universe.
It's just weird. And so one of the things to
keep in mind is that things like yesterday is that
(03:41):
you have people like Jim Jim Jordan who are still
trying to play by old ruled where, you know, and
it worked for them. I mean they you know, Fox
News did hype up a lot of this impeachment stuff
and they literally manufactured a lot of these impetriment narratives
and some of the more specific claims, like you know,
that informant Smirnoff who is claiming that, you know, there
was a five million dollar to the Bidens that completely
(04:01):
fell apart, turned out to use an informant that had
ties to Russia. Hadley alone had hyped that particular claim
eighty five times in his monologues, I mean, and that
was just Handy's show. You know, the rest of the
network is on board. So if you're a cultmbar and Jordan,
you you're like, oh, this is it. We're still going
with this. You sort of created the demand of the
appetite for an impeachment. You built the wise of the
narrative that we then used as justification for why we
(04:24):
needed to move forward here. And we were responding to
our right wing audiences. So we did this thing, and
then Fox basically just kind of left him holding the bat.
And one is that's the consistency is out there anymore.
They're not functioning the same. And the second important point,
and this ties into how Fox has been handling a
lot of these things lately, is that they just stop.
So this is not the only instance where Fox has
(04:45):
really pushed something and then when it kind of got
you know, a little bit of a hot potato, they
completely and totally walked away from it. That has been
broadly their m up for the last ten year or
so is that whenever they push the story and it
gets a little bit attraction, they're like, ah, you know what,
We're done with this. So, you know, they helped push
this idea of cutting of raising the retirement, it's just
so security, and then Republicans go and do it. They're like, yeah,
(05:06):
you know, and we're just not going to talk about
it anymore. Or the Mike Pence thing right where they
were hyping Trump's opponents and then Mike Pence goes on
the network and says, oh, yeah, I'm not going to
know just as weak it says, I'm not going to
endorse Trump, and everybody else talks about it except for
Fox Naps, even though they're the ones that broke the story.
So there is this sort of weird thing where they
just walk away from stuff. They're kind of like starting
(05:28):
fires and walking away. And I think it is largely
a reflection of that the landscape has shifted so much
and they're just not as powerful and influential as they were,
or rather, they're not as reliable of a partner as
they had been, and that that's not going to go away.
That's going to be the new norm and the default,
and you're going to see a lot more Republicans kind
of scrambling and getting embarrassed, like Jim Jordan was.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
Are they scared of like legal pushback? Is this Fox News'
response to Dominion or is this something. Are the Murdochs
playing three dimensional chess?
Speaker 3 (05:58):
They're definitely not playing three dim They don't know what
game they're playing right now. And it's not so much
about risk aversion for lawsuits that has affected some of
the coverage a little bit, where they're a little more
careful about claims they push. It's mostly that they don't
know who they are. You know. When President Obama came
into office in two thousand and nine, Fox declared themselves
the voice of the opposition, and when Trump got into
(06:20):
office in twenty seventeen, they very clearly became an organ
of the administration, sort of an adjacent sort of you know,
para communication structure, that's what they were, and you know,
had a shadow chief of staff. They just don't know
what they are anymore. They don't have the same influence
over the rest of the right wing media now, so
when they talk about something, not everybody will try to
push it. They hadn't been able to tamp down a lot.
(06:42):
I mean, just look at the way the speaker fights
have played out. That would not have happened five or
six years ago because their Fox and the rest of
the right wing media were in lockstep. They had some
worder still. I mean, Fox has tried to make Jim
Jordan the speaker this year, and that horrendeously blew up
and was again really embarrassing for him. So I think
it's that what they're trying not to do is lose
any more of their audience, which they've lost about twenty percent,
(07:04):
but they're also trying not to So they're trying not
to lose their audience, but they're also trying to not
have to be the sole entity responsible for carrying all
of the weight of like the Maga world, because that's
also not sustainable for them from a financial perspective. Either.
They have to renegotiate these cable deals. They still need
to have some political influence. The Murdocks are still kind
(07:24):
of mad, so there's like, you know, then there's internal
tensions too, whereas he's trying to jockey for who's going
to be the real influential player.
Speaker 1 (07:33):
Get back to Petence for a second, because I think
it's meaningful. Pence said he wasn't going to endorse Trump.
This is like pretty big deal, even despite the fact,
I mean, look, look, Trump had his supporters chanting hang
Mike pens so again, it's not abnormal to not want
(07:55):
to endorse that person, but for Trump world, it is
actually abnormal. So is that not getting covered because it's
such a paradigm shift and it could unravel the whole
apparatus if you were to sort of look down the
rabbit hole of people who served in the Trump admin
who now refuse to aendorse him, like they broke huge news,
(08:19):
which is kind of the job of a news network.
And not to put too fine a point on it here,
but are they hiding it because they just think it's
too detrimental to Trump or is there some other reason
they're not covering probably the biggest scoop they've had in
the last six months.
Speaker 3 (08:35):
I think it's two things. One is that they don't
want to make Truck mad because he will then attack
the network more, and that means that you'll they'll hemmrhage
more of their audience. That is one part of it
is that they just they don't want to inflame him
as much as they because by extension, that's that is
the equivalent of inflaming their audience, and they are pretty
desperate to make sure that they at least keep whatever
sort of soft datent exists between them right now because
(08:58):
of the fact that they do need that audio. It's
like that is important from a revenue perspective for them,
and that is just and also a relevancy perspective. I
think the second thing though, is that ultimately, at the
end of the day, and this is I think the
same thing with like the pop Pens endorsement stuff, is
like they're all going to vote for Trump. What we're
really talking about here is not as you ask, it's
not a full paradigm shift. It's a paradigm shift in
terms of like how they orient themselves publicly, at how
(09:19):
much public you know, weight they're willing to carry. But
ultimately they're going to vote for Trump then, and they
want him to win reelection. That is the world that
they want, and so they don't want to shoot themselves
in the foot by advancing narratives that fundamentally or could
could seriously wound Trump in any way amongst his audience.
And that means you can't because again, this is still
(09:40):
a bubble. The audience is still a bubble. And if
you have Mike Pence, who even if they have issues
with it's a different messenger. It's not just somebody who's
running against him. It's like it's his former vice president
who's making a rational argument. Trump is trying to make
inroads and in the Christian spaces right now, Like there's
real reasons why you just want to bury that.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
How could he make more inroads? I mean, doesn't he
have all the way evangelicals.
Speaker 3 (10:01):
He basically does, Yes, totally. I mean he's got them
and that is it. I mean they will all come home.
And you know, what Fox has been doing though, has
been bringing on more pastors in the last few weeks
to speak to that, to that exact thing. So when
I say, and I was like, guess what I really
mean is locking it down. And Fox has been a
conduit for that, where they have been bringing on promined
(10:22):
evangelical pastors to essentially say, despite all of his flaws,
like we still need to vote for Trump and that
that's an important thing that Fox is doing is kind
of helping make sure that they lock down that evangelical
support for Trump now hence in a way can cut
against that and that is you know, it's not going
to be a game changer, but like they did want
to put any more bananas on the fields, you know,
(10:43):
you don't have to get let this guy potentially slip
by anything. They know it's going to be a tight race,
and and they get the fact that it's margins. So
that's what I think is really motivating. This is they
still want and that's why I think they held their
punches when they supposedly turned on Trump. You know, two
years ago and the murdocks were seeing all those stories.
They never really hit up, you know, when all the
indictment stuff came down, and every time there was a
(11:03):
negative story, all they did was talk about Hunter Biden
and Joe Biden every time those moments came up. They
never actually tried to draw any blood from Trump. They
never really tried to say this somehow changes his orientation
into the space. They just did some passive aggressive like
they're no longer allowed to come on the air or
call in anymore for a little while. Ultimately, they still
advanced what was a Prochrump position, which is to help
(11:26):
make sure that he wasn't mortally wounded by these stories.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
Talk to me about the TikTok legislation. It zipped through
the House, it is in the Senate. They got they're
having these security briefings. Clearly, whatever they're seeing in these
security briefings is a big convincer, right, I mean, what
do we think they're seeing in the security briefing and
doesn't make it through the Senate.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
I think it has a very good chance of getting
through the Senate. But I also have real concerns about this.
I think that assuming and this gets into your question
what they're seeing in the security briefings, I think what
they're seeing in the security briefings is a combination of
the follower that TikTok has the enormous ability to influence,
to saturate, and to change position and perspective quickly amongst
an audience, in particularly young audience, so that it could
(12:09):
be a beachhead for foreign attacks. But that's one extension,
and two that it's already been deployed to clue great effect,
in this case not entirely by the Chinese, but also
by by Russian active measures, and the Chinese obviously let
it happen, but that that it's already been deployed. We
saw that it played out during the initial days in
the Ukraine invasion and sort of helping see the ground
(12:30):
there and changing some of opinions in Europe around this
like it's been effective, it's consistently been a tool, and
I think they're just seeing more about that and a
little bit obviously about China's potential plans. Here's where my
issue with the legislation comes in, and I think because
they don't actually have to worry about the mess. This
is what I don't think they're thinking about. So let's
say everything that they're seeing without even knowing the specifics,
is that this is a this is as some of
(12:51):
the I think some of them described it as a
gun to our head. Then all they've basically done, because
of the way the legislation is structured, is make it
so that either two things happen. Either China allows this
ticking time bombs to be detonated right before the election,
because at minimum we're talking about a six month period,
so TikTok is going to be around. So there's our
October surprise. It's already been demonstrated to be a useful
(13:11):
tool for active measures, and the truth is is that
we've relied on TikTok, the public has relied on TikTok
to actually take away the active measures that have been
deployed on the platform. There have been more active measures
removed on the platform than allowed to proliferate, I would
point out, and the leverage point there is not the
goodness of China's arts, but that they still wanted the
platform to exist and didn't want to elicit an enormous
(13:32):
amount of or give any more fuel to the fire
to sort of burg or undermine TikTok. But there were
leverages and pressure points that were keeping TikTok to some
extent constrained. And what they've basically done with this legislation,
especially if it goes through, is say, oh, nope, you
don't have those constraints anymore, because there's nothing in the
bill that actually allows for what is essentially an event
trigger or kill switch where the app stores have to
(13:54):
act sooner. So there's nothing that says, oh, well, in June,
if the platform suddenly becomes a cess pool of the
verifiable fact foreign active measures and disinformation campaigns, that the
app stores have to remove it immediately, which is a
simple thing to add that's not in there right. So
what they've basically done is say this time bomb go
ahead and deignated right before the election. So independent what
(14:15):
people think about the ban or not the ban, or
trying to force it to spin off the way that
it's structured right now, it basically creates all the incentives
for trying to allow it to be used as a
tool for disinformation and information warfare, and it doesn't give
any meaningful stop gap, and it sort of hopes that
some entity is going to fly out of the sky
and buy this, and the reality is that entity will
(14:37):
almost certainly be right wing. And so even on the
other side of this, under the best case scenario, we
are now dealing with a new right wing media outlet.
And we saw how well that's worked out for X.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
Yeah, let's talk about what's happening with you guys and
acts elon everybody's favorite billionaire, who richest man in the world,
second richest man in the world, exact in now, I
guess yeah, government subsidies. The irony is rich has become
despite the fact that he got government subsidies, largely from
(15:08):
Democrats trying to fight climate change, he's become a person
who is I think the phrase is red pilled. Let's
talk about what he's declared war on media matters. Talk
to me about what that looks like or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:20):
You can say, yes, I mean what I can say
is that he has sued us in the North District
of Texas, but there's currently a lawsuit moving forward there,
so exisuing us for accurate reporting. You know, we reported
that there was an increase of ads or there's a
bunch of high profile ads had been running alongside Nazi
content and Hitler enthusiasm content. So we didn't even try
(15:43):
to like debate, you know, the broader contours of white
nationals or white supremacy. We just focused in on Hitler
enthusiasm and Nazi accounts to show that these ads were
running there contrary to what EX had been telling advertisers.
They don't really dispute that, so that they're not saying
that we define them. We're alive that there's something inaccurate
in the boarding. They just don't like the reflection in
the mirror, basically because it's not about the laws, it's
(16:04):
about bearing us on legal fees. There also did lible tourism,
so they're currently suing us in Ireland. X is currently
suing us in Ireland and then threatening to sue in
Singapore and the UK. But then aside from that, and
I think this is the bigger warning sign for the
media more broadly, and sort of where we're heading is
that in response to Stephen Miller saying that state AG's
(16:24):
Republican state AG's should go after media matters criminally for
these reports, that they should use their power to investigate,
you know, the underlying research and efforts that went into
publishing these news reports. Ken Paxson was the first out
of the gate to start that. The Missouri Louisiana kind
of followed suit, and it was to launch a pretty
broad scale investigation under his consumer fraud statute. That obviously
(16:48):
is pretty destructive for news reporting because if you're going
to go after every article you don't like, that could
have a devastating chilling effect on news information. We sued KEM.
Paxson in dc AF before a restraining order against it.
We're still waiting on the decision there. But you know,
he talks about us at least once a week or so,
maybe more, calls us evil on a regular basis. I mean,
in his mind, we are responsible for so much attack
(17:10):
on free speech, and I think you know, if I
take it the media matters pie sadicals is obviously it's
having the efforts to barrier so that we can't be effective.
And part of the way that we got here is
that you basically had every right being media figure from
Glenn Beck to Temper Carlson to Laura Wogan and you know,
Meg and Kelly and then everybody truly messaging him basically saying,
here's how media matters hurt me. They're the most destructive
(17:32):
and evil organization in the country. Look how much damage
they cause through these reports that they need to be stopped.
And ultimately, I think it is a reflection of the
work that we do. And I also think though that
what we've seen with must not just with us, but
also as you noted, this sort of red pilling was
a process that happened over time as a result of
his own social media interactions, like he became red billed,
(17:53):
and he is just an example of what's happening across
the board on x and on other platforms that I
think make this a real, you know, a real threat
beyond just like whatever whatever happens with us is that
we are still going to have to grab them. The
reality that our society right now, in a weird way,
is kind of having a reset moment and instead of
talk radio, which really transformed our politics, our culture, and
(18:13):
our news in the nineties, We're going to be confronting
a new reality, which I think is sort of akin
to this new platform called Rumble, which is like a
YouTube alternative, and I think it's going to similarly transform
the country and our politics and our culture, you know,
for the worst. And so I think that what we're
seeing with Musk is just sort of a keyhold view
as to where the rest of the landscape is going.
Speaker 1 (18:33):
Honestly, Hi, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 3 (18:37):
Thanks yea good way.
Speaker 2 (18:38):
And Mark Oyas is the founder of Democracy Docket.
Speaker 1 (18:47):
Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
Mar thanks for having me again.
Speaker 1 (18:51):
We were on the show together this week and I
just read what you wrote about. I'm just so struck
by how incredibly important or what's happening right now. It's
like the Trump RNC takeover. We covered it from the
sort of it's an autocracy angle, but we haven't covered
it from probably the most scary and disturbing angle, which
(19:14):
is it's a voter suppression play. So talk to me
about that.
Speaker 4 (19:18):
Yeah, first of all, it was great seeing you earlier
this week. I wish we could always be on together.
Maybe if someone's listening with power. As you say, there
was a lot of coverage of the takeover of the
R and C that focused on the fact that Donald
Trump might use it as a piggybank for his legal fees.
(19:39):
That they got it a lot of people. But I
think what was not focused on as much as it
should was they actually added effectively for lawyers, right, Michael
Watley himself the chair, is a lawyer from North Carolina, and.
Speaker 3 (19:52):
Then they hired three others.
Speaker 4 (19:53):
Charlie Spies, who is a professional Republican. Frankly, I would
have said he was a never Trumper if you had
asked me a a year or so ago. He worked
for mid Romney and then DeSantis, and Jeb Bush is
super packing in the middle, and Bill McGinley, who is
much more maggot he was in the White House. Question
I pose is that we know that they are launching
(20:14):
now a new attack on voting because we see them
filing new lawsuits. The question that we don't know is
will it be more effective than it was in twenty
twenty when they had the likes of Rudy Giuliani, Jenna
Ellis and Sidney Palinchark.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
Yeah, I mean This is such a good point, which
is the thing that saved democracy so far, is that
most of the people who are doing this are very
stupid and also not particularly well trained. You make the
case here that the crew who were working on trying
to overturn the election, we're largely not very good at
this and not very smart. Your case here is that
(20:50):
these people are actually good at this and smart.
Speaker 4 (20:53):
Yeah, that's right, and I think you know you see this.
I think one of the most underappreciated names in Trump
world right now is Chris Lasovita, who is also himself
a professional campaign operative who did not originate in the
Trump be part of the Republican Party. He was frankly
largely known for running races in Virginia, and I think
he saw this opportunity to the RNC as not only
(21:16):
to placate Donald Trump's wishes, but also to bring in
a legal team that would not embarrass him and the
RNC the same way. Now, that doesn't mean they'll have
more success, by the way, I think it's an open
question whether they'll have any more success because they still
are dealt the hand that Donald Trump has given them,
which is to oppose voting rights in Court and to
poste by mail, I think those are ultimately losers of
(21:38):
a position, But I do think we shouldn't gloss over
the fact that they have added seemingly normal or formerly
normal Republican lawyers to the mix.
Speaker 3 (21:47):
Well.
Speaker 1 (21:47):
And I also think the point here is that you
have one party that no longer believes in democracy, right,
And so when you have people like Chris La Sevida,
or you have people who are like guilled Republican operatives
going like, this is our shot, let's go. Even if
it doesn't happen this time, it could happen next time.
(22:09):
And that was always my anxiety with DeSantis. I mean,
he turned out to be a spectacularly terrible candidate, but
he believed everything Trump believed, but was smarter and better organized.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Right, And this is a great threat, Molly.
Speaker 4 (22:22):
I mean, this is what I think you and I
and others have been talking about that I think people
need to hear, is that, you know, we right now
have a system in which essentially only one party can
win or else we lose democracy. And that is just
an untenable position because eventually, even if it's not Donald Trump,
you know, if it's Ron DeSantis, you know, or someone
else in that same mold. The country's going to be
(22:45):
in a world of hurt. So the question I always
pose to some of the never trumpers, who I appreciate
their work in some respects is how do we get
out of this? Like how do we get to a
place in which we are not careening from one anti
democracy candidate to another? Because you know, Ron DeSantis opposed
voting rights, he was in favor of book banning right
in Florida. He's not exactly not exactly a pillar of
(23:07):
liberal democracy.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
It does strike me, and again I'm being a Pollyanna
and Charlie Sykes already just said that. I said as
much as you would, But there is a sense in
which Nikki Haley did not seem in my mind to
be as anti democratic as the other ones.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, but she also didn't come very close to winning,
Like this is this is the only place where I
would be a little bit mildly critical.
Speaker 1 (23:31):
Right, she didn't come close to winning.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Yeah, yeahs are mildly critical of the left on this around.
Nikki Haley is Nicki Haley was never going to be
the nominee. So it's all well and good to say
she ran and she was the last one left. But
she essentially was just a vessel for protesting Donald Trump.
But she wasn't gonna win.
Speaker 1 (23:50):
Yeah, she couldn't get the critical mass because her ideas
were largely more jab than Donald.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
Right, right.
Speaker 4 (23:58):
And that's look, that's been the tension within the Republican
Party now, going all the way back to their autopsy
report after twenty twelve, when they said we need candidates
to appeal more to young voters, women, Hispanics, and others.
And Jeb Bush was intended to be that candidate, but
he got thrashed by Donald Trump. And the problem, Molly is,
ever since then, it's not clear that there is a
(24:20):
majority of Republican voters who will vote for someone who
is not in that Trump mold. So I don't feel
like we're out of the box that we've all been
put in where democracy is at stake, and it's just
the Republicans are just circling around the various versions of Trumpiness.
Speaker 1 (24:37):
No, now, I think that's right. I also think when
we are talking about this voter suppression stuff, Republicans have
a long history of voter suppression. I mean, we did
not Robert started stripping the voting rights act, you know,
pre Donald Trump.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
Right, absolutely.
Speaker 4 (24:55):
And look, this is one of the places where I
think candidly some of the never Trumper's think I was
too hard on some of them.
Speaker 1 (25:02):
They'll be okay, Yeah, they'll be fine.
Speaker 4 (25:04):
Like, the fact is that Republicans have been suppressing the
votes of blackbrand and young voters for a very long time,
and there is very little evidence that they are distancing
themselves from that, even in the never Trump camp. I mean,
let's not forget that Rusty Bauers, who is the guy
from Arizona who everyone fawned over. He oversaw the enactment
of all of the voter suppression legislation in Arizona. Brian
(25:27):
Kemp and Brad Rothenberger oversaw and champion voter expression all
the bad voter expression laws that we have seen in Georgia.
So the anti voting ethos really stems in the Republican
Party from the fact that they have been losing ground
with the popular vote in America and they have internalized
(25:48):
the need to limit who can participate in order to win.
Speaker 1 (25:52):
Yeah, this is the last gasp of a dying party
that cannot survive in a multiracial demand. Right because their
policies are terrible, right, And.
Speaker 4 (26:03):
I think the place where I have taken it, probably
a step further than maybe some others, is that I
then point out when the Freedom to Vote Act and
the Genre Lewis Vote as Advancement Act aim before Congress,
every Republican voted against it. And I mean every Republican
that includes as people a some on the right eight.
When I point out that includes Ris Cheney and that
includes Adam Kinsick, like, there is no constituency in the
(26:25):
Republican Party to expand voting whatever else you may think
about them for other issues. When it comes to voter
supression of voting rights, there are no Republicans. There are
more Republicans in the House who have it f rating
from the NA than there are who would support a
voting rights bill.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
So depressing, I mean, and really quite depressing, But I
do think really an important point. One of the things
that I read that really scared me last week was
this idea that they are trying to purge the roles.
So I'm hoping you could talk a little bit about
what that means, to purge the roles where it's happening,
where it's that's not happening, and how many lawsuits you're
(27:03):
working on right now about that.
Speaker 4 (27:05):
Yeah, so it's a really good question. Voter purgase is
one of the tried and true tactics that Republicans have
used now for many decades. If you don't like who
they vote against you, one of the things is you
go and you try to remove people from being able
to vote by having their voter registrations canceled. This was
a big problem for many, many decades. You may remember
(27:25):
the RNC found itself under a court order, a consent
decree that prohibited them from engaging in certain activities. One
of the reasons why they found themselves in that trouble
was because of racially targeted voter purchase. Now, Congress addressed
this in a couple of different bills in the nineties
and in the early two thousands to try to curb
the abilities of states to engage in these mass removal
(27:49):
of voters in ways that were harmful and illegal. Obviously,
states should be able to remove dead people, they should
be able to remove people who moved out of the jurisdiction,
they should be able to do listings. But the kind
of the targeted purges really had to go.
Speaker 3 (28:04):
So we saw a quieting of voter purges. But what's
interesting is we've now kind.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
Of seen it resurge, and I think there are a
couple of reasons for it, which I'm happy to go into,
but it's worth noting to answer your question. You know,
the first two cases that were filed by the RNC
after Mike Whatley took over, so I'm talking literally in
the last ten days, they filed two voter purge cases,
so it is very much top of their mind.
Speaker 1 (28:28):
Yeah, And I mean the idea of a voter purge
is you go to vote. You know, you are a
voter in Georgia who has gotten the day off to vote,
and you are not on the rolls anymore.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
Correct.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
And so what the Republicans are doing with their conservative
allies is a two pronged strategy, and you neique to
understand both of them to understand what we're in for
this fall, because I believe this is going to be
one of the, if not the dominant theme of this
fall election when we get there. The first is that
Republicans want to weaken the apparatus of the state to
(29:06):
have accurate voter rules. That they do this Molly in
both directions, both by trying to get them to purge
voters who shouldn't be removed, right, But at the same time,
remember they also pulled a number of their states out
of ERIC, which is an interestate compact between blue, red
and purple states to share information between them to allow
them to remove people who should be The first step
(29:28):
of this two prong is you both keep people on
who shouldn't be on. You try to purge people off
who shouldn't be off. Right, you basically create chaos, which
won't surprise you since it's a Donald Trump inspired effort. Right,
you create chaos at the state involving who is on
the voter lists. And the second part of the program though,
and this is the one that we have started to
(29:50):
see more and more in the newspaper. The New York
Times did a good story on this as well as
some other outlets, is these private election right wing election
agilantes who are basically engaging in private purges by compiling
their own lists of voters who they think should be
removed so and then submitting them to counties and insisting
(30:12):
that the counties remove those voters. So, the first is
the urge lawsuits we've been talking about are where the
RNC and others sue the state and say, hey, state,
you need to conduct a voter purge. But this second
effort is where right wing organizations, using big data and
using artificial intelligence generate their own lists of people who
(30:33):
they say should be removed, and then they challenge those people.
They engage in what's called mass voter challenges, where they
submit lists of thousands and thousands of people who they've
never met and tell the companies these people are illegal
and they have to be removed. And it is it
is the interplay of those two things that I fear
is going to really negatively impact voters this November.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
Yeah, that seems really bad. How can Democrats push back
on that?
Speaker 5 (30:59):
And all?
Speaker 1 (31:00):
Also, I really need you to talk about this carry
Lake Supreme Court madness, Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
Okay, So Democrats can to push back out a couple
of ways. The first is every state that is controlled
by Democrats should remove the ability from their state law
for private individuals to challenge voters. There is no reason, Molly,
why you should be able to go to a big
data company and generate a list of ten thousand people
you don't know and then submitted for challenge. Okay, so
(31:27):
number one states controlled by Democrats should do awigh with
private voter challenges. The second is that everyone listening should
check their own voter registration and make sure they're properly registered,
you know, but making sure it's going to be a
part of good hygiene. This fall is for people to
check with their counties and states to make sure that
they have not been removed and that they are otherwise
eligible to vote. Now on Kerry Lake, you know, Molly,
(31:50):
so much of what I do is very stressful, and
you know, and I feel, you know, under a lot
of it's humorless. And then it is often Mike Lindell
and Kerry Lake get together. If you think about it, Molly,
it's kind of a match made inhabitat right, two of them.
Speaker 3 (32:07):
Curry Lake had run for governor.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
She lost. She brought a series of lawsuits over the
fact that she lost, which she continues to litigate. One
of them is to say that the voting machines in
Arizona were you know, rigged against her. She and her lawyers,
by the way, have already been sanctioned amazing. But yet
she managed to find common ally ship with the pillow salesman,
Mike Lindell the mast. Yeah, and they decided they were
(32:33):
going to take you to the US Supreme Court.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
And so that circus has now come to town. If
you live in Washington, DC.
Speaker 1 (32:38):
That is amazing the Supreme Court, I mean, they still
have a tiny tiny bit of dignity left, right or now.
Speaker 3 (32:45):
To go back to the first topic we talked about,
you know about the lawyers.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
At one end of the spectrum, you have Rudy Juliana
dripping hair dye office standing in front of a landscaping
company between a porn.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Shop and yes, right, right, go on.
Speaker 4 (33:02):
But like at one in those re interview of that,
at the other end of the spectrum, you know, you
have more respectable lawyers like the one you know, who
just want to otherwise like undermine, you know.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Abortion rights. But Mike Lindell, Kerry Lake, they're definitely in
that first category. And the Springcourt Supremecourt will do will
do business with the second group. You know, they're happy
to undermine basic individual freedoms and democracy, but they're not
here for the Kerry Lake hair you know, Rue Juliani Kroud.
So this lass is not going anywhere but it does
show that, you know, and I thought that Bill Crystal
(33:35):
actually had an interesting article this morning in which he
kind of says, you know, the RNC not only hired
the people I was talking about, they also hired the
for uh, you know, the former anchor from Owaan News, right,
So they know how to play that sort of both
sides of They want to play both sides of this,
and there's no question. Mike Lindell and Kerry lak Aer
in the circus side.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Thank you so much. Mark, really fun to talk to
you and also oh so worrying.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
Rogers is the New York Times White House correspondent and
author of American Woman, The Transformation of the Modern First
Lady From Hillary Clinton to Joe Biden.
Speaker 1 (34:12):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Katie Rogers.
Speaker 5 (34:15):
Thank you. I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
We're so happy to have you so talk to me
about this book you write for The New York Times.
You decided to sort of pause and take a minute
to write a book. Why did you write this book?
And explain to us a little bit about the origin.
Are you still the White House correspondent the New York Times?
Speaker 5 (34:35):
I am. I've been doing that for six years which
is everyone tells me is like a year longer than
any sane person to do the Bob. So that tells
you a lot about me.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Yeah, and you've really been through some of the Trump years.
Speaker 5 (34:48):
Yeah, so I kind of gravitated, I guess, going back
to the Trump era. I got moved down from the
New York newsroom the week of Donald Trump's inauguration. My
assignment was to write features about like Washington, this very
democratic city being like overtaken by the Trump presidency and
the administration and all these conservatives of moving accounts. So
I started with that, but I kind of gravitated toward
(35:11):
malaniat Trump too, because she was such a mysterious figure.
She hadn't moved to Washington yet, so really I started
covering her right off the bat. I got named to
the White House Beed a year later, covered President Trump,
but also kept a pretty close eye on the first Lady.
And I was actually on maternity leave and got approached
to do a biography of Jill Biden and I had
(35:32):
been approached to do Malania books, and I didn't really
want to do anything that was about Jill because I
didn't know her. I hadn't covered her I'd just stopped
covering my Trump administration. I wasn't sure if there would
be enough about her to even fill a book, just
because I think to a lot of Americans, she's kind
of like an opaque figure and she's been around a
long time. People don't really know a lot about her.
(35:54):
And I was just like, I don't know if I
want to do that. But I saw her story as
kind of modern because I I think it's you know
anything about her and Joe Biden, it's that like he
lost his first wife in a terrible tragedy right in
nineteen seventy two, and it's his youngest daughter, and the
woman who came in and fixed all that and needed
that family back together was Jill Bidden And I was
(36:18):
I really thought that was karad of a modern thing, right,
Like she has a non traditional family, Like it was
a really singular story in American politics, and so I
just really was like, who is this woman who would
A do that and b be it her husband's side
for decades as he pursued this presidency. So really like
I kind of thought about her as I guess a
(36:40):
really modern figure, which is kind of not what you
would think of her. I think at First Blood she
kept her job. She's the first first lady to keep
her job, And then I kind of thought it's probably
easier for her to have gone to work because her
predecessor kind of unraveling the role completely, yeah, run of
(37:00):
everyone and showing everybody that it was optional. Well, then
I kind of thought of this as sort of a
scare slop. So every first lady kind of has changed
the role in her own way. So I kind of
decided to do first Ladies back for Return of the Century,
and it was Hillri Clinton, of course, and she really
was the most ambitious, the most educated, the most able
(37:23):
to sort of be a policy partner for her husband,
and she got a lot of scar to shoot from that, right,
she got a lot of pushback from what she tried
to do. So I kind of started with hers as
the first bookend and focused on each first lady since
and kind of culminated with Jill's story, which is a
very long winded answered to your question, But yeah, it
got more competuated as I worked on it. But I
(37:44):
think it really tells the story of this role that
has kind of stayed preserved in Amber as the culture
around it begins to have these, like, you know, pretty
fulsome conversations about what women's roles are in society and
in marriages.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
Such an interesting experiment, and it is. Yeah, I mean,
you do really see with Hillary that she took a
lot of abuse for her trying to use the role
to enact policy, right, and then Michelle Obama takes a
lot of abuse for being black and everyone being racist.
(38:21):
There was a lot of pressure, right, but she didn't
do anything policy wise. She was, you know, did much
more of the traditional first lady job. I have a
theory that black women just get the most abuse from
the mainstream media and there's so much inherent racism and sexism.
Speaker 5 (38:40):
I think there is some truth to that, and I
think people had to learn in real time how to
write about a woman who has a completely different set
of experiences that she is bringing to not only the
role but as a candidate's wife, as a politanential candidate's wife.
I write in the book that you can sort of
see she has a really dry sense of humor, right,
and she would make sort of one liners or craps,
(39:03):
you know, wise packs on the campaign, and people just
would take that like in the media, you're right, would
take it completely differently than if it were white woman
candidates spouse saying these things. And I think she learned
on the campaign trail that she had to be really
buttoned up, the perfect wife, be a supportive wife. She
actually considered not moving to Washington right away too, which
(39:25):
is an interesting sort of recal.
Speaker 1 (39:27):
To pull the girls out of school, right.
Speaker 5 (39:29):
Yeah, right, And then so like she had to not
only be this sort of perfect, you know, spouse, she
gave up her career, she also had to readjust like
two young girls to Washington. So she was up against
a lot. She had a lot to prove. And yeah,
I think that the media had to sort of much
like I think a lot of the covered around Kamala Harris,
(39:51):
the vice President, has sort of gone a little bit
harder and harsher at times because she is the first
to ever have this role and have background.
Speaker 1 (40:01):
Yeah, it's such an interesting and important thing. And I mean,
you did see that President Obama had to be ten
times more careful about everything because of that inherent racism.
Speaker 5 (40:12):
And Harris's advisors tell us all the time, you know,
former and current advisors of hers say like she asked
to be better all the time, Like black women have
to work twice as hard. So we have somebody in
public life right now, one of the highest offices of
the land, who is dealing with the same kind of
thing in a different role, but you know, in the
same sort of close circle of principles that Michelle Obama
(40:34):
dealt with, same thing she dealt with.
Speaker 1 (40:36):
Yeah, so interesting. And then you get to Milania. Did
you feel there were hopes that Milania might be I mean,
I know there were so many times during the beginning
of the Trump administration where there was a hope that
someone would be a moderating force that never really happened.
But can talk about that.
Speaker 5 (40:56):
Yeah, I remember, I'm sure you do too.
Speaker 3 (40:58):
Like that.
Speaker 5 (40:59):
People, well maybe it's Ivanka. Maybe it'll be it'll be Ivanka,
and maybe you'll be Jared. And then finally was you know,
maybe Milania, maybe Millennia will do something. She slaps his
hand away. She sent a tweet out after the Charlottesville,
you know, that horrible white nationalist rally that ended up
with a woman being killed. She you know, sent a
tweet to you know, calling for an onto violence while
(41:20):
her husband praised people were on both sides of the issue.
So I think there was a lot of hope basically
that first year that she dared views that were different
from her husband and maybe would have an ability to
mediate him, as you say. But the more I covered her,
and I think the more she showed as time went on,
she was much more willing to kind of like channel
(41:42):
what he was mad about. I would learn that she
would oftentimes be the person saying, you know, well, if
they're punching my husband, he's going to punch back, which
is kind of rooted in both how both Trumps feel
about being attacked and being scrutinized. Really, she wasn't a
moderating force. You know that the Charlottesville tweets, you know,
(42:05):
things like that amounted to kind of ephemeraa and we're
done at the suggestion of AIDS. It wasn't a reflection
of her having any sort of moderating influence on him,
at least not in a regular way in the way
that critics of the Trump administration would hope.
Speaker 1 (42:23):
Yeah, it's interesting to me because it's like, as someone
who has known maybe not women exactly like Milania, but
you know, had certainly known trophy wives. And I mean
that not in a sexist way, but in a majorative way,
but not in a sexist wife. I thought she had
a little more or I hoped she had a little
more agency than it turned out she did.
Speaker 5 (42:45):
What's interesting, though, is like I talked to Stephanie Gersham
for this book, and you know, she wrote that sort
of tell all about her time there, but I had
talked to her about a year after that book came out,
and there was still so much more to share. I
think about the East Wing that I kind of picked
up my book. And it's funny that you say agency though,
(43:06):
because Stephanie pointed out that so many times Milania would
tell her this is our East Wing. We do what
we want. We don't pay attention to what they're doing
over there. So her point was that this is the
first time that she had ever had like a buffer
from him and from his world. Yeah, and she would
(43:26):
just she enjoyed that. And Stephanie Grisham kind of said
to me, she said to me that toward the end
of the first term, she said this realization quin of
sudden with Malania Trump, that she was going to go
have to live with her husband again and she wouldn't
have this buffer, and her behavior kind of change she
got more closed in, she became a little bit more
(43:47):
chucked out. It was a really interesting like this was
one of the closest people to her. Not that Lalania
Trump really lets anybody in, but Stephanie Gersham was certainly
a loyalist and was certainly you know, around for almost
all of it until January sixth, and just watched that
behavior change from you know, when the story Daniel's Story's
published in around twenty eighteen, you know, we recorded she
(44:10):
just took off tumor labia for a weekend and nobody
knew what she was doing. And Stephanie Gresham was like,
that was to embarrass him. She was pissed off and
wanted to humiliate him, is what she told me. But
toward the end of that term she then sort of
reverted back into this sort of quiet, insular figure. It
was that was an interesting trajectory to hear about.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
Yeah, I mean so interesting and also so disappointing in
my mind. So now we have this current administration. One
of the things I'm struck by with the first lady
at ChIL Biden and I don't know her, never have
met her, but here she is. She comes in with
(44:53):
the boys, they end up having their own child together,
so they raised the three kids. Biden was sort of
grown into the presidency in a certain way in my mind,
because he had run many times, but he was never
sort of the right person for the moment. And then
it became like very clear to a lot of Democrats
that he was the only person who could beat Trump,
(45:14):
and when things look darkest, he is the most committed
to just you know, sort of this singular vision of
just beating Trump. Right. You know, Obama was the dream candidate, right,
gifted orator, just so smart, and he's incredible writer.
Speaker 5 (45:32):
He represented the future for people finally.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
Yeah, and I feel like Democrats that were just like,
we just need a white guy to run against the
other white guy. You know, he's not a gifted orator,
he's not a genius, but he's functional.
Speaker 5 (45:45):
And he's decent.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
But I also think ultimately, and again, there certainly have
been things that anyone could be not happy with, but
there's a lot of the legislation has been kind of incredible.
But I'm hoping that you could talk to us a
little bit about where her places Joe Biden, because she
is more of a traditional first lady role of the
sort of fifties, but she still teaches. And then also
(46:09):
she has this incredible stressor of having one son who
was sober and then having this right wing media monster,
this machine that is obsessed with those of her children. Right,
So I'm hoping you talk about that, because that is
an unusual dynamic.
Speaker 5 (46:28):
I think, yeah, I mean, I think everything you just
laid out, I think one of the main things to
understand about her, and I love that the idea of
pixotic because she shares that same nature, whether she had
it when she married him or developed it over time,
she developed this sort of I think I call it
her in a book, like she's not a Biden by blood,
(46:51):
but over time she has come to represent the family's
defiant backbone. And I think that both of them are
driven by being talented out and even being attacked at
some rate by the right and it kind of creates
this mentality where they view even criticism from their own
party as an attack. Though like that, it can create
(47:14):
this sort of trench mentality that isn't necessarily helpful helpful exactly,
they're incredibly defiant. They're likely to dig in against adversity
and see the misinformation from the right that he's got dementia,
that the attacks about Hunter's business dealings and how enmeshed
Joe Biden is with that, and there is mussiness there,
(47:35):
but not to the degree of course that the right
has claimed. So I think all of it creates this
like very closed, insular trench kind of mentality, and she
is at the center of that, right alongside her husband.
The one thing he didn't say about her, which I
think is important and interesting, is and this is kind
(47:56):
of like one of my story obsessions, but I don't
know that I'm going to get around to it or
if my editors like it. But she's the most successful
surrogate he has. Oh interesting, She's also the only one
in the family who is wearing and or able to
do that right. Like if you think about the Bidens,
they think of themselves or thought of themselves as the
(48:17):
political dynasty, you know, back to the seventies when his
first wife was telling reporters that the Kennedys would have
nothing on the Bidens. They believed that their family has
something special to offer American life, right, and Bo was
really the heirs to that. And when Bo died in
twenty fifteen, there was just Hunter and Ashley, as you said,
(48:37):
I have had their own issues. They've both dealt with substance
addiction and problems to that effect. And really, at the
end of the day, Jill Biden is the only one
who is able to go out there and put this
sort of lens on Biden and sort of bring him
out and bring him back amidst all of this criticism
as the man that he believes he is. Tells the
(48:59):
story that the Bidens want America to know about them,
which is that he is resilient. He has been through
so much tragedy in his life, he understands what that's like.
He has passed legislation that is bipartisan, that is you know, expansive,
and was meant her all Americans, not just some of them.
She's incredibly effective at that. And she's also attacking Donald Trump,
(49:23):
you know, by name, about his track record, particularly on
women's rights and reproductive rights. And people think of her
as a helpmate, maybe in a housewife or somebody who
is you know, just there to support her husband, and
she she truly is that. But she's also a tireless
campaigner and we've never really seen a first lady like
that who is willing to sort of get into these
(49:45):
political fights. And that is because she believes that her
husband is the only one that can beat Trump. And
she doesn't like Trump at all. She you know, has
a deep dislike for him and she's alarmed by his policies.
Speaker 1 (49:57):
Yeah, I mean she's not the only one. Katie Rogers,
thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5 (50:02):
Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.
Speaker 1 (50:05):
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.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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