December 19, 2024 • 45 mins
In our season 10 finale, Katie takes a look at standout moments from her conversations with top political minds from both sides of the aisle about the 2024 election and its surprising twists. From Trump’s unexpected coalition to the Democrats’ coulda-woulda-shouldas, this episode serves up sharp insights, candid reflections, new reflections from Katie and a dash of optimism as we face the unpredictable road ahead. See you all next year!
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is Next Question.
(00:26):
Wow twenty twenty four. What a year it's been. It's
wrapping up and so is this podcast. At least this
season of Next Question. To mark the end of this road,
we gathered some of the brightest observers of politics, from
journalists to consultants, from sociologists to former ambassadors, and looking
(00:47):
back on all the conversations I had, there is a
clear through line. We're in for an unpredictable, possibly perilous,
and democracy shaking four years. There are some bright spots though,
some ways forward, and we'll get to that too, But
first let's revisit early November twenty twenty four, the day
(01:08):
after Donald Trump was elected for a second time. I
spoke with my good friend and former podcast buddy Brian Goldsmith.
With Kamala Harris's defeat fresh on our minds, we tried
to make sense of exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
What happened. Well, we may have overcomplicated this election. You
had an incumbent president with a forty percent approval rating.
You had sixty five seventy percent of the country saying
we're on the wrong track. Stuff costs about twenty percent
more than it did before COVID, and people were broadly
dissatisfied with the status quo and the party in power,
(01:48):
so they voted for the out party. Any political scientist
would tell you that that is the most normal thing
in the world. But of course Donald Trump is the
least normal candidate, imaginable and given and all of the
as he would say, huge baggage that he's bringing into
this race and now into the White House. I think
(02:08):
a lot of Democrats, including me, thought this time would
be different, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Do you think that a lot of pundits and political
experts such as yourself, Ryan thought that again his lunacy
would outweigh people's pain at the pump and the grocery store, etc.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, we thought a couple of things. We thought the
load was just too much for voters to bear at
a certain point, the load of Trump right, all his problems.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
We saw a version of this in North Carolina, where
people wanted to vote for change. The state voted Republican
for president, and yet they elected the Democrat Josh Stein
as governor by a pretty big margin because well, I.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Mean, in fairness that his opponent was insane. If Mark Robinson,
if hadn't been revealed that he was called himself a
black hitler and liked to watch transgender people have sex,
you know, that was part of his choice in pornography.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well that's just an example of the load is too
much to bear. So the load was too much for
voters to bear with Mark Robinson. I think democrats thought,
just as Mark Robinson was ultimately rendered unelectable based on
his problems, Donald Trump would be rendered unelectable based on
his problems. And yeah, he didn't call himself a black Nazi,
but he did try to overturn a free and fair
election and instigate a violent insurrection. So you know, Potato, Patato.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Well he's done a lot more than just that massive thing.
I mean, if you just look at the last ten
days of the campaign, and we've talked about this, Brian,
it seemed he was making no effort, as Maureen Dowd
wrote her Nerd column, to expand his base, to widen
the net, to get any voter he could, and he
just drilled down on this sort of obnoxious browie. I
(04:07):
can say anything and there are no repercussions. Unhinged kind
of weird behavior from filating. I never knew that was
the verb. By the way, I learned something this week
filating a microphone. And you know, making all these disgusting,
gross comments called us.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Should be shot, saying that his opponent should be arrested.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a bitch, Kamala is trash,
you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, and more seriously, you know, promising all sorts of
illegal actions as president. And so you know, to step
back to answer your question. Yeah, we thought, despite broad
dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, that Harris had
run a pretty good campaign. She tried to position herself
as a change candidate. She closed some of the gap,
(05:02):
a lot of the gap on handling the economy, and that,
just as in twenty twenty two, Democrats would overperform because
of the Trump factor. And what I think we know
pretty definitively now is that Trump is a unique political
animal who is kind of untouchable to his supporters no
(05:25):
matter what he says or does and brings out a
pretty big coalition to the polls.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
No matter what.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Now, his coalition this time is actually pretty different than
his coalition in twenty sixteen. And we'll get into all
of that. But to your original point, it was a
broad based victory in the Swing States. It was a
series of narrow victories, consistent victories across the Swing states.
But he wasn't winning the Swing States by five or
ten points. He was winning them by one or two points.
(05:53):
He had bigger gains in places where the campaign wasn't
actually being fought between Harris and Trump on the airwaves,
but the whole country did seem to move in his direction.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
A unique political animal. Wow, that's really an understatement. It
seemed to me that change beat out any personality issues
Trump might have exhibited. His fans just didn't care. And
there's a certain authenticity to the man that seems to
be appealing to a lot of his supporters. I'll never
forget what he said when he was running the first time,
(06:27):
I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter,
or something along those lines. I think it's really true.
Nothing he said, nothing he did or failed to do,
seemed to impact voters. They just love the guy and
some of those coalitions Brian mentioned well, Trump did increase
his support among black and Latino men, young men, and
(06:50):
with urban and world voters. Perhaps no issue other than
inflation loomed larger in this election than immigration and Trump's
vision on how to handle the border crisis. I spoke
to MSNBC's Jen Soak about how we got to the
point where mass deportations actually resonated with so many Americans.
(07:14):
So who's to blame?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Sort of everybody's at fault in Washington in some ways
because immigration is such a politically charged issue that people
are unwilling to compromise on it and have real negotiations
and discussions about it. I mean, Biden proposed an immigration
bill that included increased border security and a more humane
asylum processing the first day, right, Right, No one would
(07:39):
discuss it, No one would come to the White House
and meet with him about it. I'm not saying that
he's blameless. I'm just saying like that, right, tells you
a lot about politics.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Often brought that up during the campaign.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
Yeah, that is true. What is also true is that
because the COVID restrictions were in place for so long
that was in many ways artificially keeping the numbers lower
until they were flipped back. And then during that period
of time there was the negotiation with Mexico about re
implementing the Remain in Mexico program, which was there was
(08:12):
a lot of criticism of and a lot of people
who hated that, especially from the left. So I think
there was a delayed reaction to where clearly the country
was moving on immigration by I actually not really Joe Biden,
but a lot of people in the system and the
(08:32):
Democratic Party within the caucuses, and it wasn't very clear
to me that it had moved massively until that bipartisan
border bill. So yes, hindsight's always twenty twenty. But I
think looking now, there are aspects of how the party
should proceed from here, which I think this election should
(08:54):
be partly informative about, including acknowledging that the border and
having a secure border is a part of what the
Democratic Party messaging needs to be proactively, you know.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
On the other hand, though, I think we should point
out how Donald Trump and the party exploited the immigration
issue with false information about the crimes that were committed
and really misrepresented the fact that actually immigrants commit fewer
crimes than native foreign citizens in this country. But I
(09:28):
think it just got so twisted and exploited, and the
fear and the fentanyl and all that stuff. I think
it got mixed up in one big bowl and made
people just terrified, and to the point where for a
lot of Americans, rounding up people and having a mass
(09:51):
deportation of thirteen million immigrants sounded like a good idea.
Jen brings up I think an excellent point that's undeniable
in this era of modern American politics, and that, of course,
is misinformation. Trump's communication strategy has relied heavily on stirring
(10:12):
up fear of immigrants, of trans people, of liberals, of
high inflation, even as our economy was recovering. How can
we actually break through the fear to have real conversations
with people we disagree with to come up with some
actual solutions. I spoke with Megan McCain about that, someone
(10:32):
who really doesn't see the world the same way I do.
But first I asked her about the stickiness of Trump's
message and why it was so effective.
Speaker 7 (10:43):
One of the smartest things he's ever said is they're
not after me either, after you I'm just in the way,
And I think there's just a feeling of a lot
of people in the country who you know, are living
paycheck to paycheck, who have been screaming at the top
of their lungs that inflation's killing them. I have a
friend in my life who couldn't go on a summer
vacation this summer because of the amount of money she
(11:04):
was paying extra and gas and inflation and interest rates
on her I believe health insurance, can't remember a health
or car insurance, and her husband's gainfully employed. So I
think there was just a feeling that people are not
being heard, the needs of the lower middle class are
not being addressed, and that Trump continues to say I'm
an outsider, I am going to fight for you, and
(11:28):
people believed it. And I just think there's been a
lot of mistakes done along the way, but from Democrats
running for office and governing in a world they want
to see exist and not the one that actually exists.
So I think for a lot of people, as James
Carville says, it's just the economy stupid and they just
want change. I also think people are like very scared
about the border and very scared about a lot of
(11:50):
these culture war issues and just seeing a world changing
in a way that they don't like. And they've sort
of come to terms with the fact that the person
who's going to change it comes in this like really
really corrupt and character flawed package.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
How can we have more conversations like this? How can
we have two people who disagree on a lot of issues,
and how we approach and tackle some of the thorniest
problems in our country and have civil, respectful conversations. How
can we encourage other people to do this?
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Megan, I mean, I always lead with love in every
part of my life that I'm capable of. I'm not perfect,
and I certainly have still have a timber and I
can still be like whatever. But I think age and
having kids is I just want to have be in
a world that I want my kids to be in,
and this level of division is not tolerable or sustainable.
And I think I'm open to I will talk to
(12:47):
anyone as long as it's respectful. I will talk to
anyone on any side, as long as I know that
there's not going to be screaming and name calling or
anything like that. And I just think you can only
lead by example and control how you behave speak. And
I also think we should reward platforms that have bipartisan
conversations right in this moment. It's actually what I'm the
most interested in listening to across the board. I'm interested
(13:10):
in both sides coming together and discussing where we're at.
And I think the reflection of how bad the ratings
are on MSNBC and CNN right now show that maybe
there's an appetite for more interesting converse, nuanced conversations.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
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start making progress today. So will Trump deliver on his
campaign promises? I mean, he's already walked back as pledged
(14:19):
to lower prices at the grocery store. So will his
supporters ultimately feel betrayed?
Speaker 8 (14:26):
Now?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
By the way, they're not a monolith, as we mentioned
Trump voters represent a broad swath of the country. If
you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know I'm
a huge fan of Brian Stephenson. And to have some
of those nuanced conversations that Megan mentioned, you have to
be proximant. He would say, you have to get out
of your bubble and be exposed to people who live
(14:48):
differently and may think differently. I had a fascinating conversation
with someone who did just that. Sociologist Arley Hoakeshield, who
teaches at Berkeley, of all liberal places, spend time in
southern Louisiana for her first book, Strangers in their Own Land,
and then in one of the poorest counties in the
country in Kentucky for her second book, called Stolen Pride.
(15:13):
Her goal was to better understand what was motivating a
big segment of American voters.
Speaker 9 (15:20):
If we go back two decades and we look at
three decades, look at nafta offshoring automation that has created
the haves and the have nots of globalization, and so
the haves who live in cities who have bas for
whom new opportunities have opened up, aren't looking at the
(15:43):
situation of loss. It's not just deprivation, but loss of
actually the white blue collar class. So they feeling frightened
them and a sense of loss. So they have turned
to a charismatic figure who works through emotions. And that's
(16:04):
that's why it's important. I believe, for example, that Donald
Trump has I think actually as a person, he's experienced
shame and very harsh father and that would be neither
here nor there, except that it's given him enormous insight
into the pain of unwarranted shame that a lot of
(16:27):
blue collar men who feel in free fall have felt.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I really appreciate that Arley doesn't just drop into these communities.
She really embeds in these different places and gains people's trusts,
so they really open up to her about their life experiences.
And that's something I talk with Jessica Tarlov about. She's
the lone Democrat on the most popular show on Fox News,
(16:54):
it's The Five, and she's learned that her co hosts
who disagree with her passionately most things, have come to
their views.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
Honestly, I'm a proud establishment Democrat, very moderate by the
party's standards, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, type of Democrat,
not more AOC Bernie Sanders Mold And I think that
that works better with the bipartisan conversation, because I mean,
if you want to have a food fight, and you
(17:23):
remember what cable news was like around once Trump announced,
and like every night on CNN, it was like Anna
Navarro losing her mind, right, and Kaylee Mcanenniy was on
in those days, and Anderson Cooper is just kind of
sitting in the middle petrified, right like that, That's what
it was like. But you could have a more thoughtful conversation,
(17:46):
and I found myself being able to do that more
or less. And it always is embedded, at least for
me coming from a place of understanding that I'm talking
to people who generally come by their beliefs honestly. And
I think that too many people suppose that folks who
they don't agree with don't actually believe the things that
(18:08):
they're saying. But most of the time they do, and
a lot of that is due to circumstances how they
grow up. Like I grew up here in New York City,
I have had a charmed life. I know where my
liberal politics come from and what my lived experience has
been and going to work at a place like Fox,
I now have people in my orbit who have a
(18:28):
completely different set of backgrounds who when they talk about
how they feel about the Second Amendment that comes from
a place of growing up with guns and having hunters
in their families, or when they talk about, you know,
probably the toughest issue that I ever have to discuss
on air being pro life or bringing pro choice, especially
in the wake of the Dobs decision, that a lot
(18:50):
of people's beliefs on that is rooted in their religiosity.
Where I look at it as a policy issue and
a scientific issue, and they're telling me about.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
It so a personal liberty issue.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
All of the things that we think about it versus
this is what I was taught in Sunday School, this
is what I know. I grew up in, meshed in
an environment that feels really differently to that.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That broader understanding of where people's beliefs actually come from,
whether it's rooted in their upbringing, lived experiences, religious teachings,
or culture, really shapes how we approach difficult conversations. And
speaking of challenging topics, one area that has sparked significant
debate in recent years is education, particularly around claims of
(19:39):
so called woke indoctrination in schools. From critical race theory
to gender identity, these topics have become political flash points.
The problem is most of the arguments have no basis
in truth. Remember the pet eating Haitian immigrants in Ohio,
the claim that your son goes to school as a
(19:59):
bod and comes home as a girl, or that infamous
pedophile ring in the basement of the dcpiece of parlor. Yeah,
not true. I spoke with Miguel Cardona, the outgoing US
Secretary of Education, about how these issues have reached a
boiling point in our political discourse. But I wondered, have
(20:22):
they really taken over our nation's schools. You mentioned political ideology,
and I think there is also an undercurrent of anger
that some voters apparently feel that somehow students are being
indoctrinated with sort of a woke ideology, whether it's critical
(20:44):
race theory or gender identity issues. And I'm curious if
you could speak to that and sure separate fact from
fiction and what's going on in classrooms across the country.
Speaker 8 (20:59):
You know those campaign strategies, Katie, I'm gonna be very
frank with you. I have less say on what my
children learn in the classroom now than I did when
I was a classroom teacher. Every position I've had before
Secretary of Education, I've had more authority to control the
(21:19):
curriculum than I do now. So that's all misinformation, and
I think it was done again an attempt to create
dissonance and and really get people to believe something that's
not accurate. So a lot of it was misinformation intended
to create division in our in our schools. I do
(21:42):
not control curriculum, you know. In terms of indoctrination, I
think the closest thing we've seen to that is we
have some states, you know, buying Bibles for every student
in their school. I mean, and I'm a Christian, I'm
I'm a God fearing man. I you know, was raised
Christian and still practice and have strong faith. Faith has
(22:06):
really driven me so much. And I don't talk a
lot about it, but I know that I'm following God's
plan and it's not my plan. I really can get
into that, but I do believe in the separation of
a church and state. So when I see those who
are saying that we're indoctrinating students doing some of the
things that really align with indoctrination. I get baffled, you know,
(22:28):
but I never bet against America's schools and America's educators
and parents to really separate fact from fiction and see
what's happening. There is no indoctrination there. You know, there's
a lot of this. I was at a at an
event recently and I saw a friend of mine from
high school. True story. He told me that his mother
believed when it was said that, you know, you send
(22:50):
your kid to school as a boy and then comes
back three days later as a girl, and they changed
them and they didn't know why she believed that. And
this person that was telling me that said, you got
to talk to my mom. I don't know how how
the hell she believes that that's that's wild, But yet
she believes it because she hears it being said. And
that to me, is more of a political strategy than
(23:10):
it is talking about education policy. And it was done
to get people to believe what they hear. It's sad
that it's gotten to that point of such misinformation direct
lives being shared openly. There was a time where no
party would ever stoop to that level of spreading lies
(23:31):
just to get people to believe you so that you
could vote a certain way. You know, I have confidence
that our local educators and our local parents work well
together and they're going to continue to evolve education to
make sure that our students needs are being met. But
it really it's sad in me how how much misinformation
(23:51):
was being spread with the intention of dividing our communities
for a vote.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Well, when it comes to sort of educating kids about
gender identity, are there certain guidelines or is it decided
at the state and local level.
Speaker 8 (24:07):
Local level, I have not had any conversations in my
time as Secretary of Education of how to teach any
of that. As a matter of fact, I have not
even weighed in on that my personal beliefs or my
beliefs as a lifelong educator with degrees in education. Has
never been heard on an airwave about how to teach that.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
The misinformation Secretary Cardona refers to is of course spread
online via social media, and it's a huge problem that
I think is behind our hardened positions and the polarization
in this country that seems to be getting worse every day,
polarization that is reinforced by our intensely partisan media landscape.
(24:49):
Michael Tamaski, the editor of the New Republic, believes the
conservative side is winning. He's covered the growing influence of
the right wing media industrial complex, and I asked him
about his diagnosis of where we are and how we
got there. Can I quote your article? If they're done,
(25:09):
you're in fantasy land. They're not happy with the rough parody,
the slight advantage they have. Now they want media domination.
Sinclair bought the once glorious Baltimore's son. Don't think they'll
stop there. I predict Sinclair or News Corp. Will own
the Washington Post one day, maybe sooner than we think.
(25:30):
So I guess the question, Michael, is what can be
done about this?
Speaker 10 (25:35):
Well, Liberals have to make a concerted effort, as Republicans
did twenty and thirty years ago, to build their own media.
And it has to be smart, it has to be good,
it has to entertain, it has to get an audience.
All those burdens will will apply to it, so you know,
(25:58):
it has to be good and succeed. But they just
have to start doing something about this. And they have
to try to reach into Middle America and talk to
people there because there are so many just vast swaths
of the country where the idea of liberalism and the
name of the Democratic Party are just dirt. And you know,
(26:24):
I cited also in the piece an example, the voters
of Missouri voted to protect abortion rights on one ballot initiative,
and they voted for paid family leave in a higher
minimum wage, and always they voted for these very democratic
liberal things, right, and by reasonably comfortable margins on those
(26:45):
But would they They wouldn't elect a Democrat in a
million years.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
You know.
Speaker 10 (26:49):
The Democratic candidate for Senate, Lucas Kons who ran against
Josh Holly, ran a good race, had money won, the
debate didn't come within fourteen fifteen points, So you know,
work has to be done, especially in those parts of
the country where Democrats used to win. Wasn't that long
ago that there was a Democratic senator from Missouri Claire McCaskill,
(27:10):
or Democratic senators from Iowa, even Arkansas, But it just
seems inconceivable now. So the party needs to rebuild in
those places. And part of that story is media rebuilding.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So what I'm hearing is that the Liberals or Democrats
need to develop their own network, their own vast network
of media entities. Does that mean sort of news that
reported just the facts, that wasn't based in opinion, that
let people know what was going on and tried to
(27:46):
give context, is just a thing of the past.
Speaker 10 (27:52):
No, I don't think so. I think the facts. You're
kind of on liberalism side. That's one thing. I mean,
you know, and most people support a lot of things
that liberals are for. Most people support a higher minimum wage,
as that Missouri vote shows. Most people support paid family leave,
Most people support a tax increases for the wealthy. You
(28:17):
go down these issues in child tax credit, most people
are for these things. So I don't think it means
the end of It means the end of a certain
kind of neutrality, but that neutrality has been disrobed. I
think over the last twenty years. It's not enough to
say this side says this, and this side says that,
(28:39):
and we won't referee it. That hasn't worked. That hasn't worked.
It means just refereeing it and telling people the truth,
putting truth ahead of fairness. That's what I always say, Katie.
There are these two values of the media, as you know,
that are traditional values to be fair and represent both
(29:01):
points of view or all points of view, but also
to be truthful and tell the truth I think, and
this is truth. I'm sad to say of The New
York Times. In many cases, although the New York Times
remains a great newspaper and does tons of great reporting,
they sometimes when those two values clash, they sometimes put
fairness ahead of proof. We've got to put truth ahead
(29:22):
of fairness.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Truth
(29:53):
ahead of fairness makes sense, right. Unfortunately, no one seems
to agree on facts, and they're in life the rub. Meanwhile,
the Trump transition is well underway, and it's been kind
of unhinged. Remember when Matt Gates was going to be
Attorney General. Well, Gates might have been the craziest pick,
but many of the folks Trump is selected for his
(30:15):
cabinet are raising more than a few eyebrows. His supporters
want him to really drain the swamp this time and
disrupt the bureaucratic status quo. But his detractors compare this
crew to the one you might find at the Star
Wars CANTEENA. I asked David from a conservative writer from
the Atlantic, to weigh in on how this transition differs
(30:39):
from previous ones. So let's talk about cash fatal David.
He is a MAGA loyalist to his core right.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So at THEI directors have always been since the Darator
who days people of broad and widely accepted reputation for
political neutral people who sometimes didn't even vote and always
did things presidents didn't like. And that was a job
(31:09):
many many presidents and many FBI directors refused even to
meet one another. I worked in a White House, and
if you had anything you want to know from the FBI,
including the President is going to decorate an FBI officer,
and we need to know the names of the officer's
children and make sure they're pronouncement spelled correctly so we
can recognize them with the speech. If I wanted to say,
(31:30):
what are the names of this hero's children? I went
to the White House Council's office and said, would you
make the call to the FBI to ask them the
name of the hero's children so we can because I
can't talk to them. I would be fired and or
worse if I placed a direct call the FBI.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
There is no any any signal, event propriety, or any
kind of pressure from the Executive Office to the FBI.
Was absolutely for Boden, for.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Boten, and that's how it's always always been. And now
you're going to point this person who is one of
these Watergate characters who will do anything for Donald Trump.
You commit and you know, when he was serving in
the last year of the Trump administration as chief of
staff in the Defense Department, the chairman of the Joint
Chief said, jail is an uncomfortable place. So if you're
(32:15):
thinking about doing something that will get you sent to jail,
don't do. He had to caution people, do not break
the law for Trump when he was working as a
staffer in DoD Now he's offered for the head of
the FBI. I think you can group the Trump appointments
into three main categories. They're the people who you know,
(32:38):
maybe you like them, maybe you don't, but their resume
sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Right Marco for example.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah, and maybe you have a high opinion of him,
maybe have a low opinion. But it's not crazy that
the senior Senator who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
would become Secretary of State. Maybe he'll be a weak one,
but he won't be an outlandish one. Then you have
the people who where there's a serious personality problem of
some kind or another, but where their ability to do
(33:06):
harm is maybe limited, like Pete Heeksach. I mean, you know,
he's a crackpot, He's an ideological crank. His record with
women is horrifying. His own mother thought so. But my
guess is that Pete Hegsead just doesn't have the mental
horsepower and the knowledge of the building and the Pentagon
is organized in a way I don't know how much
harm he's really going to be able to do. Then
(33:28):
you have the Tulsa Gabbards and the cash Betels, who
are going to smaller organize it where the boss is
more powerful, and who have who are not just strange personalities,
but are in the grip of really un American ideas,
and they can do a lot of damage.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Trump's nominees could in fact do a lot of damage
as norms and institutions continue to be challenged. What will
that mean for our country going forward? Democratic Senator Chris
Murphy Ofnnecticut told me he's worried.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
So what I am really concerned is that we lose
the rule of law. That's what happens in democracies that
stop being democracies all of a sudden. You can't rely
on a fair trial, you can't rely on a fair prosecution.
All of a sudden, You get favors and immunity if
(34:27):
you are a political supporter of the person in power
and you are specifically targeted, often very unfairly. If you
are political opposition, you still have elections, right, but they
don't matter as much because the opposition just disappears because
most people, when faced with the threat of persecution or prosecution,
(34:49):
decide to just lower their voice, recede into the background.
So I am most worried about Pambondi and Cash Pattel,
who are being picked because they are willing to turn
the Department of Justice into a witch hunt operation for
Trump's political opposition.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
And you already see.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
What's happening in the business right now. So the mega
billionaires in this country who run the information system have
already telegraphed that they are not willing to fight. Comcast
has announced they're selling MSNBC they're getting out of the
business of criticizing Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos did not make
an endorsement in this last election, signaling that he does
(35:30):
not want to fight either. Twitter is being run out
of the Whitehouse right now. So you see signaling from
very powerful people in this country that they do not
want to criticize Donald Trump's they want to protect their billions.
And you see a Department of Justice is about to
be taken over by a crowd that may actually start
locking up or threatening to lock up people in this
(35:51):
country who try to oppose Donald Trump. That's the end
of democracy.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
But he also says, in order to fight back, Democrats
have some work to do. Let's talk about the Democratic Party.
It's been over a month since the election, and the
inauguration is not too far away. Half of you seen
the Democratic Party other than looking at itself and wondering
(36:15):
where it went wrong? Change in the weeks since early November.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Well, I'm deeply worried because I haven't seen the kind
of introspection that I would have hoped. I think that
there's a lot of folks who look at the race
and say, well, Trump, you know, really didn't even get
fifty percent it wasn't a landslide. We almost won the
House of Representatives. We just need some minor adjustments. I
(36:45):
don't look at it that way. I think we need
to recognize how unbelievable it is that we keep losing
to somebody as reckless as Donald Trump, a felon, somebody
who openly supported an insurrection. Again, it's the United States government.
We should not be satisfied to lose to somebody like
that by such a slim margin.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
I also think it is morally.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Unsustainable for our party to stand up and say we're
the party of poor people, and poor people don't want
to vote for us. Like, how do you sort of
wake up every morning and say, well, we're the party
of poor people, but poor people don't like us. We're
not listening to the people we claim to represent. And
even if you can sort of minimize the political jeopardy
(37:33):
that we're in after this election, there's there's a moral
jeopardy we're in as a movement that will just exacerbate
and get worse if we don't look at square in
the face. So I think the answer to your question case,
I haven't seen a lot of things changing the Democratic
Party yet I'm arguing for some major change. Maybe we
just needed a month or so to lick.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
Our wounds, but like we got to get moving well.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
You wrote a memo to fellow Democrats a couple of
weeks after the election, and you talked about winning back
low income voters. You believe the key to doing that
is taking on corporate greed. But with all key respects,
Senator Murphy, hasn't the Democratic Party been talking about corporate
(38:16):
greed and nauseum for decades?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I don't, not in the way that translates to ordinary
average voters. I mean, frankly, I think the Democratic Party,
along with the Republican Party, has presided over an economy
for the last forty years that has done really, really
well for folks at the very top of the income threshold.
I mean, people sort of look at the economy that
Democrats constructed and it looks like it did really well
(38:44):
for very, very rich people. And they look at who
our coalition is, increasingly upper income individuals, and it doesn't
look like we're sincere. When we talk about corporate power,
we also talk about it generally. We don't necessarily talk
about it specifically. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they will take
(39:04):
on specific company specific CEOs. But people notice when ninety
percent of Democrats when they talk about corporate greed don't
actually name anybody, that doesn't sound real or sincere. So
I don't think people really believe that we want to
deconstruct concentrated power. And I think that you saw you
(39:29):
saw the hesitancy of the Democratic Party to make that
a ten poll. In the end of this last election.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I talked to a lot of really smart people, but
I always turned to Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican campaign
advisor who is no longer a Republican by the way,
for his thirty thousand foot view of where we are
in our nation's broader history.
Speaker 11 (39:54):
All I can say in this moment for any American,
our country's going to outlive all all of us. We'll
never see the whole. We're never gonna get to see
the ending. We just won't, right. And I think this
is like so deeply important to appreciate in the context
(40:17):
of there are things bigger than us, and as an American,
there is nothing bigger than us than the United States.
And in our story, this chapter of it, I think
it's exciting to be part of it, and to oppose
something that I think is deeply terrible because on the
(40:40):
other side of it is something a lot better. That's
the greatness of the country. Lincoln was preceded by the
worst president in American history until Trump became president, and
(41:01):
so I think Trump is going to be a disaster disaster,
but the country will endure, damage will be done, Terrible
consequences might happen, but one of the consequences that will
(41:21):
come from the disaster ahead is greatness that will emerge
from it, a greatness that didn't exist in the moment
when what's to come could have been prevented. Destiny did
(41:41):
not shape the events at hand like that. So I
think in this moment, opposing what is about to come
is of deep importance, and I'm excited to have a
small voice in that effort because for me, some people
(42:03):
are great at sports and some people love music and painting.
This is what I care about. There's nothing more important
to me outside of my family than the country. And
what that's come to mean to me over recent years
(42:26):
is not the partisan victory and the excitement of winning
a campaign when I was a young man, but about
the opportunities that everybody ought to have in a country.
That ought to mean when it comes to freedom, the
same thing for everybody, and that is very much on
the table right now, that question. And I could not
(42:48):
think of a better thing to do if I got
a day left, a week left, or thirty five years left,
than to talk about that right now, because what's been
handed down to us to preserve it makes stronger for
(43:10):
the next generation is of profound importance. There's three hundred
and forty million Americans alive, half of us who have
ever lived or alive right now, because there's only been
seven hundred million people in all the history of the
world since July fourth, seventeen seventy six who've been able
(43:30):
to say these words that mean more to me and
I think mean more to a lot of people in
the country than any other association in their life.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And it's this.
Speaker 11 (43:44):
I am an American.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Everyone here at KCM and specifically next question hopes you
will all be enjoying a much needed break and that
you'll be spending the holidays with people you love and
if you don't always agree with them, meanwhile, we'll see
you next year. As we continue to try to understand
and navigate the next four. Happy holidays everyone. Thanks for
(44:19):
listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a
subject you want us to cover, or you want to
share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(44:39):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(45:00):
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Hi everyone, I'm Kitty Kuric and this is Next Question.
(00:26):
Wow twenty twenty four. What a year it's been. It's
wrapping up and so is this podcast. At least this
season of Next Question. To mark the end of this road,
we gathered some of the brightest observers of politics, from
journalists to consultants, from sociologists to former ambassadors, and looking
(00:47):
back on all the conversations I had, there is a
clear through line. We're in for an unpredictable, possibly perilous,
and democracy shaking four years. There are some bright spots though,
some ways forward, and we'll get to that too, But
first let's revisit early November twenty twenty four, the day
(01:08):
after Donald Trump was elected for a second time. I
spoke with my good friend and former podcast buddy Brian Goldsmith.
With Kamala Harris's defeat fresh on our minds, we tried
to make sense of exactly.
Speaker 2 (01:24):
What happened. Well, we may have overcomplicated this election. You
had an incumbent president with a forty percent approval rating.
You had sixty five seventy percent of the country saying
we're on the wrong track. Stuff costs about twenty percent
more than it did before COVID, and people were broadly
dissatisfied with the status quo and the party in power,
(01:48):
so they voted for the out party. Any political scientist
would tell you that that is the most normal thing
in the world. But of course Donald Trump is the
least normal candidate, imaginable and given and all of the
as he would say, huge baggage that he's bringing into
this race and now into the White House. I think
(02:08):
a lot of Democrats, including me, thought this time would
be different, but it wasn't.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
Do you think that a lot of pundits and political
experts such as yourself, Ryan thought that again his lunacy
would outweigh people's pain at the pump and the grocery store, etc.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Well, we thought a couple of things. We thought the
load was just too much for voters to bear at
a certain point, the load of Trump right, all his problems.
Speaker 3 (02:43):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
We saw a version of this in North Carolina, where
people wanted to vote for change. The state voted Republican
for president, and yet they elected the Democrat Josh Stein
as governor by a pretty big margin because well, I.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
Mean, in fairness that his opponent was insane. If Mark Robinson,
if hadn't been revealed that he was called himself a
black hitler and liked to watch transgender people have sex,
you know, that was part of his choice in pornography.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Well that's just an example of the load is too
much to bear. So the load was too much for
voters to bear with Mark Robinson. I think democrats thought,
just as Mark Robinson was ultimately rendered unelectable based on
his problems, Donald Trump would be rendered unelectable based on
his problems. And yeah, he didn't call himself a black Nazi,
but he did try to overturn a free and fair
election and instigate a violent insurrection. So you know, Potato, Patato.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Well he's done a lot more than just that massive thing.
I mean, if you just look at the last ten
days of the campaign, and we've talked about this, Brian,
it seemed he was making no effort, as Maureen Dowd
wrote her Nerd column, to expand his base, to widen
the net, to get any voter he could, and he
just drilled down on this sort of obnoxious browie. I
(04:07):
can say anything and there are no repercussions. Unhinged kind
of weird behavior from filating. I never knew that was
the verb. By the way, I learned something this week
filating a microphone. And you know, making all these disgusting,
gross comments called us.
Speaker 2 (04:27):
Should be shot, saying that his opponent should be arrested.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
Yeah, you know, Nancy Pelosi is a bitch, Kamala is trash,
you know, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
Yeah, and more seriously, you know, promising all sorts of
illegal actions as president. And so you know, to step
back to answer your question. Yeah, we thought, despite broad
dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, that Harris had
run a pretty good campaign. She tried to position herself
as a change candidate. She closed some of the gap,
(05:02):
a lot of the gap on handling the economy, and that,
just as in twenty twenty two, Democrats would overperform because
of the Trump factor. And what I think we know
pretty definitively now is that Trump is a unique political
animal who is kind of untouchable to his supporters no
(05:25):
matter what he says or does and brings out a
pretty big coalition to the polls.
Speaker 4 (05:31):
No matter what.
Speaker 2 (05:32):
Now, his coalition this time is actually pretty different than
his coalition in twenty sixteen. And we'll get into all
of that. But to your original point, it was a
broad based victory in the Swing States. It was a
series of narrow victories, consistent victories across the Swing states.
But he wasn't winning the Swing States by five or
ten points. He was winning them by one or two points.
(05:53):
He had bigger gains in places where the campaign wasn't
actually being fought between Harris and Trump on the airwaves,
but the whole country did seem to move in his direction.
Speaker 1 (06:05):
A unique political animal. Wow, that's really an understatement. It
seemed to me that change beat out any personality issues
Trump might have exhibited. His fans just didn't care. And
there's a certain authenticity to the man that seems to
be appealing to a lot of his supporters. I'll never
forget what he said when he was running the first time,
(06:27):
I could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and it wouldn't matter,
or something along those lines. I think it's really true.
Nothing he said, nothing he did or failed to do,
seemed to impact voters. They just love the guy and
some of those coalitions Brian mentioned well, Trump did increase
his support among black and Latino men, young men, and
(06:50):
with urban and world voters. Perhaps no issue other than
inflation loomed larger in this election than immigration and Trump's
vision on how to handle the border crisis. I spoke
to MSNBC's Jen Soak about how we got to the
point where mass deportations actually resonated with so many Americans.
(07:14):
So who's to blame?
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Sort of everybody's at fault in Washington in some ways
because immigration is such a politically charged issue that people
are unwilling to compromise on it and have real negotiations
and discussions about it. I mean, Biden proposed an immigration
bill that included increased border security and a more humane
asylum processing the first day, right, Right, No one would
(07:39):
discuss it, No one would come to the White House
and meet with him about it. I'm not saying that
he's blameless. I'm just saying like that, right, tells you
a lot about politics.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Often brought that up during the campaign.
Speaker 5 (07:50):
Yeah, that is true. What is also true is that
because the COVID restrictions were in place for so long
that was in many ways artificially keeping the numbers lower
until they were flipped back. And then during that period
of time there was the negotiation with Mexico about re
implementing the Remain in Mexico program, which was there was
(08:12):
a lot of criticism of and a lot of people
who hated that, especially from the left. So I think
there was a delayed reaction to where clearly the country
was moving on immigration by I actually not really Joe Biden,
but a lot of people in the system and the
(08:32):
Democratic Party within the caucuses, and it wasn't very clear
to me that it had moved massively until that bipartisan
border bill. So yes, hindsight's always twenty twenty. But I
think looking now, there are aspects of how the party
should proceed from here, which I think this election should
(08:54):
be partly informative about, including acknowledging that the border and
having a secure border is a part of what the
Democratic Party messaging needs to be proactively, you know.
Speaker 6 (09:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
On the other hand, though, I think we should point
out how Donald Trump and the party exploited the immigration
issue with false information about the crimes that were committed
and really misrepresented the fact that actually immigrants commit fewer
crimes than native foreign citizens in this country. But I
(09:28):
think it just got so twisted and exploited, and the
fear and the fentanyl and all that stuff. I think
it got mixed up in one big bowl and made
people just terrified, and to the point where for a
lot of Americans, rounding up people and having a mass
(09:51):
deportation of thirteen million immigrants sounded like a good idea.
Jen brings up I think an excellent point that's undeniable
in this era of modern American politics, and that, of course,
is misinformation. Trump's communication strategy has relied heavily on stirring
(10:12):
up fear of immigrants, of trans people, of liberals, of
high inflation, even as our economy was recovering. How can
we actually break through the fear to have real conversations
with people we disagree with to come up with some
actual solutions. I spoke with Megan McCain about that, someone
(10:32):
who really doesn't see the world the same way I do.
But first I asked her about the stickiness of Trump's
message and why it was so effective.
Speaker 7 (10:43):
One of the smartest things he's ever said is they're
not after me either, after you I'm just in the way,
And I think there's just a feeling of a lot
of people in the country who you know, are living
paycheck to paycheck, who have been screaming at the top
of their lungs that inflation's killing them. I have a
friend in my life who couldn't go on a summer
vacation this summer because of the amount of money she
(11:04):
was paying extra and gas and inflation and interest rates
on her I believe health insurance, can't remember a health
or car insurance, and her husband's gainfully employed. So I
think there was just a feeling that people are not
being heard, the needs of the lower middle class are
not being addressed, and that Trump continues to say I'm
an outsider, I am going to fight for you, and
(11:28):
people believed it. And I just think there's been a
lot of mistakes done along the way, but from Democrats
running for office and governing in a world they want
to see exist and not the one that actually exists.
So I think for a lot of people, as James
Carville says, it's just the economy stupid and they just
want change. I also think people are like very scared
about the border and very scared about a lot of
(11:50):
these culture war issues and just seeing a world changing
in a way that they don't like. And they've sort
of come to terms with the fact that the person
who's going to change it comes in this like really
really corrupt and character flawed package.
Speaker 1 (12:03):
How can we have more conversations like this? How can
we have two people who disagree on a lot of issues,
and how we approach and tackle some of the thorniest
problems in our country and have civil, respectful conversations. How
can we encourage other people to do this?
Speaker 7 (12:26):
Megan, I mean, I always lead with love in every
part of my life that I'm capable of. I'm not perfect,
and I certainly have still have a timber and I
can still be like whatever. But I think age and
having kids is I just want to have be in
a world that I want my kids to be in,
and this level of division is not tolerable or sustainable.
And I think I'm open to I will talk to
(12:47):
anyone as long as it's respectful. I will talk to
anyone on any side, as long as I know that
there's not going to be screaming and name calling or
anything like that. And I just think you can only
lead by example and control how you behave speak. And
I also think we should reward platforms that have bipartisan
conversations right in this moment. It's actually what I'm the
most interested in listening to across the board. I'm interested
(13:10):
in both sides coming together and discussing where we're at.
And I think the reflection of how bad the ratings
are on MSNBC and CNN right now show that maybe
there's an appetite for more interesting converse, nuanced conversations.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
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start making progress today. So will Trump deliver on his
campaign promises? I mean, he's already walked back as pledged
(14:19):
to lower prices at the grocery store. So will his
supporters ultimately feel betrayed?
Speaker 8 (14:26):
Now?
Speaker 1 (14:26):
By the way, they're not a monolith, as we mentioned
Trump voters represent a broad swath of the country. If
you're a regular listener of this podcast, you know I'm
a huge fan of Brian Stephenson. And to have some
of those nuanced conversations that Megan mentioned, you have to
be proximant. He would say, you have to get out
of your bubble and be exposed to people who live
(14:48):
differently and may think differently. I had a fascinating conversation
with someone who did just that. Sociologist Arley Hoakeshield, who
teaches at Berkeley, of all liberal places, spend time in
southern Louisiana for her first book, Strangers in their Own Land,
and then in one of the poorest counties in the
country in Kentucky for her second book, called Stolen Pride.
(15:13):
Her goal was to better understand what was motivating a
big segment of American voters.
Speaker 9 (15:20):
If we go back two decades and we look at
three decades, look at nafta offshoring automation that has created
the haves and the have nots of globalization, and so
the haves who live in cities who have bas for
whom new opportunities have opened up, aren't looking at the
(15:43):
situation of loss. It's not just deprivation, but loss of
actually the white blue collar class. So they feeling frightened
them and a sense of loss. So they have turned
to a charismatic figure who works through emotions. And that's
(16:04):
that's why it's important. I believe, for example, that Donald
Trump has I think actually as a person, he's experienced
shame and very harsh father and that would be neither
here nor there, except that it's given him enormous insight
into the pain of unwarranted shame that a lot of
(16:27):
blue collar men who feel in free fall have felt.
Speaker 1 (16:32):
I really appreciate that Arley doesn't just drop into these communities.
She really embeds in these different places and gains people's trusts,
so they really open up to her about their life experiences.
And that's something I talk with Jessica Tarlov about. She's
the lone Democrat on the most popular show on Fox News,
(16:54):
it's The Five, and she's learned that her co hosts
who disagree with her passionately most things, have come to
their views.
Speaker 6 (17:02):
Honestly, I'm a proud establishment Democrat, very moderate by the
party's standards, you know, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, type of Democrat,
not more AOC Bernie Sanders Mold And I think that
that works better with the bipartisan conversation, because I mean,
if you want to have a food fight, and you
(17:23):
remember what cable news was like around once Trump announced,
and like every night on CNN, it was like Anna
Navarro losing her mind, right, and Kaylee Mcanenniy was on
in those days, and Anderson Cooper is just kind of
sitting in the middle petrified, right like that, That's what
it was like. But you could have a more thoughtful conversation,
(17:46):
and I found myself being able to do that more
or less. And it always is embedded, at least for
me coming from a place of understanding that I'm talking
to people who generally come by their beliefs honestly. And
I think that too many people suppose that folks who
they don't agree with don't actually believe the things that
(18:08):
they're saying. But most of the time they do, and
a lot of that is due to circumstances how they
grow up. Like I grew up here in New York City,
I have had a charmed life. I know where my
liberal politics come from and what my lived experience has
been and going to work at a place like Fox,
I now have people in my orbit who have a
(18:28):
completely different set of backgrounds who when they talk about
how they feel about the Second Amendment that comes from
a place of growing up with guns and having hunters
in their families, or when they talk about, you know,
probably the toughest issue that I ever have to discuss
on air being pro life or bringing pro choice, especially
in the wake of the Dobs decision, that a lot
(18:50):
of people's beliefs on that is rooted in their religiosity.
Where I look at it as a policy issue and
a scientific issue, and they're telling me about.
Speaker 1 (18:59):
It so a personal liberty issue.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
All of the things that we think about it versus
this is what I was taught in Sunday School, this
is what I know. I grew up in, meshed in
an environment that feels really differently to that.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
That broader understanding of where people's beliefs actually come from,
whether it's rooted in their upbringing, lived experiences, religious teachings,
or culture, really shapes how we approach difficult conversations. And
speaking of challenging topics, one area that has sparked significant
debate in recent years is education, particularly around claims of
(19:39):
so called woke indoctrination in schools. From critical race theory
to gender identity, these topics have become political flash points.
The problem is most of the arguments have no basis
in truth. Remember the pet eating Haitian immigrants in Ohio,
the claim that your son goes to school as a
(19:59):
bod and comes home as a girl, or that infamous
pedophile ring in the basement of the dcpiece of parlor. Yeah,
not true. I spoke with Miguel Cardona, the outgoing US
Secretary of Education, about how these issues have reached a
boiling point in our political discourse. But I wondered, have
(20:22):
they really taken over our nation's schools. You mentioned political ideology,
and I think there is also an undercurrent of anger
that some voters apparently feel that somehow students are being
indoctrinated with sort of a woke ideology, whether it's critical
(20:44):
race theory or gender identity issues. And I'm curious if
you could speak to that and sure separate fact from
fiction and what's going on in classrooms across the country.
Speaker 8 (20:59):
You know those campaign strategies, Katie, I'm gonna be very
frank with you. I have less say on what my
children learn in the classroom now than I did when
I was a classroom teacher. Every position I've had before
Secretary of Education, I've had more authority to control the
(21:19):
curriculum than I do now. So that's all misinformation, and
I think it was done again an attempt to create
dissonance and and really get people to believe something that's
not accurate. So a lot of it was misinformation intended
to create division in our in our schools. I do
(21:42):
not control curriculum, you know. In terms of indoctrination, I
think the closest thing we've seen to that is we
have some states, you know, buying Bibles for every student
in their school. I mean, and I'm a Christian, I'm
I'm a God fearing man. I you know, was raised
Christian and still practice and have strong faith. Faith has
(22:06):
really driven me so much. And I don't talk a
lot about it, but I know that I'm following God's
plan and it's not my plan. I really can get
into that, but I do believe in the separation of
a church and state. So when I see those who
are saying that we're indoctrinating students doing some of the
things that really align with indoctrination. I get baffled, you know,
(22:28):
but I never bet against America's schools and America's educators
and parents to really separate fact from fiction and see
what's happening. There is no indoctrination there. You know, there's
a lot of this. I was at a at an
event recently and I saw a friend of mine from
high school. True story. He told me that his mother
believed when it was said that, you know, you send
(22:50):
your kid to school as a boy and then comes
back three days later as a girl, and they changed
them and they didn't know why she believed that. And
this person that was telling me that said, you got
to talk to my mom. I don't know how how
the hell she believes that that's that's wild, But yet
she believes it because she hears it being said. And
that to me, is more of a political strategy than
(23:10):
it is talking about education policy. And it was done
to get people to believe what they hear. It's sad
that it's gotten to that point of such misinformation direct
lives being shared openly. There was a time where no
party would ever stoop to that level of spreading lies
(23:31):
just to get people to believe you so that you
could vote a certain way. You know, I have confidence
that our local educators and our local parents work well
together and they're going to continue to evolve education to
make sure that our students needs are being met. But
it really it's sad in me how how much misinformation
(23:51):
was being spread with the intention of dividing our communities
for a vote.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Well, when it comes to sort of educating kids about
gender identity, are there certain guidelines or is it decided
at the state and local level.
Speaker 8 (24:07):
Local level, I have not had any conversations in my
time as Secretary of Education of how to teach any
of that. As a matter of fact, I have not
even weighed in on that my personal beliefs or my
beliefs as a lifelong educator with degrees in education. Has
never been heard on an airwave about how to teach that.
Speaker 1 (24:27):
The misinformation Secretary Cardona refers to is of course spread
online via social media, and it's a huge problem that
I think is behind our hardened positions and the polarization
in this country that seems to be getting worse every day,
polarization that is reinforced by our intensely partisan media landscape.
(24:49):
Michael Tamaski, the editor of the New Republic, believes the
conservative side is winning. He's covered the growing influence of
the right wing media industrial complex, and I asked him
about his diagnosis of where we are and how we
got there. Can I quote your article? If they're done,
(25:09):
you're in fantasy land. They're not happy with the rough parody,
the slight advantage they have. Now they want media domination.
Sinclair bought the once glorious Baltimore's son. Don't think they'll
stop there. I predict Sinclair or News Corp. Will own
the Washington Post one day, maybe sooner than we think.
(25:30):
So I guess the question, Michael, is what can be
done about this?
Speaker 10 (25:35):
Well, Liberals have to make a concerted effort, as Republicans
did twenty and thirty years ago, to build their own media.
And it has to be smart, it has to be good,
it has to entertain, it has to get an audience.
All those burdens will will apply to it, so you know,
(25:58):
it has to be good and succeed. But they just
have to start doing something about this. And they have
to try to reach into Middle America and talk to
people there because there are so many just vast swaths
of the country where the idea of liberalism and the
name of the Democratic Party are just dirt. And you know,
(26:24):
I cited also in the piece an example, the voters
of Missouri voted to protect abortion rights on one ballot initiative,
and they voted for paid family leave in a higher
minimum wage, and always they voted for these very democratic
liberal things, right, and by reasonably comfortable margins on those
(26:45):
But would they They wouldn't elect a Democrat in a
million years.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
You know.
Speaker 10 (26:49):
The Democratic candidate for Senate, Lucas Kons who ran against
Josh Holly, ran a good race, had money won, the
debate didn't come within fourteen fifteen points, So you know,
work has to be done, especially in those parts of
the country where Democrats used to win. Wasn't that long
ago that there was a Democratic senator from Missouri Claire McCaskill,
(27:10):
or Democratic senators from Iowa, even Arkansas, But it just
seems inconceivable now. So the party needs to rebuild in
those places. And part of that story is media rebuilding.
Speaker 1 (27:25):
So what I'm hearing is that the Liberals or Democrats
need to develop their own network, their own vast network
of media entities. Does that mean sort of news that
reported just the facts, that wasn't based in opinion, that
let people know what was going on and tried to
(27:46):
give context, is just a thing of the past.
Speaker 10 (27:52):
No, I don't think so. I think the facts. You're
kind of on liberalism side. That's one thing. I mean,
you know, and most people support a lot of things
that liberals are for. Most people support a higher minimum wage,
as that Missouri vote shows. Most people support paid family leave,
Most people support a tax increases for the wealthy. You
(28:17):
go down these issues in child tax credit, most people
are for these things. So I don't think it means
the end of It means the end of a certain
kind of neutrality, but that neutrality has been disrobed. I
think over the last twenty years. It's not enough to
say this side says this, and this side says that,
(28:39):
and we won't referee it. That hasn't worked. That hasn't worked.
It means just refereeing it and telling people the truth,
putting truth ahead of fairness. That's what I always say, Katie.
There are these two values of the media, as you know,
that are traditional values to be fair and represent both
(29:01):
points of view or all points of view, but also
to be truthful and tell the truth I think, and
this is truth. I'm sad to say of The New
York Times. In many cases, although the New York Times
remains a great newspaper and does tons of great reporting,
they sometimes when those two values clash, they sometimes put
fairness ahead of proof. We've got to put truth ahead
(29:22):
of fairness.
Speaker 1 (29:31):
If you want to get smarter every morning with a
breakdown of the news and fascinating takes on health and
wellness and pop culture, sign up for our daily newsletter,
Wake Up Call by going to Katiecuric dot com. Truth
(29:53):
ahead of fairness makes sense, right. Unfortunately, no one seems
to agree on facts, and they're in life the rub. Meanwhile,
the Trump transition is well underway, and it's been kind
of unhinged. Remember when Matt Gates was going to be
Attorney General. Well, Gates might have been the craziest pick,
but many of the folks Trump is selected for his
(30:15):
cabinet are raising more than a few eyebrows. His supporters
want him to really drain the swamp this time and
disrupt the bureaucratic status quo. But his detractors compare this
crew to the one you might find at the Star
Wars CANTEENA. I asked David from a conservative writer from
the Atlantic, to weigh in on how this transition differs
(30:39):
from previous ones. So let's talk about cash fatal David.
He is a MAGA loyalist to his core right.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
So at THEI directors have always been since the Darator
who days people of broad and widely accepted reputation for
political neutral people who sometimes didn't even vote and always
did things presidents didn't like. And that was a job
(31:09):
many many presidents and many FBI directors refused even to
meet one another. I worked in a White House, and
if you had anything you want to know from the FBI,
including the President is going to decorate an FBI officer,
and we need to know the names of the officer's
children and make sure they're pronouncement spelled correctly so we
can recognize them with the speech. If I wanted to say,
(31:30):
what are the names of this hero's children? I went
to the White House Council's office and said, would you
make the call to the FBI to ask them the
name of the hero's children so we can because I
can't talk to them. I would be fired and or
worse if I placed a direct call the FBI.
Speaker 1 (31:44):
There is no any any signal, event propriety, or any
kind of pressure from the Executive Office to the FBI.
Was absolutely for Boden, for.
Speaker 4 (31:53):
Boten, and that's how it's always always been. And now
you're going to point this person who is one of
these Watergate characters who will do anything for Donald Trump.
You commit and you know, when he was serving in
the last year of the Trump administration as chief of
staff in the Defense Department, the chairman of the Joint
Chief said, jail is an uncomfortable place. So if you're
(32:15):
thinking about doing something that will get you sent to jail,
don't do. He had to caution people, do not break
the law for Trump when he was working as a
staffer in DoD Now he's offered for the head of
the FBI. I think you can group the Trump appointments
into three main categories. They're the people who you know,
(32:38):
maybe you like them, maybe you don't, but their resume
sort of makes sense.
Speaker 1 (32:42):
Right Marco for example.
Speaker 4 (32:44):
Yeah, and maybe you have a high opinion of him,
maybe have a low opinion. But it's not crazy that
the senior Senator who serves on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
would become Secretary of State. Maybe he'll be a weak one,
but he won't be an outlandish one. Then you have
the people who where there's a serious personality problem of
some kind or another, but where their ability to do
(33:06):
harm is maybe limited, like Pete Heeksach. I mean, you know,
he's a crackpot, He's an ideological crank. His record with
women is horrifying. His own mother thought so. But my
guess is that Pete Hegsead just doesn't have the mental
horsepower and the knowledge of the building and the Pentagon
is organized in a way I don't know how much
harm he's really going to be able to do. Then
(33:28):
you have the Tulsa Gabbards and the cash Betels, who
are going to smaller organize it where the boss is
more powerful, and who have who are not just strange personalities,
but are in the grip of really un American ideas,
and they can do a lot of damage.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
Trump's nominees could in fact do a lot of damage
as norms and institutions continue to be challenged. What will
that mean for our country going forward? Democratic Senator Chris
Murphy Ofnnecticut told me he's worried.
Speaker 3 (34:03):
So what I am really concerned is that we lose
the rule of law. That's what happens in democracies that
stop being democracies all of a sudden. You can't rely
on a fair trial, you can't rely on a fair prosecution.
All of a sudden, You get favors and immunity if
(34:27):
you are a political supporter of the person in power
and you are specifically targeted, often very unfairly. If you
are political opposition, you still have elections, right, but they
don't matter as much because the opposition just disappears because
most people, when faced with the threat of persecution or prosecution,
(34:49):
decide to just lower their voice, recede into the background.
So I am most worried about Pambondi and Cash Pattel,
who are being picked because they are willing to turn
the Department of Justice into a witch hunt operation for
Trump's political opposition.
Speaker 4 (35:08):
And you already see.
Speaker 3 (35:09):
What's happening in the business right now. So the mega
billionaires in this country who run the information system have
already telegraphed that they are not willing to fight. Comcast
has announced they're selling MSNBC they're getting out of the
business of criticizing Donald Trump. Jeff Bezos did not make
an endorsement in this last election, signaling that he does
(35:30):
not want to fight either. Twitter is being run out
of the Whitehouse right now. So you see signaling from
very powerful people in this country that they do not
want to criticize Donald Trump's they want to protect their billions.
And you see a Department of Justice is about to
be taken over by a crowd that may actually start
locking up or threatening to lock up people in this
(35:51):
country who try to oppose Donald Trump. That's the end
of democracy.
Speaker 1 (35:55):
But he also says, in order to fight back, Democrats
have some work to do. Let's talk about the Democratic Party.
It's been over a month since the election, and the
inauguration is not too far away. Half of you seen
the Democratic Party other than looking at itself and wondering
(36:15):
where it went wrong? Change in the weeks since early November.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
Well, I'm deeply worried because I haven't seen the kind
of introspection that I would have hoped. I think that
there's a lot of folks who look at the race
and say, well, Trump, you know, really didn't even get
fifty percent it wasn't a landslide. We almost won the
House of Representatives. We just need some minor adjustments. I
(36:45):
don't look at it that way. I think we need
to recognize how unbelievable it is that we keep losing
to somebody as reckless as Donald Trump, a felon, somebody
who openly supported an insurrection. Again, it's the United States government.
We should not be satisfied to lose to somebody like
that by such a slim margin.
Speaker 4 (37:08):
I also think it is morally.
Speaker 3 (37:10):
Unsustainable for our party to stand up and say we're
the party of poor people, and poor people don't want
to vote for us. Like, how do you sort of
wake up every morning and say, well, we're the party
of poor people, but poor people don't like us. We're
not listening to the people we claim to represent. And
even if you can sort of minimize the political jeopardy
(37:33):
that we're in after this election, there's there's a moral
jeopardy we're in as a movement that will just exacerbate
and get worse if we don't look at square in
the face. So I think the answer to your question case,
I haven't seen a lot of things changing the Democratic
Party yet I'm arguing for some major change. Maybe we
just needed a month or so to lick.
Speaker 4 (37:52):
Our wounds, but like we got to get moving well.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
You wrote a memo to fellow Democrats a couple of
weeks after the election, and you talked about winning back
low income voters. You believe the key to doing that
is taking on corporate greed. But with all key respects,
Senator Murphy, hasn't the Democratic Party been talking about corporate
(38:16):
greed and nauseum for decades?
Speaker 3 (38:20):
I don't, not in the way that translates to ordinary
average voters. I mean, frankly, I think the Democratic Party,
along with the Republican Party, has presided over an economy
for the last forty years that has done really, really
well for folks at the very top of the income threshold.
I mean, people sort of look at the economy that
Democrats constructed and it looks like it did really well
(38:44):
for very, very rich people. And they look at who
our coalition is, increasingly upper income individuals, and it doesn't
look like we're sincere. When we talk about corporate power,
we also talk about it generally. We don't necessarily talk
about it specifically. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, they will take
(39:04):
on specific company specific CEOs. But people notice when ninety
percent of Democrats when they talk about corporate greed don't
actually name anybody, that doesn't sound real or sincere. So
I don't think people really believe that we want to
deconstruct concentrated power. And I think that you saw you
(39:29):
saw the hesitancy of the Democratic Party to make that
a ten poll. In the end of this last election.
Speaker 1 (39:36):
I talked to a lot of really smart people, but
I always turned to Steve Schmidt, a longtime Republican campaign
advisor who is no longer a Republican by the way,
for his thirty thousand foot view of where we are
in our nation's broader history.
Speaker 11 (39:54):
All I can say in this moment for any American,
our country's going to outlive all all of us. We'll
never see the whole. We're never gonna get to see
the ending. We just won't, right. And I think this
is like so deeply important to appreciate in the context
(40:17):
of there are things bigger than us, and as an American,
there is nothing bigger than us than the United States.
And in our story, this chapter of it, I think
it's exciting to be part of it, and to oppose
something that I think is deeply terrible because on the
(40:40):
other side of it is something a lot better. That's
the greatness of the country. Lincoln was preceded by the
worst president in American history until Trump became president, and
(41:01):
so I think Trump is going to be a disaster disaster,
but the country will endure, damage will be done, Terrible
consequences might happen, but one of the consequences that will
(41:21):
come from the disaster ahead is greatness that will emerge
from it, a greatness that didn't exist in the moment
when what's to come could have been prevented. Destiny did
(41:41):
not shape the events at hand like that. So I
think in this moment, opposing what is about to come
is of deep importance, and I'm excited to have a
small voice in that effort because for me, some people
(42:03):
are great at sports and some people love music and painting.
This is what I care about. There's nothing more important
to me outside of my family than the country. And
what that's come to mean to me over recent years
(42:26):
is not the partisan victory and the excitement of winning
a campaign when I was a young man, but about
the opportunities that everybody ought to have in a country.
That ought to mean when it comes to freedom, the
same thing for everybody, and that is very much on
the table right now, that question. And I could not
(42:48):
think of a better thing to do if I got
a day left, a week left, or thirty five years left,
than to talk about that right now, because what's been
handed down to us to preserve it makes stronger for
(43:10):
the next generation is of profound importance. There's three hundred
and forty million Americans alive, half of us who have
ever lived or alive right now, because there's only been
seven hundred million people in all the history of the
world since July fourth, seventeen seventy six who've been able
(43:30):
to say these words that mean more to me and
I think mean more to a lot of people in
the country than any other association in their life.
Speaker 4 (43:42):
And it's this.
Speaker 11 (43:44):
I am an American.
Speaker 1 (43:48):
Everyone here at KCM and specifically next question hopes you
will all be enjoying a much needed break and that
you'll be spending the holidays with people you love and
if you don't always agree with them, meanwhile, we'll see
you next year. As we continue to try to understand
and navigate the next four. Happy holidays everyone. Thanks for
(44:19):
listening everyone. If you have a question for me, a
subject you want us to cover, or you want to
share your thoughts about how you navigate this crazy world,
reach out send me a DM on Instagram. I would
love to hear from you. Next Question is a production
of iHeartMedia and Katie Kuric Media. The executive producers are Me,
(44:39):
Katie Kuric, and Courtney Ltz. Our supervising producer is Ryan Martz,
and our producers are Adriana Fazzio and Meredith Barnes. Julian
Weller composed our theme music. For more information about today's episode,
or to sign up for my newsletter, wake Up Call,
go to the description in the podcast app, or visit
(45:00):
us at Katiecuric dot com. You can also find me
on Instagram and all my social media channels. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
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(45:22):
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