July 8, 2024 • 53 mins
The Lincoln Project’s Rick Wilson discusses the stakes of the 2024 election and why Trump’s denouncement of Project 2025 is unfounded. National Memo editor Joe Conason details his new book, The Longest Con: How Grifters, Swindlers, and Frauds Hijacked American Conservatism. NextGen America’s Cristina Tzintzún Ramirez examines how to motivate young people to vote.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And Judge Aileen Canon has shockingly shown deferential treatment to
Trump and paused some deadlines in the classified documents case.
We're back from vacation to have such a great show
for you today. National Memo editor Joe Connison stops by
to tell us about his new book, The Longest Con
How grifters, Swindler's and fraud's hijacked American Conservatism. Then we'll
talk to Next Jet America's Christina Sinsoon Ramirez, who will
(00:32):
tell us how to get young people out to vote.
But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
the Linked Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome back. Two weeks of vacation for me, and now
we are back with my bestie. We did actually talk
while we were on vacation, not together the Rick Wilson
Hello friend, Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
My dear, how are you doing on this fine, fine,
fine fine summer day.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So I just want to quickly say that the reason
that I ended up having to take a little more
time off was because I ended up having to have surgery.
It was totally fine. I don't have cancer. It was
just a surgery that I had to have. But I
ended up having to take an extra week off because
as much as I told the doctors that I was
good to podcast, they suggested that perhaps I should just
(01:22):
slow my role.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You know, it was a guy who went through a
minor but highly inconvenient surgery earlier this year. I feel
your pain. I really do. It's it's just like you
want to be back in it like the next day,
and they're like, why don't you take one day off?
Why don't you take off one day off? Son of
a bitch.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I had surgery on Monday, and I was like, so,
I'm thinking i'll be back by Wednesday, and they were like,
you know, like yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Why don't we go ahead and review that situation, young lady.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, it's been very quiet. No news people are going
to be listening this Monday morning. But I think first
thing we should be talking about is this huge victory
in France. Fash is a got punched in the face
yet again, Mollie.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Here's the thing that I find the most interesting about
those results. I just spoke to an overseas reporter about
an hour ago and she said, well, it was expected
in England that the Conservatives would be blown out, but
it wasn't expected in France. And I said, one of
the great tricks of the global right is to convince
people that their weak bad hand is a royal flush
(02:24):
and that they're always winning, they're always ahead, and always
they're always in control of the situation, and they're really not.
And so what we saw in France was I think
very telling that Macron was able to manage his own
internal dynamics in his party get people who were not
unified to understand that the threat they were facing required
(02:45):
them all to come together. And I don't know, maybe
that's a lesson that could be applied in other nations.
I'm struggling to think of one at the moment, but
it did sort of wrap. It did inspire me a
bit that the good guy side of the equations and
arguments doesn't have to suck.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yes, And I think that also. One of the things
about France is that the polls were again overstated. The
fascists understated the normals, and we saw that in the
UK too, like these sure, you know, they're trying to
make up for the surprise of Brexit or the surprise
of Trump by sort of juicing the numbers to be
more pro Trump or pro Brexit. I think an important
(03:25):
lesson here.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The idea that the minority is the majority is central
to an awful lot of authoritarian movements and fascist movements
and right wing politics globally, and has been so for
a long time. And you did see that. You saw
that they try to celebrify most of their people. Now.
So in France, it wasn't cranky old right winger daughter
(03:48):
of cranky old right winger Marine Lapin. It was young
sexy Jordan Bardilla. Look at it's so beautiful. I mean,
some of these people who are playing this game of
our people are always twelve feet tall, covered in solid gold, heroic, brilliant,
perfect geniuses, and the left are incompetent blah blah blah.
(04:11):
Well so in two races now in Europe and two
of the largest Western democracies, we have seen that again.
When confronted with an existential threat, the left sometimes says, oh,
wait a minute, we can settle our family business a
little later. Let's go kill bad guys first.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, and by kill, we don't mean kill, we mean win.
At the ballad box because I don't want anyone cutting.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Well, ye call me crazy, but Mark Robinson down in
North Carolina, it's like I want to count bodies and
stuck them up and then eat them. Now I'm skipping
eat in city, eat them partner.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Let's not take our cues from Mark Robinson. No, cannibalism
is strictly an RFPA junior thing.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Go on, I have tasted the long pig Molly, and
I will never be the same. Why do you think
I'm opposed to all this anti vaccent Jesus exact right.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
He doesn't want to eat and continue. Yes, I hate
to be the grown up here, but it really does
feel like there is a real salient and important point
that you're making here, Rick Wilson, which is that the
bad guys puff themselves up and make it so the
good guys think they're gonna lose.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
If I'm going to use a southernism, they're a lot
like a nose a hognose snake in Florida. Hognose snake's
perfectly harmless, all right, but when the hognose is threatened,
it puffs its face up and looks like a rattlesnake.
So They're always trying to make themselves puff up and
look like a rattlesnake. They're always trying to make you afraid.
They're always trying to make you feel like, oh my god,
these guys have got so many advantages, and they do
(05:42):
represent the majority of the and they never do. Trump
Ism is a failed ideology with the general public. If
we didn't have the electoral college system another subject for
another day, in this country, trumpism would be utterly irrelevant.
It's about like flat Earth is in terms of hard numbers.
But because we have the situation we have with our
(06:04):
electoral college system, trump ism is viable enough to be
viable in enough places to roll up the numbers. But again,
what you're seeing is they're like a hog nosed snake.
They're trying to pretend that they're stronger than they are,
and a lot of people, a lot of our friends
on the left, buy into that illusion. And I spend
(06:26):
a lot of my day, and I know you spend
a lot of your day walking them back from the
cliffs saying no, no, Donald Trump cannot get four fat
thosand three hundred and ninety two electoral college votes. There
aren't that many.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
But they said, there were, and I'm afraid we don't
know how to.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Do you know what? You all know how to do this?
They look, guys, it is even about left and right.
This is about going out and treating races as they
should be treated. Work with the things that work for
you and your campaign, do the things you have to
do to win over the middle. The edge cases on
either side are never as strong as you think. And
that was the secret sauce in the UK this week, right.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
But I also think, and again you've said this to
me before, actually I have two things I want to
talk about. First is the thing you always say to
me that has been drilled into my brain now, which
is elections are a referendum on the incumbent. If you
make this a referendum on Donald J. Trump, you win.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
That is correct, and that is what this election can
and must be. There is no alternative. You have to
make it about Trump. If it's about Joe Biden or
any Democrat. Frankly, our chances of winning are a lot lower.
If this election is a choice about Donald Trump or America,
America is going to win. But without that choice on
(07:41):
the table, it is not as easy for voters to
go into the voting with and say, Okay, I know
what this is. It's not how many parts per billion
of carbon are going to be the atmosphere, or or
is it six weeks, twelve weeks or thirty weeks for
an abortion. It's none of the policy stuff. It's all
about the fundamental. Do you want a country that looks
(08:01):
like Donald Trump in the future? Do you want to
see a country where he keeps his campaign promises? And
if you think that country is a country you want
to live in, well I can't help you. I can't
change your mind about that, but I can make the
argument over and over again that trump Ism is disconnected
from two thirds of the population. A lot of the
things he wants to do if he's elected president again are.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Deeply, profoundly unpopular.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Exactly right, Molly, exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I'm working on a piece for my Vanity Fair column
about this project twenty twenty five, and you know I've
written about it. Jesse and I did a YouTube series
about it which is going to drop soon, and so
we've spent a lot of time talking about it in interviewing
people about it. And one of the things that is
so interesting about it, besides the fact that it invokes
the Comstock Act to prevent the mailing of abortion pills.
(08:52):
It defines marriage as biblical whatever is defined in the Bible.
I mean, it's very Christian nationalists, and it wants to
regulate IVF. And what I think is so interesting about
Project twenty from five? And you tell me if you
think I'm wrong. A lot of times Trump, when something
comes up that's bad, he'll say, damn right, I did it. Yeah,
I did it, Yeah, I do it again, you know.
(09:14):
And on this he's like, I have nothing to do
with this. I don't even know what this is.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So I wrote a piece over the weekend called Trump's
Project twenty twenty five lies. The media is not seeing
the forest for the lies. Right. My opening line is,
when Donald Trump denies something, you should always take it
as a full confession of his absolute guilt. Right. I
didn't sleep with Stormy Daniels porn star. No I didn't.
That means he did sleep with Stormy Daniels the porn star,
(09:40):
maybe for only forty five seconds or so, but he did, right.
And this thing with Project twenty twenty five. And I
have to say our old alumni website, The Daily Beast
had a piece that actually got to the guts of it.
Trump ripped for denying Project twenty twenty five connections despite
the evidence. So I went and I wrote down just
(10:02):
like a half a dozen of people that I could
pull up from memory that I know we're involved in
Project twenty twenty five because this thing is and Trump's
people I heard about this on Friday. Trump's people were
bragging to reporters and bragging to political activists on Friday. Yeah,
we got the media to write the headline we wanted.
We got his headline in this Trump denies connection to
(10:24):
Project twenty twenty five, right, And most of the stories
might have gotten to it, like on paragraph nine, but
most of those stories are page A, eight, A, fifteen whatever.
The New York Times. The New York Times, as of
the time we're recording this, has yet to do a
story about the fact that Donald Trump is denying Project
twenty twenty five. But they have posted today twelve separate
(10:48):
stories about unnamed junior aides to Joe Biden who say
he's senile and must and must go right right.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean, that's the.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Problem, you know what, guys. I try not to do
media bashing I really do, because we are part of
that universe. I try not to. But the frenzy in
Washington right now, and folks, they are talking to fucking
interns at this point about what's going on. This has
become a game where junior staffers are like, I'm going
to make my bones now with whoever, whether it's you know,
(11:17):
Maggie or Jonathan or or or Peter Baker or who
they're all everyone there is leaking like a sieve. So
they seem like the cool kid. So they seem like
they're like, ah, yes, I'm the cynical and I'm twenty six,
but I'm cynical, so you should hear me out. I
mean the idea that the coverage ratio to on on
Trump and one of the most consequential and dangerous public
(11:39):
policy efforts in our history, versus a Washington parlor game
right about should he go? Should he still? Should day?
Should he go? And unfortunately for America, the idea that
the coverage is going to generate more clicks and more
TV and be in the in the hamster wheel, the
conveyor belt of the story, and it will somehow in
(12:00):
a certain way. I think it's wrong, but I do
think what it is is it's a common error on
the media. It's part a common error on the part
of a lot, a lot of all, a lot of Democrats,
a common error on the part of folks on the
left to believe that you can ever take a minute
off of the attack on Donald Trump. He's now had
a solid week where he's basically gotten to play golf.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, he does love golf.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It's unforgivable.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
One of the things that I'm struck by in my own,
you know world, is just that it doesn't a decision
that's this enormous does not need to be made in
four days. You know, I'm in correct. I was on
television with this. He's actually a young staffer who works
who worked for two people, but his bona fides were
not great, and he was saying, you know, he's got
(12:48):
to drop out. We need him out yesterday. And it's
just that is not the way to deal with a
big decision like that. And I certainly always feel that
if it's urgent, it's probably the wrong decision.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Almost always, if I may quote the nineteen ninety five
documentary Gets Shorty, there's a scene where a guy says,
excuse me, bro, but who the fuck are you? I
get a lot of excuse me, bro, but who the
fuck are you right now from a lot of people
on both sides of the equation who have not been
in national campaigns, who have not been operatives in big
(13:21):
picture campaigns, who are in either policy jobs or administrative
jobs inside the administration or inside the sort of DC ecosystem,
and a lot of people who I think watched a
little too much West Wing or watched a little too
much House of Cards, and they think things work a
certain way, and you can magically just say that we're
(13:43):
going to do this trick where everyone will agree that
it's the right trick to do, and everyone will understand
why we're doing it, and it will work out perfectly, and
know one will leak it, fuck it up, make a mistake,
do something illegal, do something stupid, do something politically fatal.
All those things are actually the more likely outcome of
these things.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I actually wrote to Margaret Sullivan about this, and she said,
creating the news is not the job of good journalism,
which is to cover reality and the truth perfectly put right,
Creating the news is not the job of good journalism,
which is to cover the reality and the truth, and
I think that that is you know, we're trying. I mean,
you and I are on the opinion side, so it's
(14:21):
a bit different. But like you know, we are trying
as best we can to reflect what we see happening
and not in fact, to create what we think should happen.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, and I've said this from the beginning. I know
for a fact what my job and role and mission is.
It is to beat the fuck out of Donald Trump.
It is to beat him and defeat him. My mission
is not to determine how the democratic internal dynamics work out,
because you know what, if it's Joe Biden, or if
it's Kamala Harris, or if it's any Rando pulled off
the fucking street, you know we're still going to have
(14:53):
to do as people in the pro democracy movement, it's
to go after Donald Trump every day. You can't give
him a day. There's only less than one hundred and
twenty days left to go in this race. You can't
give him a day off. And we've given him now
a week because of a very self indulgent culture in
Washington politics and the media. And this isn't all Joe Biden.
(15:15):
With this Shakespearean drama of Joe Biden. It's a lot
of it, and let's be really, really, really really honest
with ourselves. Is the desire of many, many people for novelty,
change and spectacle.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, and I also think the media wants to stay relevant,
and we've not had the best time of it latelight.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
No, I think that's true, and I think there I
think there are people at a certain major institution who've
taken their vendetta because they didn't get a private interview
with Joe Biden to a level that is now so obvious.
When I see a lot of magas retweeting stories from
that outlet, I wonder if anybody's figuring it out over there, like, oh, well, yes,
(15:58):
you know, when you write something for gourmet magazine, you
don't want it retweeted by Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay, this is
not where you want to be in the ecosystem. It's like,
it's not the good housekeeping seal of approval of your journalism.
When it's become a part of Trump World's ongoing propaganda efforts.
(16:18):
It is remarkable to me. And again, that source that
got the story back to me said, yeah, you know
what it was Chris Losovita and Tony Fabrizio and Susie
who went out and they polled Project twenty twenty five.
And that's why Trump dropped it. And that's why Trump
made the Platform Committee take out the abortion ban and
the RNC Platform Committee. And by the way, fun fact, MO,
(16:39):
I don't know if you know this, but Russ Vaught.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yes, Russ Vaught, I'm writing about him today.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, it's the craziest coincidence of all. But after he
finished writing Project twenty twenty five, he became the head
of the Republican Party's Platform Committee.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Sure, just what's a total coincidence? It's a complete coincidence,
all right, Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Imagine meeting you here. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Mollie Spring is here, and I bet you are trying
to look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable
all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news
store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
(17:25):
and top bags. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Joe Connison is the editor of the National Memo and
author of the Longest con How Gripters, Swindlers and Frauds
hijacked American conservatism.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Joe.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
It's great to be with you, Mollie.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
The Longest Con is the story of how explain to
us what it is? Because I think I know, but
I want you to explain it to our listener.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
So the Longest Con is an idea that actually my
wife Elizabeth had after reading an article by historian Rick Pearlstein.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I'm sure you know Rick, Yes, who's a guest of
the Pod.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Brilliant guy who wrote an article for a little magazine
called The Baffler in twenty twelve called The Long Con.
And on the surface, it was kind of an examination
of the Romney campaign, which was full of dishonest garbage.
I mean, He's Romney has changed his image quite a
bit since then, but back in that campaign it was
pretty bad. Anyway, Rick, in that article sort of digressed
(18:28):
into the huge panoply of scams and cons and just
phony campaigns that he fell into because he had subscribed
to a bunch of conservative publications and so these were
get rich quick schemes and miracle cures for cancer and
(18:48):
buy gold at an inflated price, all of these things.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
So the things that Alex Jones sells.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
Yes, right him of the big supplements, all of that
stuff that represents millions of dollars in profits to the right.
I looked at that and she said, you know what,
there's a lot more to this, and she was right.
So I spent a few years writing a book about
that con and I of course give tribute to Rick
in the introduction. But what Rick observed back then, which
(19:15):
I think is really true, is that it's no longer possible,
and it hasn't been for a long time, to separate
the con the grift, from the conservative message and the
conservative movement at this point. And this is the reason
that it appealed to me so much as a book project,
is that it really explains a lot about how we
have Trump at the head of all of it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Now.
Speaker 6 (19:37):
Trump is the grifter, our excellence. He's the king of
the convent. That is why he is so acceptable to
them leading a movement. You know, back when he first
ran for president in twenty fifteen, when he was running
National Review did a series of expose as about Trump University,
which is an enormous scam. He was forced to cough
(19:59):
up a lot of money to pay people back.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Because he had ripped them off so badly.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Now the National Review now thinks it's fine to have
this scrift as president. And why well, they feel they
have no choice whatever it is. But in fact their
whole movement is infected with us, and once in a
while you'll see them reflect on that in conservative magazines
or blog posts, substacks all of that. There are a
few of them, Eric Erickson, you know, I'm sure your
(20:25):
listeners have heard of Jim Garritty at National mL bemoan.
The fact that there are so many conservatives ripping off
other conservatives, usually old people who can be duped if
they're say things. I mean, the whole thing is so appalling. Anyway,
I decided to go back and try to figure out
how this all began, How the sort of moral fiber
(20:48):
of conservatism began to disappear, Because in olden times, molly
Conservatism was a movement of moral probity, you know, or
at least it was supposed to be. It was supposed
to believe and civic virtue and morality. And when you
look at the scams and cons that they're pulling now constantly,
you know that's all gone. So how did that happen?
(21:10):
Like when did that happen? When did that begin? And
how did it develop? And so I go through a
lot of that, and you know, as a kind of
conceit really I start the book with Roy Cohne, who was,
as you know, Trump's mentor and lawyer and role model.
And the first chapter is called the role Model and
it's about Roy Cohen, and it tells a lot about Roy,
(21:32):
who I knew personally a bit.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Oh you did, what did you think of Roy Cohen?
Speaker 5 (21:36):
He was a very bad man.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
No, I know what Roy Cohen? I mean, the Jongs
have hated Roy Cohen, and the fast have hated ronco
Generations like John pat Hornz. This is a generational Yes,
my family as well. But how did you know him?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
So?
Speaker 6 (21:55):
I was years ago a reporter at the Village Voice,
and at that time Roy was quite powerful in New
York politics. He controlled a wing of the Democratic Party,
a small wing, but a wing of the Democratic Party
in New York City, specifically Manhattan, and he used it
to gain influence from judges and from city hall and elsewhere.
(22:17):
His dad had been a judge in the Bronx and
a Democratic power broker back in the days of FDR
so Roy had sort of inherited some connections and power,
and he sort of leveraged both parties to his advantage
by then, and he found ways to suck money out
of the system that were just enormous scams. But I
dated even back to when he was working for Senator McCarthy,
(22:41):
and he and a man named David Shine, who he
put on the staff of McCarthy's Red Hunting Committee, took
a junket to Europe, supposedly to find subversive books in
United States Information Service libraries, but really it was just
a junket for these two young men to romp around
Europe together in fancy hotels. A grift, a scam, And
(23:02):
so I begin the book with that because I think
it's not just a funny story, but it tells something
about the beginnings of a decline in morality and probity
and integrity and the right.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
I've read a bunch of books that have made different
cases about how the right God here and your thesis
is basically the right God here through scams.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
Well, I mean it's not just scams, it's how can
you work a scam? And one of the ways that
they learned to work the scam was through exciting people's hatred.
So that probably fits into some of the other theories
about the development of the right that you've been reading
about that they discovered, as Roger Stone said, that hate
is as a more powerful motivator than love in politics.
(23:47):
That's what they really believe that, and there's some evidence
that it's true, at least for some people. And if
you can prey on people's hate and paranoia, you can
often dupe them into sending you money. And this is
what was discovered way back when by a man named
Richard Vigeri, who was the king of direct mail back
in the pre internet era. He was a young fundraiser
(24:10):
for right wing causes, and he realized that after the
Goldwater campaign, there was now a list.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
There was a.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
List of millions of people who had donated money to
the Goldwater campaign, and this list was in the hands
of the Clerk of the House, that's how things worked
in those days. This was in nineteen sixty four sixty five,
and he sent some women, of course, to go into
the capitol and copy down the names from that list,
and then they put them on magnetic tape and suddenly, bingo,
(24:37):
you had a list of people who were very right wing,
who believed all kinds of crazy stuff that you could
tell him, and who were I mean, Goldwater only won
the states of the Confederacy, right. A few states that
he where he prevailed were Confederate states. So there was
always a racial element to this. And by preying on
people's paranoia and their fear of communism, their fear of minorities,
(25:02):
their fear of all kinds of things, you could get
them to send money if you knew how to write
a direct mail piece that would excite their fears and
they're and their hatreds. Then the next level of the
scam is that you solicit money from people and then
you spend very little of the money on the cause
or campaign that you're telling them that they're collecting it for,
(25:24):
and most of it goes to in Vigori's case, you know,
prospecting for new suckers. In other cases it goes to
quote unquote overhead. But this is the this is the
root of the scam, and then it branches out into
many different forms.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
So give us some of those forms.
Speaker 6 (25:41):
Well, so some of the forms are Jerry Folwell was
a good example. This is how you know you saw
the beginning of the whole Fallwell Empire and Liberty University.
He got a hold of an email list of evangelical
ministers by telling the guy who had the list and
an old minister who didn't really believe that politics and
religion belong together, that he was going to use it
(26:03):
to create some sort of the Notre Dame of evangelical life,
and what he was really going to do with it
was start them moral majority and do an email prospect
because he believed this was a way to make a
lot of money. They've done this in many different ways.
There are all kinds of things that they sell to
people now, especially on the internet, but they know they
sell them over priced gold because they convince people that
(26:26):
we're about to go into a depression and it doesn't
matter what's really happening in the economy if you capture
people's attention. Hannity has done this a lot. I mean
a lot of Fox personalities have gotten involved in this.
Or you sell them penny stocks because you believe you
can make them believe that this is the next big thing,
and you believe them because you share their ideology, so
(26:47):
you tend to believe what they tell you. And they're
on TV or they're on the radio or both, and
you know you trust them because they're conservatives. Is a
merciless things and they've fleeced a lot of people money. Trump,
of course, is the is you know, the ultimate version
of this but far from the original.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes, but he's the culmination of it.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It is.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Can you explain to us, as someone who worked at
the Village Boys around the time Trump was learning all
these things from Roy Cohen, if you could sort of
sum up what you think. I mean, I hate to
even ask this question because I'm so bored with Trump,
but since he could theoretically be our next president, I
feel like we have to talk about him. I mean,
can you explain to us what you think this sort
(27:31):
of ethos is because you.
Speaker 6 (27:32):
Knew him, then it's the anti ethos. I mean, Roy
was a person who not only found ways corrupt ways
to steal money from the city treasury, you know, even
been like really petty stuff like cash from the parking
violations bureau. That he had the sort of mafia types
funneling thim. You know, he was a mob lawyer too,
(27:53):
so the sort of aura of the mob around Trump
is not accidental. Roy was the lawyer for real mobsters,
and they used to use his office for meetings because
they thought they would not be surveilled by the FBI.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
There.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
This was the world that Trump, you know, was sort
of initiated into and felt, you know, was exciting for him.
And you know what he learned from Roy was you
don't pay taxes, You don't pay the people who work
for you unless you have to. You go into litigation
with the attitude that you can just draw it out
and torture people and make them leave you alone. And
it's all about exercising power. It has very little to
(28:29):
do with ideology. It's just it's hedonism and power and
accumulating money. And I think there's a part of it
where they also like being famous. I mean, Roy loved
to be in the tabloids, so did Trump. And Roy
put Trump in the tabloids and on the media. And
that's one of the reasons why, you know, he loved
Roy Cone up until the point where he didn't. When
(28:51):
Roy was dying of AIDS, Trump abandoned him sort of notoriously.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Because he was gay or because he needed him.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
Because he didn't want to be associated with it. There
was a stigma attached, and he just was like, I
don't need this. And also at the time Roy was
under was about to have his law license taken away.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
But Roy was like often about to have his long
life it's taken away.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
It finally happened. I mean, it happened just before he died.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
In fact.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, but he was able to punt it many times.
Speaker 6 (29:20):
He did because you see, Molly, this is the reason
I talk about Roy in this first chapter, aside from
the connection with Trump, is that Roy was tolerated and
celebrated by the right, even though they all knew what
a dirty scumbag he was. Okay, they didn't care, but
people like Bill Buckley and Bill Sapphire and Abe Rosenthal
(29:41):
at the times, and lots and lots of respectable people
celebrated Rey publicly. They had big events where they would
toast him and you know, celebrate him and be happy
that he had gotten away with everything he'd gotten away
with and expressed that their friendship and.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
Approval of him.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
And on some level, what that means is it's okay
to be like him, It's okay to do the things
he does because there's no social sanction attached to it, right,
it doesn't matter. You can swindle your clients, you can steal,
you can lie the way he did so much when
he was working for McCarthy. It just doesn't matter. Because
(30:19):
he's powerful, he has connections in the media.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
You know, he was very.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Close to sign new House was my boss when I
worked at Conde Nast, super powerful, you know, publishing mogul,
and he had many powerful friends like that, and they
approved of, you know, his absolutely shocking lack of morality
and integrity. And I think Trump looked at that and said, gee,
I could be like that. I'm not going to be
(30:43):
punished for anything.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So you think New York in the eighties made Trump worse?
Speaker 6 (30:50):
Oh, undoubtedly. I mean I think the connection with Roy
Cone made Trump war was I would say, you know,
I think Trump's dad. If you talk to Mary Trumps,
I'm sure you have, you would know that Fred Trump
was not exactly you know, a paragon of integrity either
or decency.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
So you know, there's a lot that happened to Trump's
character before he met Roy, but I think Roy took
him in an even darker direction. It's not an original
observation by me. I just happened to know them because
I was covering them, you know, in the eighties, I
was writing about them. My partner at the Village Voice,
my writing partner, Wayne Barrett, is the og of Trump Lore.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
So right, right, right right.
Speaker 6 (31:31):
I was around when all that was happening, and I
saw it up close. I've known Trump a long time.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
What do you think the way to defeat Trump is?
Speaker 6 (31:38):
I tend to agree with our mutual friend George Conway, who.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Wrote the introduction to this book, who.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
Wrote the forward to my book. Yes, and it's very good.
I'm happy to say he loves the book. Even though
we were once swords drawn enemies back in the day.
Now we're friends, which is great.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
I mean, I love George and we're friends and we
talk all the time. But the road to how he
got here as lined with a lot of the people
who are now the great friends of democracy, contractually obligated
by being Howard fast granddaughter to say things like that.
But yes, continue on.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
Yes, well, I understand that. I get that.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
When I was at The New York Observer, I was
then executive editor, I also wrote a column every week,
and so I did reporting, and I was reporting on
Clinton and the Paula Jones case and all of that,
And one of the things that I discovered was that
there was a bunch of lawyers, right wing lawyers, who
were secretly advising Paula Jones in her lawsuit against Clinton
(32:34):
and trying to make sure that the lawsuit didn't get
settled for political reasons. So one of them was Anne Caulter,
another was a guy named Paul Rosenswick who's gotten.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
To be better known lately.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
And one of them at the leadership of that group
was George Conway. The third who was then a partner
at Waktel Lipton, a big democratic law firm in New York.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Making millions of dollars.
Speaker 6 (32:55):
Yes, yes, as a tobacco lawyer, which isn't the rightest episode.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yes, some of that money he did donate to Joe Biden,
so credit where credit is due.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
He did actually a lot. He's a different guy now
in my opinion. But anyway, I exposed what they were
doing in The Observer, which led to further exposure in
the New York Times and got George in a fair
amount of trouble. And I was trying to track him down,
and I put him on the front page of the
Observer and his law partners at Walktel did not like
this at all.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
No, now, a lot of liberals at walked out.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
Yeah, he wouldn't really talk to me. I mean he
called me once back when I was trying to track
him down. But anyway, so flash forward many years and
he and I are sort of following each other on Twitter.
I don't know exactly why, except I thought he was
really funny and I liked what he was saying. I
don't know why he followed me. And it comes time
my book is finished, you know, the draft is done,
(33:48):
and again my wife says to me, you should ask
Conway to write the forward. And I said, Conway, Conway
hates me. Anyway, I got in touch with him and
he came in and we had a drink and we
got along very well, talked about old times, and I said, George,
I need your advice. I need a never Trump Republican
to write the forward to this book, which is about
(34:09):
the right. And he looked at me, he's right in
the eye, and he said, do you want me to
do it?
Speaker 1 (34:15):
I was like, well, yes, Joe, thank you so much
for joining us. This is great.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Oh it's really a pleasure. Molly.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
I admire you greatly and really appreciate you.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Christina Sinson Ramirez is the president of next Gen America.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Christina, I so tell us what
do you think the Biden campaign should be doing.
Speaker 7 (34:42):
This is the first election cycle in our ten year
track record of reaching out and connecting with millions of
young voters that we fully see from the presidency down
and understanding of just how important young voters are. And
there is a lot that the Biden administration has done
that they have delivered for young voters, but there's a disconnect.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
A lot of young ters don't know a lot of that.
Speaker 7 (35:02):
So this is the administration that's actually gotten the most
progressive policy accomplished and move forward in my lifetime, including
the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest investment by any
country on the planet to tackle the climate crisis, historic
gun safety legislation, massive student debt cancelation. These gains were
all fought in one by young people also turning out
(35:23):
in record numbers, and so I think the administration needs
to be telling that story. And then we're also seeing
a lot of young people not actually know foolly who
Donald Trump is because some of them were just ten
years old, right, rates or just to give people a
frame of reference. You know, if you are eighteen years
old now or will be eighteen in November, you were
(35:45):
ten years old when Donald Trump was first elected, and
so if you had good parents, they probably shielded you
from the sounds of crying babies being ripped from their mothers,
from the site of heather Hire being run over by
white supremacists, and then are present and calling them very
fine people on both sides, and then lastly saying that
he liked to grab women by the pussy.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Those are all things you may not know.
Speaker 7 (36:07):
And so there's a lot of education I think that
the Biden administration and allies need to be doing to
educate young people about that track record. They many don't
know about.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
So what does that look like? I mean, how do
you reach young voters?
Speaker 7 (36:21):
So for us at next time, this is you know,
young voters gen Z plus millennials. Right, we go up
to eighteen to thirty five, some people just eighteen to
twenty nine. This is the largest generational voting block, and
so most of them get their news from social media.
It's really for us, we're going to We're already on
campuses across eight states, key battleground states, but we're going
(36:41):
to be on one hundred and twelve college and community
college campuses. We're already having conversations with young people in person,
and then we're working with hundreds of influencers to reach
and engage young people as authentic messengers because it's not
all up to the candidate or the campaign. And a
lot of young people, even though they overwhelmingly vote for
Democrats and progressives, also see themselves as independents and so
(37:05):
for them, what can be often more moving is a
message form one of their peers. So those college campuses
that we're on, we're also working with first time ever
college athletes that can now use their likeness and image
from the school's soccer star or football quarterback.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
You name it.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
We're trying to engage those folks to also reach people
on their platforms.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, that is a big question. Like we've seen some
reporting where there's been you know, Biden is not in
good shape with the young people, and they're mad at
him about not canceling student debt the way they wanted
it canceled, or they're mad at him because of Gaza,
(37:46):
or they're mad at him because of COVID. Do you
actually think that's true or do you think it's more
complicated than that.
Speaker 7 (37:55):
I think it's a little more complicated than that. I
think overwhelmingly, if you look at twenty two and where
we were around this time, Biden was also underwater with
young voters. He was not young voters candidate of choice.
I like to say it was the other older white guy,
Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
One of my favorite old white guys. Yes, and he
came on this podcast, and I think it was the
happiest he's ever been in an interview. Well that must
be you, Molly, that said him at ease. No, it's
because my grandfather was a famous communist who he like
loved anyway, Sorry, go on, Yes.
Speaker 7 (38:27):
But he was very popular with young people, right. Bernie
Sanders and the Biden administration understood that they were going
to have to appease young voters, and they did right.
They promised to take action on climate change, on student debt,
on big issues that young people cared about. And we've
seen his numbers rise with young people. But we're at
a place again where young people are not super excited
about their choices. However, I think as we get closer
(38:49):
to the election, and we spend the time and money
educating and reaching young people about what's at stake this election. Overwhelmingly,
I think poles are indicators of people's sentiments. Don't necessarily
think especially holes with young voters have aligned the last
few elections on where their behavior is. So at next Gen,
we understand polling as the way we do it and
(39:11):
the way we look at it in our own polling
is where are there opportunities and challenges that we have
to address versus what does this say about what's going
to happen on election day? Because you read the headlines
from the New York Times, Washington Post, you name it.
Over the last few election cycles, each election cycle twenty eighteen,
twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, it's all doom and gloom
about how young voters aren't excited about the candidates that
(39:32):
they're likely to not turn out election happens. We've had
the three highest youth voter turnouts the last three election cycles,
and overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
No, I mean for sure, and obviously despite his being
perhaps I'm sexy, Joe Biden has really delivered a lot
of wins for progressives exactly.
Speaker 7 (39:55):
I think sometimes in progressive spaces, which is usually when
most young people, lies follows as far as the policies
that they care about in the world that they want
to see created in the government they want to see,
we sometimes don't always recognize when we're actually winning. And
I think, Molly, you and I are old enough to
remember the Democratic Party of the nineties that was on
the wrong side.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
I would say, of gay rights, many many progressives issues.
Speaker 7 (40:18):
Yes, go on, gay rights, tax reform, criminal justice. They
were all on the wrong side of those issues. And
now fast forward, we have from Biden all the way
up and down right people saying that we needed to
tax the rich their fair share, that billionaires shouldn't pay
less percentage of taxes than hardworking, working class Americans. That
(40:39):
we have fully come to a place on many issues
where the Democratic Party of the nineties is no longer
the party of today. And so I think we need
to recognize, like, if you like that we've gotten student
debt cancelation, if you like that we got climate legislation,
but you were upset about not getting everything else you
want at home, means be upset, but make a political
calculation and choice about which elected official, you are more
(41:01):
likely to move. Keep organizing. Voting isn't the only way
we make change. It's the most basic thing we must do.
It's not the only thing we should do.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
The thing I've been struck by with Biden world is
that the admin they have really been responsive to a
lot of wish list items for Democrats.
Speaker 7 (41:20):
One hundred percent. I think about where we are on
student debt cancelation. You know, he had promised that he
was going to come in and do some student debt cancelation.
He tried to do ten thousand up to twenty thousand dollars,
depending on what kind of loan and income bracket people
were in. And then we've of course had the right
wing try and stop that with the right wing Supreme Court,
and they were successful. But the Biden administration didn't give up.
(41:40):
They kept figuring out ways to cancel student debt. They've
now canceled billions of dollars in student debt for nearly
five million Americans. I think of my good friend Brandon,
who did public interest law for the last ten years,
and he woke up and saw that his nearly two
hundred thousand dollars in student debt had been canceled by
the Biden administration is life changing. And if we look
(42:02):
at folks I know that have gotten solar panels or
electric cars that they were able to afford, middle class
folks that thought they could never afford that because of
the Inflation Reduction Act. Those are all things that were
one because the Biden administration was listening to and responding
to the demands and desires of young people.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, when you talk to young people and you sort
of explain to them some of the stuff that maybe
they missed, do they want to buy what you're selling? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (42:28):
I think young people are you know, they're savvy consumers
on what they consume generally and then what they get behind.
And I think politics is no different for young people.
But I think young people what we've seen the last
few elections, on what we saw in twenty twenty is
young people a lot of them said, I'm voting for Biden.
He wasn't necessarily my choice in the field of twenty
close candidates. But I agree with him more on where
(42:51):
he stands on women's rights and abortion. I agree with
him more about where he stands on the climate crisis.
I agree with him more about how he wants to
hold gun companies accountable for our gun violence epidemic, and
you can do that on many many issues. It's hard
when you look at what young people care about. There
is see much of any alignment whatsoever with Donald Trump
(43:12):
and the Republican Party for the majority of young people.
And I think young people, as we get closer to
the election and continue making that argument and trying to
reach them by the millions, they are savvy and will
make the right political calculation. But we also need to
understand that demographics are not destiny. I think Democrats make
that mistake a lot. They are simply a core ingredient
in the recipe for change. But we've got to organize,
(43:33):
reach out to and speak to that generation's pain and
power that they have.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
If you're looking at young voters as a voting base,
what states are you the most optimistic about? You know,
young people have turned out in record numbers.
Speaker 7 (43:49):
Young people are always generally have been the least likely
to be invested in are the most likely to show
up just on election day, and so we run blind.
Oftentimes we try and as many people as we can.
I think there are places where we feel generally more
hopeful Wisconsin looks good. Arizona looks you know, challenging in
its own ways. But also we have a great senatorial
(44:10):
candidate and Rubing Diego that speaks to young people in Latinos,
which is really important for that state's demographics. And then
in Pennsylvania. In Michigan are two other states. Michigan is
a state I think we need to make sure we
do the hard work and outreach for I think that
state is going to be very, very close, and I
think a lot of it could come down to young
people and making sure we spent the time and effort
(44:31):
and energy fully trying to reach them.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, and I mean that is for sure. You know
a place where the war in the Middle East is
where voters are furious. Talk to me about Nevada. Nevada
is like one of those states where supposely this seni
candidate there, Jackie Rosen, is actually a little bit better
(44:55):
senate candidate than the last cycle, better at politics. I mean,
is there a down ballid effect? And talk to me
about Nevada.
Speaker 7 (45:03):
You know, Nevada is one of the states that I
think we are concerned about right now. Again, polling is
not like an indicator of the election or the actual
outcome as an indicator of people's sentiments at that time.
But polling does show that we have work to do
across the board, including with young people. That I think
it's a population that has been hit hard by different
(45:23):
elements of recovering from COVID, that we see a really
strong need to be spoken to about the economic pain
that a lot of Americans are in. And I think
that what we need to lean on is how Democrats
and progressives really do have a different vision for the
future economically. Most Americans do agree that, especially young people,
(45:43):
that we should be taxing the rich their fair share,
that we shouldn't just have a minimum wage, but a
living wage, that women should be paid for equal work,
that people should be able to unionize right that young
people eighty eight percent of them support labor unions. There
is only one party and one candidate at the top
of the ticket that support those four issues, and that
(46:05):
is Joe Biden and Democrats. And what we saw from
Trump was a real vision for the top one percent
enacted from tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans to
trying to squash the power of labor unions. And that
will only if you thought Trump twenty sixteen was bad.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
You have no.
Speaker 7 (46:22):
Idea how bad it will be Trump two point zero
for working people in this country.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, oh for sure. So can you talk to us
about there's a lot of anxiety that Trump is winning
the Latino vote in a way that is unprecedented. Is
that true and if so, what does that mean.
Speaker 7 (46:41):
My last job before running next to in the country's
largest youthful organization, I spent close to twenty years organizing
the Latino community in Texas for Saron workers' rights and
then mobilizing young Latinos to vote. And I remember after
twenty twenty getting asked a lot if Latinos were leaning
more Republican or were they Democrats. So I said, you know,
we need to understand the population is We're not necessarily
(47:02):
either Republicans or Democrats.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
What we are is poor.
Speaker 7 (47:04):
You know, we are the ethnic group that is the
least likely to go to college, the most likely to
die on the job, the least likely to make below
fifteen dollars an hour. And so when Canadas speak to
our deep economic pain and spend the time and money
outreaching to us, they win our vote over because we're
also we live at this duality where yes, many of
us are newly arrived to this country, and at the
(47:25):
same time, in places like Texas, we were part of
this country before it was even a construct.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
The realities.
Speaker 7 (47:31):
If you look at Bernie Sanders, he did amazingly well
with Latino voters and brought tons of new Latino voters
into the political process because he spent the time and
money and energy reaching out to them. Historically, both sides
hadn't done an abysmal job of that, and I think
Republicans made a smart political calculation. That is, if we
go speak to Latino voters about economic issues and spend
the time and money on them, some Democrats have been
(47:53):
taking them for granted and that if we're the first
to outreach to them, they may come to our side.
And so that's what I see as I see that
Democrats to spend a lot more time and money speaking
to the economic realities of Latino voters. We are still
overwhelmingly Democratic voters, especially because we are young people. I
just see massive opportunity because our voting power mostly lies
with young people. We are also one of the youngest
(48:15):
ethnic group in the country. So the most common age
for white American is fifty five, for an African American
it's twenty seven, and for a Latino American it's eleven.
And today one in four American children are now actually Latino.
So what are we doing to go invest into that
community and their burgeoning power?
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Cool? I love that though. That's so hopeful and exciting,
and I think that's a really good point. You need
to speak to people where they are make the case right.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
Yeah, I mean I think that young people there isn't
just you know, it's a huge demographic. We do everything
we can to try and each young people where they're at.
That for us as the largest det vote organization. Yes,
it's being on college and community college campuses, it's organizing
with influencers, it's organizing on dating apps, it's mobilizing our
tens of thousands of volunteers literally to send tens of
(49:10):
millions of calls and texts to young people. And even
our new thing we've started doing, which is we developed
an AI chatbot to organize on Discord and Twitch and
the gaming community, especially to focus on reaching young men.
We try and leave no stone unturned to reach young
people that are probably never going to watch a traditional
TV advertisement or radio advertisement. But make sure we're reaching
(49:32):
in them in all the other ways possible.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yes, such a good point and so important and also
a little bit heartening, right I mean, and those voters
are there for Joe Biden if he can connect with them,
right absolutely.
Speaker 7 (49:48):
I think what we've seen is when you invest in
young people and spend the time and money outreaching to them,
they do turn out. When we started our organization ten
years ago with the idea that we could tackle the
climate crisis, the largest crisis of our time, by mobilizing
young people to turn out to vote, we were generally
laughed at that that was a really naive thing to
spend money on, that young people were not going to
(50:10):
turn out, that they were apathetic. Well it's ten years later,
we've seen the highest use going to turn out the
last few elections and the largest investment ever to tackle
the climate crisis. That is because of the power of
young people.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Thank you, Christina.
Speaker 7 (50:24):
Thanks so much Molly for having me and for covering
the youth vote.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
No moment, Oh fuck on, Rick Wilson, what is your
moment of fuckery?
Speaker 3 (50:36):
My moment of fuckery is that this week there is
a absolute tidal wave, an onslaught of reporting about Joe Biden. Okay,
let's just even say it's legitimate, or that it's journalism. Whatever.
We'll argue that point some other day. But it is
almost exclusively even in foreign newspapers and foreign media outlets,
(50:58):
that in the release of the files, Donald Trump pops
up in the Epsteine files being accused of having raped
two girls to twelve year olds.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Why didn't that get more mainstream media coverage? Is it
not real? I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
You know why they're not doing it. I'll tell you
exactly why they know. If they run that story, they're
going to get four thousand, good jillion tweets and emails
and phone calls from Maugas saying We're gonna come burn
down your building, wet you. That's why they're doing it, Okay,
that's why they won't fucking cover it. And look, if
you go back, you will not find me having a
(51:34):
whole bunch of tweets over the years about the story
that is alleged from these documents, because before it was
only alleged. Now it is in the court filings. And
I'm shocked that American reporters who are able to dig
down and find a person who wrote on an airplane
with Joe Biden once in twenty twenty, comparing him, he
should say he thinks you should drop out. It's amazing
(51:56):
to me. Not one of these people has fucking called
Alex who Trump gave a job after the Epstein case
because Alex Acosta got Jeffrey Epstein a plea bargain. This
thing stinks on ice, the fact that nobody's talking about it,
nobody's covering it, and I will point out that MAGA
is very frequently ready to call anyone who disagrees with
(52:19):
Donald Trump a pedophile, and now we have court testimony
in which Donald Trump is a rape pedophile. I'm sorry,
I find it outrageous fuckery. No one's covering this at scale.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Do you want to know my moment of fuckery, Rick Wilson,
I do. My momentive fuckery is Charlie Gasparino, who wrote
a disgusting opinion piece in The New York Post where
he said that Vice President Harris was a DEI hire,
despite the fact that she was the age, that she
was the second black female senator ever, that she is
(52:52):
a fucking brilliant, gifted or to our super amazing politician,
great speaker, very smart lawyer, prosecuted the fake universities, was
a leader in California, then went on to the Senate
and is the vice president and is very much a
success in her own right. Meanwhile, Charlie Gasparino yet another
(53:17):
mediocre white guy. He is our moment of fuck.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
Ray couldn't agree more. And anytime you hear the phrase
DEI or CRT or the sixteen nineteen project come out
of Omaga, it's the inward. That's it. That's what it is.
It's the inWORD. Just think of it that way and
you got.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
It, Yes, exactly, that's it. That's it. That's it for
this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
And again, thanks for listening.
Hi, I'm Mollie John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
today's best minds.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
And Judge Aileen Canon has shockingly shown deferential treatment to
Trump and paused some deadlines in the classified documents case.
We're back from vacation to have such a great show
for you today. National Memo editor Joe Connison stops by
to tell us about his new book, The Longest Con
How grifters, Swindler's and fraud's hijacked American Conservatism. Then we'll
talk to Next Jet America's Christina Sinsoon Ramirez, who will
(00:32):
tell us how to get young people out to vote.
But first we have the host of the Enemy's List,
the Linked Project's own Rick Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
Welcome back. Two weeks of vacation for me, and now
we are back with my bestie. We did actually talk
while we were on vacation, not together the Rick Wilson
Hello friend, Hello.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
My dear, how are you doing on this fine, fine,
fine fine summer day.
Speaker 1 (01:01):
So I just want to quickly say that the reason
that I ended up having to take a little more
time off was because I ended up having to have surgery.
It was totally fine. I don't have cancer. It was
just a surgery that I had to have. But I
ended up having to take an extra week off because
as much as I told the doctors that I was
good to podcast, they suggested that perhaps I should just
(01:22):
slow my role.
Speaker 3 (01:23):
You know, it was a guy who went through a
minor but highly inconvenient surgery earlier this year. I feel
your pain. I really do. It's it's just like you
want to be back in it like the next day,
and they're like, why don't you take one day off?
Why don't you take off one day off? Son of
a bitch.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
I had surgery on Monday, and I was like, so,
I'm thinking i'll be back by Wednesday, and they were like,
you know, like yeah.
Speaker 3 (01:46):
Why don't we go ahead and review that situation, young lady.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah, it's been very quiet. No news people are going
to be listening this Monday morning. But I think first
thing we should be talking about is this huge victory
in France. Fash is a got punched in the face
yet again, Mollie.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
Here's the thing that I find the most interesting about
those results. I just spoke to an overseas reporter about
an hour ago and she said, well, it was expected
in England that the Conservatives would be blown out, but
it wasn't expected in France. And I said, one of
the great tricks of the global right is to convince
people that their weak bad hand is a royal flush
(02:24):
and that they're always winning, they're always ahead, and always
they're always in control of the situation, and they're really not.
And so what we saw in France was I think
very telling that Macron was able to manage his own
internal dynamics in his party get people who were not
unified to understand that the threat they were facing required
(02:45):
them all to come together. And I don't know, maybe
that's a lesson that could be applied in other nations.
I'm struggling to think of one at the moment, but
it did sort of wrap. It did inspire me a
bit that the good guy side of the equations and
arguments doesn't have to suck.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
Yes, And I think that also. One of the things
about France is that the polls were again overstated. The
fascists understated the normals, and we saw that in the
UK too, like these sure, you know, they're trying to
make up for the surprise of Brexit or the surprise
of Trump by sort of juicing the numbers to be
more pro Trump or pro Brexit. I think an important
(03:25):
lesson here.
Speaker 3 (03:26):
The idea that the minority is the majority is central
to an awful lot of authoritarian movements and fascist movements
and right wing politics globally, and has been so for
a long time. And you did see that. You saw
that they try to celebrify most of their people. Now.
So in France, it wasn't cranky old right winger daughter
(03:48):
of cranky old right winger Marine Lapin. It was young
sexy Jordan Bardilla. Look at it's so beautiful. I mean,
some of these people who are playing this game of
our people are always twelve feet tall, covered in solid gold, heroic, brilliant,
perfect geniuses, and the left are incompetent blah blah blah.
(04:11):
Well so in two races now in Europe and two
of the largest Western democracies, we have seen that again.
When confronted with an existential threat, the left sometimes says, oh,
wait a minute, we can settle our family business a
little later. Let's go kill bad guys first.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Yeah, and by kill, we don't mean kill, we mean win.
At the ballad box because I don't want anyone cutting.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Well, ye call me crazy, but Mark Robinson down in
North Carolina, it's like I want to count bodies and
stuck them up and then eat them. Now I'm skipping
eat in city, eat them partner.
Speaker 1 (04:42):
Let's not take our cues from Mark Robinson. No, cannibalism
is strictly an RFPA junior thing.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Go on, I have tasted the long pig Molly, and
I will never be the same. Why do you think
I'm opposed to all this anti vaccent Jesus exact right.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
He doesn't want to eat and continue. Yes, I hate
to be the grown up here, but it really does
feel like there is a real salient and important point
that you're making here, Rick Wilson, which is that the
bad guys puff themselves up and make it so the
good guys think they're gonna lose.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
If I'm going to use a southernism, they're a lot
like a nose a hognose snake in Florida. Hognose snake's
perfectly harmless, all right, but when the hognose is threatened,
it puffs its face up and looks like a rattlesnake.
So They're always trying to make themselves puff up and
look like a rattlesnake. They're always trying to make you afraid.
They're always trying to make you feel like, oh my god,
these guys have got so many advantages, and they do
(05:42):
represent the majority of the and they never do. Trump
Ism is a failed ideology with the general public. If
we didn't have the electoral college system another subject for
another day, in this country, trumpism would be utterly irrelevant.
It's about like flat Earth is in terms of hard numbers.
But because we have the situation we have with our
(06:04):
electoral college system, trump ism is viable enough to be
viable in enough places to roll up the numbers. But again,
what you're seeing is they're like a hog nosed snake.
They're trying to pretend that they're stronger than they are,
and a lot of people, a lot of our friends
on the left, buy into that illusion. And I spend
(06:26):
a lot of my day, and I know you spend
a lot of your day walking them back from the
cliffs saying no, no, Donald Trump cannot get four fat
thosand three hundred and ninety two electoral college votes. There
aren't that many.
Speaker 1 (06:38):
But they said, there were, and I'm afraid we don't
know how to.
Speaker 3 (06:41):
Do you know what? You all know how to do this?
They look, guys, it is even about left and right.
This is about going out and treating races as they
should be treated. Work with the things that work for
you and your campaign, do the things you have to
do to win over the middle. The edge cases on
either side are never as strong as you think. And
that was the secret sauce in the UK this week, right.
Speaker 1 (07:04):
But I also think, and again you've said this to
me before, actually I have two things I want to
talk about. First is the thing you always say to
me that has been drilled into my brain now, which
is elections are a referendum on the incumbent. If you
make this a referendum on Donald J. Trump, you win.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
That is correct, and that is what this election can
and must be. There is no alternative. You have to
make it about Trump. If it's about Joe Biden or
any Democrat. Frankly, our chances of winning are a lot lower.
If this election is a choice about Donald Trump or America,
America is going to win. But without that choice on
(07:41):
the table, it is not as easy for voters to
go into the voting with and say, Okay, I know
what this is. It's not how many parts per billion
of carbon are going to be the atmosphere, or or
is it six weeks, twelve weeks or thirty weeks for
an abortion. It's none of the policy stuff. It's all
about the fundamental. Do you want a country that looks
(08:01):
like Donald Trump in the future? Do you want to
see a country where he keeps his campaign promises? And
if you think that country is a country you want
to live in, well I can't help you. I can't
change your mind about that, but I can make the
argument over and over again that trump Ism is disconnected
from two thirds of the population. A lot of the
things he wants to do if he's elected president again are.
Speaker 1 (08:24):
Deeply, profoundly unpopular.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Exactly right, Molly, exactly right.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
I'm working on a piece for my Vanity Fair column
about this project twenty twenty five, and you know I've
written about it. Jesse and I did a YouTube series
about it which is going to drop soon, and so
we've spent a lot of time talking about it in interviewing
people about it. And one of the things that is
so interesting about it, besides the fact that it invokes
the Comstock Act to prevent the mailing of abortion pills.
(08:52):
It defines marriage as biblical whatever is defined in the Bible.
I mean, it's very Christian nationalists, and it wants to
regulate IVF. And what I think is so interesting about
Project twenty from five? And you tell me if you
think I'm wrong. A lot of times Trump, when something
comes up that's bad, he'll say, damn right, I did it. Yeah,
I did it, Yeah, I do it again, you know.
(09:14):
And on this he's like, I have nothing to do
with this. I don't even know what this is.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
So I wrote a piece over the weekend called Trump's
Project twenty twenty five lies. The media is not seeing
the forest for the lies. Right. My opening line is,
when Donald Trump denies something, you should always take it
as a full confession of his absolute guilt. Right. I
didn't sleep with Stormy Daniels porn star. No I didn't.
That means he did sleep with Stormy Daniels the porn star,
(09:40):
maybe for only forty five seconds or so, but he did, right.
And this thing with Project twenty twenty five. And I
have to say our old alumni website, The Daily Beast
had a piece that actually got to the guts of it.
Trump ripped for denying Project twenty twenty five connections despite
the evidence. So I went and I wrote down just
(10:02):
like a half a dozen of people that I could
pull up from memory that I know we're involved in
Project twenty twenty five because this thing is and Trump's
people I heard about this on Friday. Trump's people were
bragging to reporters and bragging to political activists on Friday. Yeah,
we got the media to write the headline we wanted.
We got his headline in this Trump denies connection to
(10:24):
Project twenty twenty five, right, And most of the stories
might have gotten to it, like on paragraph nine, but
most of those stories are page A, eight, A, fifteen whatever.
The New York Times. The New York Times, as of
the time we're recording this, has yet to do a
story about the fact that Donald Trump is denying Project
twenty twenty five. But they have posted today twelve separate
(10:48):
stories about unnamed junior aides to Joe Biden who say
he's senile and must and must go right right.
Speaker 1 (10:54):
I mean, that's the.
Speaker 3 (10:54):
Problem, you know what, guys. I try not to do
media bashing I really do, because we are part of
that universe. I try not to. But the frenzy in
Washington right now, and folks, they are talking to fucking
interns at this point about what's going on. This has
become a game where junior staffers are like, I'm going
to make my bones now with whoever, whether it's you know,
(11:17):
Maggie or Jonathan or or or Peter Baker or who
they're all everyone there is leaking like a sieve. So
they seem like the cool kid. So they seem like
they're like, ah, yes, I'm the cynical and I'm twenty six,
but I'm cynical, so you should hear me out. I
mean the idea that the coverage ratio to on on
Trump and one of the most consequential and dangerous public
(11:39):
policy efforts in our history, versus a Washington parlor game
right about should he go? Should he still? Should day?
Should he go? And unfortunately for America, the idea that
the coverage is going to generate more clicks and more
TV and be in the in the hamster wheel, the
conveyor belt of the story, and it will somehow in
(12:00):
a certain way. I think it's wrong, but I do
think what it is is it's a common error on
the media. It's part a common error on the part
of a lot, a lot of all, a lot of Democrats,
a common error on the part of folks on the
left to believe that you can ever take a minute
off of the attack on Donald Trump. He's now had
a solid week where he's basically gotten to play golf.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Yeah, he does love golf.
Speaker 3 (12:25):
It's unforgivable.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
One of the things that I'm struck by in my own,
you know world, is just that it doesn't a decision
that's this enormous does not need to be made in
four days. You know, I'm in correct. I was on
television with this. He's actually a young staffer who works
who worked for two people, but his bona fides were
not great, and he was saying, you know, he's got
(12:48):
to drop out. We need him out yesterday. And it's
just that is not the way to deal with a
big decision like that. And I certainly always feel that
if it's urgent, it's probably the wrong decision.
Speaker 3 (12:59):
Almost always, if I may quote the nineteen ninety five
documentary Gets Shorty, there's a scene where a guy says,
excuse me, bro, but who the fuck are you? I
get a lot of excuse me, bro, but who the
fuck are you right now from a lot of people
on both sides of the equation who have not been
in national campaigns, who have not been operatives in big
(13:21):
picture campaigns, who are in either policy jobs or administrative
jobs inside the administration or inside the sort of DC ecosystem,
and a lot of people who I think watched a
little too much West Wing or watched a little too
much House of Cards, and they think things work a
certain way, and you can magically just say that we're
(13:43):
going to do this trick where everyone will agree that
it's the right trick to do, and everyone will understand
why we're doing it, and it will work out perfectly, and
know one will leak it, fuck it up, make a mistake,
do something illegal, do something stupid, do something politically fatal.
All those things are actually the more likely outcome of
these things.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
I actually wrote to Margaret Sullivan about this, and she said,
creating the news is not the job of good journalism,
which is to cover reality and the truth perfectly put right,
Creating the news is not the job of good journalism,
which is to cover the reality and the truth, and
I think that that is you know, we're trying. I mean,
you and I are on the opinion side, so it's
(14:21):
a bit different. But like you know, we are trying
as best we can to reflect what we see happening
and not in fact, to create what we think should happen.
Speaker 3 (14:31):
Yeah, and I've said this from the beginning. I know
for a fact what my job and role and mission is.
It is to beat the fuck out of Donald Trump.
It is to beat him and defeat him. My mission
is not to determine how the democratic internal dynamics work out,
because you know what, if it's Joe Biden, or if
it's Kamala Harris, or if it's any Rando pulled off
the fucking street, you know we're still going to have
(14:53):
to do as people in the pro democracy movement, it's
to go after Donald Trump every day. You can't give
him a day. There's only less than one hundred and
twenty days left to go in this race. You can't
give him a day off. And we've given him now
a week because of a very self indulgent culture in
Washington politics and the media. And this isn't all Joe Biden.
(15:15):
With this Shakespearean drama of Joe Biden. It's a lot
of it, and let's be really, really, really really honest
with ourselves. Is the desire of many, many people for novelty,
change and spectacle.
Speaker 1 (15:29):
Yeah, and I also think the media wants to stay relevant,
and we've not had the best time of it latelight.
Speaker 3 (15:36):
No, I think that's true, and I think there I
think there are people at a certain major institution who've
taken their vendetta because they didn't get a private interview
with Joe Biden to a level that is now so obvious.
When I see a lot of magas retweeting stories from
that outlet, I wonder if anybody's figuring it out over there, like, oh, well, yes,
(15:58):
you know, when you write something for gourmet magazine, you
don't want it retweeted by Jeffrey Dahmer. Okay, this is
not where you want to be in the ecosystem. It's like,
it's not the good housekeeping seal of approval of your journalism.
When it's become a part of Trump World's ongoing propaganda efforts.
(16:18):
It is remarkable to me. And again, that source that
got the story back to me said, yeah, you know
what it was Chris Losovita and Tony Fabrizio and Susie
who went out and they polled Project twenty twenty five.
And that's why Trump dropped it. And that's why Trump
made the Platform Committee take out the abortion ban and
the RNC Platform Committee. And by the way, fun fact, MO,
(16:39):
I don't know if you know this, but Russ Vaught.
Speaker 1 (16:41):
Yes, Russ Vaught, I'm writing about him today.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
Yeah, it's the craziest coincidence of all. But after he
finished writing Project twenty twenty five, he became the head
of the Republican Party's Platform Committee.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
Sure, just what's a total coincidence? It's a complete coincidence,
all right, Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
Imagine meeting you here. Thank you.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Mollie Spring is here, and I bet you are trying
to look fashionable. So why not pick up some fashionable
all new Fast Politics merchandise. We just opened a news
store with all new designs just for you. Get t shirts, hoodies, hats,
(17:25):
and top bags. To grab some head to fastpolitics dot com.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
Joe Connison is the editor of the National Memo and
author of the Longest con How Gripters, Swindlers and Frauds
hijacked American conservatism.
Speaker 1 (17:39):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Joe.
Speaker 5 (17:42):
It's great to be with you, Mollie.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
The Longest Con is the story of how explain to
us what it is? Because I think I know, but
I want you to explain it to our listener.
Speaker 6 (17:52):
So the Longest Con is an idea that actually my
wife Elizabeth had after reading an article by historian Rick Pearlstein.
Speaker 1 (18:01):
I'm sure you know Rick, Yes, who's a guest of
the Pod.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
Brilliant guy who wrote an article for a little magazine
called The Baffler in twenty twelve called The Long Con.
And on the surface, it was kind of an examination
of the Romney campaign, which was full of dishonest garbage.
I mean, He's Romney has changed his image quite a
bit since then, but back in that campaign it was
pretty bad. Anyway, Rick, in that article sort of digressed
(18:28):
into the huge panoply of scams and cons and just
phony campaigns that he fell into because he had subscribed
to a bunch of conservative publications and so these were
get rich quick schemes and miracle cures for cancer and
(18:48):
buy gold at an inflated price, all of these things.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
So the things that Alex Jones sells.
Speaker 6 (18:55):
Yes, right him of the big supplements, all of that
stuff that represents millions of dollars in profits to the right.
I looked at that and she said, you know what,
there's a lot more to this, and she was right.
So I spent a few years writing a book about
that con and I of course give tribute to Rick
in the introduction. But what Rick observed back then, which
(19:15):
I think is really true, is that it's no longer possible,
and it hasn't been for a long time, to separate
the con the grift, from the conservative message and the
conservative movement at this point. And this is the reason
that it appealed to me so much as a book project,
is that it really explains a lot about how we
have Trump at the head of all of it.
Speaker 3 (19:37):
Now.
Speaker 6 (19:37):
Trump is the grifter, our excellence. He's the king of
the convent. That is why he is so acceptable to
them leading a movement. You know, back when he first
ran for president in twenty fifteen, when he was running
National Review did a series of expose as about Trump University,
which is an enormous scam. He was forced to cough
(19:59):
up a lot of money to pay people back.
Speaker 5 (20:01):
Because he had ripped them off so badly.
Speaker 6 (20:03):
Now the National Review now thinks it's fine to have
this scrift as president. And why well, they feel they
have no choice whatever it is. But in fact their
whole movement is infected with us, and once in a
while you'll see them reflect on that in conservative magazines
or blog posts, substacks all of that. There are a
few of them, Eric Erickson, you know, I'm sure your
(20:25):
listeners have heard of Jim Garritty at National mL bemoan.
The fact that there are so many conservatives ripping off
other conservatives, usually old people who can be duped if
they're say things. I mean, the whole thing is so appalling. Anyway,
I decided to go back and try to figure out
how this all began, How the sort of moral fiber
(20:48):
of conservatism began to disappear, Because in olden times, molly
Conservatism was a movement of moral probity, you know, or
at least it was supposed to be. It was supposed
to believe and civic virtue and morality. And when you
look at the scams and cons that they're pulling now constantly,
you know that's all gone. So how did that happen?
(21:10):
Like when did that happen? When did that begin? And
how did it develop? And so I go through a
lot of that, and you know, as a kind of
conceit really I start the book with Roy Cohne, who was,
as you know, Trump's mentor and lawyer and role model.
And the first chapter is called the role Model and
it's about Roy Cohen, and it tells a lot about Roy,
(21:32):
who I knew personally a bit.
Speaker 1 (21:34):
Oh you did, what did you think of Roy Cohen?
Speaker 5 (21:36):
He was a very bad man.
Speaker 1 (21:39):
No, I know what Roy Cohen? I mean, the Jongs
have hated Roy Cohen, and the fast have hated ronco
Generations like John pat Hornz. This is a generational Yes,
my family as well. But how did you know him?
Speaker 3 (21:54):
So?
Speaker 6 (21:55):
I was years ago a reporter at the Village Voice,
and at that time Roy was quite powerful in New
York politics. He controlled a wing of the Democratic Party,
a small wing, but a wing of the Democratic Party
in New York City, specifically Manhattan, and he used it
to gain influence from judges and from city hall and elsewhere.
(22:17):
His dad had been a judge in the Bronx and
a Democratic power broker back in the days of FDR
so Roy had sort of inherited some connections and power,
and he sort of leveraged both parties to his advantage
by then, and he found ways to suck money out
of the system that were just enormous scams. But I
dated even back to when he was working for Senator McCarthy,
(22:41):
and he and a man named David Shine, who he
put on the staff of McCarthy's Red Hunting Committee, took
a junket to Europe, supposedly to find subversive books in
United States Information Service libraries, but really it was just
a junket for these two young men to romp around
Europe together in fancy hotels. A grift, a scam, And
(23:02):
so I begin the book with that because I think
it's not just a funny story, but it tells something
about the beginnings of a decline in morality and probity
and integrity and the right.
Speaker 1 (23:14):
I've read a bunch of books that have made different
cases about how the right God here and your thesis
is basically the right God here through scams.
Speaker 6 (23:25):
Well, I mean it's not just scams, it's how can
you work a scam? And one of the ways that
they learned to work the scam was through exciting people's hatred.
So that probably fits into some of the other theories
about the development of the right that you've been reading
about that they discovered, as Roger Stone said, that hate
is as a more powerful motivator than love in politics.
(23:47):
That's what they really believe that, and there's some evidence
that it's true, at least for some people. And if
you can prey on people's hate and paranoia, you can
often dupe them into sending you money. And this is
what was discovered way back when by a man named
Richard Vigeri, who was the king of direct mail back
in the pre internet era. He was a young fundraiser
(24:10):
for right wing causes, and he realized that after the
Goldwater campaign, there was now a list.
Speaker 3 (24:17):
There was a.
Speaker 6 (24:17):
List of millions of people who had donated money to
the Goldwater campaign, and this list was in the hands
of the Clerk of the House, that's how things worked
in those days. This was in nineteen sixty four sixty five,
and he sent some women, of course, to go into
the capitol and copy down the names from that list,
and then they put them on magnetic tape and suddenly, bingo,
(24:37):
you had a list of people who were very right wing,
who believed all kinds of crazy stuff that you could
tell him, and who were I mean, Goldwater only won
the states of the Confederacy, right. A few states that
he where he prevailed were Confederate states. So there was
always a racial element to this. And by preying on
people's paranoia and their fear of communism, their fear of minorities,
(25:02):
their fear of all kinds of things, you could get
them to send money if you knew how to write
a direct mail piece that would excite their fears and
they're and their hatreds. Then the next level of the
scam is that you solicit money from people and then
you spend very little of the money on the cause
or campaign that you're telling them that they're collecting it for,
(25:24):
and most of it goes to in Vigori's case, you know,
prospecting for new suckers. In other cases it goes to
quote unquote overhead. But this is the this is the
root of the scam, and then it branches out into
many different forms.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
So give us some of those forms.
Speaker 6 (25:41):
Well, so some of the forms are Jerry Folwell was
a good example. This is how you know you saw
the beginning of the whole Fallwell Empire and Liberty University.
He got a hold of an email list of evangelical
ministers by telling the guy who had the list and
an old minister who didn't really believe that politics and
religion belong together, that he was going to use it
(26:03):
to create some sort of the Notre Dame of evangelical life,
and what he was really going to do with it
was start them moral majority and do an email prospect
because he believed this was a way to make a
lot of money. They've done this in many different ways.
There are all kinds of things that they sell to
people now, especially on the internet, but they know they
sell them over priced gold because they convince people that
(26:26):
we're about to go into a depression and it doesn't
matter what's really happening in the economy if you capture
people's attention. Hannity has done this a lot. I mean
a lot of Fox personalities have gotten involved in this.
Or you sell them penny stocks because you believe you
can make them believe that this is the next big thing,
and you believe them because you share their ideology, so
(26:47):
you tend to believe what they tell you. And they're
on TV or they're on the radio or both, and
you know you trust them because they're conservatives. Is a
merciless things and they've fleeced a lot of people money. Trump,
of course, is the is you know, the ultimate version
of this but far from the original.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Yes, but he's the culmination of it.
Speaker 3 (27:08):
It is.
Speaker 1 (27:09):
Can you explain to us, as someone who worked at
the Village Boys around the time Trump was learning all
these things from Roy Cohen, if you could sort of
sum up what you think. I mean, I hate to
even ask this question because I'm so bored with Trump,
but since he could theoretically be our next president, I
feel like we have to talk about him. I mean,
can you explain to us what you think this sort
(27:31):
of ethos is because you.
Speaker 6 (27:32):
Knew him, then it's the anti ethos. I mean, Roy
was a person who not only found ways corrupt ways
to steal money from the city treasury, you know, even
been like really petty stuff like cash from the parking
violations bureau. That he had the sort of mafia types
funneling thim. You know, he was a mob lawyer too,
(27:53):
so the sort of aura of the mob around Trump
is not accidental. Roy was the lawyer for real mobsters,
and they used to use his office for meetings because
they thought they would not be surveilled by the FBI.
Speaker 3 (28:06):
There.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
This was the world that Trump, you know, was sort
of initiated into and felt, you know, was exciting for him.
And you know what he learned from Roy was you
don't pay taxes, You don't pay the people who work
for you unless you have to. You go into litigation
with the attitude that you can just draw it out
and torture people and make them leave you alone. And
it's all about exercising power. It has very little to
(28:29):
do with ideology. It's just it's hedonism and power and
accumulating money. And I think there's a part of it
where they also like being famous. I mean, Roy loved
to be in the tabloids, so did Trump. And Roy
put Trump in the tabloids and on the media. And
that's one of the reasons why, you know, he loved
Roy Cone up until the point where he didn't. When
(28:51):
Roy was dying of AIDS, Trump abandoned him sort of notoriously.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Because he was gay or because he needed him.
Speaker 6 (28:57):
Because he didn't want to be associated with it. There
was a stigma attached, and he just was like, I
don't need this. And also at the time Roy was
under was about to have his law license taken away.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
But Roy was like often about to have his long
life it's taken away.
Speaker 6 (29:13):
It finally happened. I mean, it happened just before he died.
Speaker 5 (29:15):
In fact.
Speaker 1 (29:17):
Yeah, but he was able to punt it many times.
Speaker 6 (29:20):
He did because you see, Molly, this is the reason
I talk about Roy in this first chapter, aside from
the connection with Trump, is that Roy was tolerated and
celebrated by the right, even though they all knew what
a dirty scumbag he was. Okay, they didn't care, but
people like Bill Buckley and Bill Sapphire and Abe Rosenthal
(29:41):
at the times, and lots and lots of respectable people
celebrated Rey publicly. They had big events where they would
toast him and you know, celebrate him and be happy
that he had gotten away with everything he'd gotten away
with and expressed that their friendship and.
Speaker 5 (29:57):
Approval of him.
Speaker 6 (29:58):
And on some level, what that means is it's okay
to be like him, It's okay to do the things
he does because there's no social sanction attached to it, right,
it doesn't matter. You can swindle your clients, you can steal,
you can lie the way he did so much when
he was working for McCarthy. It just doesn't matter. Because
(30:19):
he's powerful, he has connections in the media.
Speaker 5 (30:22):
You know, he was very.
Speaker 6 (30:22):
Close to sign new House was my boss when I
worked at Conde Nast, super powerful, you know, publishing mogul,
and he had many powerful friends like that, and they
approved of, you know, his absolutely shocking lack of morality
and integrity. And I think Trump looked at that and said, gee,
I could be like that. I'm not going to be
(30:43):
punished for anything.
Speaker 1 (30:44):
So you think New York in the eighties made Trump worse?
Speaker 6 (30:50):
Oh, undoubtedly. I mean I think the connection with Roy
Cone made Trump war was I would say, you know,
I think Trump's dad. If you talk to Mary Trumps,
I'm sure you have, you would know that Fred Trump
was not exactly you know, a paragon of integrity either
or decency.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 6 (31:07):
So you know, there's a lot that happened to Trump's
character before he met Roy, but I think Roy took
him in an even darker direction. It's not an original
observation by me. I just happened to know them because
I was covering them, you know, in the eighties, I
was writing about them. My partner at the Village Voice,
my writing partner, Wayne Barrett, is the og of Trump Lore.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
So right, right, right right.
Speaker 6 (31:31):
I was around when all that was happening, and I
saw it up close. I've known Trump a long time.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
What do you think the way to defeat Trump is?
Speaker 6 (31:38):
I tend to agree with our mutual friend George Conway, who.
Speaker 1 (31:42):
Wrote the introduction to this book, who.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
Wrote the forward to my book. Yes, and it's very good.
I'm happy to say he loves the book. Even though
we were once swords drawn enemies back in the day.
Now we're friends, which is great.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
I mean, I love George and we're friends and we
talk all the time. But the road to how he
got here as lined with a lot of the people
who are now the great friends of democracy, contractually obligated
by being Howard fast granddaughter to say things like that.
But yes, continue on.
Speaker 5 (32:12):
Yes, well, I understand that. I get that.
Speaker 6 (32:14):
When I was at The New York Observer, I was
then executive editor, I also wrote a column every week,
and so I did reporting, and I was reporting on
Clinton and the Paula Jones case and all of that,
And one of the things that I discovered was that
there was a bunch of lawyers, right wing lawyers, who
were secretly advising Paula Jones in her lawsuit against Clinton
(32:34):
and trying to make sure that the lawsuit didn't get
settled for political reasons. So one of them was Anne Caulter,
another was a guy named Paul Rosenswick who's gotten.
Speaker 5 (32:43):
To be better known lately.
Speaker 6 (32:44):
And one of them at the leadership of that group
was George Conway. The third who was then a partner
at Waktel Lipton, a big democratic law firm in New York.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Making millions of dollars.
Speaker 6 (32:55):
Yes, yes, as a tobacco lawyer, which isn't the rightest episode.
Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yes, some of that money he did donate to Joe Biden,
so credit where credit is due.
Speaker 6 (33:06):
He did actually a lot. He's a different guy now
in my opinion. But anyway, I exposed what they were
doing in The Observer, which led to further exposure in
the New York Times and got George in a fair
amount of trouble. And I was trying to track him down,
and I put him on the front page of the
Observer and his law partners at Walktel did not like
this at all.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
No, now, a lot of liberals at walked out.
Speaker 6 (33:27):
Yeah, he wouldn't really talk to me. I mean he
called me once back when I was trying to track
him down. But anyway, so flash forward many years and
he and I are sort of following each other on Twitter.
I don't know exactly why, except I thought he was
really funny and I liked what he was saying. I
don't know why he followed me. And it comes time
my book is finished, you know, the draft is done,
(33:48):
and again my wife says to me, you should ask
Conway to write the forward. And I said, Conway, Conway
hates me. Anyway, I got in touch with him and
he came in and we had a drink and we
got along very well, talked about old times, and I said, George,
I need your advice. I need a never Trump Republican
to write the forward to this book, which is about
(34:09):
the right. And he looked at me, he's right in
the eye, and he said, do you want me to
do it?
Speaker 1 (34:15):
I was like, well, yes, Joe, thank you so much
for joining us. This is great.
Speaker 5 (34:20):
Oh it's really a pleasure. Molly.
Speaker 6 (34:22):
I admire you greatly and really appreciate you.
Speaker 5 (34:26):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (34:28):
Christina Sinson Ramirez is the president of next Gen America.
Speaker 1 (34:33):
Welcome to Fast Politics, Christina, I so tell us what
do you think the Biden campaign should be doing.
Speaker 7 (34:42):
This is the first election cycle in our ten year
track record of reaching out and connecting with millions of
young voters that we fully see from the presidency down
and understanding of just how important young voters are. And
there is a lot that the Biden administration has done
that they have delivered for young voters, but there's a disconnect.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
A lot of young ters don't know a lot of that.
Speaker 7 (35:02):
So this is the administration that's actually gotten the most
progressive policy accomplished and move forward in my lifetime, including
the Inflation Reduction Act, the single largest investment by any
country on the planet to tackle the climate crisis, historic
gun safety legislation, massive student debt cancelation. These gains were
all fought in one by young people also turning out
(35:23):
in record numbers, and so I think the administration needs
to be telling that story. And then we're also seeing
a lot of young people not actually know foolly who
Donald Trump is because some of them were just ten
years old, right, rates or just to give people a
frame of reference. You know, if you are eighteen years
old now or will be eighteen in November, you were
(35:45):
ten years old when Donald Trump was first elected, and
so if you had good parents, they probably shielded you
from the sounds of crying babies being ripped from their mothers,
from the site of heather Hire being run over by
white supremacists, and then are present and calling them very
fine people on both sides, and then lastly saying that
he liked to grab women by the pussy.
Speaker 1 (36:05):
Those are all things you may not know.
Speaker 7 (36:07):
And so there's a lot of education I think that
the Biden administration and allies need to be doing to
educate young people about that track record. They many don't
know about.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
So what does that look like? I mean, how do
you reach young voters?
Speaker 7 (36:21):
So for us at next time, this is you know,
young voters gen Z plus millennials. Right, we go up
to eighteen to thirty five, some people just eighteen to
twenty nine. This is the largest generational voting block, and
so most of them get their news from social media.
It's really for us, we're going to We're already on
campuses across eight states, key battleground states, but we're going
(36:41):
to be on one hundred and twelve college and community
college campuses. We're already having conversations with young people in person,
and then we're working with hundreds of influencers to reach
and engage young people as authentic messengers because it's not
all up to the candidate or the campaign. And a
lot of young people, even though they overwhelmingly vote for
Democrats and progressives, also see themselves as independents and so
(37:05):
for them, what can be often more moving is a
message form one of their peers. So those college campuses
that we're on, we're also working with first time ever
college athletes that can now use their likeness and image
from the school's soccer star or football quarterback.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
You name it.
Speaker 7 (37:21):
We're trying to engage those folks to also reach people
on their platforms.
Speaker 1 (37:25):
Yeah, that is a big question. Like we've seen some
reporting where there's been you know, Biden is not in
good shape with the young people, and they're mad at
him about not canceling student debt the way they wanted
it canceled, or they're mad at him because of Gaza,
(37:46):
or they're mad at him because of COVID. Do you
actually think that's true or do you think it's more
complicated than that.
Speaker 7 (37:55):
I think it's a little more complicated than that. I
think overwhelmingly, if you look at twenty two and where
we were around this time, Biden was also underwater with
young voters. He was not young voters candidate of choice.
I like to say it was the other older white guy,
Bernie Sanders.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
One of my favorite old white guys. Yes, and he
came on this podcast, and I think it was the
happiest he's ever been in an interview. Well that must
be you, Molly, that said him at ease. No, it's
because my grandfather was a famous communist who he like
loved anyway, Sorry, go on, Yes.
Speaker 7 (38:27):
But he was very popular with young people, right. Bernie
Sanders and the Biden administration understood that they were going
to have to appease young voters, and they did right.
They promised to take action on climate change, on student debt,
on big issues that young people cared about. And we've
seen his numbers rise with young people. But we're at
a place again where young people are not super excited
about their choices. However, I think as we get closer
(38:49):
to the election, and we spend the time and money
educating and reaching young people about what's at stake this election. Overwhelmingly,
I think poles are indicators of people's sentiments. Don't necessarily
think especially holes with young voters have aligned the last
few elections on where their behavior is. So at next Gen,
we understand polling as the way we do it and
(39:11):
the way we look at it in our own polling
is where are there opportunities and challenges that we have
to address versus what does this say about what's going
to happen on election day? Because you read the headlines
from the New York Times, Washington Post, you name it.
Over the last few election cycles, each election cycle twenty eighteen,
twenty twenty, twenty twenty two, it's all doom and gloom
about how young voters aren't excited about the candidates that
(39:32):
they're likely to not turn out election happens. We've had
the three highest youth voter turnouts the last three election cycles,
and overwhelmingly for Democrats.
Speaker 1 (39:41):
No, I mean for sure, and obviously despite his being
perhaps I'm sexy, Joe Biden has really delivered a lot
of wins for progressives exactly.
Speaker 7 (39:55):
I think sometimes in progressive spaces, which is usually when
most young people, lies follows as far as the policies
that they care about in the world that they want
to see created in the government they want to see,
we sometimes don't always recognize when we're actually winning. And
I think, Molly, you and I are old enough to
remember the Democratic Party of the nineties that was on
the wrong side.
Speaker 1 (40:14):
I would say, of gay rights, many many progressives issues.
Speaker 7 (40:18):
Yes, go on, gay rights, tax reform, criminal justice. They
were all on the wrong side of those issues. And
now fast forward, we have from Biden all the way
up and down right people saying that we needed to
tax the rich their fair share, that billionaires shouldn't pay
less percentage of taxes than hardworking, working class Americans. That
(40:39):
we have fully come to a place on many issues
where the Democratic Party of the nineties is no longer
the party of today. And so I think we need
to recognize, like, if you like that we've gotten student
debt cancelation, if you like that we got climate legislation,
but you were upset about not getting everything else you
want at home, means be upset, but make a political
calculation and choice about which elected official, you are more
(41:01):
likely to move. Keep organizing. Voting isn't the only way
we make change. It's the most basic thing we must do.
It's not the only thing we should do.
Speaker 1 (41:08):
The thing I've been struck by with Biden world is
that the admin they have really been responsive to a
lot of wish list items for Democrats.
Speaker 7 (41:20):
One hundred percent. I think about where we are on
student debt cancelation. You know, he had promised that he
was going to come in and do some student debt cancelation.
He tried to do ten thousand up to twenty thousand dollars,
depending on what kind of loan and income bracket people
were in. And then we've of course had the right
wing try and stop that with the right wing Supreme Court,
and they were successful. But the Biden administration didn't give up.
(41:40):
They kept figuring out ways to cancel student debt. They've
now canceled billions of dollars in student debt for nearly
five million Americans. I think of my good friend Brandon,
who did public interest law for the last ten years,
and he woke up and saw that his nearly two
hundred thousand dollars in student debt had been canceled by
the Biden administration is life changing. And if we look
(42:02):
at folks I know that have gotten solar panels or
electric cars that they were able to afford, middle class
folks that thought they could never afford that because of
the Inflation Reduction Act. Those are all things that were
one because the Biden administration was listening to and responding
to the demands and desires of young people.
Speaker 1 (42:19):
Yeah, when you talk to young people and you sort
of explain to them some of the stuff that maybe
they missed, do they want to buy what you're selling? Yeah?
Speaker 7 (42:28):
I think young people are you know, they're savvy consumers
on what they consume generally and then what they get behind.
And I think politics is no different for young people.
But I think young people what we've seen the last
few elections, on what we saw in twenty twenty is
young people a lot of them said, I'm voting for Biden.
He wasn't necessarily my choice in the field of twenty
close candidates. But I agree with him more on where
(42:51):
he stands on women's rights and abortion. I agree with
him more about where he stands on the climate crisis.
I agree with him more about how he wants to
hold gun companies accountable for our gun violence epidemic, and
you can do that on many many issues. It's hard
when you look at what young people care about. There
is see much of any alignment whatsoever with Donald Trump
(43:12):
and the Republican Party for the majority of young people.
And I think young people, as we get closer to
the election and continue making that argument and trying to
reach them by the millions, they are savvy and will
make the right political calculation. But we also need to
understand that demographics are not destiny. I think Democrats make
that mistake a lot. They are simply a core ingredient
in the recipe for change. But we've got to organize,
(43:33):
reach out to and speak to that generation's pain and
power that they have.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
If you're looking at young voters as a voting base,
what states are you the most optimistic about? You know,
young people have turned out in record numbers.
Speaker 7 (43:49):
Young people are always generally have been the least likely
to be invested in are the most likely to show
up just on election day, and so we run blind.
Oftentimes we try and as many people as we can.
I think there are places where we feel generally more
hopeful Wisconsin looks good. Arizona looks you know, challenging in
its own ways. But also we have a great senatorial
(44:10):
candidate and Rubing Diego that speaks to young people in Latinos,
which is really important for that state's demographics. And then
in Pennsylvania. In Michigan are two other states. Michigan is
a state I think we need to make sure we
do the hard work and outreach for I think that
state is going to be very, very close, and I
think a lot of it could come down to young
people and making sure we spent the time and effort
(44:31):
and energy fully trying to reach them.
Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah, and I mean that is for sure. You know
a place where the war in the Middle East is
where voters are furious. Talk to me about Nevada. Nevada
is like one of those states where supposely this seni
candidate there, Jackie Rosen, is actually a little bit better
(44:55):
senate candidate than the last cycle, better at politics. I mean,
is there a down ballid effect? And talk to me
about Nevada.
Speaker 7 (45:03):
You know, Nevada is one of the states that I
think we are concerned about right now. Again, polling is
not like an indicator of the election or the actual
outcome as an indicator of people's sentiments at that time.
But polling does show that we have work to do
across the board, including with young people. That I think
it's a population that has been hit hard by different
(45:23):
elements of recovering from COVID, that we see a really
strong need to be spoken to about the economic pain
that a lot of Americans are in. And I think
that what we need to lean on is how Democrats
and progressives really do have a different vision for the
future economically. Most Americans do agree that, especially young people,
(45:43):
that we should be taxing the rich their fair share,
that we shouldn't just have a minimum wage, but a
living wage, that women should be paid for equal work,
that people should be able to unionize right that young
people eighty eight percent of them support labor unions. There
is only one party and one candidate at the top
of the ticket that support those four issues, and that
(46:05):
is Joe Biden and Democrats. And what we saw from
Trump was a real vision for the top one percent
enacted from tax cuts for the most wealthy Americans to
trying to squash the power of labor unions. And that
will only if you thought Trump twenty sixteen was bad.
Speaker 1 (46:21):
You have no.
Speaker 7 (46:22):
Idea how bad it will be Trump two point zero
for working people in this country.
Speaker 1 (46:26):
Yeah, oh for sure. So can you talk to us
about there's a lot of anxiety that Trump is winning
the Latino vote in a way that is unprecedented. Is
that true and if so, what does that mean.
Speaker 7 (46:41):
My last job before running next to in the country's
largest youthful organization, I spent close to twenty years organizing
the Latino community in Texas for Saron workers' rights and
then mobilizing young Latinos to vote. And I remember after
twenty twenty getting asked a lot if Latinos were leaning
more Republican or were they Democrats. So I said, you know,
we need to understand the population is We're not necessarily
(47:02):
either Republicans or Democrats.
Speaker 1 (47:03):
What we are is poor.
Speaker 7 (47:04):
You know, we are the ethnic group that is the
least likely to go to college, the most likely to
die on the job, the least likely to make below
fifteen dollars an hour. And so when Canadas speak to
our deep economic pain and spend the time and money
outreaching to us, they win our vote over because we're
also we live at this duality where yes, many of
us are newly arrived to this country, and at the
(47:25):
same time, in places like Texas, we were part of
this country before it was even a construct.
Speaker 1 (47:30):
The realities.
Speaker 7 (47:31):
If you look at Bernie Sanders, he did amazingly well
with Latino voters and brought tons of new Latino voters
into the political process because he spent the time and
money and energy reaching out to them. Historically, both sides
hadn't done an abysmal job of that, and I think
Republicans made a smart political calculation. That is, if we
go speak to Latino voters about economic issues and spend
the time and money on them, some Democrats have been
(47:53):
taking them for granted and that if we're the first
to outreach to them, they may come to our side.
And so that's what I see as I see that
Democrats to spend a lot more time and money speaking
to the economic realities of Latino voters. We are still
overwhelmingly Democratic voters, especially because we are young people. I
just see massive opportunity because our voting power mostly lies
with young people. We are also one of the youngest
(48:15):
ethnic group in the country. So the most common age
for white American is fifty five, for an African American
it's twenty seven, and for a Latino American it's eleven.
And today one in four American children are now actually Latino.
So what are we doing to go invest into that
community and their burgeoning power?
Speaker 1 (48:35):
Cool? I love that though. That's so hopeful and exciting,
and I think that's a really good point. You need
to speak to people where they are make the case right.
Speaker 7 (48:47):
Yeah, I mean I think that young people there isn't
just you know, it's a huge demographic. We do everything
we can to try and each young people where they're at.
That for us as the largest det vote organization. Yes,
it's being on college and community college campuses, it's organizing
with influencers, it's organizing on dating apps, it's mobilizing our
tens of thousands of volunteers literally to send tens of
(49:10):
millions of calls and texts to young people. And even
our new thing we've started doing, which is we developed
an AI chatbot to organize on Discord and Twitch and
the gaming community, especially to focus on reaching young men.
We try and leave no stone unturned to reach young
people that are probably never going to watch a traditional
TV advertisement or radio advertisement. But make sure we're reaching
(49:32):
in them in all the other ways possible.
Speaker 1 (49:34):
Yes, such a good point and so important and also
a little bit heartening, right I mean, and those voters
are there for Joe Biden if he can connect with them,
right absolutely.
Speaker 7 (49:48):
I think what we've seen is when you invest in
young people and spend the time and money outreaching to them,
they do turn out. When we started our organization ten
years ago with the idea that we could tackle the
climate crisis, the largest crisis of our time, by mobilizing
young people to turn out to vote, we were generally
laughed at that that was a really naive thing to
spend money on, that young people were not going to
(50:10):
turn out, that they were apathetic. Well it's ten years later,
we've seen the highest use going to turn out the
last few elections and the largest investment ever to tackle
the climate crisis. That is because of the power of
young people.
Speaker 1 (50:22):
Thank you, Christina.
Speaker 7 (50:24):
Thanks so much Molly for having me and for covering
the youth vote.
Speaker 1 (50:28):
No moment, Oh fuck on, Rick Wilson, what is your
moment of fuckery?
Speaker 3 (50:36):
My moment of fuckery is that this week there is
a absolute tidal wave, an onslaught of reporting about Joe Biden. Okay,
let's just even say it's legitimate, or that it's journalism. Whatever.
We'll argue that point some other day. But it is
almost exclusively even in foreign newspapers and foreign media outlets,
(50:58):
that in the release of the files, Donald Trump pops
up in the Epsteine files being accused of having raped
two girls to twelve year olds.
Speaker 1 (51:08):
Why didn't that get more mainstream media coverage? Is it
not real? I don't understand.
Speaker 3 (51:13):
You know why they're not doing it. I'll tell you
exactly why they know. If they run that story, they're
going to get four thousand, good jillion tweets and emails
and phone calls from Maugas saying We're gonna come burn
down your building, wet you. That's why they're doing it, Okay,
that's why they won't fucking cover it. And look, if
you go back, you will not find me having a
(51:34):
whole bunch of tweets over the years about the story
that is alleged from these documents, because before it was
only alleged. Now it is in the court filings. And
I'm shocked that American reporters who are able to dig
down and find a person who wrote on an airplane
with Joe Biden once in twenty twenty, comparing him, he
should say he thinks you should drop out. It's amazing
(51:56):
to me. Not one of these people has fucking called
Alex who Trump gave a job after the Epstein case
because Alex Acosta got Jeffrey Epstein a plea bargain. This
thing stinks on ice, the fact that nobody's talking about it,
nobody's covering it, and I will point out that MAGA
is very frequently ready to call anyone who disagrees with
(52:19):
Donald Trump a pedophile, and now we have court testimony
in which Donald Trump is a rape pedophile. I'm sorry,
I find it outrageous fuckery. No one's covering this at scale.
Speaker 1 (52:29):
Do you want to know my moment of fuckery, Rick Wilson,
I do. My momentive fuckery is Charlie Gasparino, who wrote
a disgusting opinion piece in The New York Post where
he said that Vice President Harris was a DEI hire,
despite the fact that she was the age, that she
was the second black female senator ever, that she is
(52:52):
a fucking brilliant, gifted or to our super amazing politician,
great speaker, very smart lawyer, prosecuted the fake universities, was
a leader in California, then went on to the Senate
and is the vice president and is very much a
success in her own right. Meanwhile, Charlie Gasparino yet another
(53:17):
mediocre white guy. He is our moment of fuck.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
Ray couldn't agree more. And anytime you hear the phrase
DEI or CRT or the sixteen nineteen project come out
of Omaga, it's the inward. That's it. That's what it is.
It's the inWORD. Just think of it that way and
you got.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
It, Yes, exactly, that's it. That's it. That's it for
this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday
and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
And again, thanks for listening.
Host
Molly Jong-Fast
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