Tim Miller, Ali Vitali & Caroline Kitchener

Published Aug 16, 2023, 4:01 AM

The Bulwark’s Tim Miller joins us to keep track of the numerous legal challenges now faced by Donald Trump. NBC News correspondent Ali Vitali provides a firsthand report from the Iowa State Fair, highlighting all the shenanigans occurring in the Republican primary. The Washington Post's Caroline Kitchener details the horrifying impact on women's lives in a post-Roe world.

Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Governor Ron De Santis says he's moved on from the Disney lawsuit. Well that's enough for me. Today we have an incredible show. NBC News correspondent Ali Vidally gives us a ground report from the Iowa State Fair and all the shenanigans that are going on in the Republican Party. Spoiler, there's a butter cow. Then we'll talk to the Washington Post Caroline Kitchener about the horrifying aftermath of women's lives in a post row world. But first we have the host of the next level, your friend and mine the Bulwarks, Tim Miller. Welcome back to Fast Politics. Frequent flyer and real friend of mine.

To Miller, Hey, Molly, I wish we can start doing this in person again.

So me too, man, I mean you fly back and forth between our two. Yeah, I'll fight to New Orleans and.

We'll figure something out.

Carvel.

It would be a great episode of Past Politics. Sorry, tender up to have you and Carvil and me, you know, live at Tippotina's or at Lafite's blacksmiths shop or something. I think that would make for some good listening.

If you guys want that, text Jesse his phone number is, or just DM him Jesse Cannon. So anyway, four indictments plus the superseding, so it's actually five if we're going to get technical Georgia last night. This is airing on Wednesday, so it will we'll still be chewing on this. I mean again, imagine you were working for Jeb Bush. Imagine old Republican Party with this being the front runner.

Forget Republican Party. I just imagine being a human and having this be our reality. I mean, it's just it's very strange. You know, those pictures are going around Monday Night of Rudy and Trump when Rudy's dressed in drag, and you know, from like the early oughts, and it's like, imagine going back to two thousand and two and having someone tell you that in twenty years, Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani are going to be indicted for trying to steal the election in Georgia. I mean, the whole thing is preposterous. It's like from a B movie, D movie. So it is kind of hard to wrap one's head around, though. I mean, obviously the serious elements of this is just that again once again, the conservative media and the Republican Party have just are just utterly failing the tests that's put forth to them, and no one is moving off of their Donald Trump approved talking points about this increasingly vast deep state. In four different parts of the country now are that are now indicting and attacking and supposedly oppressing Donald Trump over his coup attempt and his porn star payoffs and all of his other crimes. So you know, they are going to continue to fall down on the job. And it's almost like that element of this is not new. I think that there are some elements of the Georgia thing that are new and important, such as the fact that it's going to be televised, the fact that he can't be pardoned for it, which brings up an interesting wrinkle to just think the strength of the Fonnie Willis indictment and just the expansiveness of it, how many other people, all of its co conspirators. I was mentally ranking which of the nineteen indicted people I'm going to enjoy their mugshot the most. I'm trying to. I was like doing a little mental rankings. I can't really enjoy Trump's mugshot until he's actually in jail. So I think that Rudy and Jeff Clark and Jenna Ellis are my top three and kind of just depending on my mood at the moment, I'm moving them around in my mental rankings.

Those are the fan favorites. I think it's totally interesting because it's like he has all these indictments, all these different trial dates, then he has all these like civil cases. I mean, that's the thing you forget about, like right, you know, these civil cases like the Capitol police officers families, the ones who died or you know, and you have Egene Carol. I mean, there's just a sort of sea of civil litigation too. And he is seventy seven years old, though he does look mirror seventy six with the implanted wig that does look like sponge sugar discuss.

So here's the thing that is concerning to me that makes me think I'm becoming a boomer is that sometimes I don't even know what's real on social media anymore. So I don't expect to know how regular people can tell. But somebody sent a post that I that where Chris Christie said he looked like a cheap honey baked ham but I don't know if that's actually true or not, or somebody who is just doing a Chris Christie bitch, but he does look like a cheap honey baked haam. Yeah. I mean, can you campaign from the courtroom? This is the thing that is crazy when you combine the old civil litigation on the next album interviewing Robbie Kaplan this week, who's Egene's attorney? Who I love? And these actual A list attorneys that are going at Donald Trump right now, both criminally and civilly. They're like dogs on a bone and they know what they're doing. And Donald Trump is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to his defense, and so he you know, he's going to be spending a lot of time in court. We are really an unchartered territory here, and how do you campaign this way? You would think going back to the Republicans, so there would be a practical case that somebody would try to make, which is just like, no matter how much you liked Donald Trump, we're not putting our best foot forward. If our nominee has like seven court dates over the course of the general election, and my pass will be imprisoned. I mean, you think, just practically speaking, they would think we should go a different direction. I was in Iowa last week, and I think it's funny and two on two parts. I was talking to an Iowa super a DeSantis super Pac staffer who said to me that they are that they're kind of okay with finishing second and third in some states and amassing delegates because who knows what will happen with Trump and court and maybe there'll be a convention fight. And it's like, boy, that's a pretty depressing situation for DeSantis that they're hoping that Trump is in jail and that they can win a convention fight. But it also speaks to kind of there's a non zero chance that that is a real possibility.

Right, that there's a convention fight.

Yeah, And so it's just it's both pathetic on the DeSantis part team to like say that they're considering that, but it's also, I mean not completely improbable at this point, given how many court dates, domney arrangements, what's going to have.

What it seems to me like and you tell me if this is my own I feel like it's so easy to get into your own bubble with what you read and how you extrapolate, and I'm always like pretty trying to not do that, which is very hard. It seems to me like the situation is we have a like, if you are a Republican elite, if you are a person who is, you know, you're freaking out because you know this guy is not growing the electorate.

Who is though, right, Molly, who is growing the electorate.

Or even trying? Like I mean, I think Biden is trying to appeal to more people, for sure.

I met among the Republicans. Yeah, I'm met among the Republicans. Sorry that this is my point. Like DeSantis, and the whole theory of the case behind DeSantis, right, was that that there was this group of people. John Meacham coined this. I'm annoyed that he stole it, but so I'm gonna give him credit and he didn't steal and I'm enjoyed. I'm annoyed that he came up with this, but I'm going to steal it and give him credit. You know, they called him the Peter malar Vest Conservatives, you know, people that never really liked Trump in the first place, and read the Wall Street Journal, like, the theory of the case for DeSantis was that he could keep all of the maga voters, you know, because of his culture war nonsense. But then add back in some of these like Atlanta suburbs dads who just like voted for Joe Biden because they couldn't listen to their wife talking about Donald Trump anymore, and it was just like the coup was too much for them, right the last the final switchers that it's like, can run to stand this win those people anywhere. It seems like he's doing worse in both counts, like there will be some magga dead enders who won't vote for him, and he's going so crazy on the culture war stuff that that kind of crowd, that suburban dad crowd is Is he that much even more appealing than Trump at this point? So Trump is not trying to expand, but nobody else is. So nobody's making the case that, oh but I can't, right like, and that was that was how somebody could be Trump. They're going to be able to say to the Republican voters, I can give you the maga stuff you like. And also get more votes, right, I mean, that's the path, and yet no one seems to be offering that.

Or even trying to. Yeah, the trons right. For such a long time, since twenty fifteen, we've spent so much time like trying to figure out like what the future of the Republican Party would be, and especially for someone like you and Bill Crystal and Sarah like you guys are pretty focused on like how we could rebuild this, or at least I feel like for a while you were how you could rebuild this in a way that it wasn't just what it is right now. And it does seem like they they're just is sort of no, there are no ideas.

Well, I think a rightas are just ones we don't like right right, And I mean like this is and this way you can get into you know, New York Times piece about you know, kind of the polling and where the Republicans are. But there was this push and pull with on the party, right, And I'm not going to give a full history lesson here on past politics, but you know, you go back to the to the autopsy which I worked on the JUBU, which was basically you know, trying to modernize and re skin compassionate conservatism. How can you do better in the suburbs, maybe soften the position on social issues, on immigration, on gay marriage, and broaden the tent appeal more to younger folks. And then there was this counter vision like, no, we can win by going full populist, by shedding all of the whole old you know, just going around Yeah, well, well Nazi, Yeah, I mean, maybe Nazis brought in the I'm going to I'm gonna give you the best spin on what they would say. I we would call it Nazi. They would say, no, we're going to give you true populist conservatism that gets rid of all of the trickle down economics stuff and appeals more to working class people of every color and every race. And we're still going to say racist stuff, and we're still still going to ban all, you know, like band Muslims and Latinos from entering the country. We're just gonna whisper that part and hopefully that they appeal to us because they also, you know, these working class you know, there's kind of a racist element to this case actually, that these working class Hispanic and Black folks, they're going to agree with us when we demonize trans people, and and you know, so maybe we can appeal to them that way.

They are as discriminatory as we are, exactly, and so we can expand among you.

Know, working class black and latinos and and you know, just ignore these the suburb moms and and you know who aren't hardcore enough for us. So like that was their case, and they won the argument. I mean not they haven't won many elections, so they have they haven't won the argument in the case they're not succeeding very well, but they they've won a lot of time the party. Yeah, within the party, they've won the argument. And there are now very few people even arguing that we, you know, kind of go back to a compassionate conservatism type. And this is now the accepted move is that somehow that the Republicans can win by this pivot towards Trumpian populism racism.

So this leads to another question I want to ask you. There's a piece last week that David Brooks wrote about we the Elite, and it's funny because so basically that for those of you who are not extremely online and who might have missed this, the idea was, what if we the elites are the bad guys. What if we have ignored a populist sentiment. I think it was a little bit generous.

That's a nice way of putting it right.

It assumed that the Republicans were not running on this base racism, sexism, divisionism, which I think is wrong and unfair. But it's an interesting exercise to look at, like why is that group so angry? And again, we spend a lot of time talking about that, especially the New York Times does spend a lot of time talking about that. And you know, I've read a lot about this, this idea that the left have come sort of Brahmins and that they are a sort of more educated class in a way that they've lost the working man. I don't think that's really true, but I'm just curious, like, ponder on this.

For me, here's the generous part to David Brooks's argument. I think that there's something to be said about the fact that, you know, we have had this education polarization. Like for a while, there were working class Democrats, we working class Republicans, college educated class, college educated Republicans. Now it's like most of the college educated folks, particularly higher college educated folks, are Democrats overwhelmingly, and so the people that make up Democratic campaigns are overwhelmingly you know, college educated and socially and culturally liberal. And I do think that there are times when the way Democrats talk it's alienating to working class folks who don't you know, who don't like you know, all the more a's of you know, what the new you know, hot terms are in polite society, right, And so I think that there's something to be said for that. And I think that there's maybe been more an increase in focus on identity issues and a decrease sometimes on economic and class issues in the Democratic Party. And I think that's a fair discussion they have. Okay, but here's the thing that doesn't let these That doesn't mean you just let all these Trump voters off the hook for supporting a racist buffoon who tried to overthrow the government. And it's so condescending. In an article about how like elites need to be less condescending towards working class people, it's such a condescending notion that these people are so stupid that they can't figure out that Trump is a charlatan. Like they're not that stupid, Like there are other reasons why they're going with Trump. And the best way to prove this is there's a lot of working class people of color that don't seem to have been fooled by this. And so if the only reason that these guys are going to Trump is because the elites are whatever so mean to working class people, I'm looking down their nose at working class people. It's like, well, then, why haven't any working class black volks been fooled by this and gone along with Trump? They haven't, Like, there are other cultural forces at play here, And I think maybe this was a defensible argument in twenty sixteen, but in twenty twenty three, my god, let's have a little bit of a higher standard for what we expect from people.

No.

I think that's a really good point, and I actually think it's not even that complicated. I think that the fundamental mechanics of presidential campaigns and presidential elections are the same as they have always been. Which is the candidate that is the most charismatic, the one that you feel like is talking to you, That's the one you vote for a lot of people.

And that's the case for sure, you know, and I think that you know, there are other issues at play, right, I mean, the folks that feel like Trump is talking to them, like, don't feel like Trump is one of them obviously, right, It's just he is channeling their grievances and concerns, right, And some of those are legitimate. You know, in some of these communities, you know they've been hollowed out and you know they know they were overserving in our wars, you know, and Iraq in Afghanistan disproportionately, right, Like they have some legitimate concerns, but you know there's a limit to that, right, I mean, like trumpkint chandily your legitimate concerns and then it's like okay, once you're charging the capitol. That's the other thing. The whole thing is preposterous that Trump cares about these people and cares about anything but himself. And that's the frustrating part about the David Bruks thing, right, is that like these people are in jail. Some of these people are in jail because of Donald Trump. I are dead because they didn't take the vaccine, you know what I mean. Like, the whole thing is silly.

Kurt Anderson posted this yesterday and I just want to read it to you. It's from this Evan Osnos piece in The New Yorker from twenty fifteen. Trump has bequeathed a concoction of celebrity, wealth and alienation that is more potent than any we've seen before. If, as the Republican establishment hopes, the stargazers eventually defect, Trump will be left with the hardest core, the portion of the electorate that is drifting deeper into unreality with no reconciliation insight.

Yeah, pretty good from Evan twenty fifteen, twenty fifteen, Very prescient there. Yeah, and it's got and that group has only grown since then. That's that's the scariest part about it. And the part that you know really when you when you need to really reckon with what's happening in the Republican Party. Like that group, the group that's drifted into unreality, has increased their share within the party. And you know, when I go to these Republican events is what you see, and I always go back to the and now they've almost recruited or groomed, if you will, a younger generation of Republicans into that disreality. You know, when I went to that Turning Point USA conference, the first question I'd ask every one of these college kids, was like, what do you care about?

Why you hear?

And it's all vaccine conspiracies, We're wasting money in Ukraine, trans stuff, culture, war stuff, election for a lout And it was none of the stuff that dorky Alex P. Keaton, you know, Republicans of my era cared about, right, It was a totally different thing. And so that's not every young Republican of course, but but it's.

The ones who are showing up to go to the events.

So that group in the this reality has just like now, has an even greater stranglehold within the party. And I think the one thing about that has changed since that quote from Evan is, you know he was talking about you know, I don't have the exact quote in front of me, but that core, you know that that was going to be left, that core is getting near to a majority within the party now and it's certainly a plurality.

Really scary stuff. Talk to me about what yours this week, sort of what it looks like for you, what you're watching.

I don't know what I'm doing after this, Molly, that's a hard question. I'm excited. Look, here's what I'm watching Donald Trump's going to get fingerprinted and treated like a real criminal in Georgia. And we've had this two tiered system of justice discussion, and like the real two tiered system of justice is in the way that Donald Trump has been treated. You know, I talked about this on the next level. I guess you know. I was arrested for minor and posis of alcohol a couple of times. Not exactly a hard and criminal, but I'll tell you I got put in the holding pen for a couple hours. You know, I got treated like an actual criminal for being under twenty one and having alcohol. Obviously, there are much worse criminals and much more worse treatment of our criminal justiceism that did you know, marginalized groups, how they get treated. Donald Trump hasn't been fingerprinted, he has been handcuffed, he hasn't had a mugshot. He's got to do all that sometime in the next ten days now. And so good on Fannie Willis and the Fulton County Sheriff for taking this seriously and actually treating him like they treat anybody else that came through.

Yeah, my mom spent a night in jail for DUI. Always good to work into conversations. Thank you, Tim Miller.

I hope you'll come back anytime.

Ali Vitally is an NBC News correspondent. She's adorable, and she is the author of Electable Why America hasn't put a woman in the White House yet? Welcome Too Fast Politics, Aally Vitally.

Thank you.

I'm so happy to be back.

You are here in Iowa, the center of everything, the place with a pork tent and a butter cow discuss.

I mean, look the butter cow. Now, my first time seeing the butter cow. But I think here's the fun fact. Did you know that the butter cow is not like resculpted every year.

You know, I've spent so little time thinking about the butter cow. But I would hope it's not your career. That would be such an old bunch of butter. I mean, eventually, do they know.

That's what I'm saying, is it is an old bunch of butter.

Oh it is.

No, it is not resculpted every year.

Oh that's really disappointing. So let's I thought Jesse. Jesse just texted me, and I thought he was going to say, like, stop talking about this stupid cow. But in fact, he was like a real dairy cow weighs more than a thousand pounds, but the butter version comes in at about six hundred.

I didn't know that this one was sculptured in two thousand and six.

So let's talk about Iowa. I feel like I wanted to get you on because A, you wrote a lift on television and that was fabulous, But more importantly, here we are in Iowa, and it feels like a metaphor. Talk to me about what happened. I think the key moment was this weekend when DeSantis was in Iowa trying desperately to sort of win this state, which is kind of the state they've been most focused on, and Donald Trump sort of flew in. So talk to me about that dynamic and what you saw.

I mean, first of all, I think it's clear that Iowa always has outsize importance. But for anyone in this field who wants to try to show that they actually couldn't take a stand against Trump, I don't mean.

That morally or rhetorically.

I mean that electorally, because clearly they're not willing to do it the other way. Electorally, you have to win in Iowa, and I know that that's always the conventional knowledge, but it's so important now and poles have been pretty stagnant.

So the fact I think that a.

DeSantis and Tim Scott's here, and Nicky Haley is here, and Mike Pence is here, and everyone in the field is coming to the Iowa State Fair. It doesn't always matter where everyone in the field goes, because Trump doesn't always go there. But I do think it reminds how important an event like this is when Trump does show up.

He was only here for about ninety minutes.

He completely sucked all the oxygen out of the fair when he came in and made his rounds.

Over the course of a small area of the fair.

But it was less that Trump was here and more of the ways that he was trolling De Santis quite frankly to me right, the fact that he brought Florida lawmakers like Byron Donald mckaate others as a reminder of the fact that they're both from Florida and Desanti she's a sitting governor, but Trump still has all of their endorsements. And then I think the plane that was flying overhead all day on Saturday was just the constant reminder I think the banner behind the plane said be likable Ron, And you couldn't ignore the fact for those of us who covered twenty sixteen that the ron was in the style of Jem Bush's twenty sixteen logo down to the exclamation point. It was just troll on troll on troll for DeSantis, who's really trying to get like back under him after shake ups and stumbles, and they're trying to prove they can still do it. And look, they drew a crowd, but it doesn't mean he didn't also get hypple.

Right, And I also think that this sort of way Trump was able to fly in. I mean DeSantis has been there all weekend, right.

Yep, DeSantis was here all week They're all doing multiple events around this fair. They are sitting with the governor doing a fair side chat, they are going around to tent slipping pork chops. I mean, everyone here is doing the typical retail politics that you quote unquote have to do, except that Trump is preempted from that process because he's Trump. So yeah, they all have to putting the legwork, the sweat work, the Santa Pale everyone but Trump gets to literally fly in, spend ninety minutes and peace.

So he did pay for a bunch of pork at the pork tent.

I believe that's true.

You know, he sort of bought some pork for people, and he may have bought some other stuff. But it is interesting to me. And he does not get along wow with Iowa governor right.

Right, he has picked a fight with her, and it's quizzical, especially because you know, she is the sitting governor of a state that everyone agrees is important on this electoral map. She's a popular Republican and in any normal world she would probably be on a Beepsteak's list down the line. If you're Trump and you're leading the pack and you're likely to get the nomination, that's probably where your mind would go. And so the fact that he's picked a fight with Kim Reynolds, who is popular here, I mean, look, I don't know that it loses him at any points, but certainly it's it's odd, right.

I've been thinking a lot of the Republican elites, the people for whom you know, writing a check for a million dollars is not such a big deal. That crew has worked so hard to own the levers of power and now they know what right you're there? Even despite what happened last night in Georgia. I mean, doesn't it seem like he's got this nomination locked up?

And look, I haven't talked to voters yet. I will be doing those conversations ahead of the Georgia indictment. But I mean, we all knew what this was, right and it's not surprising. So I did have some of these conversations over the weekend at the fair, and I think the one that strikes me the most. Yes, I found Republican voters who didn't want to vote for Trump, either again because of January sixth, or because they never wanted to vote for him in the first place, and they just really wish the party would move on. Those people exist. It's why Trump doesn't have one hundred percent in the roles. There are people who are looking for other options, but his core group of supporters are still with him. I mean, I this is the conversation that sticks with me. A man that I spoke with who said, where was the National Guard on January sixth?

Why was there not more security?

And I said, okay, I take that point, but did Trump have any role to play?

He says, yeah, he was the president of the United States.

I said, okay, so you think he has the part to play and blame to have on January six He said yes.

I said, but you'd still vote for him? He said, yeah, he was a great president.

Right.

I mean that to me kind of says everything, which is that It's why the indictment still moves the needle. It's why the January Stix hearings didn't necessarily move the needle. And I don't mean that broadly. I mean that among Republicans. I think that's the reality of this Republican primary. That's why, as frustrating as it is for all of us who asked these contenders time and again, hey, is the fourth indictment not.

Enough for you?

Like, it's why his rivals won't go after him. There's no political upside with their baits And they've.

Seen polling which says there's no political upside.

Correct.

I mean the problem with Trump is that Trump occupies Earth too. So yes, all of these candidates who are like I need to run to the right on policy, they're on Earth wand like none of these normal rules apply here.

Yeah, I mean, honestly, I would posit that we're all on Earth one, and that's the reality that Trump in habits and everyone else is in Earth too.

Where they're saying policy is going to win the day.

You know, DeSantis thinks running on a six week fan as opposed to you know, just overturning Row is going to be the thing that helps him win and prove conservative credentials. I mean, I don't see it happening as of now, but the one lesson of covering fifteen and sixteen is that you don't make hard predictions because politics is strange. But yeah, I mean with Trump, it's clear that. I think that's why this primary feels so weird, and I think it's the thing that's been looming over the State Fair for me this entire weekend, which is usually you can feel like there's a little bit of a race going on, maybe someone can jockey for position, maybe something will resonate. Right now, it just feels so big and it doesn't have to do with policy. It has to do with political vendetta and finishing the score of twenty twenty, and there's no amount of policy that changes that.

Yeah, I mean, I do you think there are so many people in this party who you're not hearing from who are so desperate for it to be of avac or in anyone right, And Nika tim Scott, I mean you're seeing mega donors try to convalesce around tim Scott. But doesn't it seem like they're making the same mistakes they made in fifteen, which was like if you think about Democrats, Democrats decided that Biden was their best shot, and they all got behind him like in a minute, right, like you saw Mayor Pete and now.

With stretch a stunning moment. I mean, I don't that was wild, right, I.

Mean I was like, what is happening here? Like all of a sudden, everybody else dropped out. It was just incredible. It reminds me of what's happening right now in the Michigan Senate race. Like Democrats got together, they were like, this is our person, this is where we're going. Really a stark contrast to what's happening in California, which is, let us burn all the donor money on a race that will have no impact.

I mean, that's a longer conversation about money and politics, right, But but the Republicans couldn't do it right, and it's very unrepublican of them in many ways. Right, Usually there is the passing of the baton to the person who came in second the last time around, Right, it was, Yes, it went to mcmaine, and then it went to Romney, and there was a little bit of sense that was made of the transition process in Republican politics previously. Of course, we know, and it's so trivial to say it now that Trump upended all of that, you know, quote unquote tradition within conservative ranks. But I actually think that this might be very republican of them to stick with the guy who was already there. In many ways, it doesn't make sense because of all the electoral problems that will come in the general. But from a primary politics perspective, you know, none of this is exactly shocking, given the way that we've watched Trump completely just recreate this party in his own image.

I mean, I think what's so interesting is that there is an enormous gulf between what happens in these GOP primaries and what will happen in the general in a way that I think is pretty much, again using this terrible word, unprecedented, But I think it's unusual to have a primary field that is occupying such a different reality than the general I mean, I don't know how you go to a soccer mom and say, like, Trump needs to be back in office so she doesn't go to jail.

Well, I think there's a few things to that too, right.

I remember in twenty twenty, during the few days after the election, when we were still figuring out what the results were, I remember someone on the Biden team saying to me, look, this coalition is fascinating. And I also don't know if it's something that ever can be replicated again. In part that was because of the pandemic, and part it was because of the Trump factor.

All of those things were true.

I think the thing that keeps for example, suburban moms in Georgia or suburban in Pennsylvania, all the areas that Democrats did better in than they were anticipated to do, the thing that keeps them is an issue like abortion. And I think it's less that's the idea of going to suburban moms and say, hey, vote for Trump because he has to stay out of jail, and more saying consider someone else. If you're Democrats, consider someone else. Because of this issue that has been very energizing and salient.

Before I was in.

Iowa, I was in Ohio, and I think that was my big takeaway. I've covered repro for ten years and it's always been an issue that I've felt never got the credit that it was due in terms of the ways that it could animate voters. I really am someone who doesn't want to underestimate the power of women and people who are allies to women in continuing to be angry about this because female rings you such a motivator. So there's that which which percolates completely outside the Trump stuff, like outside the Iowa State Fair all of that. But like that's royling for the general. That's not a now problem. That's a future problem. It has nothing to do with the legal stuff.

Yes, oh exactly. And I think and I think I agree with you, and I think it's been wildly underestimated because it's a quote unquote women's issue. But I think it's going to bite them, and well deserved. I might add, as I am on the opinion side, you do not have to say anything, but I do think it's it's a real problem for them.

But I also think the primary point that you made right candidate recruitment has been an issue over the course of the last few midterms. I think, to go back again, Georgia is the place of the day, But I think about brschel Walker and the ways that Donald Trump has meddled in primaries to get his person to the front of the Republican pact, and then that didn't always work out.

I mean, you look in Arizona.

With the Lake Master, right, And it's why the electability argument is actually a good argument for any candidate not named Trump. We saw DeSantis kind of toy with this a little bit too, the idea that Republicans have not been winning in the Trump era when Trump himself is not directly on the ballot, and even then and even then right to sixteen of course being the outlier at least by Electoral College standards, But the electability argument is the salient one, and in part because of the primary problems of running in Republican primaries.

Yeah, it's interesting because it's like, we do have this map. So one of the things about twenty four is it's a very bad I'm allowed to say is because it's true bad Senate map for Democrats, right, it's kind of terrifying. They really need to keep as many seats as possible, and there's West Virginia and Montana and Ohio is share Brown. But I think it is interesting, like when you think about this map and then you think about twenty two and twenty Trump being on the ballot likely, and again, we don't want to predict the future because who the fuck knows. It's such a great king curse because we're not on TV. It's such a volatile time in American politics, and we saw this with the Ohio vote right with the ballot initiative. Though ballot it's hard to extrapolate ballot initiatives to voting because there's not exact continuity. But I do think share Brown is feeling a lot better.

I think you have to.

I look at this Senate maps, and look, Democrats say this to me all the time.

They say it's a bad map for them.

I mean, it's just objectively true because they have so many places to play defense, whether it's the rhetoric states that you're looking at, like Montana or Ohio where Brown and Tester I covered their reelection bids last cycle. They have very strong in state brands. I think that helped them in eighteen and will help them again now, But even look at places like Nevada, where you've brought Jackman Rosen playing defense Manson, who has always had weird reelection bid simply because he's a Democrat in a sea of red. I mean, we'll see what he ends up doing, but certainly that's going to be a weird race to watch. But it's just that they have to pray. We've been so many in so many places.

Yeah, no, it's it's a rough map. But do you think that Mansion will run for reelection?

You know, it's so hard to predict Mansion, especially because right now he's playing this tees game on two fronts.

He's playing the tees game on.

West Virginia Senate, and he's also playing the tees game on some kind of potential no labels the presidential run.

I don't know who that's for, but.

I take the groan as the person who was sitting outside of his office with a camera just waiting during Build Back Better and then the Inflation Reduction Act and all.

Of the month in between.

But Mansion is, though I've heard people say what they will about it, he is someone knows how to stay in the spotlight and leverage his power, and he knows that he has power right now, and you've seen the fruits of that in multiple pieces of legislation over the course of the last two years. And so there's no reason that I would think that he's not going to continue to leverage this weird will I run for president? Will I run in the Senate race? Will I not run at all? He's going to leverage that until he can't anymore.

So let me ask you a question about that. It definitely seems like he's good at capturing attention and power. It's very unfair for me to ask you to predict the future.

Well, they said, I wreck my crystal ball in.

DC, right, and if we can give with the toothpaste, if we can game this out. This is more of a broader question about no labels. I would say there's a lot of anxiety about no labels going in and you know, being the four points that gives this selection to Donald Trump. I mean, does it seem like this anxiety is well founded?

I think when you play a game of margins, every vote count, you just have to look at the ways that the states swung both in sixteen and in twenty. I mean, we watched the ways that third parties made it harder for the two proper parties in whatever the way that they wanted their turnout models to look. And I think that for Democrats who want to see a Democrat come out, there's a reason to be concerned. I don't know that these third party runs ever function as cleanly as you know, politicos might want to think, oh, it's all going to steal from Democrats, it's all going to steal from republic. We don't know where those votes they're going to come from, but we do know that it steals goats away from the two major parties.

I don't mean steals, I mean these people have a right to be on the ballot.

But I do think that if you're looking at a two party system, and that's how most of the country looks at politics, Yeah, when you play a game of margins, it matters who's splitting that ballot up.

Yeah, exactly in Iowa, just to get back to Iowa for a second, because you are there, God help you. For how long have you even been there?

I've been there for five days, and you know what my goal to myself was on my last day, I got my Friday Oreo.

So I'm doing that today.

Oh good, good, good sense, just delightful. Trump is in much better shape in Iowa than he was last time. Two seconds on that.

He's the front runner of the party. If she wasn't, then he wouldn't be.

He has a real team this time.

He does, and he's not putting it together in a shoe string fashion like he did in fifteen and sixteen.

I was there for that.

They had a competent team who knew Iowa, but it was still putting the plane together while they were hurting through the air at warp speed in that cycle. Yeah, you have the benefit of having done this before. I think that Trump just has the benefit of being a former president right now. Like, of course he is looking good in a place like Iowa. Definitely, of course he's looking good in a place like New Hampshire that was always a friendly.

Place to him.

In theory, he's not the right candidate for Iowa because of the way that the states he was more conservative. But no one else is mounting a challenge, and you can't vote for someone else if someone else isn't really making themselves a parent.

Ali Vitally, thank you so much. This is so interesting. I hope you'll come back.

Thank you so much. I will definitely come back, and I will bring more buttercawfec.

Hi. It's Molly and I am wildly excited that for the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to right now, is going to have merch for sale over at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies, and toe bags with our incredible designs. We've heard your cries to spread the word about our podcast and get a tow bag with my adorable Leo the Rescue Puppy on it, and now you can grab this merchandise only at shop dot fastpoliticspod dot com. Thanks for your support. Carolyn Kitchener covers abortion for the Washington Post. Welcome to Fast Politics, Karen.

Thanks for having me Li.

You are on the abortion beat. It's so incredibly depressing. It's not even the abortion beat. It's the not abortion beat, right.

That's true.

I spend almost well when I'm not in DC. I'm never in places where you can get abortions. I'm always in places where you can.

So let's talk about what the landscape looks like right now, because it's been a little more than a year, and what does the landscape look like.

We've sort of settled into this place where it's over a dozen states. It's been over a dozen states for a while now, where you know, almost all abortions are banned, and you know, it's just been feeling like, you know, every couple months it's another one. We just had Iowa wipe out most abortion access, and now I think everybody is looking to Florida. There's a big Supreme Court case that is going to determine the future of abortion access in Florida. That's in early September, and that would be the abortion band to date that affects the most people nationwide.

One of the pieces that you wrote about was these teen parents two years later couldn't have an abortion. We're seeing a lot of pieces. Yesterday there was a big piece in Time magazine about a seventh grader who had a child. This is sort of the future that a lot of these anti choice people want. I mean, what does it look like on the ground.

This particular story.

I had never done this before, but I revisited a young woman that I wrote about a year ago because so much time has passed. So I wrote about her a year ago. Three months after she had twins as a result of the Texas abortion ban, which now I mean we're coming up on two years since Texas became the first state to ban most abortions. That was about nine months before rofell. So, you know, I think through her, I was really interested in revisiting her because you can really see quite a bit of time down the line. What does life look like? And you know the answer is that life for her is really hard.

Yeah, So let me ask you the thing that I'm struck by with a lot of this abortion coverage, and I'm curious if you have the same experience, and if not, why not what I had expected? When you know, I was raised by a second wave from us. It was obsessed with the fact that they had gotten us a choice. I mean obsessed. And she said, you know, if you lose choice, you have women trying to do abortions on themselves and they die. I'm sure that is some percentage of what's happened. But a lot of the stories we're reading or not about that, they're about pregnant women who cannot get treated. Can you talk a little bit about that.

I think that there was a lot of retrospective thinking zooming out that was done, you know, a year after Roechell, and a lot of sort of trying to crunch the numbers and see, you know, how many abortions are still happening and how many are not happening, And really the answer there is that it's extremely difficult to know because self managed abortion and by that I mean mostly abortion pills have become like such a massive thing that was not the case before Roe. Right, we just have this huge you know, what I think is is well, I mean we know, actually know, we know that these are numbering in the tens of thousands, but people just going going online and ordering pills and doing their abortions safely at home, and so you know, it is hard to know just how many people are not able to access it at all. Which is why I think those stories are so important because we know that that we know that not everybody knows what AID access is. You know, for listeners, that's like the kind of the biggest online place to get abortion pills.

But you know, a lot of people don't know that.

But we're seeing a lot of like lawsuits and litigation from women for whom they never thought the end of ROW would affect them.

Yeah, that's true.

I mean we're seeing, you know, in Texas, the big lawsuit in Texas, it's I believe it's over a dozen women who, you know, all of who like had pregnancies that they really wanted, you know, they were excited to have a baby, but they had some kind of pregnancy complication, and for all of them it was, well, it was either some kind of pregnancy complication that affected their own health or it was you know, something was very wrong with the baby. Before Roe, the standard for treatment that they would have received, would have been offered to them was an abortion. In all of these cases, that was just taken off the table. So you know, you had these these women bringing this incredibly just I mean, giving these incredibly powerful testimonies, you know, a Texas courthouse about you know, the way that these laws absolutely put.

Them in danger, grave danger in many cases.

Yeah, the thing I'm struck by is, like, clearly the reason that Roe was decided so broadly in nineteen seventy three. Obviously it was because of women dying leading to death, you know, because of they did their own abortions. But I also think there's like a larger medical issue of doctors who you know. I mean, we've interviewed a lot of doctors on this podcast. We've I have talked to my own guynecologists who's involved in Physicians for reproductive health, and there's a lot of anxiety. I mean, obviously not for the BLUESDAID doctors and not for these special trained doctors that are coming into planned parenthood to the very few clinics that are still exist in the rest of the country, but there's anxiety for normal you know, obgyns who signed up to deliver babies and not to make every medical choice a question of whether or not they were going to lose their license. Oh.

Absolutely, It's it's terrifying. I talked to a lot of obigu i n's that are in that position, and you know, in many cases obiguis that feel just I mean many that are considering moving because they just feel so disheartened and you know, frankly depressed in some cases that they can't provide the care that they you know, they feel that they sign up to give.

And I also wonder what it looks like a country that has such terrible problems with maternal fetal health. I mean, for a wealthy country, we have the kind of maternal fetal health you don't usually see in a wealthy country. And then for black women it's several magnitudes of mortality more than for white women. Right, So I just wonder if you could talk about that.

Yeah, I mean, that is the thing to watch over the coming year and the years to come. I mean, the you know, over a dozen states that have you know, near total abortion bands in effect, almost all of them are on the list of like top ten worse states from maternal mortality. There's just an incredibly there's an incredible overlap there. As a journalist, that's going to be probably the top thing that I'm going to be watching as time goes by. What is happening to those numbers. You know, unfortunately there's often kind of a lag in those numbers, but people really need to pay attention to that.

I think, Yeah, there's definitely a groundswell of voters are not happy with these fans. Again, this is not the first time Republicans of voters are not seeing eye to eye. I don't see a world where Republican politicians are going to change their you know, they're going hard on abortion. And I think Florida is a great example, with Ron DeSantis, who had a more reasonable bell and then because it was running for president, tightened it up. Can you talk about that, Yeah, absolutely.

I Mean what happened with DeSantis and Florida in particular, I think just shows how between a rock and a hard place these Republican politicians are finding themselves on this issue. Because DeSantis, I mean, he went out and he backed the six week Man. It was very unclear to me for a very long time whether he was going to do that, but then he decided. He you know, he met with all these anti abortion advicates and he decided to do it. But the way that he did it was I think really revealing. He did it at like it was like it was like eleven o'clock at night. There was no big like media thing. They took one picture and he put it on Twitter, you know, late late at night, and I think, like, I think that's really telling, especially in compared to the year before when he signed the fifteen Week Band. He did this huge, you know party at this church and everybody was invited and there were all these treatures and videos and and this time, I mean, he I signed this bill and then the next day he went to speak at Liberty University, which is like his people, yeah, extremely extremely religious and conservative and very very you know, anti abortion, and he didn't even bring it up the fact that, you know, just the day before he had done this.

So I just think that's so taling.

I think a lot of them are really struggling with how to you know, both like, do what the base, the sort of Republican base wants and these what these anti abortion activists are pushing them to do, but also reckoning with the fact that the vast majority of people, the vast majority of voters don't want these policies.

The anti choice activists, they seem insatiable, they see, you know, like there is for them. In my sense of the reporting I've read, they are not happy with the six week band. They are not happy with it. I mean they really want to go for brogue.

I think that's right. I mean, they really are you know.

They're also kind of I think, starting to zero in on, you know, pills that people are able to order, Like they know, they're realizing that, you know, the bands aren't having quite the effects that they imagine that they would, the magnitude of the effect that they thought that they would because you know, people are you know a lot of people, certainly not everyone, but a lot of people are able to travel out of state or they're able to go online and order pills, and they're really frustrated by that, and they do want to go further.

Right, what I think is pretty interesting and I'm hoping we could talk about this for a second, is Judge Matthew, because Marek is is judge in Texas. He is if you take a case up in this particular part of Texas, he's the only judge who will get He is a mega judge put in by Trump, very ideological, very very ideological, wants to take the pills off the market. Talk to us about where we are with that.

Well, we're kind of waiting for the Supreme Court to see if they're going to do sort of a full review of that case. So right now, you know, Matthew, I think it was what it was back in back in February, cos Merik did withdraw he he attempted to withdraw you know, FDA approval of this key abortion drug of mefi pristone, and you know, then it went up to the Fifth Circuit, it ended up at the Supreme Court, the Supreme Court, you know, basically, you know, temporarily stopped it in its tracks. And so you know, MEPhI pristone is still widely available in states where abortion is legal, but it's not the end of the road for that case. So I think a lot of anti abortion activists got very excited by how are that effort went. I mean, when that case was filed. I mean legal experts, even you know, really conservative anti abortion experts that I spoke with, they did this, you know, on not putting their names to it, but you know, in conversations they would say, like, that's crazy. You know, that kind of case is just kind of nuts. But it went somewhere like it, you know, they they found a judge that was willing to kind of green light that. And so I do think that, you know, even if this particular case kind of flounders and doesn't go anywhere else, I do expect that we will see more efforts along these lines to kind of take a swing at particularly abortion pills on a national level. I think anti abortion activists are really realizing what a different world this is in pre row right.

It's interesting, though, like with the abortion pills, because it opens the door to so many FDA problems, right, and it is absolutely just you know, once you start deciding that the drugs you don't like do things you don't like, and so you want to take them off the market. I mean pharmaceutical companies, which if last time I checked, we're sort of one of the major you know, rulers of this country and one of the larger benefactors of politicians. I mean, you're going to run into You're going to run smack into religion versus capitalism big time here.

Well, yeah, I mean a lot of people who, you know, people who don't usually weigh in on abortion issues around the Casmeric case were like, you know, they were really making their voices heard and saying like, look, this does not stop with abortion, and this is really opening as sort of dangerous canaisforms.

Yeah, I mean it does feel like a Pandora's box right once you start saying this, I don't like what this does? You know, were you going to stop antidepress and so you're going to stop right alan, You're going to stop I mean cholesterol drugs. I mean, it is such an insane place to go. So right now we have a sort of like America is basically right states where you can get abortions, states where you can't get abortions, and then miles and miles and miles between them. If you live in Florida, Now, how far do you have to drive to get an abortion?

Well, Florida right now is at fifteen weeks, so it's about like ninety to ninety five percent of abortions can still happen there. So right now, the farthest that you can get from a legal abortion in the United States is South Texas. But if Florida goes dark, then I mean it's just it's it's really hard to wrap your mind around. Just it would completely upend the landscape right now. I mean, I think there's sort of a tentative equilibrium that has been reached where, you know, the clinics that I'm talking to in North Carolina and Illinois, which are some of the big access points, like they are struggling to meet demand, really struggling to meet demand, but they are they are hanging on, you know, they're they're sort of they're they're they're figuring out ways to do it. But if you insert I mean Florida, I think I said this, but on a on a you know, average year, it's eighty thousand abortions that take place in Florida. You know, it's the third most populous state. So if you kind of add those eighty thousand two or some number of that eighty thousand, because it would be a six week band if you add that to you know, all of these places that are just barely you know, making it. It's just hard to see where people would go.

Yeah, but I don't think they care. So interesting. I hope you will come back.

I would love to come back.

Thank you, Anna, thanks for caring about this issue.

They're all pect Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast, mister trub Peece of having a rough week. So he claims he's got big claims coming Monday. And we know how on scar schedule he usually is for things. He's very good at that.

So this is an incredible little bit of sorcery that we haven't seen since season one of The Trump Show. He's going to show us this irrefutable evidence that the twenty twenty election was stolen. This is a page right out of the My Pillow playbook. Right, they're going to show us, They're going to prove it. You'll remember that My pillow guy did a lot of events that showed us that the election was stolen, except that he couldn't prove any of it because none of it was true. So mister Trump is going to do that in New Jersey and his golf club. The world weights and waits and waits and waits. 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.

Two

Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast

Join noted author & pundit Molly Jong-Fast for irreverent humor that cuts right to the heart of our  
Social links
Follow podcast
Recent clips
Browse 384 clip(s)