Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discussed the top political headlines with some of today's best minds and middleweight fighter and Treasury Secretary Scott Essen says TikTok will retain quote Chinese characteristics after sale.

We have such a great show for you today.

Media Matter's own Angelo Karasone stops by to talk to us about Trump's increasing threats to media organizations.

Ben we'll talk to the American Federation of Teacher President Randy Weiningarden about her new book, Why Fascist Fear of Teachers.

But first the news.

Mali cash Bottel is testifying in front of Congress right now.

I have to choose my words well here, but it seems even the Republicans aren't buying what he's selling.

Yeah, these hearings.

If you're going to watch one incredible bit of politics as theater, this is it.

Man correct for a second.

Theater, you buy what the actors are doing.

This you don't buy what the actors are doing.

That is for sure true.

So this is very interesting.

So we have cash Bettel.

He is up there.

He is being interviewed by the Senate.

There's a moment where Senator Kennedy, John Kennedy from the Great State of Louisiana.

Used to be a guy who like basically pretends to be dumb.

He went to Oxford.

He's actually like pretty smart.

He's a lawyer.

Used to be a Democrat, now is a Republican who pretends to be dumb, which I think is worth thinking about for just a second.

This is the line he says, did you know about do you think that who?

Sort of like who is on Jeffrey Epstein's list the client list that doesn't exist except when it does.

And Bettel says there is no credible evidence none that Epstein trafficked to other individuals.

Now, we know this to be true because it's not right.

We know this is not true.

We know this is not true because Virginia Giuffrey, who died by suicide this year, had countless stories about Prince Andrew.

We know this to be true because during the investigation Glaine Maxwell said as much.

We know this to be true.

This is like as true as anything we know.

Is this great reporting by Julie K.

Brown, great book by Julie K.

Brown.

Right, there are more than two hundred victims.

So we sat and heard a press conference pretty recently where they said we'll just make the list ourselves.

So here is cash Ptel's saying there is no list.

There is no there there, which is pretty damning because there is no world in which it's possibly true.

Patel says, if there were evidence, I would bring the case yesterday.

Okay.

But the other thing, there are a number of great moments in that hearing you should watch.

There is an incredible moment where the junior senator from Vermont, Peter Welsh, gets in there and asks him about his use of the FBI's private jet.

That is a real crowd pleaser.

By the way, he's like, so you were at a UFC fight with mel Gibson in Las Vegas and he says, well, I live in Las Vegas.

You were in Miami at a whatever sporting event.

Do you live in Miami too?

By the way, like Cash Battel is not just going to REO's.

He's going everywhere.

And perhaps the lesson of this story is that, well he may not be a good director of the FBI, Cash Pattel is a very good time.

He loves to go to a fight.

Okay, Well, we got to talk about other things.

There's five new members we now know the names of named to the influential CDC Vaccine Advisory Committee and Maya.

I know we don't disparage NEPO babies on this podcast, but it's an assortment of kooks and nepo babies.

We're all oh all the time.

But let's just talk about this for a second.

RFK Junior, perhaps not the best?

Is that fair to say?

Very fair?

So the new members include a lot of people.

Well, some of these people are doctors.

That's something.

The daughter in law of Senator Marsha Blackburn, somebody who is a who practices cardiology at a place called Four Hearts and Souls Free Medical Clinic in Hawaii.

They're basically all famous for being anti boxers as far as I can tell.

Right, it's that vibe.

And then we have the one that has some nepotism that it doesn't seem as crazy, but you'll be real shocked to hear that that's how trump ism works.

I mean, I have to say it's the beneficiary of nepotism myself.

You know, you never want to be the least crazy person on a panel.

That's an interesting career advice.

You should do a college speech on that.

You could quote me, you never want to be the least crazy person on a panel, Like sometimes nepotism ain't so great.

You don't want to be the smartest person in the room, and you don't want to be the least crazy person of that panel.

You know, I noticed someone crouches.

You're saying, sometimes, I think you should get that for some college students.

Yeah, you never want to be the least crazy person on the panel.

It's clear that we are heading towards some kind of crisis event here with this RFK stuff.

I mean, I think it's pretty clear.

So I don't know what this crisis event looks like, but it strikes me that none of this goes anywhere good.

Again, Like you have to remember there's so many different ways in which RFK, and we've had so many people on this podcast to talk about this, which RFK has like undermined your health and safety when it comes to like food investigations for like you know, food poisoning, when it comes to different food born illnesses, like there are just a lot of ways to get sick, and this administration is guaranteeing that unless you're really lucky, you may very well get something Sabaya.

I have to ask a question on behalf of the audience.

Did you learn this lesson that you don't want to be the craziest person on a panel when you sat next to Walter Kurt.

On Bill Mahr, I said the least crazy person on the panel.

I'm sorry, Yes, yes, I'm sorry the least craziers.

Yes, I've had experiences of being the least crazy person on a panel, and I have to say I love that you bringing it back to what really matters.

Okay, So the House GP has released their stop gap bill to fund the government through November twentieth.

Well, it's looking about what we expected.

Yeah.

Look, one of the things that I think is a hallmark of trump Ism is a lot of this isn't legal.

A lot of this isn't how it's supposed to go.

A lot of this is set up in a way that means that they have to do certain things to get around the law or to get around the way things are supposed to be going, all sorts of different problems.

So now the government is set to shut down, you know, within the next couple of days.

This is a stop gap to keep it open till right before Thanksgiving if you don't see why this is a problem.

And again, like here's the thing.

Democrats really want Republicans to put in money because basically, what's going to happen when the way the BBB works is Obamacare premiums are about to go up like twenty percent.

We are already in a very inflationary moment in American life.

Donald Trump, the guy who promised to make everything cheaper, has made everything more expensive.

Shocker.

And so now we find ourselves the deadline is September thirtieth.

The government shuts down on September thirtieth.

It is September sixteenth, So that means they either need to figure out a way to bind bipartisan funding or shut down.

Democrats, I think would like to see Schumer not back down.

They'd like to see Jeffries not back down and not be mean to Chris Holland.

I don't know what that for anyone, FYI.

So I think it's a real question whether Democrats shut down the government.

And you know, the thing is, you can do it if you have a plan.

You can't do it if you don't have a plan.

So you need a plan.

So the hope I think we all have is that Jeffries and Schumer have some kind of plan that you know, if they shut down the government, they're doing it for a deliverable they can get from the Trump administration.

Now you get to this problem, which is it's very hard to make deals with Trump because he goes back on things all the time because they're you know, his his dealmaking is largely vibes based.

And the other thing is Johnson wants more money for member security because for obvious reasons.

So that's somewhere between thirty and sixty million dollars.

So, you know, Democrats want bipartisan negotiations, Republicans don't want by partisanship, Trump continues to be in bolden.

This is a tough road to hoe.

And you know, and the question last time was that she and Hikeem we're not on the same page.

So you had Hiquem wanting to hold out and Schumer caving.

So if that is what we have this time, that's going to be real bad.

Speaking of well, this isn't so bad because it's so silly.

Trumpet his advisors are planning for a crackdown and left wing groups, one of them is Antifa Malli.

Now, since this is my wheelhouse.

I have to give a little memo to most people who don't know this.

Antifa pretty much does not exist at this point.

There may be some people running around saying.

It's so, you say so, you say that's what you want us to think.

This is one of those things where I could claim, of anybody who's in the media class talking about things, that I am probably the person who knows the most about this Seeguz.

I was very close to this culture for a long time, and this is really really silly stuff like this is the boogeyman of all boogeymen right now.

So you say so, you say so, that's what you want us to believe.

Look, man, yes, Republicans have for a long time been very into solving problems that don't exist.

So I think we're likely to see a lot of other non existent problems solved very quickly.

And I, for one, love to see Republicans solving problems in our real Angelo Karasone is the CEO of Media Matters.

Welcome to Fast Politics, Angelo, thanks me.

It's just shocking how bad it's gotten, how fast, how bad we were talking just for a second before those about topics, and like one is more disheartening than the next.

I don't even know where to start.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's a fair thing.

I mean, And part of the reason it feels so heavy, in particular, especially the moment, like you know, the the last last week or so, it's the event itself is unpleasant, terrible, set right, distressing on.

There's a whole bunch of emotions that come with the event in a vacuum.

But then if you take it one step removed, and this is where I think some of the heaviness that I feel comes in, and I know a lot of my team does, and you is that you don't just see it as one event.

Then you start to look at it.

You don't look at it as a vacum.

You don't feel it in a vacuum.

You feel it in part of a larger process of transition and change for our culture and for our society.

And when you look at it like that, then the timeline becomes very collapsed.

So I see what's going on here.

This is a catalyzing event that will could very easily be used to exploit for the consolidation of more power, for more crackdowns.

And as that's as you say, you see it through that lens because of the work you do in your sort of experience.

And then on the other hand, you don't see any speed bumps, you don't see any friction slowing it down, and so it's hard to grab onto.

So in a way, everything kind of just crashes emotionally and mentally into one quick moment where it's like, whatever is going to about to happen in six months from now?

You begin to feel and internalize that today and that that's certainly been my experience.

So you are the head of Media Matters.

Media Matters is an organization that has has experienced a lot of the kind of thing that this administration would like to do more broadly to outlets it considers to be disloyal to the cause.

And so I would love you to talk about We've talked about this before.

You've been targeted by Elon Musk, been targeted by other groups.

But talk to me about like what that looks like real time?

Yeah, I mean in real time.

What it basically is is a series of calling them attacks.

In this environment, it just feels very different.

It's a series of very specific tactics that are designed to drain resources, financial and time as well as emotional energy, and then as it's draining those things, it's injecting a specter of fear for additional escalation.

And if you look at that framework, that's exactly what the conversation that's coming out of the administration the last few days has been like, right, which is sort of this very nebulous but yet seemingly credible threats of retaliation against this constellation of network that they won't name.

And if you're a part of that day to day independently these threats, what it feels like is one, you know, the natural response when you're under that kind of pressure is to go along, to get along, to prevent right, which is that happening?

That is the goal.

We've seen it largely has worked, that is it.

I mean that, and most major national outlets, a lot of you know, ABC and CBS and others, you know, they they they bent.

And even though they bent, Trump that's still threatening them, continuing to threaten them.

But they they folded.

They made a calculus that well, we just won't continue to do certain things that that's seemingly great and antagonized.

Will adjust our mission accordingly, We'll change the nature of our content and that's the goal.

It's to stifle dissent, which then makes it easier to consolidate power.

And because sort of this feedback loop that speeds up each cycle, so day to day, that's what it feels like, you feel sort of like the best example I can say, like on a practical sense is that, imagine you worked it.

Imagine your job.

Is beyond just your job, right, which it's already very difficult, but imagine it's you feel like you basically run a half marathon every day and then you come home and you're.

Supposed to live your life, except you're not.

Right.

Everything is sore, you're steel, maybe feel a little sick.

Right.

You don't get to compartmentalize that into the office.

It's just it spills over into everyday life.

And that happens in these in these environments.

And ultimately, what we're really talking about here isn't anything controversial.

It's actually the most fundamental American thing, which.

Is to speech.

Again, I hate to be the cock eyed optimist here because there's no reason for optimism except one thing.

I'm gonna and I know, I bet you know what I'm gonna say, right, Pam Bondi's anti free speech tie rate of yesterday.

Can you talk about it?

Yeah, I mean it wasn't.

I mean, she basic made it sound like they would punish and retaliate against anyone that for saying anything they don't like, including you know, things that are beyond just say insightmentto violence.

But you know, she used a very broad definition of so far, not just hate speech, just so anything they don't like, they'd basically define criticism as hate speech.

And you know, she was pushed a little bit, not like in an aggressive way, would just sort of like expand on it and maybe help clarify.

And she didn't even take the cue from the interviewer, which is a very friend of the interviews, even though it's yeah, you.

Know, but she just dug in.

I think she thought she was doing great while the interview was happening, and at his core, though, when you take that away, you're kind of giving away the end result before it happens, and when you say it out loud explicitly.

That's part of the challenge in these moments too.

And I think there's something significant about that interview.

One of the challenges in these moments is that I certainly feel like about you do too, is like you're sort of warning about what's where it's going, right, you know, the current moment is unpleasant, but most people want things to feel normal and stable.

And say, well, that's just rhetoric.

Yeah, they're not going to do that thing.

It can't possibly get that bad, you know, not just this sort of slow boil.

And so you have to try to piece it together.

You know, you sort of sound you know, you're theorizing, and you know, it's an uphill climb to get people to really see that.

And when they say it, when they explicitly say it, it changes the orientation around it and the way that it's reported on and the way that people think about it.

And that is probably one.

Piece of friction in the system, is that they themselves have communicated and articulated it.

And that's part of, by the way, a broader pattern of overreach.

I mean that has been unfolding in the last few days too, like they really try to take this moment and turn it into something that I think most Americans because they are paying attention because it did strike them.

The political vound's is uneasy and it's not really resonated.

It just seems.

Obvious what they're doing in that way, and the overreach is always is always a risk, right, it will force them to come back from the line, hopefully.

I think of JD.

Van's speech in Europe where he said, you know, you guys, don't I mean this speech, by the way, an incredible You know, you had Harris so worried about how she would do at the Munich security conference.

Her aid's telling me she killed it.

They were the applause that, you know, I'm thinking to myself, Okay.

Meanwhile, Jadie Ance goes and says, you guys all are doing it all wrong and walks out of there.

Yeah, and like, yeah, it's incredible.

And look, that is part of that is the importance of all this too, is that you know, authoritarianism, especially during this stage of it, is theater.

The performance does matter.

You know, if you think you killed it, you people will kind of accept it.

Or if you don't think it matters, which is the other part.

If you don't make it seem as big of a thing, it's hard to then say, well, he blew it or it didn't go well.

And you know, look, he was also criticizing them for being anti free speech, which is kind of amazing.

That that's the point.

I mean, wait, he was criticized as being anti free speech, but he was lecturing, I'm on free speech.

Well, that's right, that's right, he was lecturing I'm on free speech.

The point is part of the right wing media.

One of the stories in the right wing media that has been percolating for so long is that in Europe they've been cracking down on people's social media accounts and they've been essentially stifling they've been using the government power to implement and drive a woke dei agenda and then brutalitating against individuals.

And that was that's he obviously gave a Lincoln a nod to that part of the larger right wing sort of sort of narrative.

And that's that.

It has been a pretty big through line in the right wing media.

Is that that there that the left has actually been vigorously anti free speech, and you know they're.

Going to get back at the left by being more anti free speech.

Yeah, I mean, and they're justifying too.

They'll rationalize it, you know that there we are in this moment of the ends, justify the means, like pointing out hypocrisy doesn't matter.

They kind of embrace it.

You know.

It is sort of this because it is about revenge.

You know, when Trump announced his candidacy his re election, he did describe himself as an strmit of revenge.

And the truth this revenge is amazing.

People love me.

We're not supposed to get revenge in balance, Like it's a thing you're taught is not a good thing because it is poisonous.

It is poisonous to relationships, it's poisonous to yourself, it's poisonous to the people around you.

There's so much colateral damage.

But it still feels amazing.

And even if it doesn't feel amazing.

But thought of it feels amazing, you know.

And it's a tempting thing to get out there and say, I'm going to get revenge against all the people that hurt you or that made you feel like you were being judged for your ideas.

And this is a part of that story.

None of this, Like, I don't necessarily believe that you can cause this.

But they are responding to cancel culture, right, They're responding to the fury about the idea that a mob a woke mob.

I want you to you and I both know this is not real.

But we're going to just go along down this rabbit hole just to sort of talk through what the implication of it are.

So, say you're a movie star, you say something that is cancellable, whatever it sounds like, and you get canceled.

Maybe it's sexism, maybe it's racism, maybe it's whatever this is.

I'm talking four years ago when things still mattered, and then there's an outrage cycle and then that person becomes a star on the right and this was this is sort of the impetus, right, is this the impetus they're using.

I mean, obviously Trump has other stuff, but yeah, there's.

Definitely a piece of especially as it relates to getting all these individuals fired and terminated.

You know that database that's being collected, you know, say more about the database database.

There's a database that's percolating that claims to have tens of thousands of individuals on it.

It originally started as anybody that was you know, that they identify them and pulled together their examples of them publicly celebrating or uh, you know, or expressing support for Charlie Kirk's Harbor order, and that it's kind of expanded it out now is sort of this broader thing of even including people that say, ok, I didn't agree with Charlie Kirk.

I thought that something said was terrible, but I don't think anything should be killed.

They're including that those critiques now, so they've really expanded up.

Does Spenser Cox end up in that list because he did say mildly yeah.

Yeah, I mean people acknowledging the provocatory nature.

And with the by the way, Utah Governor Spencer Cox who did say maybe not that the shooter was a leftist, which we don't totally know still right, because our FBI is very into REOs, we don't totally know what the what the may be more complicated than left versus right for this shoot, right, I think that's right.

I think it probably a lot more complicated than that.

And but that ties into this right because the part of it is this frenzy moment.

You have this catalyzing event for so and you can use it for so many different things.

One of the things that they've been doing is then going and getting people fired from their employees, holding that up as an example.

And it has two effects.

One is that it continues to reinforce the story that hey, this this is representative of liberals in America.

They are, they celebrate violence, they are they are violent to their core.

Look at all these exemplars that we have been able to identify, and yeah, they're being fired, but like that's that is them, that's who they are.

But the second thing ties into what you're getting to, which is that and they've been you know, they've been writing media figures that have been talking about it that this is giving liberals a taste of their own medicine, that this is it and they see this as an example of them fighting back against cancer culture.

You know, it's it's a very tidverate, tad approach.

But is that that's where the tie it is because but it's organizing, you know, because when you do these things, you're engaging people, you're asking them, you know.

And the Vice President said this in his own at the end of when he hosted the show, which is, if you see somebody saying something like this, report them right, right, I mean he asked me.

And that is, you know, putting aside the sub substance of it.

That is good old fashion organizing.

When you write people, give them a task or a charge, and then have them participate and engage.

That's movement building, that's power building, right, right, and that's what it is.

There's something and when you participate in those things and you achieve some kind of externality, it's intoxicating because gets to feel something and feel like you're part of something.

And that is what they're doing now.

It's part sticking it to liberals and owning the libs, which has always been a core part of it, and part of it is them what they see is embracing and refining the tactics of the left.

Yes, it does fit into that larger revenge narrative, right, backlash to backlash to backlash.

Yeah, because imagine you're sitting there and so you see this trickle out a little bit with celebrities in Hollywood that sort of identify as conservative.

You know, whenever they're doing their tours, they always talk about how they felt ostracized or that they couldn't talk about their politics.

That underneath the surface.

As all of these social movements had been emerging over the past few years, these reactionary movements, some of which are very intense.

If you're if you feel like the mob is coming for your ideology who you are, you could always be next, right, it creates this real fear and it just sits below the surface, always sort of simmering.

So in a way it this is allowing them to channel all of those latent, intense emotions about you know, the mob coming for them.

And when you when there is these types of events, regardless of there's something very powerful, it's if you feel very powerless, right, and when there is, you know, if somebody is being fired for saying they're a conservative, usually that's not what happens.

It's that they said something really terrible and then it turns out that they have a larger pattern of saying even more terrible things.

And this is ultimately about a business and they just like they don't want to invest it.

There are usually reasons for that.

You're not really going after somebody at like a local store like that.

Usually it doesn't create a national moment for the left.

But putting aside the distinctions, as if you're watching that unfold, you do feel very powerless, aside from being maybe a little scared and that that has you know, you know, there's kinetic energy when you're moving, and then there's potential energy when it's just sitting there kind of brewing like a spring ready to pounce, and that's kind of what they're tapping into.

Is this a lot of this widescale feeling that anything they expressed will be penalized and that they have to whisper or do it in these private channels and otherwise they'll get in trouble.

And now they can just now they can just do it and they can get revenge at the same time.

And they're tapping into that too, And that's what reactionary movements are about.

One of the things that I wanted to bring up here, which I think is important, is that and it devolves into some really really fun inter office fighting that has already emerged.

So Candace Owens, I would love you to explain to our listeners what this story is between Candace Owens and you know where I'm going with this, right, one of the two most main character of main characters, Candice Owens and Bill Ackman, please discuss.

I also think it's important in the larger scheme of how these media figures are created.

Yeah, and I think that's important.

I would start with a few things.

One, you know you can do podcasts and shows, and that there's plenty of figures on the right.

You know that that have that, but you know, not all of them are really talented.

Right.

They may have a show, but they may not be talented like broadcasters Cannas owns, regardless of her politics ideology, the stuff she says, Camiones is actually a talented broadcaster.

She's a talented storytellers.

She just she really has talent.

You don't get to those numbers.

She's talented.

And yeah, look I listened to and watched a lot of these people, and you know she is a truly talented broadcaster.

And no, Katie Miller, No.

No, right exactly, and you know, and where why that matters is that it's also worth knowing that candis on his background, she is not always a right wing figure.

Candace was not a right wing figure for as she was sort of she started out on the left actually.

Right and yet another imagine get another success for the party exactly.

Like, there's no but there's no way for her to use that talent, right, There was not really a mechanism for harnessing talented people like Candice owns.

There just wasn't.

The right has plenty of those institutions, one of which was Training Point.

Right and so she doesn't find and does not grow people and does not So there are no there are no people like that on the left.

There just isn't really that.

And so if you think about if your turning point and your objective is to organize on campus and to build power amongst college students, and then you have this really talented person who's already demonstrated that they're disaffected.

Remember she did blexit, which is the black exit from the Democratic Party, and so she's sick.

Yeah, she signals that she was like in the beginning the process of trying to find her own way, her and Kirk became really close friends.

They were friends and because there was that, really she was affiliated turning point, and they made investments in her.

And that's the pipeline.

That's how you transform.

It's not as easy as I'll give you five thousand dollars if you become a conservative.

It's I'm talented, I have nowhere to go in this sector, but I want to use my talent, and this is offering it to me.

And so it starts with rejection and then it gets moved over.

And here's how it all builds to what happened.

Now, So that background is that she has that relationship, a really long history with Charlie Firkin.

Turning point obviously, now she is out on her own, which there's a lot of stuff that happened in between.

But she's still part of that ecosystem.

And she's also been increasingly antagonistic toward it's become a lot more conspiratorial, but she's been antagonistic toward net Yahoo, toward Israel, towards sort of what she sees as you know, this sort of constellation of very prominent Jewish donors that are supporting Republican causes and trying to pressure them and force them to be more pro Israel and to slow down what she's seen as a transformation amongst her side where they've been more.

Willing to criticize Israeli politics.

And she sees that there's a Butcher's And how that fast forwards is that she claims that there's was this incident back in May where Bill Ackman sort of like you know, got to Charlie Kirk and screamed at him and you know, chastise him, because the theory here is that Kirk was beginning to waffle on his support for the current you know, the current stuff that Israel was doing, and that he was getting a lot of pressure from Turning Point donors and from from prominent Republican donors, and that Bill Acklan was sort of the tip of the spear.

That's what she claims.

And so she does this sort of like you know, and it you know, she's in the larger yeah, story, She's upset.

She feels like people are trying to that they're not only whitewashing and put pushing over history, you know, claiming affiliation that they shouldn't have, which she's basically arguing, is that people like net Yahou and others are going to try to say that Kirk is pro Israel no matter what, and the sort of claim that mantle and associate themselves hit Kirk's memory with that movement, and she's pushing back on that, and in particular she's really trying to, you know, I think use this as a moment to say, all of these people, bill Ackman being the face of it, they really made Charlie Kirk's last few months a living hell, and we shouldn't forget them as part of the story.

So that's that's how we get here, and she obviously makes threats to innuendo, she promises she's going to release text messages, she doesn't get responses.

Turning Point, for its part, has fully denied that and her accounting of the story entirely.

But I don't think based on her past that that means that she stops pushing that narrative, right.

I mean, that is the other free speech problem this crew is going to have, is that part of their way of succeeding is you have to get eyeballs.

I mean, isn't Trump's whole theory of success about sort of getting eyeballs?

Yeah, Trump's theory.

Of success, Yeah, I mean trumps Trump built an organized power on the fringes.

I mean, that's sort of how he was able to just take over the Republican part is that he built You use the fringes to build a lot of kinetic energy and tension and conversation, achieved narrative dominance, and then the rest kind of followed.

The theory comes from actually New York City tabloids, and it's this idea that they basically function as a herd and that you actually only need.

A lead steer.

Now in the in the eighties, you get one or two tabloids to write a story and everybody else kind of follows it.

It's called the lead steer theory.

Trump just took that lead steer theory and applied it to the modern information landscape by just getting the maximum amount of social attention and then having everybody else follow.

And even today when.

He was asked before he went on the you know, on the helicopter, somebody asked that if social media was a cancer, and everybody is saying social media is a cancer, I mean that's just like a thing.

He said, No, No, some parts of it are very good because to your question, he recognizes that so much of his power actually comes from being able to channel that for narrative dominance.

Narrative dominance.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Randy Winegarden is the president of the American Federation of Teachers and the author of Why Fat Just Fear Teachers.

Welcome to Fast Politics, Randy Weingarten.

I'm so glad to be with you, Molly.

Let's talk about this book and why you wrote it and and sort of get us up to speed.

Yes, let's get it is Why Fascist Fear Teachers?

So why do they?

And how did you get here?

And why did you decide to write a book.

Let me go to the in first, which is I was watching not only myself but so many teachers be so demonized in the last few years.

I mean, no other than like why would my Pompeo, you know, say that I was the most dangerous person in the world, like, you know, with not Putin but me.

Why would Chris Ruffo or so many of these other extremists you know, basically say the way you actually create privatization and vouchers is to create universal public school distrust.

Why all of the erasure and book banning and basically this smearing and demonization.

So I you know, I've been watching it, I've been working on it for years, but I wanted to spend some time saying is this intentional or is it not?

And what was clear is that it is an intentional plot that you know, authoritarians have done for years to basically get rid of knowledge, to erase history, to stop people from being together and society, you know, creating the cracking open of society.

And what was clear by the work that these are what was clear by what these demonizers are doing is they fear knowledge, so they fear critical thinking and they fear the other big thing that teachers do, which is to create a safe and welcoming environment for our kids.

It's like they want society to crack open.

And then you think about that, because the title was intentional, and think about fascists.

What do fascists do?

They create this US versus them.

They create this sense of demonizing and dehumanizing them so that people become specs, they don't become people.

And they do that so that they can just trash for them, you know, in love of the you know, beloved strong man, and in love of the US.

And you see that kind of division and divisiveness play itself out in American society right now.

So I was pretty clear not to label any particular person as a fascist because I didn't want the whole discussion to be is he or isn't he.

What I wanted is for people to recognize fascistic behavior.

And the second thing I wanted, so the first was the why why is this going on?

And the second thing I wanted to do, which would not surprise you, is to lift up teachers.

This is a love letter to teachers and to what teachers do in society to help kids thrive.

And to help families and people who you know, you don't know their names, Like you may know the name of Abbie Clemens because she was at you know, Sandy Hook the day of that shooter, but you don't know the name of Ryan Richmond, who is you know, a social studies teacher in New Hampshire.

Or Ralfiyo Bonhome who's a Civics teacher in Washington, d c.

Or Barbara Johns, who was one of the plaintiffts Brown versus Board of Education, never got to go to an integrated school, but became a librarian in the Philadelphia school system, you know.

Or Lilly and Keys who teaches in McDowell County, West Virginia and helps kids who are in poverty.

These are the people who are trying to help our thrive.

So those are two reasons.

Why is what's happening happening and who is trying to help kids learn?

So let's talk this through.

Republicans have for a long period of time been mad at public education.

They've also been super mad at unions.

So it makes sense that the head of the teachers' union would be right in their crosshairs because you work in a union, plus you are a teacher.

Plus it's this free education, which the Republicans would love to see that money go to vouchers and charter schools and religious schools and anything they can that seems a little bit less egalitarian.

How did COVID open the door for some of the attacks that they are making on you guys?

It seems so similar to the attacks on doctors.

Really, let me.

Take one step back, because I'm also trying to teach in this book.

Sorry, I am a recovering social studies teacher.

But you know, there are three basic ways that regular people have any power in the United States of America.

One is through elections, obviously in terms of who you elect.

To power is people go out and vote.

The second is clearly education, because it's not just learning to read and write, but to think and things like that.

And so this is where free, universal public education becomes so important because it is about other people's children.

Is it about all of our kids and whether all of our kids have a shot.

But the third is the point you're just making, which is how do regular people have a shot to get better wages or better benefits.

It's through a union movement, you know, and through having a union.

If you're not rich, the way in which you do it in terms of negotiating is, you know, a union movement and a collective marketing contract.

So we're two of those three.

And that part of the reason where if you are the billionaire class or the powerful elite and you don't want regular folks to have any power, you attack the ways in which regular folks have power.

And we are two of the three of them.

And so I think that that is one of the reasons that the powerful who don't want to share power with others, that's why they attack as opposed to sharing power with others and making the country a better country.

But the issue about COVID, I think what COVID did is it created such fear and anxiety that it created fertile ground for the US versus them for the demonization.

Like and I kind of got COVID really wrong because I thought, I mean, look the record, and I've been investigated by Republicans up and down the line, you know, But we were the first ones in April of twenty twenty to say schools have to reopen.

And we put out a report that said, yeah, there's a bunch of other things we want but schools need to safely reopen before anybody else put it out.

And yet because schools were not safely reopened as quickly as they should have been, you know how many times did I get, you know, demonized by the right wing instead of them doing the work that they had to do to actually do what they did in Europe, which is create testing and make sure that schools, you know, were a priority.

And we knew after a while, by January twenty twenty one, we actually knew what to do, but the Trump administration didn't want to do it.

And just like they take on science, they took on school teachers and unions and others who were trying to do two things.

Have schools reopened because frankly, here's a spoiler alert.

Nobody liked hybrid learning and nobody liked virtual learning.

People wanted to be my members wanted to be back in school, but they wanted to be safe.

And parents wanted kids to be back in school, but they wanted to be safe.

And so I do think what COVID did was it created such fear and anxiety that it created fertile ground to find places to blame.

And we spent a lot of time you know, the irony here is I was very, very vocal trying to spend time trying to get schools open safely.

And because I was that vocal on it, I was a target.

Now there's another reason I think COVID and the long tail of COVID, not just long COVID, but the long tail of COVID is so highly problematic because it accelerated the use of devices, particularly smartphones.

And what's I think we've seen and learned of late, meaning in the last year, is not just what smartphones and what the algorithm of social media has done in terms of the nature of our you know, political dialectic, but what is done in terms of bullying, what it's done to make people feel worse about themselves.

And it's also what it's done in terms of Jonathan Hate's new research about attention and so kids.

We saw this in schools when schools were reopened, kids were focused on their phones, not looking at each other.

And I would often ask teachers, you know, are kids looking at you?

Are they looking at each other?

No?

And in some ways that's part of the reason why these cell phone bands and schools are not so popular.

You know, it's all over New York.

Now there's a state law because we need to get kids into being kids again.

We need to get kids into an engagement with other human beings, into playing, into thinking.

And what we're seeing is it's not just chet GPT and you know, taking a whole bunch of chapter GPT and you know, pasting it somewhere and saying that's my report.

It's that kids are not thinking.

That kids are not playing with each other, the kids not reading, and so that is really, really, really problematic.

To why do you think that Democrats are in such a bad space at this moment.

I think it's a couple of things.

There's a lot of buyer's remorse about Trump, and you and I have talked for so many months.

You know where I stand on all of this stuff.

Because it was only one and a half percent ultimately, But the difference between meaning between you know, Trump and Harris in terms of the election, You're not talking about a huge landslide here.

You're talking about a very narrow election.

Even though Trump won the popular vote and a lot of people didn't vote.

I think people understood who Trump was, but the reason he won and Harris lost was about inslation and the economy and people wanting to have a better life.

I'm not saying that's what everybody thought.

We all know about the cult and madget and this and that.

But I think the difference between why I Biden won in twenty and why Trump won in twenty twenty four was that.

And people see that their lives haven't gotten better, and there's a lot of buyer's remorse, but they're really met at the Democrats for not making a better case.

Right right, for sure, I think it spills over.

Yeah, because I'm seeing people say, Okay, the vote for the Democrats next time.

I'm seeing a widening vote between you or what are you going to do next time?

A widening chasm.

But what you're not seeing and I think people are saying this and you know, look, you know I left the DNC.

They're seeing it some from the governors.

But what they're not seeing is they know what the Democrats stand against.

What do the Democrats stand for?

Like, how are the Democrats even if Trump is president, how are the Democrats going to help better the lives of people?

And I think that what we didn't do, and I'm a Democrat, I mean we try to do it in terms of of you know, education.

But what we haven't done nationwide is not have like four or five very seminal points.

I think one should be a working class tax cut.

I want to have better programs as well, but workers really right now feel a lot of pain in terms of inflation.

There should be a working class tax cut, not just a tax cut for the rich.

Or don't just sprinkle, you know, no taxes on overtime, on tips.

Let's have a tax cut for the cost of living so that no worker is paying taxes on the first forty five thousand dollars of income.

Let's make sure that people can live on their salaries as we're fighting for higher salaries for people.

Let's make sure that there is affordable housing and affordable healthcare.

And let's make sure that school actually have wrap around services and have the kind of curriculum and engagement that parents want for their kids.

Let's create these kinds of things.

And before somebody starts calling the socialists, these are the things we've done over the course of his streak.

What was Mitchell Lama in New York City?

It was affordable housing.

What did Johnson do in terms of the civil rights laws, medicare, medicate.

What did FDR do in terms of social security?

These are the things we do to try to create a safety net so that people can thrive.

This is the United States of America.

We should be able to do these things.

That's why I think they're mad.

So since you've left the DNC, it has done everything that we hoped it would not.

It can't keep up fundraising wise, we're seeing the RNC is eating their lunch.

Are you glad you left?

How does this ship get righted?

I left for two reasons.

One, it was clear that Ken Martin listening to anything that I was saying about wanting to do this.

You know, the DNC, it's not every Democrat, it's a convener, but you know, you have a real important goal in terms of that convening and that kind of arraying policy and having a message and communicating that message about what the Democrats stand for.

And you know what I've just said to you publicly.

You know me, I'm not shy.

I said it and it wasn't paid attention to.

And so that was one of the reasons.

If you were I'm busy enough.

We have a lot of work to do in terms of labor and education and making a difference in the lives of people, so I put my pursuits elsewhere.

That's number one.

Number two, it creates an independence.

There's a cynicism that a lot of people have right now.

Now some of it is done because of the US versus them, and there's a cynicism about you know, when life isn't getting better for people, you know, people feel like, oh everybody does it.

Oh everybody's corrupt.

I mean, that's that's not true.

But there is a lot of people that feel that way.

And a lot of that is because in misinformation and disinformation it goes back to what authoritarians and oligarchs and others do and what you know, can be fascistic kind of behavior.

But what I have found is that that independence.

My members like it.

My members, you know, even though many of them are Democrats, they want us to view you know, the election and election time not through the lens of their leaders being a Democrat or a Republican or be on the DNC or the RNC.

They want us to have some more independence.

It doesn't you know, mean that they don't want us to vote for Democrats or endorse democrats, but you could see them saying to me, well, where's your loyalty?

And so that independence I think is helpful for And I'm glad I.

Did it sound like what you're talking about here is the difference between the people and the party who are fighting and the leadership which is sort of following along.

I think that DNC is different than the governor's, those in the Senate, those in the House, and I have a lot of respect.

I mean, look at what Robert Garcia is doing right now, as the.

Minority know, he's awesome.

He's awesome.

Look at what Jimmie Raskin is doing.

I mean, you don't have the power on the floor of the Congress, but they figured out how to go to Jeffrey Epstein's estate and get things that they should get.

I mean, this is what fighting is about.

Look at what Corey Booker did on the floor.

You have to create it.

Just all people, not in leadership though.

I mean, Garcia is the leader in the ober side, right, but they did not give him an easy time getting there either.

The first guy had to die.

But I agree, I think you're right one hundred percent.

We're at a time why fascists feared teachers.

Brandy Win Marden.

Will you please come back?

Of course, no mock Jesse Cannon Maley.

I'm gonna take you back to another time.

Please don't.

At one point, libertarians said they are principled people who cared about freedom of speech and that they would do anything to defend it because we can't have no government clamping down on our liberties.

Well, Rad Paul the foremost libertarian in our congressional body.

He's all for cracking down on people talking smack on Charlie Kirk.

So basically, all these Republicans are pandering to their base, and they know their base is really upset about Charlie Kirk.

And you know, killing people is bad, okay, and I'm happy to say that.

I'll say that till I'm blue in the face.

Doesn't matter who it is, don't kill people, bad, bad, bad.

I'm looking at Molly right now and the blue is coming on, so I'm going to encourage her to move on.

Right.

But violence bad, free speech good.

And also the first Amendment, like the first Amendment, not the second, not the third.

The number one of them is like you can speak.

So I want to point to a woman called Pam Bondy, who is at least theoretically our attorney general and mostly just a pundit.

At this point, she went real hard on free speech, real hard.

She was batted down by a real bipartisan array that I thought was impressive.

We had both the Bulwark and the Federalist just clamping down on that.

So, you know, look, free speech is sort of all we have here, so I think they're going to have some problems taking it away.

But you know, Matt Walsh, Eric Ericson Wow, ro Conna, and Matt Eglesias all agree at least on one thing, which.

Is every side of the quad graph you got there?

Can we get Nick Fuentes involved?

Yeah, we got it all.

Man.

Are the groyper's free speech?

I think I probably are.

Well.

They like to say lots of things that most people don't like, so that, yes, I'm going with that.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's not good.

It's not good where we are in America right now.

Not great.

But the good news is no, I'm just kidding, there is no good news.

That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.

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