November 16, 2024 • 35 mins
Kurt Andersen examines the plotting, or lack thereof, in the upcoming Trump administration. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, reacts to Trump's attacks on America's education system.
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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 and Elon Musk's own AI labels him
one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X
Kurt Anderson stops by to talk about the fantasy land
(00:23):
that we're in now. Then we'll talk to Randy Weingarten,
president of the American Federation of Teachers. He's going to
give us her reaction to Donald Trump's attack on America's
education system. We don't have news today because it's just
too much snakes and we needed to take a tiny break.
(00:46):
We will be back on Monday with lots of news
and lots of fuckory, and sometimes we just have to
take a tiny break. So we love you guys, and
we know how hard this is, and we hope that
you'll spend the weekend watching movies and eating cookies and
(01:07):
trying to regroup because January is coming. Kurt Anderson is
the author of Evil Geniuses and the co creator of Commandsy. Kurt,
thank you so much for joining me today. You know,
there was only one person who I wanted to talk
(01:27):
to about the fantasy land that we now live in
and that was Kurt Anderson. So true.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Hi, Mollie, it's so good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm sorry Court Anderson for asking you to record so
early in the morning, but I'm going to Washington, so
I had to get you when I could get you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, you know, it was of all the weeks and
all the special day periods, this one seemed up my alley.
So thank you for seeing. I'm a chronicler of madness.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, as an author of a book called Fantasy Lane,
and the fact that we are now across the rubicon
into what is going to be four years of at
best fantasy Land and at worst dystopia Land, which would
just technically be dystopia.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, and my other book that's kind of a companion
to it, of course, is called Evil Geniuses. So you
got your Fantasy Land and you got your Evil Geniuses in.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
The What's so interesting to me about round two of
this is that we have all of this sort of
earnestness of Round one, where we were like, these are institutions,
this cannot happen, is gone, and now we have gone
full into this sort of nihilism that is the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Absolutely, I don't know if it's the nineteen nineties. What
I realized actually thinking about this the last boy for
hours is that it's the forty seven ad to an
extreme degree. I mean, people in the past, I think
it said, oh, Trump is like Nero. Trump is like Caligula,
the Caligula thing, where these appointments of Tulca Gabbard and
(03:01):
Matt Gates and Pete tag Seth, it's just so beyond.
I mean, the first national security people he announced were
just you know, second tier conservative Republicans, quasi ormy, okay,
like let's soften everybody up. And lots of friends of
mine said, oh, this is kind of reassuring. This is
not bad, right.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Democracy will not end with Marco Rubio appointment.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Let's not forget Robert F. Kennedy junior my freshman year
in college. Drug dealer, a coped dealer. But Trump has
been successful because he's not like a conventional politician. From
the beginning, he's anti establishment to the max. Well, this
is not anti establishment in the way that I don't
know John Fetterman is or Bernie Sanders is or those
kinds of people. It is mocking all expertise and experience
(03:45):
and judgment and seriousness and virtue and making a travesty
of it and saying it doesn't matter, and saying you're
all full of shit, you people who actually have careers
and know things, and if any things, this is I mean,
if anybody's ever seen the various movies John Herger, other
actors playing Calicula, he was this this corrupt, unstable, cruel,
(04:09):
extravagant sexual freak and love spectacle. And he was mister
Gladiator and probably nuts and you had to worship him,
and at least allegedly at least joked about making his
horse a senator. It was he going to be as
good as senator as you, and made the senators Roman
senators grovel literally grovel, didn't kiss his feet. So here
(04:29):
we are.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Man.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You got a literary, metaphorical thing. It's it.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Well, you know what I was so struck by is
that in twenty sixteen, right Republicans refused to stand up
to Trump. They felt they didn't need to, or they
didn't want to, or you know, it wasn't worth. The
calculus was like, I don't want death threats, I don't
want to be booed at the airport. I just want to,
like tow the line and not to make my life difficult.
(04:56):
And even like Mitch McConnell, could have ended this whole
thing by saying to Republicans that they could vote to
convict Dan Trump would have been ineligible to run for
president again, and that would have been done complete. But instead,
here we are. There are four seats that Democrats would
need to swing to tank any of these nominations. Trump really,
(05:19):
I think, has made many overtures that he would like
to make these reciss appointments. I'm not sure if he'll
be able to, but maybe he will. You know, if
I've learned anything, it's underestimate Trump at your own peril.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right, No, absolutely, And you know, and we look for
these gloomers of hope. Well it's John Foon instead of
somebody worse as the Senate majority leader. So maybe he's
more of an institutionalist than a normal fellow. Maybe he'll
do the right thing. We'll see, Yeah, betting on the
Republicans electeds in Washington doing the right thing obviously ausing bet, yes,
(05:53):
has not.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I've been fruitful.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Freight ear well, see I did get pleasure and not
just shutting freud, but like, okay, when the various senators,
especially Republican senators as well as Republican House members, came
out about Matt Gates just saying, are you fucking kidding me?
This guy is this ex trafficker? This guy can't be
you know. So there is more at this Roseveldt date,
(06:17):
and with these extreme egregious human nominations, some at least
rhetorical emission of the truth of the horror of this
idiocracy animal house unqualified madness that he's proposing.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Idiocracy is a really good word for what we're about
to embark on if we talk about the Senate and
the House too, But it's not quite the same. The
Senate built on the idea that these people, at least
the thing that they are these moral pillars.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
The thing about the Senate is it's a lot of
work to get there and quite a bit of work
to stay there. It would be easier just to go
into investment banking. So these people have kept these jobs
because on some level or not, maybe hypocritically whatever, but
they think they care about American government. So here we
are now in a moment where it doesn't matter, right,
(07:11):
these people have to pretend that this is normal or
something else.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, yes, that is the thing. And of course the
Senate has always been. It was in the Constitution, was
as the framers were framing it, talked about the center
versus the house as being this place that would you know,
cool the tea cup of the house, where it was
all nutty and crazy, all and hot all the time.
That was this the thing. And of course the US
Senate and therefore senators are all about this. We are
(07:39):
the dignified people in Washington. We look down on the House,
and so occasionally, like now and in the last eight years,
that dignity has called to be more than just how
they act and look and dress. And yeah, Mitt Romney,
you look, you'll identify your central casting. But like dudes,
now's the time to really hump, try to do the
(08:00):
right thing and not let this go into this decadent
imperial rome thing that he's he's really trying to take
us to. No, we'll see. You know, you only need
Susan Collins again, betting on Susan Colly as well, or Rakowski.
You need you say four, I guess you need four
people to say no, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Cornyan, maybe Langford, maybe Mitch McConnell. Maybe I mean, well.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Mis McConnell is retiring in two years and is gone,
Like yeah, okay, it's time to atone a little bit guy.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And don't sleep on Tom Taylus because Tom Taylus is
in a rapidly purple in state. But again, like this
is such wish casting. Like even in twenty sixteen, like
if we just step back from minut in twenty sixteen,
you had some Republicans who were actually less insane and
they were chased out of the party. And again, insane
is relative, but they had more of a sort of
(08:58):
sense of what all, you know what. The previous generation
had a certain like traditionalism. So I'm talking about Jeff
Blake or you know. But again, it's hard for me
to imagine that it's hard to imagine that this ends
up being Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
No, I hear you, And I again, I'm not going
to be the you know, my habitual temperamental fifty one percentist,
which I've all that is the thing, like okay, barely optimist. Okay,
it doesn't necessarily work, and I you know, you don't
want to be Charlie Brown and is having the ball
kicked out, having a your.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
But you also want you can't give up, and you
can't give into despair.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No exactly. Again, my hopeful view perhaps is that, yeah,
the Jeff flakes at all have been kicked out. I
mean think did not entirely capitulate for a year, right,
I mean it wasn't just immediately on in January twenty seventeen. Okay,
whatever the guy says, I'll do, I'll suck whatever is required.
So we'll see it is eight years later and they
(09:59):
do know him no longer like wow, this guy won,
I got whoh oh, So that they are aware, and
some of them are leaving soon, some of all of
them in six years. So he is not yet going
to be called a lame duck, that is to say,
Donald Trump. And you can come back and say, well,
he may try to serve another term, let's leave that aside.
He's gonna be a lame duck. He's gonna be out
(10:20):
of there in four years, and in certainly in two years,
people are going to start calling him lame duck. And
here we are less than two weeks after the election,
and the clown train is already going toward the cliff
who We're barely there. So if this is a preface
foreshadowing of what the administration going to be like. There's
(10:40):
no reason to think it isn't this is not going
to go well, and all these things that we thought,
I mean, the story of thing phenomenon is, oh, this
is going to kill him. Oh he said this about McCain.
All's Oh this pen never does it never does. But
we'll see if enough of them have enough courage to
do this very very simple and obvious. I think in
these three or four worst appointments, for instance, just for starters.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, I mean I would also add, you know, for
the people who are listening, who are like me, do
not despair. Right. The federal government is an enormous entity.
It has never been known for changing quickly.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
My one bright spot here, believe it or not, is
that these three appointments are so crazy because he is
signaling that nothing here is going to be normal. Give
me this thought experiment for a minute. Okay, if Trump
had nominated Marco Rubio and then more normal Republicans but
then quietly bullied them into doing insane things, it would
(11:42):
have been much much harder to make the case that
this stuff was insane. Like RFK junior taking over ATSs, Like,
this is a person who does not believe in vaccines.
Now he's taking over government science, right, Like this is
going to be a thing that is very clearly what
it is and not you know, like I go back
(12:04):
to Justice Roberts. Right, Roberts cuts away at things in
order to undermine them. Right, he says, you know, he
undermines Citizens United, he undermines Roe v. Wade, he undermines
you know, ultimately ends up. You can give as much
money as you want to candidates, you know, so we
have billion dollar presidential campaigns, and also we have Roe v.
(12:27):
Wade eventually gets overturned. So that kind of stuff is
much harder to explain to the American people than stuff
like this guy doesn't believe in vaccines and now he's
running government science.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, one hundred percent. And of course that is because
several reasons, I mean, less consequentially is he likes the
show he Donald Trump, So this is going to control
the world. They're going to let's do it walls. There's that,
but it's also really it is like Caligula saying to
the center is no, literally, lick my feet, get down there,
lick my feet. It's so much about that. And like
(13:01):
Bobby Kennedy, who I have known for you know, fifty
years and followed and written about for ten about his
descent into conspiracy theory and vaccines are evil all that,
I'll move on from him. But he has said many times,
as he was being the anti vaccine guy the last
twenty five years, that people like the Fauci's, the leading pediatricians,
(13:22):
the leading vaccinologists, immunologists in America, should be behind bar
and he said that's not hyperble, I mean it. They
should be in throw away the keys, talking like Trump,
you know, long before Trump was around as a president.
And then last year, of course he says COVID nineteen
was targeted to attack black people and Caucasians and that ALEXH. Konazzi,
Jews and Chinese are are immute. This guy really making
(13:45):
in charge of this shit anyway. The other thing I
realized this week is the just brilliant, enduring truth of
the maybe the two most famous lines as well that
came out as he was running for president before he
was president. But one is, of course, when you're a star,
they let you do it. Well, he's showing that again.
I'm a star, they let me do it. I can
(14:07):
appoint Tulca Gabbert and Matt Gates and Pete Hegzeth and
Bobby Kennedy to these jobs, these important crucial jobs in
the American government, for which they are obviously and plainly
not qualified, And I can stay in the middle of
fifth I don't shoot somebody, and I wouldn't get loser
the voters. It's well, he says, So these are the
explanatory things, and he is never I mean again and
(14:29):
again we say yep, uh huh, yep. This is a new,
next level version of that.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
No exactly, and I think that is ultimately how we
got here, right. I've been thinking a lot about like
what I got wrong, you know, when I was like,
she's gonna win with a mandate. One of the things
that I think I got so wrong was this idea
like Trump, he spends one hundred and eighty percent of
(14:54):
his time doing pr right, so he's outward facing, he's
doing interviews. Again, he's saying insane stuff, but it doesn't
necessarily matter. And then Democrats elect a guy who does
almost no interviews for whom boringness is the defense, and
then he is unable to get coverage for all of
(15:16):
the really I think great accomplishments of his administration. It
just was sort of a snowball, like if you're going
to run against Trump and again, hopefully Trump decides that
his second term is the end of it and that
he does not try to run for a third term,
which you could certainly see him trying to do. I
hate that I just said that, but you know that
(15:37):
I'm really I mean, I hate that, but I do
think Democrats right now have to start messaging members of Congress,
senators need to get on. You know. Part of the
only thing left that standing between us and total autocracy
is these Democrats who don't have control of the federal government,
(15:58):
but do have the ability to go on.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Joe Rogan, Yes, exactly. Well, and the thing about, as
you starkily put it, and it's true about Biden and
the Democratic generally, the Democratic machines, for whatever sort of reasons,
ineffectiveness at getting out look at what we've done. Look
how great this is, as opposed to him being the
news and doing whatever it takes to be you know,
(16:22):
the story every day. It is the problem or one
of the problems of how we've been and how especially.
I mean, maybe maybe it will change it, Maybe that
will change now because of the results of the selection
that you understand. You have to be a friend. My
brilliant wife, Van Kramer, when Biden actually became president four
years ago, wrote a brilliant long memo to a good
(16:43):
friend of ours who had been in the Obama administration
in a very very high, you know, deputy cabinet position, saying,
here's what they have to do. Trump knows how to
make a show. We're not saying just you know, do
crazy stuff, but like, here's some ways. You know, she
was in television, no show business, and he said, yeah,
this is brilliant, this is great. They're never going to
(17:04):
do anything like this because they're basically still living in
the nineteen nineties as though it's normal town.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
That's one of the things that they have to figure
out and get right, and maybe maybe now they will.
The other thing you mentioned mandate is your mistakenness about
that Kama Harris will be elected with the mandate. And
you know, as I say about so many things, it
was pretty to think. So the hyperbole of describing Trump's
win lass to be ratchet out. He got it out
of control. Yes, it's Donald Trump being lenched again. Oh
(17:32):
my god. Sure. But in terms of historical margins of victory,
which is his is now in the popular vote, or
as we would call it any other country, the vote,
it's one and a half percent and drop it. We'll
see when the final million and a half votes in
California how that goes. But where is that in the
rank of all presidents who've ever won the popular vote,
(17:55):
of whom they're fifty five, number fifty. That's where it is,
number fifty to fifty five. Even in the electoral college margin,
where of course Republicans including him are get this kick
you know, this bonus still low. It's still in the
lowest quarter of those ever. So it ate a landslide.
It's bad, and he's bad and all that. I'm not no,
(18:17):
but it's not a mandate. It's just important not to
get that into our heads that, oh the Americans oken
in this is it? No, it's two percent? You know, No.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I agree, And that's a really good point, and I
really appreciate you saying that, probably the most important point
we have going for us part Anderson, if we don't
get sent to Gitmo, will you please come back on
my podcast.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, whenever I have enough of a head of steam
and things and do nothing doins me more than getting
up at five point thirty in the morning, coming on.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
You're sorry, by the way, let the record show we
started at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Well Pacific time, though, even though I'm in New York.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, yes, you're right, you're at five am Pacific.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I'm always delighted. And no, it's good for me because
then I can have a whole work day now and
instead of having coffee, I talk to you.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yes, all right, it's you and Lawrence are not early
morning people. But let the record show I have pen
up since six am. I really appreciate you. Thank you,
Kurt Anderson. Please come back soon.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
My pleasure.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Randy Winingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winmarten.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
How are you holding up, my dear Mollie.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I am in a.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Period of quiet reflection or because it's me, loud reflection
where I'm trying to figure out what I got wrong
and try to figure out how to make sense of
the stuff that I got wrong, learn from what you
know my blind spots were, and just take as much
(19:56):
information as possible.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
What about you, I'm doing the same thing. I mean,
I was hoping against hope that Harris would win, but
in diving into all of what happened, this was my fear.
I want to make sure that we learned the right
lessons out of it, as opposed to the finger pointing
(20:23):
and the recriminations that one is seen. And I do
feel like there's a lot of lessons learned that would
actually be helpful not only in saving and then strengthening
our democracy, but also in listening to what people were
(20:45):
actually saying about their lives. And I think it is
both a clarion call for not only both political parties,
but for the civic leadership, the business leadership in the
country and in the world about what work and families
(21:06):
really need. And obviously I don't feel great about the
results and about the chaos and everything that's about to
happen to people and people's rights, but I do think
that there is more and more and more. I am
starting to see a through line that actually can be
explained by a couple of the economic charts that I
(21:28):
have seen in the last few days, including two of them.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
One was the Steve Ratner chart that he did in
warning Joe you may have been on at the time.
And the other is a chart that I think I
saw from EPI or from Robert Rechent, not quite sure
what the sources anymore. That chart basically said that the
people who earned the least in this country voted for
Donald Trump. And then the second chart, which I thought
(21:53):
was equally both heartbreaking but also as instructive, is that
people no longer make more more than their parents made.
The promise of America, you know, has always been an
economic one, much more than almost anything else. You know,
It's been about freedom, but it's really been that. You know,
you think America is going to be a country that
(22:15):
has such great economic engines that every succeeding generation is
going to do better than the one before it. And
that promise has been broken. And I think that that frankly,
the first party that actually is going to be able
to both get fairness and growth, right, you know, economic
(22:36):
fairness and economic growth.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Right. There's a race between that success and whether or not,
you know, we will have authoritarianism.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I hear what you're saying, and it's super interesting. The
thing I might, yes and you is I just want to,
like bap up to the beginning of your answer, which was,
I agree that.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It's such an early moment, like less than two weeks
from this election.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
So what I would say is, in my mind, it's
not time for recrimination, but more like time for sort
of taking stock of where we are and you know
where we're going, and I think that is super important.
And also just like there are so many lessons to
be learned, like Harris lost, right, but she did in
(23:25):
fact deliver senate candidate. It's down ballot in almost every
single one of these swing states, with the exception of
maybe Pennsylvania, though it's now gone to recount. My question
is sort of like I understand the hand ringing, but
I wonder how much And again you've been doing this
(23:46):
longer than I have, but I just wonder how much
of it was a Trump brand being uniquely powerful, because
remember they haven't been able to recreate this in any
which way, versus is a Democratic brand being uniquely not powerful.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I fanger you all the time, Molly.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
So I read a lot of what you do and
think a lot about what you say, but I found
your article in terms of kind of like reflecting on
this uniquely incisive because I think you.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Recognized in there the unique brand that Donald Trump brings.
I mean, there's a lot of you know, I may
say a few things that are really really really really
really controversial because it kind of puts some of the
normal thinking, you know, turns it on its head. But
I do. So let me just start by saying Donald
(24:43):
Trump got his experience not only as a real estate
developer in New York, which is a tough town in
which to be successful, even if you start with a
silver spoon in your mouth, which he did, and he
early on was able to do things like withstand discrimination
complaints and other kinds of things, you know, and he
(25:05):
was often the talk of the town in New York
regardless of all of that stuff. But what he did
which was uniquely different than probably any other candidate, but
Ronald Reagan. He's an actor, and he learned how to
use those skills that he developed on the Apprentice. And
(25:26):
one may agree or disagree with him, but he became
one of the most effective communicators in our generation, maybe
in a century. And at the same time he's learned
how to master or he's worked with the tech industry
in such a way that they have developed new forms
(25:49):
of communication in some ways. Kennedy and television, Hitler and radio.
He's learned how to do this.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Yeah, here's what I want to ask you. You are
very much in his crosshairs. He is going war with
public education. You are the head of the teachers union,
you are an icon of public education.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
How does this work?
Speaker 6 (26:12):
I giggle a little bit because public education has been
in the crosshairs of the established marketeers and top down
ideologues or trickle down ideologues forever, but.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Not from the members of the Republican Party and not
from the people on the ground, which is part of
the reason why they have to create culture wars. I
go back to I invoke what Chris Ruffo said a
while ago at Hillsdale College. I know that, you know,
people don't know that name, but he made sure we
(26:50):
knew what their strategy was, which was their strategy was
and is to create universal distrust in public schools so
that they can essentially balkanized and basically end the public
schooling as we know it. And they've done that to
try to create vouchers, which was now defeated in three
(27:11):
essentially red states. So I think that the answer to
this is understanding the landscape is really important. But at
the end of the day, the real question is going
to be this, If you really represent the public that
elected you, then you will care about strengthening public schools,
and you'll care about creating as many opportunities for people
(27:33):
to join labor unions and to actually engage in collective
bargaining and to actually lift wages as possible. If you
really care about the people of America, that's what you're
going to do. And so that's going to be where
we lean into how do we help kids have the
opportunities that you know, we every single day say they
(27:56):
so richly deserve. How do we help working families have
the opportunities to get ahead? And so I think what
you've seen in the last two years is that when
we've called that question and when we've actually not only
did the advocacy for it, but we've been on the
ground giving out books as other people banned them, We've
been on the ground really trying to create these ladders
(28:19):
of opportunity or pathways from classroom to career, like in
advanced manufacturing. That's what people really want, that's what they
want for their families. We're going to try to do
more and more of that, and hopefully it's not going
to be a big choice. It's not going to be
a big contrast. Maybe this is what they're going to do,
but if not, that's what we're going to do. And
(28:42):
you know, I suspect just like we saw in Kentucky
and Nebraska and Colorado when people voted not to defund
their public schools. I suspect when we saw across the country.
I mean, if you look at all the down ballot
races across the country, seventy to eighty percent of the
pro public education candidate in Minnesona won their races. Twenty
(29:03):
one or twenty three out of the twenty five levees
in Florida for public schools, one North Dakota refuse to
give up their property tax to defund their state. So
the real issue becomes, how do we every day not
make this election to election, but how do we every
day work with the coalition of people who really do
(29:25):
want a better life for themselves than their kids, And
how do we do that and how does that force
then become a force in elections that doesn't get scared
or anxious by you know, a commercial that's intended to
scare or create anxiety, but where they're really working for
that latter of opportunity for themselves and others. And that's
what I'm going to do, and that's what my members
(29:48):
are going to do, and that's what our leaders are
going to do.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
But what about like, for example, the Department of Education,
Like that is a hot.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I'm laughing because I'm going to surprise you and my answer,
which is this, in nineteen seventy seven, my predecessor, as
you know, Al Schanker, was not my immediate processor, although
I knew him pretty well he was. But Al Schanker
in nineteen seventy seven and the AFT in nineteen seventy
seven actually oppose the creation of the Department of Education.
(30:16):
We actually believed that the Department of Education should stay
in h EW because we thought we needed to actually
deal with whole children and whole families and not pull
education out, but really do it all together. And so
the issue for us is not the symbolism of all
of this stuff. The issue and obviously we care about
the people who work at the Department of Education, We
(30:38):
care about the families that work there. We don't want
people fired But the issue really is what happens to.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
What they do?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Like what they do is they actually send to states
a lot of money. Ten percent of school district's budgets,
particularly for poor kids and kids with disabilities, come from
funds that they meet out. The real you is, let's
stop talking about form over. You know who's going to
get things done? Like, so, what happens to the money
(31:08):
that basically more red states get than blue states. What
happens to that money the poor kids in Tennessee are
in Mississippiate, Like, what happens to that money that kids
with disabilities get? So I haven't seen a plan yet.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
I think it's very unlikely that you're going to see
a plan.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So they're going to try to get everybody up and
outrage land about the symbolism about whether they're going to
close the Department of Education versus not. The craziness here.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Is, look how many people are vuying for the job.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Of being the head of the Department of Education. And
the other craziness is I saw Donald Trump's ten point plan.
Speaker 8 (31:47):
In that ten point plan, there's a whole lot of stuff,
Like half of it were words that I have said,
like project based instruction, and how do we have career
based learning, and how do we have internships? And how
do we do all this stuff? Only the public schools
can really actually do that. And then he says, well,
we're going to close the Department of Education and move
everything to the States. But if a school doesn't do
(32:10):
what I wanted to do, I'm going to close it down.
That sounds like actually more control, not less control. So
we have to separate out their rhetoric which is intended
to create chaos and fear from Okay, are you really
going to take money away from kids with disabilities? A
whole lot of Republican parents have kids with disabilities.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Are you going to take that money away or not?
If Donald Trump tries to take money away from parents
or from kids with disabilities, I'm going to be out
there fighting against that. If Donald Trump tries to take
money away from kids in Mississippi or New York City
that need that power professional in a classroom to help
that kids learn to read, I'm going to fight against that.
(32:54):
So what are they really saying.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What are they really saying?
Speaker 3 (32:57):
We don't know what they're really saying.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
They don't want public education to thrive because they want
people to be in religious schools and also in educating
people as dangerous, right, I mean, is that really what
it is?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I would actually ask it as a question, why do
they fear education? I understand we've seen this for forty
or fifty years. It stopped for a little while because
of all the stuff that was going on in terms
of yeah, sure, but let me tell you a little secret.
Since I've been around for a long time, it used
to be like places like New York, Cardinal O'Connor. Cardinal
(33:29):
O'Connor and the Catholic Diocese worked pretty well with the
public schools. And I was around enough that we actually
work together. We honored religious education. But we need to
actually fund our job, America's job, states jobs. We have
an obligation to fund a public school system that is
available for everyone. Now, if people want religious education, you know,
(33:53):
my grandmother used to say, zygozint, let them have religious education.
Let them do that. They want to do it, constitutionally,
they should have your right to do it. But they
can't take money from the public system that goes to
everybody for a separate system. And that's really a question here.
And what's happened is you see it in a bunch
of people. What with these voucher cases that are going
(34:14):
on right now, these voucher moves and state legislators.
Speaker 7 (34:17):
Most of the money is going to kids and families
who will already send their kids to private schools. And
most of the money is going to rich parents and
rich people who already send their kids to private schools.
So instead of this being about all kids, what we're
saying is that's where the money in these Baucher states
are going to, and it has actually hurt the rest
of the kids. And our job, my job is to
(34:38):
make sure there's a public school system that every single
parent wants to send their kids to, every kid is
engaged in and thrives, and teachers want to be.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, exactly. Randy Winegarden, thank you, thank you, thank you.
It sounds like we're going to have a long for yours.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yes, but thank you for your podcast and thank you
for communicating with people, because I think you are one
of the few people on the progressive side that really
understands that this kind of sense of a podcast where
you have people on and you talk to people and
people then listen to it. That's what Joe Rogan does
all the time. So I just really also wanted to
(35:14):
say that this communication vehicle how we communicate with people,
that is also part of what we have to learn.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Right now, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
the best minds and politics makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. 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 and Elon Musk's own AI labels him
one of the most significant spreaders of misinformation on X
Kurt Anderson stops by to talk about the fantasy land
(00:23):
that we're in now. Then we'll talk to Randy Weingarten,
president of the American Federation of Teachers. He's going to
give us her reaction to Donald Trump's attack on America's
education system. We don't have news today because it's just
too much snakes and we needed to take a tiny break.
(00:46):
We will be back on Monday with lots of news
and lots of fuckory, and sometimes we just have to
take a tiny break. So we love you guys, and
we know how hard this is, and we hope that
you'll spend the weekend watching movies and eating cookies and
(01:07):
trying to regroup because January is coming. Kurt Anderson is
the author of Evil Geniuses and the co creator of Commandsy. Kurt,
thank you so much for joining me today. You know,
there was only one person who I wanted to talk
(01:27):
to about the fantasy land that we now live in
and that was Kurt Anderson. So true.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
Hi, Mollie, it's so good to be here.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
I'm sorry Court Anderson for asking you to record so
early in the morning, but I'm going to Washington, so
I had to get you when I could get you.
Speaker 2 (01:47):
Well, you know, it was of all the weeks and
all the special day periods, this one seemed up my alley.
So thank you for seeing. I'm a chronicler of madness.
Speaker 1 (01:57):
Yeah, as an author of a book called Fantasy Lane,
and the fact that we are now across the rubicon
into what is going to be four years of at
best fantasy Land and at worst dystopia Land, which would
just technically be dystopia.
Speaker 2 (02:13):
Well, and my other book that's kind of a companion
to it, of course, is called Evil Geniuses. So you
got your Fantasy Land and you got your Evil Geniuses in.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
The What's so interesting to me about round two of
this is that we have all of this sort of
earnestness of Round one, where we were like, these are institutions,
this cannot happen, is gone, and now we have gone
full into this sort of nihilism that is the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
Absolutely, I don't know if it's the nineteen nineties. What
I realized actually thinking about this the last boy for
hours is that it's the forty seven ad to an
extreme degree. I mean, people in the past, I think
it said, oh, Trump is like Nero. Trump is like Caligula,
the Caligula thing, where these appointments of Tulca Gabbard and
(03:01):
Matt Gates and Pete tag Seth, it's just so beyond.
I mean, the first national security people he announced were
just you know, second tier conservative Republicans, quasi ormy, okay,
like let's soften everybody up. And lots of friends of
mine said, oh, this is kind of reassuring. This is
not bad, right.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Democracy will not end with Marco Rubio appointment.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
Let's not forget Robert F. Kennedy junior my freshman year
in college. Drug dealer, a coped dealer. But Trump has
been successful because he's not like a conventional politician. From
the beginning, he's anti establishment to the max. Well, this
is not anti establishment in the way that I don't
know John Fetterman is or Bernie Sanders is or those
kinds of people. It is mocking all expertise and experience
(03:45):
and judgment and seriousness and virtue and making a travesty
of it and saying it doesn't matter, and saying you're
all full of shit, you people who actually have careers
and know things, and if any things, this is I mean,
if anybody's ever seen the various movies John Herger, other
actors playing Calicula, he was this this corrupt, unstable, cruel,
(04:09):
extravagant sexual freak and love spectacle. And he was mister
Gladiator and probably nuts and you had to worship him,
and at least allegedly at least joked about making his
horse a senator. It was he going to be as
good as senator as you, and made the senators Roman
senators grovel literally grovel, didn't kiss his feet. So here
(04:29):
we are.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
Man.
Speaker 2 (04:29):
You got a literary, metaphorical thing. It's it.
Speaker 1 (04:33):
Well, you know what I was so struck by is
that in twenty sixteen, right Republicans refused to stand up
to Trump. They felt they didn't need to, or they
didn't want to, or you know, it wasn't worth. The
calculus was like, I don't want death threats, I don't
want to be booed at the airport. I just want to,
like tow the line and not to make my life difficult.
(04:56):
And even like Mitch McConnell, could have ended this whole
thing by saying to Republicans that they could vote to
convict Dan Trump would have been ineligible to run for
president again, and that would have been done complete. But instead,
here we are. There are four seats that Democrats would
need to swing to tank any of these nominations. Trump really,
(05:19):
I think, has made many overtures that he would like
to make these reciss appointments. I'm not sure if he'll
be able to, but maybe he will. You know, if
I've learned anything, it's underestimate Trump at your own peril.
Speaker 2 (05:30):
Right, No, absolutely, And you know, and we look for
these gloomers of hope. Well it's John Foon instead of
somebody worse as the Senate majority leader. So maybe he's
more of an institutionalist than a normal fellow. Maybe he'll
do the right thing. We'll see, Yeah, betting on the
Republicans electeds in Washington doing the right thing obviously ausing bet, yes,
(05:53):
has not.
Speaker 1 (05:53):
I've been fruitful.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
Freight ear well, see I did get pleasure and not
just shutting freud, but like, okay, when the various senators,
especially Republican senators as well as Republican House members, came
out about Matt Gates just saying, are you fucking kidding me?
This guy is this ex trafficker? This guy can't be
you know. So there is more at this Roseveldt date,
(06:17):
and with these extreme egregious human nominations, some at least
rhetorical emission of the truth of the horror of this
idiocracy animal house unqualified madness that he's proposing.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
Idiocracy is a really good word for what we're about
to embark on if we talk about the Senate and
the House too, But it's not quite the same. The
Senate built on the idea that these people, at least
the thing that they are these moral pillars.
Speaker 4 (06:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
The thing about the Senate is it's a lot of
work to get there and quite a bit of work
to stay there. It would be easier just to go
into investment banking. So these people have kept these jobs
because on some level or not, maybe hypocritically whatever, but
they think they care about American government. So here we
are now in a moment where it doesn't matter, right,
(07:11):
these people have to pretend that this is normal or
something else.
Speaker 2 (07:17):
Well, yes, that is the thing. And of course the
Senate has always been. It was in the Constitution, was
as the framers were framing it, talked about the center
versus the house as being this place that would you know,
cool the tea cup of the house, where it was
all nutty and crazy, all and hot all the time.
That was this the thing. And of course the US
Senate and therefore senators are all about this. We are
(07:39):
the dignified people in Washington. We look down on the House,
and so occasionally, like now and in the last eight years,
that dignity has called to be more than just how
they act and look and dress. And yeah, Mitt Romney,
you look, you'll identify your central casting. But like dudes,
now's the time to really hump, try to do the
(08:00):
right thing and not let this go into this decadent
imperial rome thing that he's he's really trying to take
us to. No, we'll see. You know, you only need
Susan Collins again, betting on Susan Colly as well, or Rakowski.
You need you say four, I guess you need four
people to say no, I'm not doing this.
Speaker 1 (08:21):
Cornyan, maybe Langford, maybe Mitch McConnell. Maybe I mean, well.
Speaker 2 (08:28):
Mis McConnell is retiring in two years and is gone,
Like yeah, okay, it's time to atone a little bit guy.
Speaker 1 (08:36):
And don't sleep on Tom Taylus because Tom Taylus is
in a rapidly purple in state. But again, like this
is such wish casting. Like even in twenty sixteen, like
if we just step back from minut in twenty sixteen,
you had some Republicans who were actually less insane and
they were chased out of the party. And again, insane
is relative, but they had more of a sort of
(08:58):
sense of what all, you know what. The previous generation
had a certain like traditionalism. So I'm talking about Jeff
Blake or you know. But again, it's hard for me
to imagine that it's hard to imagine that this ends
up being Okay.
Speaker 2 (09:14):
No, I hear you, And I again, I'm not going
to be the you know, my habitual temperamental fifty one percentist,
which I've all that is the thing, like okay, barely optimist. Okay,
it doesn't necessarily work, and I you know, you don't
want to be Charlie Brown and is having the ball
kicked out, having a your.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
But you also want you can't give up, and you
can't give into despair.
Speaker 2 (09:36):
No exactly. Again, my hopeful view perhaps is that, yeah,
the Jeff flakes at all have been kicked out. I
mean think did not entirely capitulate for a year, right,
I mean it wasn't just immediately on in January twenty seventeen. Okay,
whatever the guy says, I'll do, I'll suck whatever is required.
So we'll see it is eight years later and they
(09:59):
do know him no longer like wow, this guy won,
I got whoh oh, So that they are aware, and
some of them are leaving soon, some of all of
them in six years. So he is not yet going
to be called a lame duck, that is to say,
Donald Trump. And you can come back and say, well,
he may try to serve another term, let's leave that aside.
He's gonna be a lame duck. He's gonna be out
(10:20):
of there in four years, and in certainly in two years,
people are going to start calling him lame duck. And
here we are less than two weeks after the election,
and the clown train is already going toward the cliff
who We're barely there. So if this is a preface
foreshadowing of what the administration going to be like. There's
(10:40):
no reason to think it isn't this is not going
to go well, and all these things that we thought,
I mean, the story of thing phenomenon is, oh, this
is going to kill him. Oh he said this about McCain.
All's Oh this pen never does it never does. But
we'll see if enough of them have enough courage to
do this very very simple and obvious. I think in
these three or four worst appointments, for instance, just for starters.
Speaker 1 (11:05):
Right, I mean I would also add, you know, for
the people who are listening, who are like me, do
not despair. Right. The federal government is an enormous entity.
It has never been known for changing quickly.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
You know.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
My one bright spot here, believe it or not, is
that these three appointments are so crazy because he is
signaling that nothing here is going to be normal. Give
me this thought experiment for a minute. Okay, if Trump
had nominated Marco Rubio and then more normal Republicans but
then quietly bullied them into doing insane things, it would
(11:42):
have been much much harder to make the case that
this stuff was insane. Like RFK junior taking over ATSs, Like,
this is a person who does not believe in vaccines.
Now he's taking over government science, right, Like this is
going to be a thing that is very clearly what
it is and not you know, like I go back
(12:04):
to Justice Roberts. Right, Roberts cuts away at things in
order to undermine them. Right, he says, you know, he
undermines Citizens United, he undermines Roe v. Wade, he undermines
you know, ultimately ends up. You can give as much
money as you want to candidates, you know, so we
have billion dollar presidential campaigns, and also we have Roe v.
(12:27):
Wade eventually gets overturned. So that kind of stuff is
much harder to explain to the American people than stuff
like this guy doesn't believe in vaccines and now he's
running government science.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
No, one hundred percent. And of course that is because
several reasons, I mean, less consequentially is he likes the
show he Donald Trump, So this is going to control
the world. They're going to let's do it walls. There's that,
but it's also really it is like Caligula saying to
the center is no, literally, lick my feet, get down there,
lick my feet. It's so much about that. And like
(13:01):
Bobby Kennedy, who I have known for you know, fifty
years and followed and written about for ten about his
descent into conspiracy theory and vaccines are evil all that,
I'll move on from him. But he has said many times,
as he was being the anti vaccine guy the last
twenty five years, that people like the Fauci's, the leading pediatricians,
(13:22):
the leading vaccinologists, immunologists in America, should be behind bar
and he said that's not hyperble, I mean it. They
should be in throw away the keys, talking like Trump,
you know, long before Trump was around as a president.
And then last year, of course he says COVID nineteen
was targeted to attack black people and Caucasians and that ALEXH. Konazzi,
Jews and Chinese are are immute. This guy really making
(13:45):
in charge of this shit anyway. The other thing I
realized this week is the just brilliant, enduring truth of
the maybe the two most famous lines as well that
came out as he was running for president before he
was president. But one is, of course, when you're a star,
they let you do it. Well, he's showing that again.
I'm a star, they let me do it. I can
(14:07):
appoint Tulca Gabbert and Matt Gates and Pete Hegzeth and
Bobby Kennedy to these jobs, these important crucial jobs in
the American government, for which they are obviously and plainly
not qualified, And I can stay in the middle of
fifth I don't shoot somebody, and I wouldn't get loser
the voters. It's well, he says, So these are the
explanatory things, and he is never I mean again and
(14:29):
again we say yep, uh huh, yep. This is a new,
next level version of that.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
No exactly, and I think that is ultimately how we
got here, right. I've been thinking a lot about like
what I got wrong, you know, when I was like,
she's gonna win with a mandate. One of the things
that I think I got so wrong was this idea
like Trump, he spends one hundred and eighty percent of
(14:54):
his time doing pr right, so he's outward facing, he's
doing interviews. Again, he's saying insane stuff, but it doesn't
necessarily matter. And then Democrats elect a guy who does
almost no interviews for whom boringness is the defense, and
then he is unable to get coverage for all of
(15:16):
the really I think great accomplishments of his administration. It
just was sort of a snowball, like if you're going
to run against Trump and again, hopefully Trump decides that
his second term is the end of it and that
he does not try to run for a third term,
which you could certainly see him trying to do. I
hate that I just said that, but you know that
(15:37):
I'm really I mean, I hate that, but I do
think Democrats right now have to start messaging members of Congress,
senators need to get on. You know. Part of the
only thing left that standing between us and total autocracy
is these Democrats who don't have control of the federal government,
(15:58):
but do have the ability to go on.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
Joe Rogan, Yes, exactly. Well, and the thing about, as
you starkily put it, and it's true about Biden and
the Democratic generally, the Democratic machines, for whatever sort of reasons,
ineffectiveness at getting out look at what we've done. Look
how great this is, as opposed to him being the
news and doing whatever it takes to be you know,
(16:22):
the story every day. It is the problem or one
of the problems of how we've been and how especially.
I mean, maybe maybe it will change it, Maybe that
will change now because of the results of the selection
that you understand. You have to be a friend. My
brilliant wife, Van Kramer, when Biden actually became president four
years ago, wrote a brilliant long memo to a good
(16:43):
friend of ours who had been in the Obama administration
in a very very high, you know, deputy cabinet position, saying,
here's what they have to do. Trump knows how to
make a show. We're not saying just you know, do
crazy stuff, but like, here's some ways. You know, she
was in television, no show business, and he said, yeah,
this is brilliant, this is great. They're never going to
(17:04):
do anything like this because they're basically still living in
the nineteen nineties as though it's normal town.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
That's one of the things that they have to figure
out and get right, and maybe maybe now they will.
The other thing you mentioned mandate is your mistakenness about
that Kama Harris will be elected with the mandate. And
you know, as I say about so many things, it
was pretty to think. So the hyperbole of describing Trump's
win lass to be ratchet out. He got it out
of control. Yes, it's Donald Trump being lenched again. Oh
(17:32):
my god. Sure. But in terms of historical margins of victory,
which is his is now in the popular vote, or
as we would call it any other country, the vote,
it's one and a half percent and drop it. We'll
see when the final million and a half votes in
California how that goes. But where is that in the
rank of all presidents who've ever won the popular vote,
(17:55):
of whom they're fifty five, number fifty. That's where it is,
number fifty to fifty five. Even in the electoral college margin,
where of course Republicans including him are get this kick
you know, this bonus still low. It's still in the
lowest quarter of those ever. So it ate a landslide.
It's bad, and he's bad and all that. I'm not no,
(18:17):
but it's not a mandate. It's just important not to
get that into our heads that, oh the Americans oken
in this is it? No, it's two percent? You know, No.
Speaker 1 (18:26):
I agree, And that's a really good point, and I
really appreciate you saying that, probably the most important point
we have going for us part Anderson, if we don't
get sent to Gitmo, will you please come back on
my podcast.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
Well, whenever I have enough of a head of steam
and things and do nothing doins me more than getting
up at five point thirty in the morning, coming on.
Speaker 1 (18:50):
You're sorry, by the way, let the record show we
started at eight o'clock.
Speaker 2 (18:56):
Well Pacific time, though, even though I'm in New York.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
Yeah, yes, you're right, you're at five am Pacific.
Speaker 2 (19:03):
I'm always delighted. And no, it's good for me because
then I can have a whole work day now and
instead of having coffee, I talk to you.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Yes, all right, it's you and Lawrence are not early
morning people. But let the record show I have pen
up since six am. I really appreciate you. Thank you,
Kurt Anderson. Please come back soon.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
My pleasure.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
Randy Winingarten is the president of the American Federation of Teachers.
Speaker 4 (19:28):
Welcome back to Fast Politics, Randy Winmarten.
Speaker 3 (19:32):
How are you holding up, my dear Mollie.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
I am in a.
Speaker 4 (19:36):
Period of quiet reflection or because it's me, loud reflection
where I'm trying to figure out what I got wrong
and try to figure out how to make sense of
the stuff that I got wrong, learn from what you
know my blind spots were, and just take as much
(19:56):
information as possible.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
What about you, I'm doing the same thing. I mean,
I was hoping against hope that Harris would win, but
in diving into all of what happened, this was my fear.
I want to make sure that we learned the right
lessons out of it, as opposed to the finger pointing
(20:23):
and the recriminations that one is seen. And I do
feel like there's a lot of lessons learned that would
actually be helpful not only in saving and then strengthening
our democracy, but also in listening to what people were
(20:45):
actually saying about their lives. And I think it is
both a clarion call for not only both political parties,
but for the civic leadership, the business leadership in the
country and in the world about what work and families
(21:06):
really need. And obviously I don't feel great about the
results and about the chaos and everything that's about to
happen to people and people's rights, but I do think
that there is more and more and more. I am
starting to see a through line that actually can be
explained by a couple of the economic charts that I
(21:28):
have seen in the last few days, including two of them.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
One was the Steve Ratner chart that he did in
warning Joe you may have been on at the time.
And the other is a chart that I think I
saw from EPI or from Robert Rechent, not quite sure
what the sources anymore. That chart basically said that the
people who earned the least in this country voted for
Donald Trump. And then the second chart, which I thought
(21:53):
was equally both heartbreaking but also as instructive, is that
people no longer make more more than their parents made.
The promise of America, you know, has always been an
economic one, much more than almost anything else. You know,
It's been about freedom, but it's really been that. You know,
you think America is going to be a country that
(22:15):
has such great economic engines that every succeeding generation is
going to do better than the one before it. And
that promise has been broken. And I think that that frankly,
the first party that actually is going to be able
to both get fairness and growth, right, you know, economic
(22:36):
fairness and economic growth.
Speaker 3 (22:38):
Right. There's a race between that success and whether or not,
you know, we will have authoritarianism.
Speaker 4 (22:46):
I hear what you're saying, and it's super interesting. The
thing I might, yes and you is I just want to,
like bap up to the beginning of your answer, which was,
I agree that.
Speaker 1 (22:58):
It's such an early moment, like less than two weeks
from this election.
Speaker 4 (23:02):
So what I would say is, in my mind, it's
not time for recrimination, but more like time for sort
of taking stock of where we are and you know
where we're going, and I think that is super important.
And also just like there are so many lessons to
be learned, like Harris lost, right, but she did in
(23:25):
fact deliver senate candidate. It's down ballot in almost every
single one of these swing states, with the exception of
maybe Pennsylvania, though it's now gone to recount. My question
is sort of like I understand the hand ringing, but
I wonder how much And again you've been doing this
(23:46):
longer than I have, but I just wonder how much
of it was a Trump brand being uniquely powerful, because
remember they haven't been able to recreate this in any
which way, versus is a Democratic brand being uniquely not powerful.
Speaker 3 (24:04):
I fanger you all the time, Molly.
Speaker 5 (24:06):
So I read a lot of what you do and
think a lot about what you say, but I found
your article in terms of kind of like reflecting on
this uniquely incisive because I think you.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
Recognized in there the unique brand that Donald Trump brings.
I mean, there's a lot of you know, I may
say a few things that are really really really really
really controversial because it kind of puts some of the
normal thinking, you know, turns it on its head. But
I do. So let me just start by saying Donald
(24:43):
Trump got his experience not only as a real estate
developer in New York, which is a tough town in
which to be successful, even if you start with a
silver spoon in your mouth, which he did, and he
early on was able to do things like withstand discrimination
complaints and other kinds of things, you know, and he
(25:05):
was often the talk of the town in New York
regardless of all of that stuff. But what he did
which was uniquely different than probably any other candidate, but
Ronald Reagan. He's an actor, and he learned how to
use those skills that he developed on the Apprentice. And
(25:26):
one may agree or disagree with him, but he became
one of the most effective communicators in our generation, maybe
in a century. And at the same time he's learned
how to master or he's worked with the tech industry
in such a way that they have developed new forms
(25:49):
of communication in some ways. Kennedy and television, Hitler and radio.
He's learned how to do this.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Yeah, here's what I want to ask you. You are
very much in his crosshairs. He is going war with
public education. You are the head of the teachers union,
you are an icon of public education.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
How does this work?
Speaker 6 (26:12):
I giggle a little bit because public education has been
in the crosshairs of the established marketeers and top down
ideologues or trickle down ideologues forever, but.
Speaker 3 (26:28):
Not from the members of the Republican Party and not
from the people on the ground, which is part of
the reason why they have to create culture wars. I
go back to I invoke what Chris Ruffo said a
while ago at Hillsdale College. I know that, you know,
people don't know that name, but he made sure we
(26:50):
knew what their strategy was, which was their strategy was
and is to create universal distrust in public schools so
that they can essentially balkanized and basically end the public
schooling as we know it. And they've done that to
try to create vouchers, which was now defeated in three
(27:11):
essentially red states. So I think that the answer to
this is understanding the landscape is really important. But at
the end of the day, the real question is going
to be this, If you really represent the public that
elected you, then you will care about strengthening public schools,
and you'll care about creating as many opportunities for people
(27:33):
to join labor unions and to actually engage in collective
bargaining and to actually lift wages as possible. If you
really care about the people of America, that's what you're
going to do. And so that's going to be where
we lean into how do we help kids have the
opportunities that you know, we every single day say they
(27:56):
so richly deserve. How do we help working families have
the opportunities to get ahead? And so I think what
you've seen in the last two years is that when
we've called that question and when we've actually not only
did the advocacy for it, but we've been on the
ground giving out books as other people banned them, We've
been on the ground really trying to create these ladders
(28:19):
of opportunity or pathways from classroom to career, like in
advanced manufacturing. That's what people really want, that's what they
want for their families. We're going to try to do
more and more of that, and hopefully it's not going
to be a big choice. It's not going to be
a big contrast. Maybe this is what they're going to do,
but if not, that's what we're going to do. And
(28:42):
you know, I suspect just like we saw in Kentucky
and Nebraska and Colorado when people voted not to defund
their public schools. I suspect when we saw across the country.
I mean, if you look at all the down ballot
races across the country, seventy to eighty percent of the
pro public education candidate in Minnesona won their races. Twenty
(29:03):
one or twenty three out of the twenty five levees
in Florida for public schools, one North Dakota refuse to
give up their property tax to defund their state. So
the real issue becomes, how do we every day not
make this election to election, but how do we every
day work with the coalition of people who really do
(29:25):
want a better life for themselves than their kids, And
how do we do that and how does that force
then become a force in elections that doesn't get scared
or anxious by you know, a commercial that's intended to
scare or create anxiety, but where they're really working for
that latter of opportunity for themselves and others. And that's
what I'm going to do, and that's what my members
(29:48):
are going to do, and that's what our leaders are
going to do.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
But what about like, for example, the Department of Education,
Like that is a hot.
Speaker 3 (29:55):
I'm laughing because I'm going to surprise you and my answer,
which is this, in nineteen seventy seven, my predecessor, as
you know, Al Schanker, was not my immediate processor, although
I knew him pretty well he was. But Al Schanker
in nineteen seventy seven and the AFT in nineteen seventy
seven actually oppose the creation of the Department of Education.
(30:16):
We actually believed that the Department of Education should stay
in h EW because we thought we needed to actually
deal with whole children and whole families and not pull
education out, but really do it all together. And so
the issue for us is not the symbolism of all
of this stuff. The issue and obviously we care about
the people who work at the Department of Education, We
(30:38):
care about the families that work there. We don't want
people fired But the issue really is what happens to.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
What they do?
Speaker 3 (30:44):
Like what they do is they actually send to states
a lot of money. Ten percent of school district's budgets,
particularly for poor kids and kids with disabilities, come from
funds that they meet out. The real you is, let's
stop talking about form over. You know who's going to
get things done? Like, so, what happens to the money
(31:08):
that basically more red states get than blue states. What
happens to that money the poor kids in Tennessee are
in Mississippiate, Like, what happens to that money that kids
with disabilities get? So I haven't seen a plan yet.
Speaker 4 (31:22):
I think it's very unlikely that you're going to see
a plan.
Speaker 1 (31:26):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
So they're going to try to get everybody up and
outrage land about the symbolism about whether they're going to
close the Department of Education versus not. The craziness here.
Speaker 7 (31:38):
Is, look how many people are vuying for the job.
Speaker 3 (31:40):
Of being the head of the Department of Education. And
the other craziness is I saw Donald Trump's ten point plan.
Speaker 8 (31:47):
In that ten point plan, there's a whole lot of stuff,
Like half of it were words that I have said,
like project based instruction, and how do we have career
based learning, and how do we have internships? And how
do we do all this stuff? Only the public schools
can really actually do that. And then he says, well,
we're going to close the Department of Education and move
everything to the States. But if a school doesn't do
(32:10):
what I wanted to do, I'm going to close it down.
That sounds like actually more control, not less control. So
we have to separate out their rhetoric which is intended
to create chaos and fear from Okay, are you really
going to take money away from kids with disabilities? A
whole lot of Republican parents have kids with disabilities.
Speaker 3 (32:32):
Are you going to take that money away or not?
If Donald Trump tries to take money away from parents
or from kids with disabilities, I'm going to be out
there fighting against that. If Donald Trump tries to take
money away from kids in Mississippi or New York City
that need that power professional in a classroom to help
that kids learn to read, I'm going to fight against that.
(32:54):
So what are they really saying.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
What are they really saying?
Speaker 3 (32:57):
We don't know what they're really saying.
Speaker 4 (32:59):
They don't want public education to thrive because they want
people to be in religious schools and also in educating
people as dangerous, right, I mean, is that really what
it is?
Speaker 3 (33:09):
I would actually ask it as a question, why do
they fear education? I understand we've seen this for forty
or fifty years. It stopped for a little while because
of all the stuff that was going on in terms
of yeah, sure, but let me tell you a little secret.
Since I've been around for a long time, it used
to be like places like New York, Cardinal O'Connor. Cardinal
(33:29):
O'Connor and the Catholic Diocese worked pretty well with the
public schools. And I was around enough that we actually
work together. We honored religious education. But we need to
actually fund our job, America's job, states jobs. We have
an obligation to fund a public school system that is
available for everyone. Now, if people want religious education, you know,
(33:53):
my grandmother used to say, zygozint, let them have religious education.
Let them do that. They want to do it, constitutionally,
they should have your right to do it. But they
can't take money from the public system that goes to
everybody for a separate system. And that's really a question here.
And what's happened is you see it in a bunch
of people. What with these voucher cases that are going
(34:14):
on right now, these voucher moves and state legislators.
Speaker 7 (34:17):
Most of the money is going to kids and families
who will already send their kids to private schools. And
most of the money is going to rich parents and
rich people who already send their kids to private schools.
So instead of this being about all kids, what we're
saying is that's where the money in these Baucher states
are going to, and it has actually hurt the rest
of the kids. And our job, my job is to
(34:38):
make sure there's a public school system that every single
parent wants to send their kids to, every kid is
engaged in and thrives, and teachers want to be.
Speaker 4 (34:46):
Yeah, exactly. Randy Winegarden, thank you, thank you, thank you.
It sounds like we're going to have a long for yours.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
Yes, but thank you for your podcast and thank you
for communicating with people, because I think you are one
of the few people on the progressive side that really
understands that this kind of sense of a podcast where
you have people on and you talk to people and
people then listen to it. That's what Joe Rogan does
all the time. So I just really also wanted to
(35:14):
say that this communication vehicle how we communicate with people,
that is also part of what we have to learn.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Right now, that's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear
the best minds and politics makes sense of all this chaos.
If you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a
friend and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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