October 26, 2024 • 47 mins
MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell tries to calm our nerves as the election nears. Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig details why VP Harris may need fake electors.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 thirteen former Trump administration officials have
signed on to an open letter backing up John Kelly.
We have a show that includes two different lawrences MSNBC.
(00:23):
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell stops by to try to calm our
nerves are fraid pre election nerves. Then we'll talk to
Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig about his left field take on
why VP Harris might actually need fake electors.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
So, mally I thought hacking would be a very big
part of the selection, but it really feels like the
final chapter before we vote, the hacking is really coming
into view. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Who knows? Chinese hackers targeted data from phones used by
former Prescident Donald J. Trump and his running mate Senator JD.
Vance of Ohio. It is a wide ranging intelligence collection effort.
Maybe they released it, Maybe they just use it to
manipulate them if they get into power. Who knows, Or
perhaps they hack the material and then as you'll remember,
(01:18):
newspapers decide not to release it. You'll remember that is
opposed a stark contrast to twenty sixteen, when they made
a big deal of releasing everything from John Podesta's Risotto
recipe to Kuma and Hillary talking about whether or not
they should be bad and have the krimboulet. So I
(01:38):
don't know they're haacking. They targeted the phones. We'll see
what happens. Stay tuned to our sound depressed.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
So I'll tell you what makes me depressed That billionaires
have this much power, and unfortunately they have to fund
all of our media outlets and Jeff Bezos. People are
not happy with them today, are they?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
So?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
The Washington Post is first time since nineteen sixty they're
not endorsing a candidate. You know why they're not endorsing
a candidate because the billionaire who owns them decided it
would be too much trouble. They had a endorsement of
Harris because she's the normal candidate who doesn't want to
end American democracy. It was all teed up and the
(02:20):
newspaper decided not to publish it. The decision not to
publish was made by the Post owner. Perhaps you remember him,
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He owns huge amount of companies
and stuff and has billions and billions of dollars in many,
many yachts. He has. In twenty nineteen lawsuit, Amazon claimed
(02:42):
it lost ten billion dollars in Pentagon cloud computing and
a contract to Microsoft because Trump used improper pressure to
harm his perceived political enemy. Well, Jeff Bezos isn't going
to let that happen again, and he has given up
the endorsement. Timothy Snyder, the Yale professor, talks about this
and calls it complying in advance. It's one of the
(03:03):
things you're not supposed to do when you're fighting authoritarianism.
Stay tuned, so Mallya.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
As we hinted in the opening of the show, thirteen
former Trump administration officials have released an open letter on
Friday amplify in the warnings of Trump's former chief of staff,
John F. Kelly.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, you know John Kelly, Trump's longest serving chief of staff.
It was a marine, He was very well respected. He
came out and did these tapes with Mike Schmidt from
the New York Times. They're on the New York Times
website and they and they have General Kelly describing Donald
Trump as an authoritarian and as a fascist. Someone who
(03:41):
doesn't like democracy. He also tells his anecdote about how
he thought that Hitler had good generals and that maybe
you know, he had some musings about Hitler. You never
want to have musings about Hitler in case you're wondering.
It really was a brave thing. And remember, these military
guys are try to be non political. It takes a
lot to get them to come out and say something
(04:03):
political like this. So this is a very big deal.
So today, after being attacked by all of Trump World
and all of Trump's people, thirteen former Trump administration officials,
which this is really a big deal, released an open
letter on Friday amplifying the warnings of John F. Kelly,
donald Trump's longest chief of staff. And this is really
(04:24):
quite a big deal. These are lifelong Republicans who are
taking a stand against this, and the people who have
signed it are people like Alyssa Griffin, Stephanie Grisham, Adam Kinsinger,
Miles Taylor, Olivia Troy Scaramoucci. This is a very unusual
thing to have, and everyone is trying to make the
(04:48):
make it clear that what Donald Trump wants to do
is not normal and none of this is what happens
normally in American democracy.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
One of Trump's great techniques every election season is he
tries to play both sides of many issues and blur
the lines so people can make a decision to just
vote for him. And he's tried to do this with
Israel versus Hamas and Hezbala, but things get complicated because
he runs his mouth weird and weird ways. What are
you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
So Donald Trump has said that he would be better
for Arab Americans than Harris. He says that you should
vote against Harris because it's too stupid to go into.
But anyway, Trump allies they feel they have this opportunity
to lure away young Muslims. You'll see that a lot
of the polling shows they're pretty tight there. But he
(05:38):
has expressed support for Israel's offensives against Hamas and Hezbela
in a recent call with the country's prime minister, a
position that could complicate his campaign's outreach to Arab Americans.
You guys, if it's Donald Trump, it's transactional. And if
he gets back in the White House, he's going to
let nat Yahoo do whatever he wants to Palestine. Who
(06:00):
thinks otherwise is sadly mistaken.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So Maally. We knew as this election came to a
close that North Carolina is one of the states that
has traditionally always had some of the biggest voting fuckery.
They will make students walk miles to their voting locations
and change point places on the day of the election.
Republicans have long fucked around there, but this is a
(06:25):
new height.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So this is the House Freedom Caucus. The chair of
the conservative House Freedom Caucus in North Carolina member of
Congress named Andy Harris. I mean, this is so insane,
he said. It makes a lot of sense that given
the distraught wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part
of the state, that he wants to preemptively award electoral
(06:48):
votes to Trump. So that means, if you live in
North Carolina, this member of the Republican Freedom Caucus wants
to make sure that your votes do not count because
of the hurricane. He would like to just give all
of your votes to Republican electors and award the state
to Donald Trump before anyone's even been voting. This is
(07:10):
so incredibly destructive, not what we do in this country,
and absolutely so just insane and really shocking. Andy Harris
and this was reported in Politico. Such a crime, and
this is what Republicans want to do, and they keep
telling you. Lawrence O'Donnell is the host of the Lawrence
(07:40):
O'Donnell Show on MSNBC, So welcome back, Lawrence very much.
You have so eloquently explained to the moment in American
life that we're in. But just one more time for
the people in the back, could you.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Remind me I don't remember a word I say. This
moment is one we've been in before, and it's the
one the show business is in twenty four hours a day,
every day, and it's the William Goldman moment of nobody
knows anything. And that is the famous line from his
(08:15):
the single best book, possibly only good book about show business,
Adventures in the Screen Trade, by Oscar winning screenwriter William Goldman,
and he takes you through explaining the business and why
it's not a business and why it's all so crazy,
and it all comes down to nobody knows anything. No
one knows what movie is going to work. No one
(08:36):
knows literally like what's going to happen next, what to
do next? And that's where we are now. The New
York Times has officially given up. They've done their last
poll and said, we give up the basic headline of
the poll as we give up. We've wasted all of
our money in our time on all of this polling.
It has led us to nowhere. No poll has told us,
(09:00):
you know, what was going to happen next, even in
the polls, and so like New York Times is saying
to you, Okay, thank you for reading all of our
massive coverage about this and how every little thing might
change the course of the of the election and all that,
and thanks for studying every little detail of our polls.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
We have no.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Idea who's going to win, and we give up. And
you know, I could have suggested that they give up
a lot earlier on the polling, because it was pretty
clear that the polling did not have any gravitational forces
in it that made any sense right up to you know,
the present, where you can have a candidate on the
record praising Hitler and it has no effect. So when
(09:42):
you live in that political universe, you shouldn't expect the
polls to be helpful. They're not going to be helpful.
And so I kind of love that The Times has
in effect fully admitted that that nobody knows anything, and
all these pollsters don't know anything, and here we are,
and so you know, it's the way life used to
be before meteorology. You didn't know if it was going
(10:04):
to rain in the afternoon or you just everybody lived
life in a perfectly reasonable way without knowing what was
going to happen next. I've been able to accept for
a very very long time that I don't know what's
going to happen in the future. That should not be
a hard thing for people to come to grips with.
And so in this case, the future is you know
(10:26):
what eleven days away, and it's upon us, and you know,
the last time nobody knew anything, Joe Biden won.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So yeah, I would love you for two seconds. I
know this is a stupid question, but I feel like
our listeners need to sort of just have.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Let me just say at eleven in the morning, which
we can reveal this is this is before noon. Yes,
stupid questions are the only kind I want. I'm not
awake enough for a serious question.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Excellent reading Early voting is like trying to read runs,
especially in an election that has a tent big enough
to include Harris and Liz Cheney, do you agree.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Well, early voting used to you know, when the craziest,
stupidest candidate in history was urging people not to early vote,
which is the stupidest thing he could possibly have said.
When he was doing that, early voting was indicative, you know,
in twenty twenty of oh boy, look at the size
of the early voting. We know that's not Trump voters,
(11:27):
or you know, mostly not Trump voters. And now I
think it's trickier, you know, because they've changed the tune.
Trump's not out there preaching against early voting, so you
definitely are going to have a larger participation of Trump
voters in early voting. I do think it's not unreasonable
for the Harris side to take encouragement from big early
(11:52):
voting numbers.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, Okay, So that's a really good point. It's a
genre of article is the nervous Democrats and the confident Republicans.
You know, there have been a ton of articles in
Axios and you know, axios like publications about the anxiety
the Democrats have.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Can I just say parenthetically here, yes, please help me
so bioccupation. I am mired in these subjects. I never
read Axios. And I don't mean this as any kind
of offense against Axios, but all the information you needed
(12:35):
to be fluent in this field existed before Axios was born,
and before most of the people working at Axios was
were born. Okay, so when people send me these things, oh,
I read this and I read that, the first thing
I say to them is, why are you reading that?
Why would you read that? The field is just now
overflowing with junk stuff? That is a business. You got
(12:59):
to remember, Axios was invented to make people rich. It
was not invented to clarify how you should think about things.
You know, same thing with Politico. The world was fine
without Politico, it was fine. I've learned nothing, absolutely nothing
since the invention of Politico. Nothing. It hasn't added a
thing to my understanding of anything. I've read very very
(13:20):
little from Politico over the years, you know, since it
was started. And again that was started as a get
rich business. It had all the same integrity as an
Elon Musk enterprise. It was just to make money. And
so if you're you know, taking a reasonably frequent look
at the New York Times, you're not going to learn
(13:42):
anything more you're not going to get smarter by reading
beyond that stuff. And we all know the limits now
in political coverage of the New York Times itself, you know,
in the Washington Post itself. But they haven't those people
have not come along and figured out how to do
this better than the New York Times or the Washington Post.
I will certainly want that defense of the New York
(14:04):
Times in Washington Post. So I just sorry I heard
the word axios, and I just say this for all
my friends who and by the way, most of my
friends do overly obsess and they pick up all this
little junk stuff you know that's out there, and it's
an utter waste of time. But by the way, it's
a condition of nervous Democrats and confident Republicans. That has
(14:27):
been the case for every single presidential election after nineteen
ninety six. Bill Clinton had an eighteen point lead over
Bob Dole in the summer of nineteen ninety six, and
for the first time in history, the Democrats were not nervous. Okay,
by the way, one other time the time prior to that,
(14:48):
when the Democrats were not nervous was when Michael Dukakis
had a seventeen point lead over George H. W. Bush,
and the Democrats made the mistake of not being nervous.
And so but ever since then, you know, al Gore
got more votes in any reasonable fair reading of the situation,
al Gore won and beat George W.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Bush.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
The Supreme Court didn't see it that way. And you know,
and it was panic for Democrats right right down to
the wire, you know. And and it was never panicked
for the Bush side, like never. They were never worried,
you know. And I think it's I think it's almost temperamental.
And I mean it wasn't really a public pose. I mean,
those actual Bush guys, those Bush people, you know, those
(15:28):
Jim Bakers, they they just weren't. They just don't worry.
Those people, you know, And they're constitutionally different. You know.
This modern set of Republicans are not like that. They
do worry, they do panic, but they are smart enough
to simply, like a football team, you know, going into
the Super Bowl, never express any doubts, right And the Democrats, like,
(15:51):
my god, if the Democrats were in the Super Bowl
and doing all those press conferences two weeks before the game,
you'd have like half of them going well, I don't know.
I don't know, but it just and so they haven't
figured that out. You know that it's an athletic thing.
Like you, the best thing you can do, no matter
how nervous you are in this field is you know,
(16:12):
it's just feign confidence if you have to.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, And there has been some you know this, there's
been some incredible reporting that has come out and I'm
even thinking about today this Elon Musk has been talking
to Vladimir Putin story which came out from the Rupert
Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal. And you do really see
why Republicans are so anti reporting.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, and by the way, you also see the kind
of thing that feeds their confidence. Right, So they've got Musk, like, man,
that's a confidence builder. This guy, you know, runs Twitter
and twists it to your advantage. He's prepared to give
people a million dollars, you know, to you know, sign
up to vote. He's you got all that Musk money.
(16:57):
I mean, that's that's a pretty big deal. He's highly
influential with a kind of person who is not a
wise voter. You know, these kind of goofy thirty two
year old males which I used to be and you know,
so that's you know, you could see where that kind
of thing does build a certain kind of confidence without calculating,
(17:19):
without noticing. Oh, by the way, it doesn't seem to
be making any difference in the polls.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right. You would think that giving away a million dollars
a day would be illegal, right.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But it turns out it is, which is why they stopped.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yes, that's true. I mean, it's so crazy that this
guy has security clearance, he has.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
A Let's just remind all of our Tesla driving listeners
out there, every single one of you has contributed to
the Trump campaign, every one of you and you know,
friends of mine in California years ago when Musk started
trying to violate labor law there and started then getting
rid of their teslas. You know, there was a very
varying degrees of consciousness of what Musk was up to
(18:03):
in California, just in the factories. But that's where it began,
the getting rid of the Tesla thing. But buying a
Tesla now, is that's a political action. You know, there
are there are other electric cars, and there are other
cars that can give you whatever kind of thrill you're
trying to get out of a machine, and so Tesla owners,
(18:24):
you have contributed to the Trump campaign, whether you wanted
to or not. And if you're planning on, you know,
buying one to borrow, or if you bought one last month,
then you very directly contributed to the campaign.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And there is a sense in which government regulation has
a lack of government regulation has allowed Elon Musk to
sort of take over huge swaths of the federal government.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Well, it's the problem of the number of vendors.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
If you're trying to stick something up in space, it's like, well,
you know, we really don't have another place to go.
I'd love to have another place to go. If you're
trying to do satellite communication, if you're trying to provide
emergency telephone service, you know in Ukraine, starlink is it.
There isn't another one, you know, and that's your problem.
It's the problem of monopoly in an arena that the
(19:17):
government actually needs. So the government's what's what's the government
going to do, like crack down on starlink for being
a monopoly it needs it. You know, in North Carolina,
they needed the you know, EPA needed to distribute that
stuff so people could communicate. You know, they're not going
to do a monopoly crack down on the only real
(19:38):
company that can deliver pretty big payloads into space. So
you are just stuck. It won't last forever, you know,
it never does. You know, at some point there'll be
other ways of doing all the things that the musk
companies do. But for now, it's it's a nightmare scenario
of outright crazy billion an who's active, who's actually and
(20:02):
this is really you couldn't possibly have imagined this. He's
actually crazier than Henry Ford, actually crazier than Henry I mean,
Henry Ford was a classic American hardcore anti semi of
which there were millions in Henry Ford's day. In fact,
I would suggest the majority of Americans were kind of
(20:24):
minimally anti Semitic in their in their language. They didn't
think anything of it. They didn't if you ask them
if they were anti Semitic, they'd say no, and they
would use Jew as a verb in the next sentence.
And you know, so, so there was that, and then
there's the virulent kind, which was what Henry Ford was
and Lindbergh and those people, and you know, other than that,
(20:45):
which is a pretty big. Other than that, you know,
Henry Ford was a pretty rational operator. He didn't think, oh,
let me buy some company so I can destroy it
and turn it turn its value into nothing, you know,
like Twitter. Right, he didn't do that. But really it's
(21:05):
prior to Musk. Henry Ford was our greatest shame as
an American rich guy. And now there's another one.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, you know, Henry Ford is such a really important
historical parallel. And one of the things that I spend
a lot of time doing when I think about this
moment in American life, is trying to sort of connect
parallels to it. Elon Musk and Henry Ford. They're so
similar except for the irrationality right of Elon Musk, which
(21:32):
Henry Ford didn't necessarily have that kind of or at
least we didn't see it right. He wasn't public facing
the way Elon is. But there are so many precedents.
Trump is in himself unprecedented. But a Republican party that
cowers and refuses to stand up for what's right.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Is not no, not no. But this level of stupidity, yes,
is brand new, you know. I Mean the last time
we were stupid tariffs was one hundred years ago. I mean,
you know, really wildly stupid about tariffs. It was one
hundred years ago. But that's one hundred years ago in economics, okay,
and one hundred years ago in economics, most economics professors believed,
(22:13):
you know that Smoot Holly tariffs were a very very
bad idea. But it wasn't that clear to the world
or to our politics. You know. Then we did Smoot
Holly tariffs. They were a disaster, and both Smoot and
Holly were defeated in their reelection campaigns because it was
crazy and stupid. That's the kind of growing pain in
(22:35):
the learning of economics, which was a relatively new discipline
one hundred years ago, that you go, Okay, we're not
making that mistake again. What you are really stupid about
is making stupid mistakes again, you know, after we've shown
them to you. But Trump's you know, ignorance level is
brand new too. That is brand new. Like we've never
(22:56):
ever ever had anybody that ignorant, you know, anybody that stupid.
He does have the processor, Like if you gave him,
if he was less ignorant, he still wouldn't be able
to manage it in a you know, in a cognitive
way and come out with the right answer. But he
doesn't have either the information or the ability, you know,
to process, and so you're you're stuck with this level
(23:17):
of just rank stupidity that we've never seen before. And
it does, you know, very much, seem to be getting worse.
I mean, I'm a believer in the cognitive deterioration of
that guy over time. He's a stupid or crazier person
today and will be stupider and crazier tomorrow and next week.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, and he's diminished too, I mean he has trouble
keeping the same schedule.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, that's what I mean. Nobody's getting smarter in their
late seventy like nobody.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
As I had it into my late forties. Not late yet,
but I can attest.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Oh no, you know, sorry, your past, your Nobel prize.
You know, when you see those Nobel prizes come out, invariably,
it's for work that the person did when they were
thirty two or twenty seven or so, and they're getting
it when they're fifty seven, because it takes that long
in chemistry or you know, some of these fields to
realize the importance of that work. It takes a couple
(24:17):
of decades usually in economics for people to say, oh,
that was a really really important discovery, because look, it's
proven true over two decades. And so so those Nobel
prizes for those gray haired people are almost always for
things they did decades earlier. You know, they're almost like
professional athletes. It's almost like, yeah, yeah, he was a
(24:38):
great pitcher when he was twenty seven, but not.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Will you leave us with something a little bit optimistic?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, And the indicators if you actually look inside this
New York Times poll where they kind of throw up
their hands, you know, the indicators inside that are good
for the Harris campaign, and that's all. Well, you know,
that's all you can look for, is that? So I
think everybody should just go about their business on the
(25:08):
assumption that Kamala Harris will be present for the next
four years, and if next week there's some counter information
to that, you'll have plenty of time then to start
feeling bad about that.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Thank you. Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five
and how awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so
are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart
to make a limited series with the experts on what
a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's
future right now. We have just released the final episode
(25:42):
of this five episode series. They're all available by looking
up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube,
and if you are more of a podcast person and
not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put
your phone in the lock screen and it will play
back just like thet All five episodes are online now.
(26:03):
We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term
would or could do to this country, so please watch
it and spread the word. Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard
professor and co author of How to Steal An Election.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Lawrence.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Great to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I think of you as someone who is not a
radical leftist, okay, if that's the understatement of the year.
And I'm hoping you could talk to us just about
where you are right now. You've written so much, You've
taught at so many important places, you have such an
important and meaningful academic career. Talk to us about where
(26:46):
you are right now and your kind of I feel
like you've had a little bit of a political movement too.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, I mean, my thought is not unique. I think
we're at a catastrophic moment with our democracy, and we're
being a act on two fronts at once. One front
is the deeply unrepresentative system we have for democracy, polluted
most dramatically by the corrupting influence of money. So I've
(27:11):
been an activist in trying to figure out how to
flip that. I think we have a really exciting opportunity
in main this election to pass an initiative that's going
to tee up the opportunity for the Supreme Court to
say what they've never had a chance to say, which
is the First Amendment does not protect super PACs, that
super PACs are not actually part of our constitutional armada.
(27:32):
So that's, you know, I think we'll be progress on
that front. But the second front is just recognizing how
the business model of media is against the business model
of democracy, Like the media makes money when it turns
us into crazy people who hate each other, and when
the reality of that, I think begins to be clear.
I think what we have as a really important challenge
(27:54):
about how do we move democracy into a place where
it's not vulnerable to these corrupting systemic effects from the
way media works.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, you know, we are having this conversation in the
backdrop of decision. I assume you and I are both
reacting to this devastating news today that the Washington Post,
known as a real beacon of democracy with a motto
that says democracy dies in darkness, has decided not to
endorse because their billionaire owner has decided it's not worth
(28:24):
a headache to piss off Donald Trump, which again Timothy
Schneider writes about, is this obeying in advance one of
the rules of if you're going to fight authoritarianism, you
never do stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Like this, right. Obviously, newspapers feel the pressure of the
current moment in a couple of important ways that the
market is won, but the political response from an authoritarian
regime is another that is quite terrifying. You know, I
think Post in the New York Times, you know, at
(28:57):
the time of the Pentagon papers, or the time that
stories around Nixon came out, like took a gamble to
assume that they could behave the way we want newspapers
to behave and that they wouldn't be punished for it.
And the reality was they weren't punished for it by
the administration in a way that was devastating, But I
get the fear. I just it's terrifying and depressing that
(29:20):
they seem to be responding to it so directly.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like because my grandfother went
to jail refusing to name names in the house and
non American activities, Howard Fast and you know, was he
a great guy, not especially cheated on every wife he
ever had, and was you know, very selfish in a
lot of ways. But you know, at the end of
the day, he could not not stand up for what
was right. And I think all of us are a
(29:45):
little shaken by the idea that billionaires are such bad actors.
But should we be.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
No, we shouldn't be. I mean, you know, I think
that there's a psychological dimension to this in an obvious
economic dimention. So the psychological dimension is this weird you
know what Jared Linier refers to as kind of quitter poison,
like this weird phenomenon of like what happens when you
have these these technologies that give you this constant, adilating
a feedback from attention. And you know, people like Trump
(30:11):
and and Elon have also obviously become addicted to this
and it changes them that's Lanier's point, like changes them
into much worse people than they were before this has happened.
So so that's that's one part of it. But the
other is just you know, they recognize that there's an
opportunity for enormous power when you've got a particularly authoritarian
(30:32):
character like Trump. You know they wouldn't you know, It's
not like you pick, like should I pick Harris or
should I pick Trump? And the return to the billionaire
would be the same, because obviously Harris's administration is going
to be one much more constrained by traditional rules of
law and like the necessity of behaving appropriately. I'm his
is going to be like crazy crazy town, and you know,
(30:55):
I'm terrified about what it will actually mean to have
Elon Musk in the government, not to mention Rfk Junior
in the government with this guy at the top. Now,
the other you know possibility is it could be that
these billionaires, you know, Peter Teel, he's an extremely intelligent
strategic player, is actually kind of counting on Trump burning
out pretty quickly, Like the twenty fifth Amendment could be
(31:16):
invoked on day one. Then we have Jady Vance for
twelve years as president because he fills out Trump's term,
and then he gets to be elected twice. I mean,
that's a genius play if what you're trying to do
is the power of just a couple powerful people.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
There are a number of things I would say to
address this, but you're someone who's who's done a lot
of work in like sort of the norms that constrain.
When Trump picked Jadaman's I thought to myself, Jadavans is
going to twenty fifth amendment him right away. But I
now have a new theory, which hopefully won't have to happen.
But I think there's a scenario where the one piece
of good news about Donald Trump is that Donald Trump
(31:52):
is not easy to manipulate. Well, he's easy to manipulate,
but he's not easy. He won't necessarily do what you want.
And I've seen this historically, right Like, there are so
many members of that cabinet who thought that this guy
isn't so smart, and we'll just get him to do this,
this and this. But you know, he's got a sort
of chaos theory around him. For whatever reason, he's not loyal,
(32:14):
And so I could see a world where they try
to twenty fifth amendment him and he tries to destroy
all of them.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
You know, the dynamic of the twenty fifth Amendment is
they would say he needs to step aside, he says no,
I'm fine. Then that goes to Congress, and Congress needs
to vote. And if two thirds say he's got to go,
he's got to go. Now, what are the Democrats going
to do? Like, if you have a chance to get
rid of Donald Trump, even though none of us would
like Jady Vance, would you rather Jadi Vance? Jady Vance
is not like he's not I mean.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
He's not a chaos actor, but he's a bad guy.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Is it bad? Yeah? And he's connected obviously to money
in a way that's really troubling. But the point is,
like I would think today that Democrats would say, yeah,
but all of this is premised on this decline that
we're seeing continuing to a point where any fair person
could look at him and say, look, you have come
to a stage of your dementia that no longer is
it's appropriate for you to be president. I think that's happening.
(33:08):
I don't think you could have planned on that happening,
but I think that's certainly happening. And if it happens,
then the Democrats are like, yeah, you've got to go.
And then who would be fearful of him? He can't
run for anything again. I mean, you know, then Republicans,
all those Republicans who just hate to live in his
shadow and live under his control would have a chance
to for you know, independent fair reasons. Hey, he's got
to go. And then is jd Vance?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, I mean there are so many really terrible possible scenarios.
I'm wondering if there are so many. But let's talk
about this book he wrote about how to Steal an Election,
written before Trump was the nominee, and sort of walk
us through what's happening right now.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Well, I think the scariest so we went through nine scenarios.
We had six that were possible I think for our
live to keep me awake. But the one I'll focus
on because it's just a total unforced error, is the
one related to so called fake electors. You know, so
after twenty twenty, you know, four states, Georgia and Wisconsin,
(34:09):
in Michigan and Arizona prosecuted the so called fake electors
and created this standard that basically said there was completely
wrong for those fake electors to meet and cast their ballots. Well,
I think Fates has a sense of irony, and I'm
fearful that we're going to be in a position in
this election where Harris needs some fake electors because like,
let's take a scenario, imagine Georgia, Harris is slightly ahead.
(34:32):
Then a judge rules it a whole bunch of ballots
have to be thrown out because the absentee ballots, whatever
bullshit they say. Then the law, the new Electoral count
Reform Act, forces the governor to certify six days before
the electors are supposed to vote. So Camp has to certify,
and he certifies who's ever ahead at that moment, and
so that happens to be Trump. And so then the
first question is what do the Harris electors do? Do
(34:54):
they show up and vote and be called fake electors
because you know, Georgia has prosecuted the fake electors who
showed up under Trump, they're not certified. If they don't vote,
then the appeal of the ballots that were thrown out stops.
It becomes moot at that one. And so if they
do vote, then the law doesn't have any provision assuming
that you know they're successful and the appeal concludes that
(35:17):
the ballots should be counted and so therefore Harris is
the winner. Then there's no provision in the law for
recertifying the winner of the election in Georgia, so that
the result of this is that you would have Trump
certified even though the votes came out for Harris, And
then you've got to count on Congress doing the right thing,
which you know, is not something one would count on
(35:38):
in a context of a very close election where everybody's
accusing everybody of what kind of fraud? I think this
is the one that I'm most fearful of, and it's
completely unforced error because like in prosecuting the fake electors,
I think people were more focused on how do we
punish the Trump electors than how do we, you know,
create a safe process for picking the next president. And secondly, Congress,
(36:02):
in amending the Electoral count Reform Act, increase the pressure
by shortening the period where people got to adjudicate these
questions and thereby created and incentive to kind of slow
it down or to throw it from one side to
the other side and exploit this kind of problem of certification.
So this dynamic, I think is the one that if
(36:23):
we're very close. We need to be prepared to respond
to and they're very few people that can respond to it.
I mean, you know, all the Democrats have said it's
totally appropriate to have been prosecuting these electors. I think
I'm the only one. I've written four expert reports or
three expert reports, and these various litigations about why it
was wrong to be prosecuting these electors. So you know,
(36:44):
I think I'm the only one who's taken this position.
But you know, that's a pretty weak foundation to build
a resistance to the obvious move people are going to make,
which is you're not allowed to vote hiros electors. You
have to stay home, right.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
No, I mean that is a really terrifying scenario that
I hadn't even thought of. I appreciate you for bringing
up something so incredibly crazy but also very possible. I mean,
we are really through the rabbit hole here with the
idea that the fake electors could be the real electors.
Is something I had not thought about, but is really
(37:19):
quite scary. Some of the poort cases, you know, Republicans
have done a ton of cases. A lot of them
have actually been settled for the good. Right, can you
talk us through that.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah, I mean they've been settled for the good, but
they're causing their intended harm. Like the point of these
cases is to begin to create the chaos environment, Like,
you know, they want to be able to say, look,
we've had to fight forty five cases or one hundred
and fifty five cases to address all the problems in
this election, and they're just getting going. Like the difference
between this election and twenty twenty is that the infrastructure
(37:53):
of litigation on the Republican side is much more advanced
and much smarter. And that's terrifying because you know, Matt Seligman,
my co author on that book and I in twenty
twenty taught a course called Wargaming twenty twenty where the
students like played through every single game they could play
to flip the election. Of course we didn't imagine the
(38:14):
Storm the Capitol on January sixth play, which you know
was literally the dumbest play they could have played. But
the point is they were so inept on all the
other plays through the course of like the election in
twenty twenty. They're not going to be inept this time.
I think they're very strategic, and I think we've got
to be. You know, I'm actually worried that our side
is a little bit insufficiently strategic in recognizing exactly the
(38:38):
kind of move they're going to make.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, that's really scary and for sure. I mean, the
reality is, we have one party that no longer believes
in American democracy, right, And I don't know how long
you can go on like this in a country it's
a two party system. One party wants democracy, the other
is really And if you ask these Trump supporters the
(39:00):
East will say they want to toocracy, they want that.
How did this happen so quickly? And also it feels
like we're in a death spiral. Make me feel better, please, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
No, I can't do that. I'm not going to do that.
I mean, you know, the reality is, I think there's
a great statistic that Pugh has been collecting since nineteen
ninety seven, asking Americans whether they're confident in Americans political judgment.
So in nineteen ninety seven, two thirds of Americans said yes,
we're confident in Americans political judgment, and today two thirds
(39:33):
say they're not. And this is not a surprising change
because in the period since nineteen ninety seven until today,
we've grown a media that constantly shows us the crazies
on the other side, like we are convinced, we are saying,
and there are just crazies on this other side, and
it's vice versa the same. So the very premise for
democracy that we kind of believe in our our capacity,
(39:56):
whether we're entitled to or not, our capacity to like
government is being eroded by as a byproduct of a
business model to sell fricking ads. Like the idea that
we're throwing away democracy because where you know, these companies
are trying to maximize ad revenue is astonishing to me.
But that, I think is really what's happening here.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
But the media. And I don't want to defend the
media because as a member of it, we're such a disaster,
but it does seem to me like the media is
almost a meaningless rounding era at this point. And technology
is really.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
Yeah, we're just using different words. By media, I mean
the infrastructure of information feeding systems that we've got, so
the Internet and cable and broadcasting these and newspapers and
like podcasts whatever. This is all there. But the point
is at the center now is a business model of
engagement and the byproduct of the business model of engagement
(40:55):
is the weakening of democracy, because the most engaging content
is the content that convinces us that the other side's
crazy and that we are saying, well, that dynamic is poisonous,
just like you know, processed food, ultra processed food is poisonous.
It's profitable but poisonous. And this is profitable but poisonous,
and we don't have a simple way to imagine changing
(41:16):
that dynamic.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
But the way we got here, and this is my
own passion project, so maybe I'm wrong, but the way
we got here is that the government refused to regulate anything.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
Well, it's true the government doesn't regulate anything, but in fact,
I don't think the government under our First Amendment would
be able to regulate anything. The old fairness doctrine was
premised on the idea that you were using public airways
and as a quid pro quo for using public airways,
you had to provide meaningful public information service.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah, And that argument that was defended in a case
called Red Lion was pretty shaky as it was nineteen
sixty nine, it was not clear it really made sense.
But the point is, once they started building their own infrastructure,
cable and fiber. Then the premise of the government's power
is taken away. Like in the old days, yes, it's
a common resource you're using, so quid pro quo, give
(42:08):
us good service. But today they'd say, screw your common resource.
Like we build these wires, like it's our wires. We
get to put across ours whatever we want. So it's
like we're allowed to publish in the New York Times
paper whatever we want, right, And the point is, I
think the Supreme Court would agree with them. So the
idea that we can just imagine a new FCC with
a new newt minnow who's going to stand up and
(42:29):
like force media to behave I just think is a fantasy.
It's not possible under our constitution Right now. We've got
to think of other strategies to get us to a
place where people love or respect or even entertain the
idea that democracy could work.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Right, And what is that? Yeah, I'm sorry, it's like
the meanest question. Can you answer all of our problems? Now?
In the last three minutes.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
I've become a real fan of the citizen assembly movements
that you see these sparking, you know, pretty important changes
in Ireland and in France and in some parts of
the United States. But you know, that's we're just at
such the early early beginning of that that you know,
I don't think there's any solution in the next ten years.
I think there's lots to do in the next ten years,
(43:17):
but we're not going to get to a place that
feels like it felt when we felt maybe democracy was
broken in manageable ways. Now it just feels broken in
unmanageable ways. And I don't know how we're going to
deal with this now. Obviously, this election is critical because
like if we if we get this election wrong, then
it spins into a kind of insanely crazy way. So
(43:40):
if we get this one right, I think, you know,
we can buy more time, but it's not going to
be pretty. This next election or the next election after
that is just going to be as corrupted by both
the money on the one side and the structure of
media on the other.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Do you think that the Supreme Court sees how bad
it says?
Speaker 4 (44:00):
I think Roberts is like the only conservative who certainly
sees how bad this is. Maybe Amy Coney Barrett. I
don't know her, but you know, I think you've got
people like Alito, whose view is screw it, I'm going
to get We're going to get whatever we can get,
and our white Christian nationalism is going to be advanced
in an aggressive and self conscious way. And as long
(44:21):
as we have five votes, I mean probably have six votes,
but as long as we have five votes, that's all
we need.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Is this the last bast of Christian nationalism? Is this
this sort of death now of white supremacist stuff? Are
they seeing in a country that they can no longer
control and have their claw marks in it? Or am
I being overly optimistic?
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Well? I do think that this is the election to
win that fight, because you know, the next eight years
will shift enough that it will not make sense to
be white supremacist anymore. It's not to say that the
conservative movement, you know, is dead, I mean, because you
know Latino's are I think our natural conservative. They're going
to move to the conservative movement, and they would move
(45:03):
quickly if they would just give up their racism, Like,
so give up the racism, then you can begin to
attract a bunch of naturally conservative people. And you know,
quite frankly, I'm a liberal, but I would love a
politics where we had a healthy conservative like think about
the old days where what we were trying, we were
finding about whether John McCain should be president or not.
For God's sake, Imagine how wonderful it would be if
(45:24):
the choice was Barack Obama or John McCain, or Mitt Romney.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Or Barack Obama every day.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Yeah, I mean you can. It's not so hard to
imagine getting to a place like that. But it requires
a radical remake of the Republican Party, and I think
ejecting the racism is going to be the first step.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, no moment.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Jesse Cannon Smay.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
One of the things that I think shook a lot
of Democrats about Petslvidia was that Republicans at these insaley
high voter registration numbers in Pennsylvania. Well, it turns out
there might be a reason why. What do you see
it here?
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Pennsylvania officials are investigating fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County.
Election workers identified issues with as many as twenty five
hundred forms during a routine review. You're going to be
shocked to know in Lancaster County and guess who's involved.
You're going to be shocked.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Would it be someone who's a little too online.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
It would be Scott Presler. You'll remember Scott Presler. He's
a conservative activist with long hair who's an actor and
his group Early Vote Actions seek to register Republicans in
swing states like Pennsylvania. And he says that it has
nothing to do with him, but we don't think so,
(46:55):
so we'll see what happens. But not very surprising. He
brought his two voter registration message to Lancaster County and
it's reviewing twenty five hundred voter registration applications for possible fraud.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Great stuff.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make 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 thirteen former Trump administration officials have
signed on to an open letter backing up John Kelly.
We have a show that includes two different lawrences MSNBC.
(00:23):
MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell stops by to try to calm our
nerves are fraid pre election nerves. Then we'll talk to
Harvard professor Lawrence Lessig about his left field take on
why VP Harris might actually need fake electors.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
So, mally I thought hacking would be a very big
part of the selection, but it really feels like the
final chapter before we vote, the hacking is really coming
into view. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Who knows? Chinese hackers targeted data from phones used by
former Prescident Donald J. Trump and his running mate Senator JD.
Vance of Ohio. It is a wide ranging intelligence collection effort.
Maybe they released it, Maybe they just use it to
manipulate them if they get into power. Who knows, Or
perhaps they hack the material and then as you'll remember,
(01:18):
newspapers decide not to release it. You'll remember that is
opposed a stark contrast to twenty sixteen, when they made
a big deal of releasing everything from John Podesta's Risotto
recipe to Kuma and Hillary talking about whether or not
they should be bad and have the krimboulet. So I
(01:38):
don't know they're haacking. They targeted the phones. We'll see
what happens. Stay tuned to our sound depressed.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
So I'll tell you what makes me depressed That billionaires
have this much power, and unfortunately they have to fund
all of our media outlets and Jeff Bezos. People are
not happy with them today, are they?
Speaker 3 (01:58):
So?
Speaker 1 (01:58):
The Washington Post is first time since nineteen sixty they're
not endorsing a candidate. You know why they're not endorsing
a candidate because the billionaire who owns them decided it
would be too much trouble. They had a endorsement of
Harris because she's the normal candidate who doesn't want to
end American democracy. It was all teed up and the
(02:20):
newspaper decided not to publish it. The decision not to
publish was made by the Post owner. Perhaps you remember him,
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. He owns huge amount of companies
and stuff and has billions and billions of dollars in many,
many yachts. He has. In twenty nineteen lawsuit, Amazon claimed
(02:42):
it lost ten billion dollars in Pentagon cloud computing and
a contract to Microsoft because Trump used improper pressure to
harm his perceived political enemy. Well, Jeff Bezos isn't going
to let that happen again, and he has given up
the endorsement. Timothy Snyder, the Yale professor, talks about this
and calls it complying in advance. It's one of the
(03:03):
things you're not supposed to do when you're fighting authoritarianism.
Stay tuned, so Mallya.
Speaker 2 (03:09):
As we hinted in the opening of the show, thirteen
former Trump administration officials have released an open letter on
Friday amplify in the warnings of Trump's former chief of staff,
John F. Kelly.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
Yeah, you know John Kelly, Trump's longest serving chief of staff.
It was a marine, He was very well respected. He
came out and did these tapes with Mike Schmidt from
the New York Times. They're on the New York Times
website and they and they have General Kelly describing Donald
Trump as an authoritarian and as a fascist. Someone who
(03:41):
doesn't like democracy. He also tells his anecdote about how
he thought that Hitler had good generals and that maybe
you know, he had some musings about Hitler. You never
want to have musings about Hitler in case you're wondering.
It really was a brave thing. And remember, these military
guys are try to be non political. It takes a
lot to get them to come out and say something
(04:03):
political like this. So this is a very big deal.
So today, after being attacked by all of Trump World
and all of Trump's people, thirteen former Trump administration officials,
which this is really a big deal, released an open
letter on Friday amplifying the warnings of John F. Kelly,
donald Trump's longest chief of staff. And this is really
(04:24):
quite a big deal. These are lifelong Republicans who are
taking a stand against this, and the people who have
signed it are people like Alyssa Griffin, Stephanie Grisham, Adam Kinsinger,
Miles Taylor, Olivia Troy Scaramoucci. This is a very unusual
thing to have, and everyone is trying to make the
(04:48):
make it clear that what Donald Trump wants to do
is not normal and none of this is what happens
normally in American democracy.
Speaker 2 (04:56):
One of Trump's great techniques every election season is he
tries to play both sides of many issues and blur
the lines so people can make a decision to just
vote for him. And he's tried to do this with
Israel versus Hamas and Hezbala, but things get complicated because
he runs his mouth weird and weird ways. What are
you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (05:14):
So Donald Trump has said that he would be better
for Arab Americans than Harris. He says that you should
vote against Harris because it's too stupid to go into.
But anyway, Trump allies they feel they have this opportunity
to lure away young Muslims. You'll see that a lot
of the polling shows they're pretty tight there. But he
(05:38):
has expressed support for Israel's offensives against Hamas and Hezbela
in a recent call with the country's prime minister, a
position that could complicate his campaign's outreach to Arab Americans.
You guys, if it's Donald Trump, it's transactional. And if
he gets back in the White House, he's going to
let nat Yahoo do whatever he wants to Palestine. Who
(06:00):
thinks otherwise is sadly mistaken.
Speaker 2 (06:03):
So Maally. We knew as this election came to a
close that North Carolina is one of the states that
has traditionally always had some of the biggest voting fuckery.
They will make students walk miles to their voting locations
and change point places on the day of the election.
Republicans have long fucked around there, but this is a
(06:25):
new height.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1 (06:26):
So this is the House Freedom Caucus. The chair of
the conservative House Freedom Caucus in North Carolina member of
Congress named Andy Harris. I mean, this is so insane,
he said. It makes a lot of sense that given
the distraught wrought by Hurricane Helene in the western part
of the state, that he wants to preemptively award electoral
(06:48):
votes to Trump. So that means, if you live in
North Carolina, this member of the Republican Freedom Caucus wants
to make sure that your votes do not count because
of the hurricane. He would like to just give all
of your votes to Republican electors and award the state
to Donald Trump before anyone's even been voting. This is
(07:10):
so incredibly destructive, not what we do in this country,
and absolutely so just insane and really shocking. Andy Harris
and this was reported in Politico. Such a crime, and
this is what Republicans want to do, and they keep
telling you. Lawrence O'Donnell is the host of the Lawrence
(07:40):
O'Donnell Show on MSNBC, So welcome back, Lawrence very much.
You have so eloquently explained to the moment in American
life that we're in. But just one more time for
the people in the back, could you.
Speaker 3 (07:55):
Remind me I don't remember a word I say. This
moment is one we've been in before, and it's the
one the show business is in twenty four hours a day,
every day, and it's the William Goldman moment of nobody
knows anything. And that is the famous line from his
(08:15):
the single best book, possibly only good book about show business,
Adventures in the Screen Trade, by Oscar winning screenwriter William Goldman,
and he takes you through explaining the business and why
it's not a business and why it's all so crazy,
and it all comes down to nobody knows anything. No
one knows what movie is going to work. No one
(08:36):
knows literally like what's going to happen next, what to
do next? And that's where we are now. The New
York Times has officially given up. They've done their last
poll and said, we give up the basic headline of
the poll as we give up. We've wasted all of
our money in our time on all of this polling.
It has led us to nowhere. No poll has told us,
(09:00):
you know, what was going to happen next, even in
the polls, and so like New York Times is saying
to you, Okay, thank you for reading all of our
massive coverage about this and how every little thing might
change the course of the of the election and all that,
and thanks for studying every little detail of our polls.
Speaker 4 (09:18):
We have no.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
Idea who's going to win, and we give up. And
you know, I could have suggested that they give up
a lot earlier on the polling, because it was pretty
clear that the polling did not have any gravitational forces
in it that made any sense right up to you know,
the present, where you can have a candidate on the
record praising Hitler and it has no effect. So when
(09:42):
you live in that political universe, you shouldn't expect the
polls to be helpful. They're not going to be helpful.
And so I kind of love that The Times has
in effect fully admitted that that nobody knows anything, and
all these pollsters don't know anything, and here we are,
and so you know, it's the way life used to
be before meteorology. You didn't know if it was going
(10:04):
to rain in the afternoon or you just everybody lived
life in a perfectly reasonable way without knowing what was
going to happen next. I've been able to accept for
a very very long time that I don't know what's
going to happen in the future. That should not be
a hard thing for people to come to grips with.
And so in this case, the future is you know
(10:26):
what eleven days away, and it's upon us, and you know,
the last time nobody knew anything, Joe Biden won.
Speaker 1 (10:33):
So yeah, I would love you for two seconds. I
know this is a stupid question, but I feel like
our listeners need to sort of just have.
Speaker 3 (10:40):
Let me just say at eleven in the morning, which
we can reveal this is this is before noon. Yes,
stupid questions are the only kind I want. I'm not
awake enough for a serious question.
Speaker 1 (10:53):
Excellent reading Early voting is like trying to read runs,
especially in an election that has a tent big enough
to include Harris and Liz Cheney, do you agree.
Speaker 3 (11:06):
Well, early voting used to you know, when the craziest,
stupidest candidate in history was urging people not to early vote,
which is the stupidest thing he could possibly have said.
When he was doing that, early voting was indicative, you know,
in twenty twenty of oh boy, look at the size
of the early voting. We know that's not Trump voters,
(11:27):
or you know, mostly not Trump voters. And now I
think it's trickier, you know, because they've changed the tune.
Trump's not out there preaching against early voting, so you
definitely are going to have a larger participation of Trump
voters in early voting. I do think it's not unreasonable
for the Harris side to take encouragement from big early
(11:52):
voting numbers.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Right, Okay, So that's a really good point. It's a
genre of article is the nervous Democrats and the confident Republicans.
You know, there have been a ton of articles in
Axios and you know, axios like publications about the anxiety
the Democrats have.
Speaker 3 (12:12):
Can I just say parenthetically here, yes, please help me
so bioccupation. I am mired in these subjects. I never
read Axios. And I don't mean this as any kind
of offense against Axios, but all the information you needed
(12:35):
to be fluent in this field existed before Axios was born,
and before most of the people working at Axios was
were born. Okay, so when people send me these things, oh,
I read this and I read that, the first thing
I say to them is, why are you reading that?
Why would you read that? The field is just now
overflowing with junk stuff? That is a business. You got
(12:59):
to remember, Axios was invented to make people rich. It
was not invented to clarify how you should think about things.
You know, same thing with Politico. The world was fine
without Politico, it was fine. I've learned nothing, absolutely nothing
since the invention of Politico. Nothing. It hasn't added a
thing to my understanding of anything. I've read very very
(13:20):
little from Politico over the years, you know, since it
was started. And again that was started as a get
rich business. It had all the same integrity as an
Elon Musk enterprise. It was just to make money. And
so if you're you know, taking a reasonably frequent look
at the New York Times, you're not going to learn
(13:42):
anything more you're not going to get smarter by reading
beyond that stuff. And we all know the limits now
in political coverage of the New York Times itself, you know,
in the Washington Post itself. But they haven't those people
have not come along and figured out how to do
this better than the New York Times or the Washington Post.
I will certainly want that defense of the New York
(14:04):
Times in Washington Post. So I just sorry I heard
the word axios, and I just say this for all
my friends who and by the way, most of my
friends do overly obsess and they pick up all this
little junk stuff you know that's out there, and it's
an utter waste of time. But by the way, it's
a condition of nervous Democrats and confident Republicans. That has
(14:27):
been the case for every single presidential election after nineteen
ninety six. Bill Clinton had an eighteen point lead over
Bob Dole in the summer of nineteen ninety six, and
for the first time in history, the Democrats were not nervous. Okay,
by the way, one other time the time prior to that,
(14:48):
when the Democrats were not nervous was when Michael Dukakis
had a seventeen point lead over George H. W. Bush,
and the Democrats made the mistake of not being nervous.
And so but ever since then, you know, al Gore
got more votes in any reasonable fair reading of the situation,
al Gore won and beat George W.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
Bush.
Speaker 3 (15:07):
The Supreme Court didn't see it that way. And you know,
and it was panic for Democrats right right down to
the wire, you know. And and it was never panicked
for the Bush side, like never. They were never worried,
you know. And I think it's I think it's almost temperamental.
And I mean it wasn't really a public pose. I mean,
those actual Bush guys, those Bush people, you know, those
(15:28):
Jim Bakers, they they just weren't. They just don't worry.
Those people, you know, And they're constitutionally different. You know.
This modern set of Republicans are not like that. They
do worry, they do panic, but they are smart enough
to simply, like a football team, you know, going into
the Super Bowl, never express any doubts, right And the Democrats, like,
(15:51):
my god, if the Democrats were in the Super Bowl
and doing all those press conferences two weeks before the game,
you'd have like half of them going well, I don't know.
I don't know, but it just and so they haven't
figured that out. You know that it's an athletic thing.
Like you, the best thing you can do, no matter
how nervous you are in this field is you know,
(16:12):
it's just feign confidence if you have to.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Yeah, And there has been some you know this, there's
been some incredible reporting that has come out and I'm
even thinking about today this Elon Musk has been talking
to Vladimir Putin story which came out from the Rupert
Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal. And you do really see
why Republicans are so anti reporting.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yeah, and by the way, you also see the kind
of thing that feeds their confidence. Right, So they've got Musk, like, man,
that's a confidence builder. This guy, you know, runs Twitter
and twists it to your advantage. He's prepared to give
people a million dollars, you know, to you know, sign
up to vote. He's you got all that Musk money.
(16:57):
I mean, that's that's a pretty big deal. He's highly
influential with a kind of person who is not a
wise voter. You know, these kind of goofy thirty two
year old males which I used to be and you know,
so that's you know, you could see where that kind
of thing does build a certain kind of confidence without calculating,
(17:19):
without noticing. Oh, by the way, it doesn't seem to
be making any difference in the polls.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
Right. You would think that giving away a million dollars
a day would be illegal, right.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
But it turns out it is, which is why they stopped.
Speaker 1 (17:34):
Yes, that's true. I mean, it's so crazy that this
guy has security clearance, he has.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
A Let's just remind all of our Tesla driving listeners
out there, every single one of you has contributed to
the Trump campaign, every one of you and you know,
friends of mine in California years ago when Musk started
trying to violate labor law there and started then getting
rid of their teslas. You know, there was a very
varying degrees of consciousness of what Musk was up to
(18:03):
in California, just in the factories. But that's where it began,
the getting rid of the Tesla thing. But buying a
Tesla now, is that's a political action. You know, there
are there are other electric cars, and there are other
cars that can give you whatever kind of thrill you're
trying to get out of a machine, and so Tesla owners,
(18:24):
you have contributed to the Trump campaign, whether you wanted
to or not. And if you're planning on, you know,
buying one to borrow, or if you bought one last month,
then you very directly contributed to the campaign.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
And there is a sense in which government regulation has
a lack of government regulation has allowed Elon Musk to
sort of take over huge swaths of the federal government.
Speaker 3 (18:50):
Well, it's the problem of the number of vendors.
Speaker 4 (18:53):
You know.
Speaker 3 (18:53):
If you're trying to stick something up in space, it's like, well,
you know, we really don't have another place to go.
I'd love to have another place to go. If you're
trying to do satellite communication, if you're trying to provide
emergency telephone service, you know in Ukraine, starlink is it.
There isn't another one, you know, and that's your problem.
It's the problem of monopoly in an arena that the
(19:17):
government actually needs. So the government's what's what's the government
going to do, like crack down on starlink for being
a monopoly it needs it. You know, in North Carolina,
they needed the you know, EPA needed to distribute that
stuff so people could communicate. You know, they're not going
to do a monopoly crack down on the only real
(19:38):
company that can deliver pretty big payloads into space. So
you are just stuck. It won't last forever, you know,
it never does. You know, at some point there'll be
other ways of doing all the things that the musk
companies do. But for now, it's it's a nightmare scenario
of outright crazy billion an who's active, who's actually and
(20:02):
this is really you couldn't possibly have imagined this. He's
actually crazier than Henry Ford, actually crazier than Henry I mean,
Henry Ford was a classic American hardcore anti semi of
which there were millions in Henry Ford's day. In fact,
I would suggest the majority of Americans were kind of
(20:24):
minimally anti Semitic in their in their language. They didn't
think anything of it. They didn't if you ask them
if they were anti Semitic, they'd say no, and they
would use Jew as a verb in the next sentence.
And you know, so, so there was that, and then
there's the virulent kind, which was what Henry Ford was
and Lindbergh and those people, and you know, other than that,
(20:45):
which is a pretty big. Other than that, you know,
Henry Ford was a pretty rational operator. He didn't think, oh,
let me buy some company so I can destroy it
and turn it turn its value into nothing, you know,
like Twitter. Right, he didn't do that. But really it's
(21:05):
prior to Musk. Henry Ford was our greatest shame as
an American rich guy. And now there's another one.
Speaker 1 (21:11):
Yeah, you know, Henry Ford is such a really important
historical parallel. And one of the things that I spend
a lot of time doing when I think about this
moment in American life, is trying to sort of connect
parallels to it. Elon Musk and Henry Ford. They're so
similar except for the irrationality right of Elon Musk, which
(21:32):
Henry Ford didn't necessarily have that kind of or at
least we didn't see it right. He wasn't public facing
the way Elon is. But there are so many precedents.
Trump is in himself unprecedented. But a Republican party that
cowers and refuses to stand up for what's right.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Is not no, not no. But this level of stupidity, yes,
is brand new, you know. I Mean the last time
we were stupid tariffs was one hundred years ago. I mean,
you know, really wildly stupid about tariffs. It was one
hundred years ago. But that's one hundred years ago in economics, okay,
and one hundred years ago in economics, most economics professors believed,
(22:13):
you know that Smoot Holly tariffs were a very very
bad idea. But it wasn't that clear to the world
or to our politics. You know. Then we did Smoot
Holly tariffs. They were a disaster, and both Smoot and
Holly were defeated in their reelection campaigns because it was
crazy and stupid. That's the kind of growing pain in
(22:35):
the learning of economics, which was a relatively new discipline
one hundred years ago, that you go, Okay, we're not
making that mistake again. What you are really stupid about
is making stupid mistakes again, you know, after we've shown
them to you. But Trump's you know, ignorance level is
brand new too. That is brand new. Like we've never
(22:56):
ever ever had anybody that ignorant, you know, anybody that stupid.
He does have the processor, Like if you gave him,
if he was less ignorant, he still wouldn't be able
to manage it in a you know, in a cognitive
way and come out with the right answer. But he
doesn't have either the information or the ability, you know,
to process, and so you're you're stuck with this level
(23:17):
of just rank stupidity that we've never seen before. And
it does, you know, very much, seem to be getting worse.
I mean, I'm a believer in the cognitive deterioration of
that guy over time. He's a stupid or crazier person
today and will be stupider and crazier tomorrow and next week.
Speaker 1 (23:36):
Yeah, and he's diminished too, I mean he has trouble
keeping the same schedule.
Speaker 3 (23:41):
Yeah, that's what I mean. Nobody's getting smarter in their
late seventy like nobody.
Speaker 1 (23:51):
As I had it into my late forties. Not late yet,
but I can attest.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
Oh no, you know, sorry, your past, your Nobel prize.
You know, when you see those Nobel prizes come out, invariably,
it's for work that the person did when they were
thirty two or twenty seven or so, and they're getting
it when they're fifty seven, because it takes that long
in chemistry or you know, some of these fields to
realize the importance of that work. It takes a couple
(24:17):
of decades usually in economics for people to say, oh,
that was a really really important discovery, because look, it's
proven true over two decades. And so so those Nobel
prizes for those gray haired people are almost always for
things they did decades earlier. You know, they're almost like
professional athletes. It's almost like, yeah, yeah, he was a
(24:38):
great pitcher when he was twenty seven, but not.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Will you leave us with something a little bit optimistic?
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Yeah, And the indicators if you actually look inside this
New York Times poll where they kind of throw up
their hands, you know, the indicators inside that are good
for the Harris campaign, and that's all. Well, you know,
that's all you can look for, is that? So I
think everybody should just go about their business on the
(25:08):
assumption that Kamala Harris will be present for the next
four years, and if next week there's some counter information
to that, you'll have plenty of time then to start
feeling bad about that.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
Thank you. Are you concerned about Project twenty twenty five
and how awful Trump's second term could be, Well, so
are we, which is why we teamed up with iHeart
to make a limited series with the experts on what
a disaster Project twenty twenty five would be for America's
future right now. We have just released the final episode
(25:42):
of this five episode series. They're all available by looking
up Molly John Fast Project twenty twenty five on YouTube,
and if you are more of a podcast person and
not say a YouTuber, you can hit play and put
your phone in the lock screen and it will play
back just like thet All five episodes are online now.
(26:03):
We need to educate Americans on what Trump's second term
would or could do to this country, so please watch
it and spread the word. Lawrence Lessig is a Harvard
professor and co author of How to Steal An Election.
Welcome to Fast Politics, Lawrence.
Speaker 4 (26:22):
Great to be here, Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
I think of you as someone who is not a
radical leftist, okay, if that's the understatement of the year.
And I'm hoping you could talk to us just about
where you are right now. You've written so much, You've
taught at so many important places, you have such an
important and meaningful academic career. Talk to us about where
(26:46):
you are right now and your kind of I feel
like you've had a little bit of a political movement too.
Speaker 4 (26:51):
Yeah, I mean, my thought is not unique. I think
we're at a catastrophic moment with our democracy, and we're
being a act on two fronts at once. One front
is the deeply unrepresentative system we have for democracy, polluted
most dramatically by the corrupting influence of money. So I've
(27:11):
been an activist in trying to figure out how to
flip that. I think we have a really exciting opportunity
in main this election to pass an initiative that's going
to tee up the opportunity for the Supreme Court to
say what they've never had a chance to say, which
is the First Amendment does not protect super PACs, that
super PACs are not actually part of our constitutional armada.
(27:32):
So that's, you know, I think we'll be progress on
that front. But the second front is just recognizing how
the business model of media is against the business model
of democracy, Like the media makes money when it turns
us into crazy people who hate each other, and when
the reality of that, I think begins to be clear.
I think what we have as a really important challenge
(27:54):
about how do we move democracy into a place where
it's not vulnerable to these corrupting systemic effects from the
way media works.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
Yeah, you know, we are having this conversation in the
backdrop of decision. I assume you and I are both
reacting to this devastating news today that the Washington Post,
known as a real beacon of democracy with a motto
that says democracy dies in darkness, has decided not to
endorse because their billionaire owner has decided it's not worth
(28:24):
a headache to piss off Donald Trump, which again Timothy
Schneider writes about, is this obeying in advance one of
the rules of if you're going to fight authoritarianism, you
never do stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Like this, right. Obviously, newspapers feel the pressure of the
current moment in a couple of important ways that the
market is won, but the political response from an authoritarian
regime is another that is quite terrifying. You know, I
think Post in the New York Times, you know, at
(28:57):
the time of the Pentagon papers, or the time that
stories around Nixon came out, like took a gamble to
assume that they could behave the way we want newspapers
to behave and that they wouldn't be punished for it.
And the reality was they weren't punished for it by
the administration in a way that was devastating, But I
get the fear. I just it's terrifying and depressing that
(29:20):
they seem to be responding to it so directly.
Speaker 1 (29:23):
Yeah, I mean, I feel like because my grandfother went
to jail refusing to name names in the house and
non American activities, Howard Fast and you know, was he
a great guy, not especially cheated on every wife he
ever had, and was you know, very selfish in a
lot of ways. But you know, at the end of
the day, he could not not stand up for what
was right. And I think all of us are a
(29:45):
little shaken by the idea that billionaires are such bad actors.
But should we be.
Speaker 4 (29:50):
No, we shouldn't be. I mean, you know, I think
that there's a psychological dimension to this in an obvious
economic dimention. So the psychological dimension is this weird you
know what Jared Linier refers to as kind of quitter poison,
like this weird phenomenon of like what happens when you
have these these technologies that give you this constant, adilating
a feedback from attention. And you know, people like Trump
(30:11):
and and Elon have also obviously become addicted to this
and it changes them that's Lanier's point, like changes them
into much worse people than they were before this has happened.
So so that's that's one part of it. But the
other is just you know, they recognize that there's an
opportunity for enormous power when you've got a particularly authoritarian
(30:32):
character like Trump. You know they wouldn't you know, It's
not like you pick, like should I pick Harris or
should I pick Trump? And the return to the billionaire
would be the same, because obviously Harris's administration is going
to be one much more constrained by traditional rules of
law and like the necessity of behaving appropriately. I'm his
is going to be like crazy crazy town, and you know,
(30:55):
I'm terrified about what it will actually mean to have
Elon Musk in the government, not to mention Rfk Junior
in the government with this guy at the top. Now,
the other you know possibility is it could be that
these billionaires, you know, Peter Teel, he's an extremely intelligent
strategic player, is actually kind of counting on Trump burning
out pretty quickly, Like the twenty fifth Amendment could be
(31:16):
invoked on day one. Then we have Jady Vance for
twelve years as president because he fills out Trump's term,
and then he gets to be elected twice. I mean,
that's a genius play if what you're trying to do
is the power of just a couple powerful people.
Speaker 1 (31:30):
There are a number of things I would say to
address this, but you're someone who's who's done a lot
of work in like sort of the norms that constrain.
When Trump picked Jadaman's I thought to myself, Jadavans is
going to twenty fifth amendment him right away. But I
now have a new theory, which hopefully won't have to happen.
But I think there's a scenario where the one piece
of good news about Donald Trump is that Donald Trump
(31:52):
is not easy to manipulate. Well, he's easy to manipulate,
but he's not easy. He won't necessarily do what you want.
And I've seen this historically, right Like, there are so
many members of that cabinet who thought that this guy
isn't so smart, and we'll just get him to do this,
this and this. But you know, he's got a sort
of chaos theory around him. For whatever reason, he's not loyal,
(32:14):
And so I could see a world where they try
to twenty fifth amendment him and he tries to destroy
all of them.
Speaker 4 (32:20):
You know, the dynamic of the twenty fifth Amendment is
they would say he needs to step aside, he says no,
I'm fine. Then that goes to Congress, and Congress needs
to vote. And if two thirds say he's got to go,
he's got to go. Now, what are the Democrats going
to do? Like, if you have a chance to get
rid of Donald Trump, even though none of us would
like Jady Vance, would you rather Jadi Vance? Jady Vance
is not like he's not I mean.
Speaker 1 (32:43):
He's not a chaos actor, but he's a bad guy.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
Is it bad? Yeah? And he's connected obviously to money
in a way that's really troubling. But the point is,
like I would think today that Democrats would say, yeah,
but all of this is premised on this decline that
we're seeing continuing to a point where any fair person
could look at him and say, look, you have come
to a stage of your dementia that no longer is
it's appropriate for you to be president. I think that's happening.
(33:08):
I don't think you could have planned on that happening,
but I think that's certainly happening. And if it happens,
then the Democrats are like, yeah, you've got to go.
And then who would be fearful of him? He can't
run for anything again. I mean, you know, then Republicans,
all those Republicans who just hate to live in his
shadow and live under his control would have a chance
to for you know, independent fair reasons. Hey, he's got
to go. And then is jd Vance?
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Yeah, I mean there are so many really terrible possible scenarios.
I'm wondering if there are so many. But let's talk
about this book he wrote about how to Steal an Election,
written before Trump was the nominee, and sort of walk
us through what's happening right now.
Speaker 4 (33:48):
Well, I think the scariest so we went through nine scenarios.
We had six that were possible I think for our
live to keep me awake. But the one I'll focus
on because it's just a total unforced error, is the
one related to so called fake electors. You know, so
after twenty twenty, you know, four states, Georgia and Wisconsin,
(34:09):
in Michigan and Arizona prosecuted the so called fake electors
and created this standard that basically said there was completely
wrong for those fake electors to meet and cast their ballots. Well,
I think Fates has a sense of irony, and I'm
fearful that we're going to be in a position in
this election where Harris needs some fake electors because like,
let's take a scenario, imagine Georgia, Harris is slightly ahead.
(34:32):
Then a judge rules it a whole bunch of ballots
have to be thrown out because the absentee ballots, whatever
bullshit they say. Then the law, the new Electoral count
Reform Act, forces the governor to certify six days before
the electors are supposed to vote. So Camp has to certify,
and he certifies who's ever ahead at that moment, and
so that happens to be Trump. And so then the
first question is what do the Harris electors do? Do
(34:54):
they show up and vote and be called fake electors
because you know, Georgia has prosecuted the fake electors who
showed up under Trump, they're not certified. If they don't vote,
then the appeal of the ballots that were thrown out stops.
It becomes moot at that one. And so if they
do vote, then the law doesn't have any provision assuming
that you know they're successful and the appeal concludes that
(35:17):
the ballots should be counted and so therefore Harris is
the winner. Then there's no provision in the law for
recertifying the winner of the election in Georgia, so that
the result of this is that you would have Trump
certified even though the votes came out for Harris, And
then you've got to count on Congress doing the right thing,
which you know, is not something one would count on
(35:38):
in a context of a very close election where everybody's
accusing everybody of what kind of fraud? I think this
is the one that I'm most fearful of, and it's
completely unforced error because like in prosecuting the fake electors,
I think people were more focused on how do we
punish the Trump electors than how do we, you know,
create a safe process for picking the next president. And secondly, Congress,
(36:02):
in amending the Electoral count Reform Act, increase the pressure
by shortening the period where people got to adjudicate these
questions and thereby created and incentive to kind of slow
it down or to throw it from one side to
the other side and exploit this kind of problem of certification.
So this dynamic, I think is the one that if
(36:23):
we're very close. We need to be prepared to respond
to and they're very few people that can respond to it.
I mean, you know, all the Democrats have said it's
totally appropriate to have been prosecuting these electors. I think
I'm the only one. I've written four expert reports or
three expert reports, and these various litigations about why it
was wrong to be prosecuting these electors. So you know,
(36:44):
I think I'm the only one who's taken this position.
But you know, that's a pretty weak foundation to build
a resistance to the obvious move people are going to make,
which is you're not allowed to vote hiros electors. You
have to stay home, right.
Speaker 1 (36:57):
No, I mean that is a really terrifying scenario that
I hadn't even thought of. I appreciate you for bringing
up something so incredibly crazy but also very possible. I mean,
we are really through the rabbit hole here with the
idea that the fake electors could be the real electors.
Is something I had not thought about, but is really
(37:19):
quite scary. Some of the poort cases, you know, Republicans
have done a ton of cases. A lot of them
have actually been settled for the good. Right, can you
talk us through that.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah, I mean they've been settled for the good, but
they're causing their intended harm. Like the point of these
cases is to begin to create the chaos environment, Like,
you know, they want to be able to say, look,
we've had to fight forty five cases or one hundred
and fifty five cases to address all the problems in
this election, and they're just getting going. Like the difference
between this election and twenty twenty is that the infrastructure
(37:53):
of litigation on the Republican side is much more advanced
and much smarter. And that's terrifying because you know, Matt Seligman,
my co author on that book and I in twenty
twenty taught a course called Wargaming twenty twenty where the
students like played through every single game they could play
to flip the election. Of course we didn't imagine the
(38:14):
Storm the Capitol on January sixth play, which you know
was literally the dumbest play they could have played. But
the point is they were so inept on all the
other plays through the course of like the election in
twenty twenty. They're not going to be inept this time.
I think they're very strategic, and I think we've got
to be. You know, I'm actually worried that our side
is a little bit insufficiently strategic in recognizing exactly the
(38:38):
kind of move they're going to make.
Speaker 1 (38:39):
Yeah, that's really scary and for sure. I mean, the
reality is, we have one party that no longer believes
in American democracy, right, And I don't know how long
you can go on like this in a country it's
a two party system. One party wants democracy, the other
is really And if you ask these Trump supporters the
(39:00):
East will say they want to toocracy, they want that.
How did this happen so quickly? And also it feels
like we're in a death spiral. Make me feel better, please, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:13):
No, I can't do that. I'm not going to do that.
I mean, you know, the reality is, I think there's
a great statistic that Pugh has been collecting since nineteen
ninety seven, asking Americans whether they're confident in Americans political judgment.
So in nineteen ninety seven, two thirds of Americans said yes,
we're confident in Americans political judgment, and today two thirds
(39:33):
say they're not. And this is not a surprising change
because in the period since nineteen ninety seven until today,
we've grown a media that constantly shows us the crazies
on the other side, like we are convinced, we are saying,
and there are just crazies on this other side, and
it's vice versa the same. So the very premise for
democracy that we kind of believe in our our capacity,
(39:56):
whether we're entitled to or not, our capacity to like
government is being eroded by as a byproduct of a
business model to sell fricking ads. Like the idea that
we're throwing away democracy because where you know, these companies
are trying to maximize ad revenue is astonishing to me.
But that, I think is really what's happening here.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
But the media. And I don't want to defend the
media because as a member of it, we're such a disaster,
but it does seem to me like the media is
almost a meaningless rounding era at this point. And technology
is really.
Speaker 4 (40:31):
Yeah, we're just using different words. By media, I mean
the infrastructure of information feeding systems that we've got, so
the Internet and cable and broadcasting these and newspapers and
like podcasts whatever. This is all there. But the point
is at the center now is a business model of
engagement and the byproduct of the business model of engagement
(40:55):
is the weakening of democracy, because the most engaging content
is the content that convinces us that the other side's
crazy and that we are saying, well, that dynamic is poisonous,
just like you know, processed food, ultra processed food is poisonous.
It's profitable but poisonous. And this is profitable but poisonous,
and we don't have a simple way to imagine changing
(41:16):
that dynamic.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
But the way we got here, and this is my
own passion project, so maybe I'm wrong, but the way
we got here is that the government refused to regulate anything.
Speaker 4 (41:26):
Well, it's true the government doesn't regulate anything, but in fact,
I don't think the government under our First Amendment would
be able to regulate anything. The old fairness doctrine was
premised on the idea that you were using public airways
and as a quid pro quo for using public airways,
you had to provide meaningful public information service.
Speaker 1 (41:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah, And that argument that was defended in a case
called Red Lion was pretty shaky as it was nineteen
sixty nine, it was not clear it really made sense.
But the point is, once they started building their own infrastructure,
cable and fiber. Then the premise of the government's power
is taken away. Like in the old days, yes, it's
a common resource you're using, so quid pro quo, give
(42:08):
us good service. But today they'd say, screw your common resource.
Like we build these wires, like it's our wires. We
get to put across ours whatever we want. So it's
like we're allowed to publish in the New York Times
paper whatever we want, right, And the point is, I
think the Supreme Court would agree with them. So the
idea that we can just imagine a new FCC with
a new newt minnow who's going to stand up and
(42:29):
like force media to behave I just think is a fantasy.
It's not possible under our constitution Right now. We've got
to think of other strategies to get us to a
place where people love or respect or even entertain the
idea that democracy could work.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Right, And what is that? Yeah, I'm sorry, it's like
the meanest question. Can you answer all of our problems? Now?
In the last three minutes.
Speaker 4 (42:55):
I've become a real fan of the citizen assembly movements
that you see these sparking, you know, pretty important changes
in Ireland and in France and in some parts of
the United States. But you know, that's we're just at
such the early early beginning of that that you know,
I don't think there's any solution in the next ten years.
I think there's lots to do in the next ten years,
(43:17):
but we're not going to get to a place that
feels like it felt when we felt maybe democracy was
broken in manageable ways. Now it just feels broken in
unmanageable ways. And I don't know how we're going to
deal with this now. Obviously, this election is critical because
like if we if we get this election wrong, then
it spins into a kind of insanely crazy way. So
(43:40):
if we get this one right, I think, you know,
we can buy more time, but it's not going to
be pretty. This next election or the next election after
that is just going to be as corrupted by both
the money on the one side and the structure of
media on the other.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
Do you think that the Supreme Court sees how bad
it says?
Speaker 4 (44:00):
I think Roberts is like the only conservative who certainly
sees how bad this is. Maybe Amy Coney Barrett. I
don't know her, but you know, I think you've got
people like Alito, whose view is screw it, I'm going
to get We're going to get whatever we can get,
and our white Christian nationalism is going to be advanced
in an aggressive and self conscious way. And as long
(44:21):
as we have five votes, I mean probably have six votes,
but as long as we have five votes, that's all
we need.
Speaker 1 (44:26):
Is this the last bast of Christian nationalism? Is this
this sort of death now of white supremacist stuff? Are
they seeing in a country that they can no longer
control and have their claw marks in it? Or am
I being overly optimistic?
Speaker 4 (44:43):
Well? I do think that this is the election to
win that fight, because you know, the next eight years
will shift enough that it will not make sense to
be white supremacist anymore. It's not to say that the
conservative movement, you know, is dead, I mean, because you
know Latino's are I think our natural conservative. They're going
to move to the conservative movement, and they would move
(45:03):
quickly if they would just give up their racism, Like,
so give up the racism, then you can begin to
attract a bunch of naturally conservative people. And you know,
quite frankly, I'm a liberal, but I would love a
politics where we had a healthy conservative like think about
the old days where what we were trying, we were
finding about whether John McCain should be president or not.
For God's sake, Imagine how wonderful it would be if
(45:24):
the choice was Barack Obama or John McCain, or Mitt Romney.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Or Barack Obama every day.
Speaker 4 (45:31):
Yeah, I mean you can. It's not so hard to
imagine getting to a place like that. But it requires
a radical remake of the Republican Party, and I think
ejecting the racism is going to be the first step.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us.
Speaker 4 (45:45):
Yeah, glad to be here. Thanks for having me, no moment.
Speaker 1 (45:54):
Jesse Cannon Smay.
Speaker 2 (45:55):
One of the things that I think shook a lot
of Democrats about Petslvidia was that Republicans at these insaley
high voter registration numbers in Pennsylvania. Well, it turns out
there might be a reason why. What do you see
it here?
Speaker 1 (46:09):
Pennsylvania officials are investigating fraudulent voter registration applications in Lancaster County.
Election workers identified issues with as many as twenty five
hundred forms during a routine review. You're going to be
shocked to know in Lancaster County and guess who's involved.
You're going to be shocked.
Speaker 2 (46:28):
Would it be someone who's a little too online.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
It would be Scott Presler. You'll remember Scott Presler. He's
a conservative activist with long hair who's an actor and
his group Early Vote Actions seek to register Republicans in
swing states like Pennsylvania. And he says that it has
nothing to do with him, but we don't think so,
(46:55):
so we'll see what happens. But not very surprising. He
brought his two voter registration message to Lancaster County and
it's reviewing twenty five hundred voter registration applications for possible fraud.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
Great stuff.
Speaker 1 (47:11):
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
minds and politics make 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
Popular Podcasts
40s and Free Agents: NFL Draft Season
Daniel Jeremiah of Move the Sticks and Gregg Rosenthal of NFL Daily join forces to break down every team's needs this offseason.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Bobby Bones Show
Listen to 'The Bobby Bones Show' by downloading the daily full replay.