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Has Optimism Become Cringe? (with Chris Hayes) · Pod Save America

0:20
Speaker 1: Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Lovett. And joining
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Speaker 1: me today, he's the host of All In on MSNBC
0:25
Speaker 1: and the podcast, Why Is This Happening? Chris Hayes. Thank
0:29
Speaker 1: you for being here.
0:30
Speaker 2: Oh, it's a delight to be here. Thank you for
0:32
Speaker 2: having me.
0:33
Speaker 1: Let's just jump in. Donald Trump took a break from
0:36
Speaker 1: winning golf tournaments and doing scam IPOs to hit the
0:39
Speaker 1: campaign trail, holding events in both Michigan and Wisconsin. During
0:42
Speaker 1: his event in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Trump, per usual, focused
0:45
Speaker 1: on immigration. Let's take a listen.
0:48
Speaker 3: The 22-year-old nursing student in Georgia who was barbarically murdered
0:52
Speaker 3: by an illegal alien animal. The Democrats said, please don't
0:56
Speaker 3: call them animals. They're humans. I said, no, they're not humans.
0:59
Speaker 3: They're not humans. They're animals. Nancy Pelosi told me that.
1:03
Speaker 3: She said, please don't use the word animal, sir, when
1:05
Speaker 3: you're talking about these people. I said, I'll use the
1:08
Speaker 3: word animal because that's what they are. And we have
1:10
Speaker 3: all the law enforcement behind. They're going to be watching
1:12
Speaker 3: what happens to this thug. He's not going to get
1:14
Speaker 3: away with it. So many people get away with it.
1:16
Speaker 3: They say, oh, let him go.
1:17
Speaker 2: Let him go.
1:19
Speaker 3: I'm the only one that has to put up a bond.
1:21
Speaker 3: You know, I put up a bond. I didn't do
1:23
Speaker 3: anything wrong. I had to put up a bond this
1:25
Speaker 3: morning for one hundred and seventy five million dollars. I
1:27
Speaker 3: did nothing wrong. They can shoot somebody, kill somebody and
1:30
Speaker 3: walk out of jail an hour later.
1:32
Speaker 2: How about that?
1:32
Speaker 3: Do you think that's a fair policy? That's that's called
1:35
Speaker 3: radical left.
1:36
Speaker 1: OK, now going on there is a lot going on there.
1:40
Speaker 1: All right. Now, according to a recent AP poll, about
1:43
Speaker 1: two thirds of Americans disapprove of Biden's handling of the border,
1:46
Speaker 1: including four and ten Democrats. I also thought this was telling.
1:49
Speaker 1: When asked unprompted, immigration is the number one issue on
1:53
Speaker 1: voters' minds, according to Gallup. But how do you separate
1:57
Speaker 1: the way in which there is a serious issue at
2:00
Speaker 1: the border, it's worthy of voters' concern and attention, from
2:03
Speaker 1: the way in which an entire right-wing media system has
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Speaker 1: basically turned the crisis into a kind of political step
2:10
Speaker 1: and repeat for them to exploit across a variety of issues?
2:14
Speaker 2: Well, I guess the first thing I would say is
2:16
Speaker 2: it's been... depressingly effective, the step and repeat. I mean,
2:21
Speaker 2: they know what they're doing. One sort of asterisk I'd
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Speaker 2: add to that polling is that I think it's either
2:27
Speaker 2: in the Gallup or Pew polling, one of these entities
2:29
Speaker 2: that does repeated polling. The primacy of the economy has
2:34
Speaker 2: gone down considerably, particularly among Republicans. So six months ago,
2:39
Speaker 2: Republicans were like, the economy is the biggest thing. And
2:41
Speaker 2: what's happened is the economy has gotten better. So now
2:43
Speaker 2: they don't want to talk about the economy. And so
2:45
Speaker 2: the salience has totally switched. And if you consume any
2:47
Speaker 2: right-wing media, like I cannot overstate the monomania in right-wing
2:52
Speaker 2: media about this, about the border and about quote-unquote migrant crime.
2:58
Speaker 2: I mean really it's just I think an effect– it
2:59
Speaker 2: has been an effective propaganda effort.
3:02
Speaker 1: Yeah. In the same Gallup poll from March, this was
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Speaker 1: the order of top concerns. Crime and violence beat the economy, healthcare,
3:11
Speaker 1: drug use, the deficit, social security, and the environment. I'm
3:15
Speaker 1: in LA. We saw a double-digit drop in violent crime
3:18
Speaker 1: in 2023. This is a trend across the country. There
3:21
Speaker 1: was a precipitous decline in homicides, in violent crime, most
3:23
Speaker 1: types of property crime. And yet, 77% of Americans believe
3:28
Speaker 1: there is more crime now than a year ago. 55% No,
3:32
Speaker 1: you hope like, okay, that's people say, you know, oh,
3:34
Speaker 1: you know, things, New York is crazy. What's happening in
3:36
Speaker 1: San Francisco? My goodness, that place is crazy, but not
3:39
Speaker 1: in my community. I don't see it, but wow, the
3:41
Speaker 1: country's going to hell in a handbasket. But 55% say
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Speaker 1: that about their own community, that roughly matches the Gallup
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Speaker 1: surveys from the 1990s when crime was objectively, objectively far,
3:58
Speaker 1: far worse than it is right now. So Trump is
4:01
Speaker 1: obviously both feeding this and feeding off of this dynamic.
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Speaker 1: He obviously is doing this classic technique of finding terrible,
4:11
Speaker 1: heinous crimes committed by immigrants and exploiting them. He's also
4:14
Speaker 1: doing that in an ad. I know you think a
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Speaker 1: lot about how people are getting or not getting information.
4:21
Speaker 1: You were a local reporter back in the day. How
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Speaker 1: do you explain this disconnect between crime vibes and crime rates?
4:30
Speaker 2: That's a really good question. I don't have a great
4:33
Speaker 2: explanation of it. I mean, I do think that– I
4:35
Speaker 2: think there's a few things. One, I do think there's– again,
4:37
Speaker 2: there's a propaganda campaign. That propaganda campaign has been very effective.
4:44
Speaker 2: There's always going to be an incentive to cover incidents
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Speaker 2: of violence and mayhem in the local news. It's the
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Speaker 2: lifeblood of local news. It always has been. It is
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Speaker 2: going to give people a skewed sense of overall incident rates.
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Speaker 2: What's strange when you compare the border stuff to the
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Speaker 2: crime stuff in the case of the border, like it
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Speaker 2: really has been the case that there were a number
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Speaker 2: of months. There were record setting amount of people really
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Speaker 2: were showing up at the border. So like there was
5:09
Speaker 2: an actual tangible phenomenon. You can talk about what was
5:13
Speaker 2: driving that or what the best way to deal with it.
5:15
Speaker 2: The crime thing is really driving me insane. And we
5:17
Speaker 2: hit this on the show all the time. Here are
5:19
Speaker 2: the facts about crime. Violent crime, particularly the most serious
5:22
Speaker 2: violent crime, a homicide spiked at an unprecedented level under
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Speaker 2: President Donald Trump. Last year, it fell at what appears
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Speaker 2: to be a record setting level under Joe Biden. It
5:32
Speaker 2: spiked under Donald Trump, the law and order president. It
5:34
Speaker 2: has declined under Joe Biden, the Democratic president. If you
5:37
Speaker 2: tell people this, they refuse to believe you. And I
5:41
Speaker 2: honestly I'm like I'm a little at my wits end
5:43
Speaker 2: about the whole thing. And again, my kid takes a
5:45
Speaker 2: subway every day. OK, my kid takes a subway every day.
5:48
Speaker 2: I take this away. Like it's not these are not
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Speaker 2: like remote concerns to me. They're real concerns. I'm a
5:53
Speaker 2: New Yorker. I went to I commuted to school as
5:56
Speaker 2: a 12 year old every day in the early 1990s
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Speaker 2: when homicides were almost 10x what they've been. So, like,
6:03
Speaker 2: I know it's real. It's real. The threat to your
6:06
Speaker 2: physical security, the fear of crime, this is not like nonsense.
6:09
Speaker 2: People do really worry about it. And it's totally fair
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Speaker 2: and right to worry about it. But the proportions and
6:15
Speaker 2: the perception have gotten utterly untethered from reality.
6:18
Speaker 1: Well, so, right. I mean, the question is, like, how
6:21
Speaker 1: do you what changed? Right. So, you know, there's been
6:24
Speaker 1: a right wing ecosystem for some time. If it bleeds,
6:28
Speaker 1: it leads has been.
6:28
Speaker 2: Yeah.
6:30
Speaker 1: It was not invented by social media. or Newsmax, there
6:34
Speaker 1: is something that is definitely, the link between reality and
6:38
Speaker 1: people's experience has frayed in some way. I agree.
6:43
Speaker 2: I got two theses on these. One is the Eric Kleinenberg,
6:46
Speaker 2: who just got a great book out now about the
6:48
Speaker 2: pandemic called 2020. I do think a lot of it's
6:51
Speaker 2: like the intense disruption and the hangover of the dislocation
6:55
Speaker 2: disruption that was the COVID experience and the trauma it
6:57
Speaker 2: produced and the social dislocation, which did actually produce an
7:02
Speaker 2: increase in violence and an increase in disorder and an
7:04
Speaker 2: increase in crime and an increase of untreated acute mental
7:07
Speaker 2: illness because clinics were closed. People were like, all that
7:10
Speaker 2: stuff really happened. People really did experience that. And there's
7:13
Speaker 2: a little bit of a lag of the experience, the
7:16
Speaker 2: processing and the feeling like the nose is coming up.
7:19
Speaker 2: Like that. So I think there's a little bit of that.
7:22
Speaker 2: And then I think the information environment has totally degraded.
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Speaker 2: So I just think that like, I have no idea
7:27
Speaker 2: where people are getting their information about the world from.
7:30
Speaker 2: But it has become more obscure and opaque behind sort
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Speaker 2: of like the black box of algorithms, particularly younger voters
7:37
Speaker 2: under 35. A lot of it's coming from TikTok. And
7:40
Speaker 2: some of it's great. Like, I like TikTok. There's great
7:42
Speaker 2: stuff on TikTok. People make smart and interesting points the
7:44
Speaker 2: way they do on anything. And there's smart people doing
7:46
Speaker 2: stuff on YouTube. But I just have noticed, and I
7:49
Speaker 2: don't know if you've noticed this, a real uptick in
7:52
Speaker 2: the incidence of like the normies in my life saying
7:55
Speaker 2: stuff where you're like, wait, what? What did you just say?
7:58
Speaker 2: Where did that come from? So I think those two things.
8:00
Speaker 2: I think the fact that there really was disruption and
8:03
Speaker 2: it takes a long time for people to, like, metabolize
8:06
Speaker 2: that and also the kind of fracturing of the information
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Speaker 2: environment have combined to create this kind of, like, insanely
8:14
Speaker 2: persistent sense of bad vibes.
8:16
Speaker 1: Yeah.
8:18
Speaker 2: That is, to me, the sort of central... It's really
8:20
Speaker 2: the central issue.
8:21
Speaker 1: No, it is. It's... Because, right, there was just people
8:25
Speaker 1: where there was a... during the pandemic, there really was
8:28
Speaker 1: a spike in crime that was terrible. There was also just,
8:32
Speaker 1: we were disconnected from each other and that, but we
8:36
Speaker 1: are now years.
8:39
Speaker 2: No, I know.
8:39
Speaker 1: The fear that the crime rate would keep going up, right?
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Speaker 2: Basically that- Was a real fear.
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Speaker 1: I had it.
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Speaker 2: We all had it.
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Speaker 1: We all had it. The wheels were coming off that
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Speaker 1: this was it, that things were just going to descend. Totally.
8:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
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Speaker 1: But there is a There is an optimistic story to
8:53
Speaker 1: be told. Yes. But there's no equity. There's no equity
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Speaker 1: in telling it right. Like like there's first of all,
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Speaker 1: there's obviously Joe Biden is too smart to go out
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Speaker 1: there and say, actually, crime is not as bad as
9:03
Speaker 1: it as you think it is. Vote for me. Right.
9:05
Speaker 1: That's there's no that's not exactly a winning argument when
9:09
Speaker 1: you have Trump out there doing kind of 1930s style
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Speaker 1: kind of bloody anecdotes.
9:15
Speaker 2: Yeah.
9:16
Speaker 1: And so you end up in a situation where Trump
9:18
Speaker 1: makes his news with these speeches. He really enjoys the
9:23
Speaker 1: fact that he can say, oh, I'm going to call
9:26
Speaker 1: them animals, but the left is afraid to call them animals.
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Speaker 1: He plays that game. Meanwhile, Joe Biden today is doing
9:31
Speaker 1: a healthcare event with Bernie Sanders. That's how we talk
9:35
Speaker 1: past each other right now. But stepping back, you see
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Speaker 1: this sort of pessimism across a range of issues. Pessimism
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Speaker 1: performs really well online. Cynicism does really well online. And
9:44
Speaker 1: it's hard to figure out the cause and effect But
9:46
Speaker 1: there's also this dynamic in which being pessimistic is how
9:51
Speaker 1: you prove that you're not captured. Having a negative take
9:57
Speaker 1: is how you show that you really are. get it.
10:00
Speaker 1: And I, and I don't know what to do with that.
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Speaker 1: It's my most, I don't know what to do with
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Speaker 1: the fact that optimism has become cringe, which may be
10:10
Speaker 1: just because I'm old and I've become cringe.
10:13
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:13
Speaker 1: Yeah.
10:14
Speaker 2: But, but like, I'm in the same boat.
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Speaker 1: I'm There there has to be some there has to
10:20
Speaker 1: be a way to make an argument at a progressive
10:24
Speaker 1: optimists case in politics, not just for Joe Biden, but
10:27
Speaker 1: just for progressive values, for a progressive worldview that things
10:31
Speaker 1: can get better, because otherwise, you know, if patriotism belongs
10:34
Speaker 1: to the fascists and optimism. belongs to the tech bros.
10:39
Speaker 2: What do we got?
10:40
Speaker 1: What are we offering?
10:41
Speaker 2: I totally, yeah. We're singing from the same hymnal here.
10:45
Speaker 2: And I think it might also be generation. We might
10:47
Speaker 2: just be equally middle-aged and cringe. And again, I try
10:53
Speaker 2: to check myself in this because there are tangible material
10:57
Speaker 2: aspects of American life right now that are really rough.
11:00
Speaker 2: The two biggest ones, housing costs are, again, it's important
11:05
Speaker 2: to sort of check back in of like, data anecdote,
11:07
Speaker 2: like synthesizing all that. So like housing costs are crushing
11:10
Speaker 2: people right now. And the combination of the fact that
11:14
Speaker 2: higher interest rates have really sort of frozen the housing market,
11:16
Speaker 2: which makes people's entrance in the housing market really, really
11:19
Speaker 2: hard and rents have really gone up and there's a
11:21
Speaker 2: real acute housing problem and housing is the biggest cost
11:24
Speaker 2: people have. So there's some empirical material stuff happening there.
11:27
Speaker 2: But I also agree with you that like the nature
11:30
Speaker 2: of the the tenor of the conversation about public life
11:34
Speaker 2: that exists online, which is increasingly where conversations about public
11:37
Speaker 2: life take place, just like a plant growing towards light,
11:42
Speaker 2: they inevitably stretch towards the negative. And it has a really,
11:48
Speaker 2: I think, an insidious political effect that is not just
11:50
Speaker 2: an insidious political effect, oh, it's bad for Joe Biden's
11:53
Speaker 2: approval ratings, about the vision of building a better future
11:58
Speaker 2: that has to be essentially the lifeblood of any project
12:00
Speaker 2: of the left. or liberalism.
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Speaker 1: One way I think that I find myself realizing that, oh, I'm, I'm,
12:07
Speaker 1: if not pessimistic, I am not imaginatively optimistic in that
12:12
Speaker 1: I don't, I spend a lot of my days really
12:16
Speaker 1: zooming in on how we survive and win in a
12:19
Speaker 1: 50-50 nation. Yeah. But I spend much less of my
12:22
Speaker 1: time thinking, what is the path out of a dynamic
12:26
Speaker 1: in which the stakes of every presidential election feel total?
12:31
Speaker 1: Where we basically have a politics in which we have
12:37
Speaker 1: a Biden administration, which deserves a ton of criticism on
12:41
Speaker 1: a whole host of levels, but on a variety of
12:44
Speaker 1: domestic policies, certainly, has been incredibly successful on every measure
12:49
Speaker 1: you could have, given the cards he was dealt, versus
12:53
Speaker 1: a doddering, corrupt... fascistic old man, you know, and we
12:58
Speaker 1: know going in, like, God, it's probably going to come
13:00
Speaker 1: down to about 3,000 people outside of Madison. And it's like, well,
13:04
Speaker 1: that's a huge fucking problem. It shouldn't.
13:06
Speaker 2: We know it shouldn't. I don't know what to do
13:08
Speaker 2: with it either. I mean, I agree that you sort
13:10
Speaker 2: of deal with the structural. I mean, I keep having
13:13
Speaker 2: faith in persuasion. I do have faith in time healing
13:16
Speaker 2: some wounds. Like, I do think that there's a huge
13:18
Speaker 2: lag on this stuff. And I do think that I
13:21
Speaker 2: do think as this may sound cringe or this may
13:24
Speaker 2: sound excessively internet coded, but I do think like the
13:28
Speaker 2: model of unprocessed trauma is actually very important, important and
13:31
Speaker 2: useful and understanding of American life after COVID. Cause you
13:34
Speaker 2: could be like, well, it happened three years ago and
13:36
Speaker 2: it's like, well, yeah, but that's the thing about trauma, right?
13:40
Speaker 2: Like it does, it's not just, it doesn't just go away.
13:43
Speaker 2: And particularly when it's not dealt with it, it comes
13:45
Speaker 2: out in all sorts of different ways. So I, I
13:49
Speaker 2: do have some faith in like the far trajectory. I
13:51
Speaker 2: do have the faith in in persuasion. The thing that
13:55
Speaker 2: I really don't have, and this is another thing that
13:57
Speaker 2: I've started to feel like an old man about, I
13:59
Speaker 2: really have, is the information environment. I just, I truly
14:04
Speaker 2: do not know. It's harder and harder for me just
14:06
Speaker 2: to mentally model how the modal swing state independent voter
14:13
Speaker 2: gets their information about the world. So when we talk
14:15
Speaker 2: about like the economic policy that has been the Biden
14:18
Speaker 2: economic policy, which has been incredibly like successful, I saw
14:23
Speaker 2: a chart actually comparing it to the recovery after the
14:25
Speaker 2: Great Recession and it's like in sort of redistributive terms
14:29
Speaker 2: been incredible. Like the real term wealth of the bottom
14:33
Speaker 2: three quintiles have grown tremendously and they all fell during
14:36
Speaker 2: the recovery of the Great Recession. So– But the question
14:39
Speaker 2: of like, well, who knows that? Even on the, even,
14:42
Speaker 2: I mean, I do this on my show. You said
14:43
Speaker 2: Biden's smart enough to do it, but I do it
14:44
Speaker 2: on my show. I just go up in front of
14:46
Speaker 2: a graph and I'm like, crime went up under Donald
14:48
Speaker 2: Trump and it's going down under Joe Biden. Like, please
14:51
Speaker 2: share this. This is a fact we need to know.
14:55
Speaker 2: Oil production is higher than it's ever been in the
14:57
Speaker 2: history of any country on earth. This is just a
14:59
Speaker 2: fact about what's happened. Now you can say that's bad
15:01
Speaker 2: because it's bad for the climate. You could say it's
15:03
Speaker 2: great because it's keeping oil prices down. But what you
15:05
Speaker 2: can't say is, God damn those liberals, they're not pumping
15:08
Speaker 2: the oil.
15:09
Speaker 1: Well, no, I know. And it's, it really is, it
15:11
Speaker 1: is hard to, it's like, it's self, it's a, it's
15:15
Speaker 1: such a vicious circle, right? Because if you're somebody who's
15:17
Speaker 1: saying housing costs, they are the biggest problem in my
15:20
Speaker 1: life right now. And there are people out there saying, well,
15:22
Speaker 1: we need to do, we need to do these kinds
15:24
Speaker 1: of rent controls. We need to do these kinds of
15:26
Speaker 1: ways to take away power from landlord. We need these
15:29
Speaker 1: kinds of subsidies, all, all things that are important.
15:31
Speaker 2: Right.
15:31
Speaker 1: But from, you know, what we need is a national
15:34
Speaker 1: program to, to build vast amounts of housing to make
15:38
Speaker 1: up for the generation that failed to do that, right?
15:41
Speaker 1: And if you have no idea that Joe Biden was
15:44
Speaker 1: able to pass a massive infrastructure bill, if you have
15:46
Speaker 1: no idea that Joe Biden passed the biggest climate investments
15:49
Speaker 1: in history, if you have no idea about all these
15:52
Speaker 1: ways in which government has been able to succeed, maybe
15:55
Speaker 1: not in a way that is tangible yet, but actually
15:58
Speaker 1: passing big pieces of legislation, why on earth would Would
16:01
Speaker 1: you be optimistic if someone says, I see what your
16:04
Speaker 1: problem is and here's how we can solve it over
16:06
Speaker 1: the next five, 10 years?
16:08
Speaker 2: Or even or even understanding where the positions are like this.
16:11
Speaker 2: We're doing this new we're doing this. We've launched this
16:14
Speaker 2: new thing on my podcast. Why is this happening? Called
16:16
Speaker 2: the stakes. And we've got the first one coming out
16:18
Speaker 2: next week, which is about immigration. And one of the
16:19
Speaker 2: things I'm obsessed with, which gets exactly this point, is
16:22
Speaker 2: it's even more concrete than that. And here's why. For
16:25
Speaker 2: the first time since 1892, two guys running against each
16:28
Speaker 2: other that both served as president. So usually one of
16:31
Speaker 2: the people has some speculative vision of what they'll do.
16:35
Speaker 1: Yeah.
16:35
Speaker 2: While one of the people has a record. In this case,
16:38
Speaker 2: they both have records. You can literally just be like,
16:40
Speaker 2: what did HUD look like under President Donald Trump? What
16:44
Speaker 2: did he do on housing? What did he do on–
16:48
Speaker 2: on immigration. What did he do? Like there are concrete records.
16:51
Speaker 2: And one of the things we're trying to do on
16:52
Speaker 2: this new series, the stakes is like, we just did
16:54
Speaker 2: this on immigration. It'd be like, it's not rhetorical. It's
16:58
Speaker 2: not speculative. They actually both wielded the power of the state.
17:01
Speaker 2: They both have records and you can actually talk about that.
17:04
Speaker 2: And that to me is an enormous missing part of
17:06
Speaker 2: this information environment, which is like Donald Trump was not
17:10
Speaker 2: a friend of building more housing. Joe Biden actually has
17:13
Speaker 2: been pro building more housing. Like They do actually have
17:16
Speaker 2: records here and they're actually quite different.
17:18
Speaker 1: Yeah. It, it feels like we're at the, the like
17:21
Speaker 1: kind of logical conclusion of a process that started a
17:24
Speaker 1: long time ago. You know, cable news, I mean, you know,
17:27
Speaker 1: Jon Stewart goes on, on cable news and says, stop
17:31
Speaker 1: hurting America. Right. And it had this feeling of, Hey, there's,
17:35
Speaker 1: there's too much coverage of the horse race and not
17:37
Speaker 1: enough on the substance. There's too much, like there's, there's
17:41
Speaker 1: too much of, there's too much of the, of the,
17:43
Speaker 1: of the icing. There's not enough, There's not enough cake. Right.
17:47
Speaker 1: And we're still just talking about cake. That process continued.
17:50
Speaker 1: And now there's basically, you know, there was a story
17:54
Speaker 1: about Joe Biden waking up every morning and watching Morning Joe.
17:57
Speaker 1: And I was like, God, that's quaint. That makes me
17:59
Speaker 1: feel a little bit better. Wouldn't it be nice if
18:01
Speaker 1: Morning Joe was as important as it used to be?
18:04
Speaker 1: The national gathering place that was once Morning Joe, where
18:07
Speaker 1: we knew everybody was watching, right? And, you know, this
18:11
Speaker 1: podcast series, it is something people need to know. But
18:15
Speaker 1: if you're gonna plausibly say, all right, this is gonna
18:18
Speaker 1: be a value. No, no, I'm not saying, look, obviously,
18:22
Speaker 1: I believe personally that the future hinges on how many
18:25
Speaker 1: people listen to the stakes on the why is this
18:27
Speaker 1: happening feed. That has been my proposition from the beginning.
18:30
Speaker 1: But no, but we feel this here, right? Like the
18:32
Speaker 1: person listening, if you're listening to this podcast, I hope
18:35
Speaker 1: it's your first episode. Probably not. You're trying, you've reacted.
18:38
Speaker 2: You're probably locked in. You're locked in.
18:40
Speaker 1: You're locked the fuck in. But no, but you responded
18:43
Speaker 1: to chaotic, confusing, overwhelming times by trying to dig in
18:47
Speaker 1: a little bit and try to make sense of it,
18:49
Speaker 1: understand it. Some people got incredibly connected. You know, there
18:53
Speaker 1: are a lot of people out there whose phone screens
18:54
Speaker 1: haven't really locked in since like November of 2016, right?
18:57
Speaker 1: They're just in it. And then there's millions upon millions
19:00
Speaker 1: upon millions of people that just tuned it all out, right?
19:04
Speaker 1: And so the hope for your show that's giving people,
19:06
Speaker 1: that's arming people with that information is presumably most of
19:09
Speaker 1: those people have pretty well-formed, solid views of the world,
19:13
Speaker 1: but that they will be armed with data and information
19:15
Speaker 1: to go out there and talk to other people.
19:17
Speaker 2: Or even to be like your friend and be like,
19:18
Speaker 2: because there are people, you know, it's such a spectrum.
19:21
Speaker 2: And there are people who don't really know what, You know,
19:25
Speaker 2: don't don't know that. Here's a great example. I don't
19:28
Speaker 2: know that actually Trump's administration was pretty hostile to like
19:32
Speaker 2: a new building. And the conservative movement has been particularly,
19:35
Speaker 2: you know, they took out Kathy Hochul's attempts in New
19:37
Speaker 2: York State to do this. Like Tucker Carlson demagogued about it.
19:40
Speaker 2: Joe Biden's actually been very like forward leaning on this,
19:43
Speaker 2: particularly in the last month. He's been so just the
19:46
Speaker 2: basics of that. are like, actually, I know this is
19:48
Speaker 2: important to you. Here's where they stand. You know, the
19:51
Speaker 2: iconic version of this is the interview with the voter
19:54
Speaker 2: in one of the Nate Cohn, you know, the supplements
19:56
Speaker 2: to a Nate Cohn poll in New York Times who
19:58
Speaker 2: blamed Biden for the overturn of Roe because it happened
20:01
Speaker 2: while he was president. And it's like, right, if you're
20:04
Speaker 2: not that checked in, like that's not a crazy idea.
20:07
Speaker 2: I mean, obviously to someone that understands why that happens.
20:11
Speaker 2: And in a more granular sense, it's like, it is
20:13
Speaker 2: a little crazy, but again, if you're not that checked in,
20:16
Speaker 2: then you're, you know, Oh, it happened under him. He
20:18
Speaker 2: must've done it. So even at the basic level of
20:21
Speaker 2: like being able to share with people, you know, because
20:23
Speaker 2: it's true, like everyone is an emissary for this information,
20:26
Speaker 2: particularly in a world in which the information environment is
20:28
Speaker 2: viral and social, right? Like people are learning stuff from stuff.
20:33
Speaker 2: Other people sent them as their primary means of learning stuff.
20:37
Speaker 2: So again, you're the person that sends people stuff for
20:41
Speaker 2: someone in your life, right? Like, you know, there's something optimistic,
20:45
Speaker 2: I guess, at that, or at least, like, it feels
20:47
Speaker 2: like you could do something useful with that.
21:02
Speaker 1: You've talked about this. I believe you talked about this
21:04
Speaker 1: with Ben Smith about the media, that when you were
21:07
Speaker 1: a local reporter, you would be the only journalist in
21:11
Speaker 1: the room covering an alderman, stuffing money in his pockets,
21:14
Speaker 1: I assume. But you were the conduit, right? If you
21:17
Speaker 1: weren't there, what happened in that room wouldn't be public.
21:20
Speaker 1: But because you were there, you reported it, it might
21:23
Speaker 1: get out to people. All those local institutions are dead
21:26
Speaker 1: or dying. But at the same time, every person in
21:29
Speaker 1: that room is a reporter now. And I feel like
21:33
Speaker 1: so much of what we're talking about is the ways
21:35
Speaker 1: in which that has made everything worse. But very little
21:38
Speaker 1: of that conversation is about the ways in which it
21:40
Speaker 1: can potentially, right? Like if people truly take their responsibility
21:45
Speaker 1: as sort of like emissaries to each other more seriously
21:48
Speaker 1: in a world without news, maybe that is a place where,
21:51
Speaker 1: I don't know, there's some way in which we can
21:53
Speaker 1: kind of inform each other.
21:55
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's the hope, but I agree. I
21:57
Speaker 2: think one of the things that we've seen to circle
21:59
Speaker 2: back to where we started of like, why is there
22:02
Speaker 2: this disconnect, particularly on crime and violence? Like, why is
22:04
Speaker 2: this disconnect here? And we've had these disconnects before. We
22:07
Speaker 2: should say that, you know, people thinking that crime has
22:09
Speaker 2: gone up in the last year when it's gone down
22:11
Speaker 2: has happened before. That this sort of, yes, the kind
22:17
Speaker 2: of social viral sense of information that creates this kind
22:21
Speaker 2: of like buzzy mood in people about what's going on
22:26
Speaker 2: that can get increasingly detached from some more rigorous method
22:31
Speaker 2: of delivering the information about what's going on, I think
22:34
Speaker 2: is a, is a huge part of it. And again,
22:36
Speaker 2: we could all play a role in, in correcting that.
22:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do also, it's also that like, does that
22:44
Speaker 1: lend itself, you know, are we playing in on the,
22:50
Speaker 1: is that the home turf of the right in some sense?
22:54
Speaker 2: Well, this is why I think what you saw with
22:57
Speaker 2: Trump yesterday in Michigan and the kind of lurid tales
23:01
Speaker 2: of horrific crimes is so– they understand what they're doing.
23:08
Speaker 2: It's a little like the– I think it was from
23:10
Speaker 2: the Onion book with the 1980s campaign of like Jimmy Carter,
23:13
Speaker 2: like let's talk better mileage. was his slogan in Ronald
23:16
Speaker 2: Reagan's was kill the bastards. And like, there's a little
23:21
Speaker 2: bit of, you know, to go back to Biden today
23:23
Speaker 2: in the White House, like we're bringing the cost of
23:25
Speaker 2: inhalers down $ 11 an inhaler. And it's like, blood will
23:29
Speaker 2: run through the streets unless you elect me. There's a
23:33
Speaker 2: little bit of that. And there's a reason to talk
23:35
Speaker 2: to your point about turf. I think it's actually been
23:39
Speaker 2: a confounding thing for Democrats to figure out how to
23:43
Speaker 2: have this conversation. precisely because it's been framed in such
23:48
Speaker 2: a gross and demagogic way that Democrats have really struggled
23:52
Speaker 2: to take it head on. I think people have tried
23:54
Speaker 2: in different ways. I think Chris Murphy's done some interesting
23:56
Speaker 2: stuff on this. But again, I don't think anyone's quite
24:00
Speaker 2: come out. No one's making the affirmative case on the
24:03
Speaker 2: other side of why immigration is actually good and why
24:06
Speaker 2: immigrants are good and why it's good for the country
24:08
Speaker 2: and why it makes us better and all of the
24:10
Speaker 2: things it brings. And so it's– I think that conversation
24:13
Speaker 2: has gotten completely asymmetrical.
24:15
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, and yet, like in that same AP poll
24:18
Speaker 1: that shows, you know, two thirds of voters are deeply
24:20
Speaker 1: concerned about the border crisis. There is still a majority
24:22
Speaker 1: of Americans who on the whole see immigration as a
24:26
Speaker 1: net good, not Republican net benefit. They have concerns, but
24:29
Speaker 1: they believe they take pride in an identity of America
24:32
Speaker 1: as a nation of immigrants. Democrats used to have a
24:35
Speaker 1: way of talking about this, right? Barack Obama, I worked
24:38
Speaker 1: on those speeches, would say America is a nation of
24:40
Speaker 1: laws and a nation of immigrants. We have to enforce
24:43
Speaker 1: our laws so that we can be a welcoming place.
24:45
Speaker 1: There is a language that has been built up over
24:47
Speaker 1: time that is the most popular position on this issue.
24:51
Speaker 1: That was the consensus bipartisan from Marco Rubio to George W.
24:56
Speaker 1: Bush to Lindsey Graham and John McCain to Barack Obama
24:59
Speaker 1: and all kinds of Democrats. There was that consensus and
25:02
Speaker 1: that does still exist, but Right now, because of I
25:06
Speaker 1: think the media coverage of the border, there's just no
25:09
Speaker 1: space for that other half of the conversation. Yeah.
25:11
Speaker 2: I mean can I do a quick riff on this
25:13
Speaker 2: because I've been thinking about this a lot. So we've
25:16
Speaker 2: seen very powerful anti-immigration politics across the developed world, across
25:21
Speaker 2: all of OECD and in other places. I mean there's
25:23
Speaker 2: been migrant backlash in Colombia directed at Venezuela. So keep
25:27
Speaker 2: in mind. whenever we complain about how many people are
25:29
Speaker 2: showing up here, like there's like 2 million Venezuelans who
25:32
Speaker 2: showed up in Colombia per capita, which is just would
25:35
Speaker 2: be an insane, catastrophic crisis with our politics here. Usually
25:39
Speaker 2: the countries that are dealing with these kinds of situations
25:42
Speaker 2: are neighboring countries to places that are in intense and
25:45
Speaker 2: acute distress. Why are immigration politics so universal and why
25:51
Speaker 2: they've been so successful? And here I think is a
25:52
Speaker 2: key thing. If you do them right, What's great about
25:56
Speaker 2: them as politics is that you can make the other,
26:00
Speaker 2: the them, a group that doesn't vote. So other kinds
26:06
Speaker 2: of ways that you might think of dividing a nation
26:08
Speaker 2: to play culture war politics. Gay folks. Well, you know,
26:11
Speaker 2: gay folks. Well, gay folks vote and gay folks have
26:14
Speaker 2: family members who vote and they have parents and they
26:15
Speaker 2: have kids and they have. aunts and uncles. And it
26:17
Speaker 2: turned out after a long enough time, you couldn't do
26:19
Speaker 2: that anymore because enough of those people are created together
26:22
Speaker 2: to say, we don't like this. And you ended up
26:24
Speaker 2: with a smaller half of the country. If you direct
26:28
Speaker 2: your ire at people who by definition are not citizens
26:31
Speaker 2: and you do it smartly enough, there's a vision of
26:34
Speaker 2: binding together a pretty broad coalition of people, even across
26:38
Speaker 2: lines of race.
26:40
Speaker 1: Yeah.
26:41
Speaker 2: To say those people there are the problem. And if
26:45
Speaker 2: we stop them and we direct our ire at them
26:47
Speaker 2: and we, we, we, we, we unleash all hell and
26:50
Speaker 2: fury on them, everything will get better for us. And
26:53
Speaker 2: it has the advantage of the them not being able
26:56
Speaker 2: to vote.
26:57
Speaker 1: Yeah. And, and I do think Democrats had a bunch
27:01
Speaker 1: of assumptions. Actually, some Republicans did to the Republican autopsy that,
27:05
Speaker 1: that led Marco Rubio to embrace immigration reform, made this
27:08
Speaker 1: assumption too, which is that, uh, uh, embracing comprehensive immigration
27:12
Speaker 1: reform is a way to appeal to Hispanic voters. But
27:15
Speaker 1: then you see in this poll, in all these polls,
27:17
Speaker 1: this crosses the racial lines, that there's a broad concern
27:23
Speaker 1: about the border. I was actually thinking about something similar.
27:30
Speaker 1: You know, you talked to Judith Butler about trans issues
27:35
Speaker 1: and gender. I'm going to tie it back. It'll make
27:37
Speaker 1: sense in a second. But about And you posed a
27:40
Speaker 1: rhetorical question, which you actually didn't end up answering in
27:43
Speaker 1: that conversation, which is, why are Republicans so focused on this, right?
27:49
Speaker 1: There's inflation, there's crime to demagogue, there's the economy, there's healthcare,
27:55
Speaker 1: there's all these other issues, and yet a swimmer saying
27:58
Speaker 1: they didn't get a medal in some event they were
28:00
Speaker 1: supposed to get, applause people on their feet. And it
28:04
Speaker 1: does seem like Republicans are have always found that there
28:10
Speaker 1: was money to be made in moralizing or demonizing some
28:13
Speaker 1: group of people. But they don't do the Murphy Brown
28:16
Speaker 1: thing anymore. There are too many rich gay Republicans and
28:20
Speaker 1: too many gay people in this country now. And it
28:24
Speaker 1: feels as though they've got an itch that they need
28:25
Speaker 1: to scratch, right? They need a small enough group of
28:27
Speaker 1: people to demonize and demonize in a way that appeals
28:31
Speaker 1: to people's sense of cultural change. And that leads them
28:35
Speaker 1: to this... very small group of people who they only recently.
28:42
Speaker 2: With very little power.
28:43
Speaker 1: Very little power. Let's be clear. Very little power. But
28:46
Speaker 1: I was wondering if you have any other kind of
28:49
Speaker 1: what you sort of, why you think this issue of
28:51
Speaker 1: trans rights has become such an important one on the right?
28:56
Speaker 2: So I think it's interesting also to compare these two, right?
28:59
Speaker 2: Because I think you're right. The mechanics are similar. They
29:02
Speaker 2: understand that they're sort of Best ground is a kind
29:05
Speaker 2: of us versus them, where them are the vanguard of
29:09
Speaker 2: some form of threatening cultural change, whether that's immigrants showing
29:13
Speaker 2: up at the border or trans people showing up at
29:16
Speaker 2: your kid's swim meet. And it's also the case that
29:20
Speaker 2: in both those cases, there's a mathematical logic to the
29:27
Speaker 2: folks at the border who can't vote. or to a tiny,
29:31
Speaker 2: vanishingly small fraction of American life, which are trans folks.
29:36
Speaker 2: What's interesting to me is I don't think it's all
29:39
Speaker 2: that calculating. So I think part of the trans stuff
29:42
Speaker 2: is it freaks a lot of people out who have
29:45
Speaker 2: conservative values on gender hierarchy because it is a threat
29:48
Speaker 2: to conservative gender hierarchy, which was part of the point
29:51
Speaker 2: I was making with Butler. I think they and I
29:55
Speaker 2: have slightly different views on this. I think they think
29:58
Speaker 2: that it doesn't need to be a threat in some ways.
30:00
Speaker 2: And I think it, it sort of inescapably is, and
30:03
Speaker 2: they're not misunderstanding the degree to which it does threaten
30:07
Speaker 2: sort of gender hierarchies. But what's also interesting to compare
30:11
Speaker 2: is how successfully immigration stuff has been and how much
30:14
Speaker 2: a flop the trans stuff has been and why that is.
30:18
Speaker 2: And I think this has to get, this gets back
30:20
Speaker 2: to an interesting question about what you talked about. There's
30:23
Speaker 2: an accrued language for Democrats, how much brand capital is,
30:27
Speaker 2: and reputational trust on issues built up over time matters.
30:31
Speaker 2: And I think basically you've got a situation in which
30:34
Speaker 2: the public broadly is more inclined to trust Democrats on
30:38
Speaker 2: issues of LGBTQ stuff and more inclined to trust Republicans
30:44
Speaker 2: on immigration stuff. And I think that brand equity has
30:47
Speaker 2: meant in some degree, you've seen very different outcomes for
30:51
Speaker 2: in some ways, parallel attempts to kind of pick some
30:55
Speaker 2: small group and go after them. One of which has
30:59
Speaker 2: not actually been that politically successful to the point where
31:02
Speaker 2: it's been a little bit abandoned mid-game.
31:05
Speaker 1: Yeah.
31:06
Speaker 2: They're not hammering it the way they were in 2022.
31:10
Speaker 2: DeSantis' attempts to– remember DeSantis' whole thing was he was
31:13
Speaker 2: going to get to the right of Donald Trump on
31:16
Speaker 2: trans issues. Whereas the immigration stuff has been obviously incredibly
31:22
Speaker 2: fruitful for them politically and they are 1,000 percent committed
31:25
Speaker 2: to it, almost to the exclusion of other things at
31:26
Speaker 2: this point.
31:27
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's interesting. I agree with you. I agree
31:31
Speaker 1: with both points seem to be somewhat intention, which is
31:34
Speaker 1: just to go wide with it. Like, yes, like trans
31:37
Speaker 1: liberation is actually also going to liberate Ben Shapiro from
31:42
Speaker 1: the burdens masculinity are placing on him, right? Like, I
31:44
Speaker 1: believe that. Yeah, I agree.
31:46
Speaker 2: I believe that too, yeah.
31:47
Speaker 1: That freeing us of assumptions around gender, gender as a performance,
31:51
Speaker 1: this is actually, it's actually, it hits people deeply because
31:56
Speaker 1: it reaches something That is a weight every single person
32:02
Speaker 1: is carrying. So they are right when they raise these
32:05
Speaker 1: concerns that being open to trans acceptance is a path
32:08
Speaker 1: to a broader demolition of assumptions on gender. But at
32:12
Speaker 1: the same time, it also does seem to be a flop.
32:15
Speaker 1: And what my concern there is, is are we missing something?
32:18
Speaker 1: Which is, has issues, especially around sports and trans people,
32:23
Speaker 1: been a means of.
32:27
Speaker 1: Bringing in younger men who feel as though the left
32:31
Speaker 1: has attacked their understanding of gender and their understanding of
32:34
Speaker 1: their own role and their good qualities without offering them
32:38
Speaker 1: a replacement, right? Like they, they think they're supposed to
32:41
Speaker 1: be strong and tough and they're not very comfortable expressing themselves.
32:45
Speaker 1: And they do want to hit on women at bars,
32:47
Speaker 1: whatever the, whatever the thing is on the right, right? Like,
32:50
Speaker 1: I don't know what straight people do. I've never, honestly,
32:52
Speaker 1: you're the first one I've talked to in fucking weeks, but, but,
32:55
Speaker 1: but Like a straight up straight up. Other than John
32:58
Speaker 1: and Tommy, obviously.
32:59
Speaker 2: Hit on women in bars.
33:00
Speaker 1: Right. No, for sure. But this is almost like a
33:02
Speaker 1: shibboleth for the Joe Rogan world to get disaffected or
33:07
Speaker 1: less political men in the door.
33:09
Speaker 2: I think it's probably been successful in that way. And
33:12
Speaker 2: I do think there's some evidence in the data of
33:14
Speaker 2: this bifurcation and the ideological identification of young people along
33:19
Speaker 2: gender lines that women are becoming more liberal and it
33:23
Speaker 2: looks mostly like women are becoming more liberal while men
33:26
Speaker 2: are not, as opposed to getting more reactionary. But again,
33:29
Speaker 2: there's an actual interesting debate about what that data say.
33:33
Speaker 2: I do think part of it is that, and I
33:36
Speaker 2: do think there's a real question there. This gets back
33:39
Speaker 2: to the information environment situation where, I mean, I just
33:43
Speaker 2: feel like there's the algorithmic logic of, I see it myself.
33:48
Speaker 2: I'm 45 years old and I like to like lift
33:50
Speaker 2: weights every day.
33:50
Speaker 1: And And by the way, you're a beast.
33:56
Speaker 2: Thank you, John. The algorithm is like, oh, you like
34:02
Speaker 2: to lift weights? Oh, I see you bought this weird
34:05
Speaker 2: grip thing for your home gym. Let me feed you
34:08
Speaker 2: a ton of right-wing content. And I kind of have
34:11
Speaker 2: to keep going and be like, nope, nope, nope. Not interested.
34:13
Speaker 2: And it just keeps wanting to, because it's like, well, you're, we,
34:16
Speaker 2: we know who you are. You're a straight white man
34:19
Speaker 2: who likes to work out. We think we know you
34:21
Speaker 2: want just nothing but like Rogan clips and Shane Gillis monologues. And,
34:26
Speaker 2: and I have to be like, I don't, well, Shane
34:28
Speaker 2: Gillis is fine. Some of the stuff's funny, but I
34:30
Speaker 2: have to just keep telling it not to. And I
34:31
Speaker 2: do think there is a, there's something insidious in the
34:34
Speaker 2: information environment that connects to this notion of, you know, trans, uh,
34:40
Speaker 2: like attacks on trans rights. You see this with people's
34:43
Speaker 2: trajectories where their entrance into losing their mind politically is
34:48
Speaker 2: on trans stuff. Like they start there and they end
34:51
Speaker 2: up totally bonkers. So there's definitely like a bit of
34:56
Speaker 2: a gateway drug situation happening there. But that I think
34:59
Speaker 2: is different than it being a politically useful mass political tool.
35:04
Speaker 2: And I have, again, when this started, when I saw
35:07
Speaker 2: this ramping up in 21, particularly into the midterms in 2022,
35:10
Speaker 2: I was worried it would be very politically effective. Like,
35:14
Speaker 2: I didn't know. I just think that the numbers have
35:17
Speaker 2: come back and shown it largely to be a dud.
35:21
Speaker 2: And I think partly it has to do with sailing.
35:23
Speaker 2: I don't know what it is. I don't have a
35:24
Speaker 2: great answer, but I do think that there is that
35:26
Speaker 2: it hasn't worked. And I'm grateful for that. Now, I
35:28
Speaker 2: should also say it hasn't worked politically, but they are
35:31
Speaker 2: they're serious. They're not just doing this for political expediency,
35:34
Speaker 2: which is an important point. Republican legislatures are trying to
35:37
Speaker 2: ban trans care. and essentially ban trans people because they
35:40
Speaker 2: hate them and don't want them to exist. And they
35:42
Speaker 2: will do that even if it's not politically expedient because
35:45
Speaker 2: they are ideologically committed to the punishing of trans folks
35:52
Speaker 2: as a matter of principle, not just political expedience. That's
35:55
Speaker 2: scary and terrible. I can't say that there's lots of
35:57
Speaker 2: victories happening at the policy level because there's horrible things
36:00
Speaker 2: happening in a bunch of states. But it has not
36:02
Speaker 2: proven to be the electoral winner that they were betting on.
36:05
Speaker 1: Right. It's a similar we've seen this cycle play out before, too,
36:07
Speaker 1: which is just as Americans were gaining more and more
36:09
Speaker 1: acceptance of gay people. There was this last gasp of
36:13
Speaker 1: passing of amendments into constitutions across the country that took
36:17
Speaker 1: years to undo because politicians who had thought it was
36:21
Speaker 1: popular and was a deeply held conviction kept going. as
36:25
Speaker 1: they were losing ground on the issue.
36:27
Speaker 2: Well, and you see this right now on abortion. And
36:31
Speaker 2: I think you guys talk about this, and I think
36:33
Speaker 2: it's an important thing. I always tell people, you see
36:35
Speaker 2: this with Biden in Israel right now. From the outside,
36:39
Speaker 2: I think people actually undercredit how much sincere belief and
36:43
Speaker 2: ideological formation informs the actions of politicians. I think people
36:48
Speaker 2: really think that interest group lobbying, political expedience, and all
36:51
Speaker 2: that stuff matters a huge amount. And it particularly matters
36:54
Speaker 2: on like, low salient stuff. People don't have really deeply
36:58
Speaker 2: held ideological beliefs on auto dealership regulation. And when and
37:02
Speaker 2: that's the kind of thing that lobbying just matters essentially
37:04
Speaker 2: 100 percent. But on things like abortion or things like
37:07
Speaker 2: Israel or things like trans folks rights, there are people
37:12
Speaker 2: with really sincere beliefs who really believe sometimes horrible, sincere
37:16
Speaker 2: beliefs who are really going to use their power to
37:19
Speaker 2: pursue those beliefs and way past the flashing warning electoral signals.
37:25
Speaker 2: And this is exactly what's happening precisely on abortion right now.
37:28
Speaker 1: Yeah. You see that on guns, you'll see people point
37:33
Speaker 1: to the money candidates have received from the gun lobby.
37:37
Speaker 1: And it's an important fact, but it sort of doesn't,
37:42
Speaker 1: the cause and effect isn't exactly, isn't right there. Before
37:46
Speaker 1: we go to break, In case you missed it, Tommy
37:48
Speaker 1: teamed up with Roger Bennett of Men in Blazers once
37:51
Speaker 1: again for another season of World Corrupt. This time, they
37:54
Speaker 1: unpacked how Saudi Arabia, an oil-rich nation with a troubled
37:57
Speaker 1: human rights record, has secured the role of World Cup
37:59
Speaker 1: host in 2034. The full series is out now, so
38:03
Speaker 1: head on over to the Pod Save the World feed
38:06
Speaker 1: to binge it right now. One other note. Figure skaters
38:10
Speaker 1: are doing backflips. TikTok is horny for George W.
38:13
Speaker 3: Bush.
38:13
Speaker 1: Women in New York City are getting punched in the face.
38:16
Speaker 1: Is it all connected? No. And thank God. On the
38:21
Speaker 1: latest episode of Terminally Online, I sat down with Keep
38:23
Speaker 1: It host Ira Madison III, producers Caroline Rustin and Kendra
38:26
Speaker 1: James for a wide-ranging discussion of the internet's freshest nightmares.
38:30
Speaker 1: Tune in to this exclusive series by going to crooked.com
38:34
Speaker 1: slash friends right now.
38:45
Speaker 4: Each week on Why Is This Happening, MSNBC's Chris Hayes
38:48
Speaker 4: is joined by uniquely qualified guests to dig deeper into
38:52
Speaker 4: today's most pressing issues. Fans are loving what they're hearing.
38:55
Speaker 1: There's no other podcast that will cover fitness one week,
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Speaker 1: communism the next, and climate change the third.
39:00
Speaker 4: Chris's interviews draw something out that otherwise just wouldn't be
39:05
Speaker 4: available to me.
39:07
Speaker 1: Chris Hayes has a unique ability to offer insight that
39:10
Speaker 1: is helpful in understanding how the parts fit into the whole.
39:15
Speaker 2: It is a really great distillation of information and insight,
39:19
Speaker 2: but it's also really fun.
39:21
Speaker 4: Why is this happening? The Chris Hayes Podcast. New episodes
39:24
Speaker 4: every Tuesday. Subscribe for free wherever you get your podcasts.
39:33
Speaker 1: Just to go back to where we were at the
39:34
Speaker 1: beginning on pessimism versus optimism, I do think one thing
39:40
Speaker 1: that Trump did was, certainly for a lot of heavily
39:46
Speaker 1: engaged progressives, it shook them– it taught them that they
39:51
Speaker 1: didn't understand or had been perhaps a little too, had
39:57
Speaker 1: a lot of assumptions around what people they didn't know
40:00
Speaker 1: were like. And they thought, oh, wow, there's a lot
40:03
Speaker 1: of people out there that will tolerate immorality, that will
40:07
Speaker 1: tolerate vulgarity, that will tolerate cruelty in a way that
40:10
Speaker 1: they didn't totally understand. And the Joe Biden theory from
40:14
Speaker 1: the very beginning of his campaign has been, this country
40:19
Speaker 1: is decent, and decency will win. And I think I
40:22
Speaker 1: had the same fear, right, around, say, trans issues that
40:25
Speaker 1: you did. They'll go, this is gonna be an effective
40:27
Speaker 1: way to demagogue for them. Hasn't been as effective. Oh, good. Like,
40:32
Speaker 1: that is an interesting and important result about people's humanity, right,
40:36
Speaker 1: and the things that they think are silly or go
40:37
Speaker 1: too far or don't make sense to them. You see
40:39
Speaker 1: the same thing on immigration, right? We've had nonstop anti-immigration
40:45
Speaker 1: fervor on television for years, and yet still in the
40:47
Speaker 1: polls- you find that people don't, that has not totally
40:51
Speaker 1: washed away a deeper sense of national identity. You know,
40:57
Speaker 1: Trump is now doing, he called, he criticized Transgender Day
41:01
Speaker 1: of Visibility.
41:03
Speaker 2: Yes.
41:03
Speaker 1: And he declared November 5th Christian Visibility Day once he wins.
41:08
Speaker 1: I know that was ironic in part because Easter is
41:11
Speaker 1: literally Christ Visibility Day. But I think it's a good
41:17
Speaker 1: place to sort of end, which is you had a
41:19
Speaker 1: conversation with a progressive evangelical about the kind of devil's
41:27
Speaker 1: bargain that conservative evangelicals made with Trump and whether or
41:33
Speaker 1: not that bargain held in 2020 and whether or not
41:35
Speaker 1: it will hold in 2024. And I'm wondering what you
41:40
Speaker 1: think of that argument that actually there is a disaffected
41:45
Speaker 1: group of people who are still tied to traditional Christian
41:49
Speaker 1: virtues and that they may make a difference.
41:51
Speaker 2: Yeah, a guy named Doug Padgett, who himself is an
41:53
Speaker 2: evangelical pastor and who's been doing this really cool kind
41:56
Speaker 2: of bridge building work where he tries to talk to
41:58
Speaker 2: evangelicals about their politics. And he's a liberal, but devout
42:03
Speaker 2: and pious and doesn't see a contradiction between those two.
42:06
Speaker 2: And one thing I found really useful to talking to
42:10
Speaker 2: him about you know, it's such a cliche to be like,
42:13
Speaker 2: X group isn't a monolith. But it really is true.
42:16
Speaker 2: And it's also useful to just break these sort of,
42:20
Speaker 2: you know, evangelical or Christian Republicans. There's huge groups, there's
42:24
Speaker 2: Southern Baptists, there's Pentecostal tradition, there's called sort of non-denominational.
42:28
Speaker 2: These are sort of three big theological categories. And then
42:32
Speaker 2: within that, there's, you know, there's the folks who become
42:35
Speaker 2: almost sort of part of this cult, this sort of
42:38
Speaker 2: Trump as almost near Christ-like figure, martyred, persecuted, you know.
42:44
Speaker 2: And then there's the sort of coldly transactional folks who
42:48
Speaker 2: still don't love the guy or think that he's vulgar
42:53
Speaker 2: or think that he's not. They don't like the cruelty,
42:57
Speaker 2: but transactionally view him as vouchsafing their interests. And then
43:02
Speaker 2: there are people who are even uncomfortable with the agenda,
43:08
Speaker 2: but who culturally feel that they can't– for both cultural
43:14
Speaker 2: and kind of religious reasons, they can't deviate from voting
43:16
Speaker 2: for him. And one of the points that he made
43:19
Speaker 2: was in the exit polls that he got a higher
43:21
Speaker 2: percentage of self-avowed evangelical voters in 16 than he did
43:26
Speaker 2: in 20. And it was eight points or something. But
43:29
Speaker 2: eight points is not nothing. There's a lot of evangelical
43:31
Speaker 2: Christians in this country. And every point matters. And he's
43:36
Speaker 2: out there sort of doing this work, trying to talk
43:38
Speaker 2: to people. Not in an explicitly partisan sense, but he
43:42
Speaker 2: was down at the border in Eagle Pass and talking
43:44
Speaker 2: to people down there. And one of the things I
43:46
Speaker 2: like that he said is he's talking about conversations in
43:48
Speaker 2: which he would quote something Trump would say and they
43:50
Speaker 2: would deny Trump said it. And he found that reassuring
43:54
Speaker 2: insofar as opposed to defending him saying something vile about immigrants.
43:58
Speaker 2: They just didn't believe it. And the reason they didn't
44:00
Speaker 2: believe it is the way they were resolving the cognitive
44:02
Speaker 2: dissonance they had between their own principles and beliefs and
44:05
Speaker 2: their support of Trump was that there must be a
44:07
Speaker 2: lie somewhere. or must be out of context, which is
44:11
Speaker 2: better than, oh, yes, I also have this vile, odious
44:14
Speaker 2: view that dehumanizes other people. And the last thing that
44:19
Speaker 2: I found really interesting about that conversation, which loops back
44:22
Speaker 2: the immigration thing is, you know, the best versions of
44:27
Speaker 2: evangelical Christian sort of mission and charity tends to be
44:32
Speaker 2: very international and focused, tends to be very in its
44:37
Speaker 2: own weird way, cosmopolitan, that these people, whether you're in
44:40
Speaker 2: Uganda or you're in Guatemala or in Indonesia, if you're
44:44
Speaker 2: dealing with other folks, particularly other Christians, there's a fellowship
44:48
Speaker 2: that crosses these lines of national borders and race and
44:52
Speaker 2: ethnicity and background. And there's something beautiful in that when
44:57
Speaker 2: it can be used to get Christian groups, as they
45:00
Speaker 2: have done for literally decades and centuries in the country,
45:03
Speaker 2: take in refugees and minister to immigrants. And there are
45:06
Speaker 2: still so many groups that are doing that and finding
45:09
Speaker 2: ways to revive that spirit that is there in a
45:12
Speaker 2: lot of people that even have experienced in themselves, have
45:14
Speaker 2: gone and done work in orphanages in Guatemala and then
45:17
Speaker 2: come home and listen to Donald Trump say. These people
45:21
Speaker 2: are animals, you know, I mean, they say literally the
45:23
Speaker 2: same people that there is some better angel to appeal
45:26
Speaker 2: to there on this issue.
45:29
Speaker 1: Yeah. And there's plenty of criticism of that kind of
45:32
Speaker 1: missionary work. Oh, of course. And I know you've talked
45:36
Speaker 1: about it, but that what it is also rooted in
45:40
Speaker 1: is obviously the opportunity to help, but that the way
45:44
Speaker 1: in which you as an individual are changed when you're
45:47
Speaker 1: exposed to the real lived suffering and experiences of other people,
45:52
Speaker 1: which is part of that tradition.
45:54
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And I think that that Again, that cosmopolitanism,
45:58
Speaker 2: for lack of a better word, or universalism, it should
46:03
Speaker 2: be in deep tension with nationalism. I mean it really
46:06
Speaker 2: should be. God created all of us. Jesus has saved
46:11
Speaker 2: all of us Christians across the lines of border. So
46:13
Speaker 2: why isn't that person your Christian brother showing up bedraggled
46:16
Speaker 2: at the border? That commitment should make the nationalism harder.
46:22
Speaker 2: In fact, it has been fused in service of the nationalism.
46:25
Speaker 2: But it doesn't mean that that– again, we're talking about
46:28
Speaker 2: the kind of capital that builds up. Those institutional traditions,
46:33
Speaker 2: the muscle memory, the theological traditions that are there, they're
46:36
Speaker 2: still there. They're still there and there's something to call
46:40
Speaker 2: on there. I think Barack Obama was smart in that
46:43
Speaker 2: rhetoric because he, I think, really understood that. There's something
46:46
Speaker 2: to call on there when we talk about immigration.
46:49
Speaker 1: Yeah, and also just that as evangelical becomes a form
46:54
Speaker 1: of political identity.
46:56
Speaker 2: Almost primarily.
46:57
Speaker 1: Almost primarily. It does leave a lot of people who
47:00
Speaker 1: might not feel as comfortable with that name as they
47:02
Speaker 1: once had available for this type of persuasion.
47:06
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree with that as well.
47:07
Speaker 1: Before we let you go, you are part of the
47:09
Speaker 1: Crooked family. You're married to strict scrutinies. I am.
47:11
Speaker 2: I'm married into it. I'm a Crooked-in-law, I think it's called.
47:14
Speaker 1: Not since Thomas Jefferson dined alone, etc. What is the...
47:20
Speaker 1: Here was my question for you. What is the dumbest
47:23
Speaker 1: conversation you and Kate have had lately? Just the truly
47:26
Speaker 1: dumbest fucking bullshit, stupid conversation you two have had. It's
47:32
Speaker 1: not all amicus briefs and gender studies. It can't be.
47:37
Speaker 2: That's a great question. It is a lot of amicus
47:39
Speaker 2: briefs and gender studies. I have to be totally honest.
47:41
Speaker 2: I mean, the fact of the matter is most of
47:43
Speaker 2: the dumb conversations are about the dumb logistics of a
47:46
Speaker 2: household that has three children and... like four jobs. So
47:52
Speaker 2: so it's it's it's it's there is a lot of
47:54
Speaker 2: there's a lot of talking about the kids. There's a
47:56
Speaker 2: lot of amicus briefs and gender studies and talking about
47:58
Speaker 2: the news and politics and the court and law. And
48:00
Speaker 2: then there's a lot of like, oh, my God, did
48:02
Speaker 2: David's baseball practice get moved from that location to this location?
48:06
Speaker 2: And how are we going to get him there? I'm
48:09
Speaker 2: trying to think if we've had like a good dumb.
48:11
Speaker 2: I mean, we definitely we did the you know, we
48:15
Speaker 2: did the household. What's up with Kate? before the cancer
48:20
Speaker 2: announcement that happened.
48:22
Speaker 1: You really is. It is a philosophy class at Brown
48:25
Speaker 1: over there. 24 hours a day. 24 hours a day.
48:29
Speaker 1: It's Wittgenstein and Judith Butler.
48:33
Speaker 2: There was a lot of talk about the various aspects
48:35
Speaker 2: of the stomach bug that moved through our house.
48:37
Speaker 1: See, that's what I'm talking about.
48:38
Speaker 2: That does it for me. There was a lot of that.
48:41
Speaker 2: There was a lot of that.
48:42
Speaker 1: Okay, okay.
48:43
Speaker 2: I'll spare the listeners that. For sure.
48:46
Speaker 1: And that's why you're the best. That's why you're the
48:48
Speaker 1: best at this. That's why you succeed across platforms. Chris Hayes,
48:52
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Everybody should check out Why Is
48:54
Speaker 1: This Happening in this new series, The Stakes. Everybody should
48:57
Speaker 1: check it out. Chris, what a pleasure. Thanks for being here.
49:00
Speaker 2: Oh, that was so fun. If you want to get
49:03
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49:06
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49:09
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49:12
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49:22
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49:24
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49:27
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