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Acast powers the world's best

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that we record. The

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briefing room is for anyone

0:10

who wants to understand the perspective

0:13

of law enforcement.

0:14

It's an opportunity for us to talk

0:16

about what comps are doing out on

0:18

the street from day to

0:19

day. Why comps do what they

0:22

do? And also to discuss

0:24

where comps go out of bounds. When

0:27

we're out on patrol, when we go to a call, when

0:29

we make a traffic stop, it's not always

0:31

about

0:31

enforcement. What we're doing with the

0:33

briefing room is we're trying to edge Kate

0:35

the public. It's not

0:37

about a lecture. It's you

0:40

probably didn't know this is why

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the police are doing

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this. And hopefully we can

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briefing room launches January twenty

0:49

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0:57

Hey,

1:01

everyone. John here, and welcome to Helen High

1:03

Water in my podcast about politics and culture

1:05

on the edge of Armageddon. It's

1:07

determined if dubious, committed,

1:10

if cocu for cocoa puffs, often

1:12

wrong, but rarely in doubt exercise, in

1:14

elevated gas baggery, in

1:17

neither rain nor snow nor heat nor gloom

1:19

of nights, nor the toxic

1:21

rantings of the courthouse right. A

1:23

president attempting to invalidate a legitimate

1:25

election and stage an auto coup complete

1:27

with an armed destruction of the United States capital,

1:30

nor more broadly and arguably

1:32

even more disturbingly, the capture

1:34

of a decent sized chunk of our political so analytic

1:37

spheres by a cadre of incoherent,

1:39

insidious, conspiracy adiled,

1:42

autocracy craving, authoritarian worshiping

1:44

lunatics, hustlers, grifters, idless and

1:46

income boops. None of it. None of

1:48

it has kept us from our duly

1:50

sworn duty and obligations, giving

1:53

you our listeners a fresh

1:55

episode of this podcast week after week

1:57

after week after week. Maybe not

2:00

without fail because, you

2:02

know, hashtag epic fail

2:04

is one of our many Mottos around

2:05

here, but certainly without a pause.

2:08

We've been doing that for more than

2:10

two years. Haven't had a break,

2:13

all of which is to say that

2:15

I am plumb shagged

2:18

out and desperately in need

2:20

of some R and R. And with the midterm

2:22

election now in the

2:24

rear view mirror in our democracy, Amazingly,

2:27

if I will admit a little unexpectedly, still

2:30

intact, it seems like a

2:32

suitable time for the High Water

2:34

home office to give itself a

2:36

fucking break. And so for the next

2:38

few weeks, that is exactly what

2:41

we are gonna do. And we'll see you back here

2:43

on the other side of the holidays. Tanned,

2:45

rested, refreshed, revitalized, and raring

2:47

to go. Ready to get

2:49

back to cranking out more tasty

2:52

content. In the meantime,

2:54

Don't despair. We're not leaving

2:56

you entirely in the lurch for

2:58

these weeks. To the contrary, every

3:00

Tuesday morning pre usual, you

3:02

will find a hopefully unfamiliar

3:05

episode of the podcast doing the

3:07

backstroke in your feed drop

3:09

there by the Abel AI fact totems

3:12

who'll be mining the store while we're away.

3:14

And while these episodes come

3:16

over the next few weeks, may not be fresh, or

3:19

strictly speaking new, they will

3:21

be piping hot, a carefully

3:23

curated series of high water golden

3:25

oldies, which those of

3:27

you who've been around from the start may remember,

3:30

I hope fondly. And those of you

3:32

who came along sometime later may never have

3:34

encountered at all. Given

3:36

our focus on politics these past few months

3:38

and our desire not to take a dump on

3:40

your mood of holiday inspired good cheer,

3:42

we've decided these encore presentations will

3:44

avoid that topic like the plague and focuses

3:47

dead on culture, entertainment, technology, and such

3:49

with a run of some of our most favorite guests in those

3:51

realms over the past two years. Including

3:53

this beauty right here, which

3:55

whether or not you've heard it before, you

3:57

will not want to miss. And so with

4:00

that, We leave it to it with a

4:02

hearty and heartfelt namaste.

4:15

Hey, everyone, John Harman here, and welcome to Helen

4:17

High Water. My podcast from the recount and iHeartRadio

4:20

with big ups to the one and only Riza for our

4:22

dope theme music.

4:25

In the wake of Joe Biden's inauguration with the

4:27

new administration, getting off the ground and staring

4:29

down the barrel of what the new president himself

4:32

described in his inaugural address as the,

4:34

quote, cascading crises of our

4:36

era He named four of them and they

4:38

are all big. COVID, the

4:40

economy, racial justice, and climate,

4:42

any one of which would pose huge

4:45

challenges to new administration. Biden

4:47

pointed out that he was looking at all four of them and

4:49

he didn't even name the fifth big crisis

4:51

that the backdrop For all of them,

4:53

the Casmic divide that's opened up between

4:55

red and blue America, so vividly

4:57

and garishly and grow deskly on display.

5:00

On January sixth, with the introduction of the

5:02

capital, with all of that happening right

5:04

now in American politics and American life I wanted to

5:06

get on this podcast, two of the most

5:08

brilliant observers of American life that I

5:10

know. The first is best selling novelist

5:12

and non fiction author, former magazine

5:14

editor and digital media entrepreneur, longtime

5:17

radio and podcast host and all around

5:19

Renaissance

5:19

man, Kurt Anderson. The

5:21

state of our union is

5:24

barely off the edge

5:26

of the cliff. But that's

5:29

better than it was a few weeks ago

5:31

and my fingers are crossed

5:34

and my heart is full of

5:35

hope. I am fifty one percent

5:38

hopeful. And the other is an equally

5:40

impressive intellectual polymath, former

5:42

staff director for two powerful committees of

5:44

the US senate, author and

5:46

Emmy Award winning TV writer and

5:48

most recently the host of the last

5:50

word on MSNBC at ten

5:52

PM, Lawrence O'Donnell, the state

5:54

of our politics is much

5:56

improved as of the afternoon

5:59

of January

6:00

twentieth. How much

6:02

improved remains to be seen? Kurt

6:04

Anderson, Lawrence O'Donnell, had been close friends

6:07

since they met in college that would be Harvard

6:09

College, specifically at the Harvard Lampoon,

6:11

forty six years ago. They

6:13

have been close friends since then and

6:16

the fact of their friendship is

6:18

one that is known to. I I would say a relatively

6:20

small number of people. I am one of those people and

6:22

Kurt is someone I've known longer and

6:24

better than Lawrence. He, of course, came

6:26

to prominence in American journalism as the

6:29

cofounder along with Great and Carter

6:31

and editor in chief of the

6:33

iconic magazine in the nineteen

6:35

eighties known as spy. Huge magazine

6:37

in our collective lives and culture. A lot of things you

6:39

see on the Internet these days owes

6:41

its genetic inheritance to spy magazine.

6:43

But Kurt moved on from that

6:45

and had and even more, I'd say, illustrious

6:48

career Moving into the realm that I've

6:50

known him in best, really, as an author

6:52

of novels. He's written three, one called Turner

6:54

the Century, another called Heilemann another

6:56

called True Believers. All fantastic

6:58

books, many of them selling lots and

7:00

lots of copies and earning a ton of

7:02

critical praise and attention. And

7:04

then they sit alongside Kurt's non fiction

7:07

ouve which is exactly the same

7:09

length. He has three big non fiction books, and

7:11

they are super important to this podcast. The first

7:13

was called reset that came out in two thousand nine. Sort

7:15

of a prelude to the two big books

7:17

that he's written in the last few years, one called

7:19

Fantasy Land, how America went haywire a

7:21

five hundred year history, that came out in twenty

7:23

seventeen and then the most recent book called

7:25

evil genius is the unmaking of America a recent

7:27

history. We're gonna talk about those

7:29

books today with Kurt and

7:32

his dear friend, Lawrence O'Donnell. O'Donnell,

7:34

someone who a lot of people know as the

7:36

host of the last word. And what

7:38

makes the last word so essential

7:40

and so invaluable in its discussion of what happens

7:42

in American politics is Lawrence's background

7:44

in politics, unlike most of the people

7:46

who host television shows

7:48

on all of the cable networks, Lawrence

7:50

is someone who actually knows how government

7:52

works and particularly how the United States senate

7:54

works and how congress functions

7:56

on Capitol Hill knows about how politics in

7:58

Washington plays out at a very granular

8:01

and very deeply detailed

8:03

level because of his time working in the

8:05

US Senate after he graduated from Harvard the mid nineteen

8:07

seventies and Kurt and he went their separate ways.

8:09

Lawrence was a writer for a period of time

8:11

and then eventually found his way to Capitol

8:13

Hill where from the late eighties

8:15

into the mid nineteen nineties, he worked for

8:18

the man who in all the years that I

8:20

cover politics is the most impressive United States senator

8:22

that I ever met Daniel Patrick Moynihan.

8:24

Lawrence with his innate brilliance

8:27

was drawn to Moynihan. Moynihan was drawn

8:29

to Lawrence, and Lawrence became the staff

8:31

director for the Senate Finance Committee in

8:33

nineteen ninety three and nineteen ninety five. And so in

8:35

that two year period where Lawrence ran that

8:37

committee alongside Pat Moynihan, he

8:39

received what I would call a lifetime

8:41

education in the actual

8:43

politics that govern Washington.

8:45

After that period, he went back to

8:47

his first love, which was writing and

8:49

found himself writing for television and from

8:51

the kind of late nineties into the mid two

8:53

thousands, he was very intimately

8:55

involved with someone who's been on this

8:57

podcast for Aaron Sorkin in the

8:59

creation of an execution of the West Wing,

9:01

which is where he won his Emmy Award.

9:03

And for those of you who unaware of this.

9:05

One of the best things about Lawrence's role at the Westwind was

9:07

in addition to writing a bunch of episodes. He

9:09

was the guy who played Jed Bartlett's

9:11

dad in flashbacks on the West

9:13

Wing. So we got to see a little Lawrence O'Donnell in the West

9:15

Wing, and then he went on and became a pretty

9:17

regular figure on MSNBC. Starting out as kind of a

9:19

fill in host for Keith Holberman on

9:21

countdown, making a lot of regular appearances on morning

9:23

Joe, and then eventually getting his own show in

9:25

that ten o'clock hour, the last word,

9:27

in two thousand eleven. And

9:29

he's been on the air ever since. A

9:31

tremendous television show for people who

9:33

actually don't just wanna hear

9:35

platitudes and punditry, but

9:37

actually wanna hear smart people

9:39

trying to explain what's actually going on

9:41

in Washington. The last word has become

9:43

a a bastion for that and a

9:45

refuse for people who join

9:47

Lawrence's sophistication and nuance and understanding of

9:49

what actually goes on to Washington.

9:50

And you

9:51

put those two guys together, Lawrence

9:54

Curt Anderson, They are two people who,

9:56

at this particular moment, given

9:58

the work that Kurt has been doing, given the running

10:01

commentary that Lawrence has been hosting an offering, It

10:03

struck me that putting them together, given their

10:05

long history together in their relationship, would be

10:07

a brilliant idea. And the

10:09

one thing we really needed was a venue

10:11

to have this kind of conversation. And as you all

10:13

know, we now have that venue and it's

10:15

a podcast that you have all come to know and

10:18

hopefully love.

10:19

A podcast called Helen High Water.

10:22

This is

10:25

a time of testing. We

10:28

face an attack on our democracy and

10:31

on truth, a raging

10:33

virus, growing

10:35

in equity, staying

10:37

of systemic racism, climate

10:40

and crisis, America's

10:42

role in the world, any one

10:44

of these would be enough to challenge us in

10:46

profound ways. But the fact

10:48

is, we face them all

10:50

at once. Presenting

10:53

this nation with one of the greatest

10:55

responsibilities we've had.

10:57

Now, we're gonna be tested. Are we

10:59

gonna step up all of

11:00

us. It's

11:02

time for boldness. For

11:05

there's so much to

11:05

do. And this

11:08

is certain I promise

11:10

you, we will be judged you

11:12

and I by how

11:14

we resolve these cascading crises

11:17

of our era. We will

11:19

rise to the occasion as the question,

11:21

will we master this

11:24

rare and difficult hour when we

11:26

meet our obligations and pass along

11:28

a new and better world to our children.

11:31

I believe we must, I'm sure you do as

11:33

well. I believe we will.

11:35

Lauren's a

11:36

Donald Kurt Anderson. It's great to see the two of you here

11:38

together. And one of the things I wanna do in this podcast, which we

11:40

will get to, is just explore the extraordinary relationship

11:43

between you two

11:43

gentlemen. Have you guys ever done the interview together

11:45

before? Has ever happened? Well,

11:48

I've interviewed Kurt. Kurt?

11:50

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, Kurt has

11:52

interviewed me and and Yeah. The the kind

11:54

of most I'd say, intimate

11:56

version of it, I guess, is me interviewing

11:59

Kurt on a on a book tour event in

12:01

LA. So -- Yes. It was

12:03

really the two of us and it wasn't about

12:05

getting a show out there to other people. You

12:07

know, it was for three hundred people.

12:09

But, John, you are the first

12:11

to put us together in this form. This

12:13

is the first threesome. In other words, so

12:15

to speak. And just I

12:17

mean, the the footnote that I have to

12:20

begin with is I wouldn't be

12:22

here. Nothing you

12:24

recognize in my resume would have occurred

12:26

without Kurt Anderson. It's absolutely

12:29

true. He took me on as a kind of

12:31

life client in college and has

12:33

guided me all the

12:33

way. Yeah. So guys, I believe I've had the

12:36

pleasure of three some on some occasions in private, and it's part of

12:38

the reason why I wanted to recreate it here. That will

12:40

not be the part that's explicit. Although I imagine

12:42

there'll be a fair amount of profanity in this knowing the

12:44

two of

12:44

you, you're both potty mauves. We have

12:46

so much to discuss, but I first

12:48

would like to just reflect on

12:50

that piece of oratory. You

12:52

know, the inaugural came, it went. Joe

12:54

Biden spoke, What'd you think of that

12:56

speech? He had to deliver the

12:58

speech of his lifetime, and he

13:00

did. It was the biggest challenge

13:03

I've ever seen in the State of the Union

13:05

address. How do you

13:07

take on this moment? Because this

13:10

point in our

13:12

political culture and our governing

13:14

culture is uniquely

13:18

insane. And you suddenly

13:20

have to stand up and deliver the

13:22

idea that sanity is restored.

13:24

It was a bigger challenge

13:27

than FDR had in

13:29

nineteen forty four and state of the

13:31

Union address and inaugural address

13:33

after, while World War two is going

13:35

on. But people who actually at that point

13:37

could see the light at the end of the tunnel of world

13:39

war two. The light at the end of the

13:41

tunnel of Trumpism

13:44

wasn't really apparent until

13:46

about noontime on January

13:47

twentieth. And so he

13:50

had so much to do and he did

13:52

it. As you guys know, the circus is back in production,

13:54

and so I've been in Washington three successive

13:56

Wednesdays on this new run. One of them,

13:58

there was an insurrection. One of them, there

14:00

was an impeachment, and the third was an

14:02

inauguration. Like one of the most extraordinary fifteen

14:04

day periods in the thirty years I've covered

14:06

politics. And against that backdrop,

14:08

you have Joe Biden getting up

14:10

to speak. That's the immediate backdrop.

14:12

Then there's the larger backdrop that Lawrence is

14:14

referring to, which is you know, the cascading

14:16

crises that Biden referred to.

14:18

So, could I ask you not just to

14:20

evaluate the oratory, but just sort

14:22

of like what the fuck was that that

14:24

just has happened in this couple of weeks

14:26

that, you know, that Biden had to

14:28

kind of perform against? Well,

14:31

we have talked about the Trump presidency

14:34

as a

14:34

reality show, which is fair enough and

14:36

true

14:36

enough. The last three weeks,

14:39

which you've so concisely described

14:41

is like the

14:43

last episode or two of a television

14:46

series. Right? I mean, with all of

14:48

its implausibility of the

14:50

impeachment, interaction, inauguration.

14:53

So it is that. And I gotta

14:55

say that the fact that even

14:58

the day after the insurrection,

15:00

the twenty four hours between

15:02

whatever, two in the afternoon on the

15:04

sixth, two. Morning,

15:06

two in the afternoon, certainly on the seventh.

15:09

It seemed shockingly

15:12

resolved for one thing. We were no

15:14

longer right. We were

15:17

horrified and appalled and all those things, but we were no

15:19

longer most of this, I think,

15:21

frightened. And that's

15:23

remarkable and and not

15:25

like politics usually

15:28

unrolls. Back to the the

15:30

Biden inaugural, one of the things he

15:32

did that was so extraordinary was,

15:35

avoid the trap

15:37

of the caracature

15:39

parody, Joe Biden. Right? And I'm like,

15:41

oh, he just wants to reach across the aisle. He

15:43

thinks it's still nineteen seventy four, all

15:45

that stuff. He managed to thread the

15:47

needle and and really convey

15:49

and say that we're

15:52

still in a crisis moment.

15:55

And we're not And electing

15:57

me and Paris

15:59

didn't solve the problem. There

16:01

were places that's an inauguration

16:03

speech. But he managed to

16:05

be mister unity without

16:08

falling into the the

16:10

parody or the caricature of

16:11

that. I wanna ask you

16:14

both this question because, you

16:16

know, he says there's forecasting

16:18

crisis. He doesn't even mention the Democratic crisis.

16:20

He talks about COVID, the

16:22

economy, the racial reckoning

16:24

crisis and climate. And I think, you know,

16:26

in some ways, the biggest crisis of all is the

16:28

crisis what's happening in our democracy. Right?

16:30

With the division that we now see in all of

16:32

its era should vivid frightening

16:35

reality, I was up there,

16:37

right, that day and saw it up

16:39

close. But people

16:41

say, this showed how fragile our

16:43

democracy was. We almost lost

16:45

it for a few hours there on Wednesday

16:47

sixth. That's what was on display.

16:49

And I I think it's

16:51

horrifying long range more

16:53

disturbing than some people think going

16:55

forward. You know, you can't say enough about

16:57

how fucked up what happened on the

16:59

sixth was in the cosmic sense. But

17:01

I don't feel like the

17:04

democracy was at stake that day. There was ever a

17:06

moment when I thought if they

17:08

succeeded that afternoon, that

17:10

a coup would have been affected. I mean, I think our

17:12

democracy, even in that moment, was

17:14

highly resilient, remains highly resilient. They

17:17

had captured the capital for twenty

17:19

four hours, we would have had it back twenty

17:21

four hours later. Right? It's not like

17:23

that was what was at stake. Even though there was

17:25

a lot on the line here, I think

17:27

it overstates the case to say that our

17:29

democracy was hanging by thread for a couple of hours

17:31

on Wednesday the

17:31

sixth. As usual, I

17:34

completely agree with John

17:36

Hylen. I understand everyone's

17:39

historical reaction to it. I

17:41

understand the use of the word cool. It's a word

17:43

I have not used in relation to this.

17:45

That's not what we were watching. I

17:47

think a lot of what you saw

17:49

and processed depends

17:52

on your birth date. If you were

17:54

old enough to see know,

17:56

university buildings taken over for the

17:58

first time in the 1960s and when

18:00

it happened to Columbia, when it happened

18:02

at Harvard, I think it's sixty nine

18:05

or something like that. It was stunning if you

18:07

were watching that at home as I was as

18:09

a high school kid on TV, but

18:11

you understood it because I

18:14

was on the side of everybody who was taking

18:16

over those buildings because they were taking

18:18

over the buildings in protest of

18:20

the Vietnam War. And So

18:22

there are two things to talk about, about

18:24

those people who went into the capital. What

18:27

they actually did

18:29

and what they thought.

18:32

And the thing that

18:34

I find most horrific

18:36

is not at all what they did. It

18:38

is what they thought. It's the guy

18:40

with the Camp Auschwitz Jersey,

18:43

actual Nazis. Going

18:46

into the capital who believed

18:48

not enough Jews were killed

18:50

by Hitler, who who really share

18:53

Hitler's ambition to have killed all the Jews of

18:55

Europe and more. That

18:57

was the horror. But if

18:59

you actually watched them, And if

19:01

you watch them with the experience of having participated

19:03

in mass demonstrations yourself

19:06

say during the Vietnam era,

19:09

as I did. And and

19:12

know what's happened in the history of

19:14

those events in the past, they

19:16

were actually in

19:18

relative terms well behaved. And here's what I

19:20

mean by that. When I saw

19:23

people, in the chamber of

19:25

the United States Senate, where

19:27

it's hard to describe how

19:29

few human beings on earth have ever set foot

19:31

in there because of the floor privileges of the Senate.

19:34

Most of the people who've worked on senate

19:36

staffs have never been allowed to sit foot

19:38

on the floor of the Senate. And

19:40

so it's the rarest place in America,

19:42

you know, but maybe backstage in

19:44

the Supreme Court chamber is more rare.

19:47

So it was kind of astonishing but

19:49

I watched them. And they did absolutely

19:53

no damage whatsoever. Daniel

19:55

Webster's desk is right over there.

19:58

They could have carved it up. They could have burned it. They could have

20:00

burned all the desks. They could have burned the

20:02

carpet. You know? And so I was watching what they

20:04

didn't do. And when you see that

20:07

Maroding Ward in the

20:09

capital rotunda. Notice that

20:11

around them are some of

20:13

the most important paintings in

20:15

Washington. That are, you know, bigger than the walls of my house.

20:18

And no one touches them.

20:20

No one does a thing. And so then

20:22

the other day, some video emerges.

20:24

From the senate chamber, some cell

20:27

phone video. And there's a guy

20:29

in full idiot militia

20:31

regalia, just looking as stupid as

20:33

you could possibly look in this

20:36

event, a completely cowardly buffoon

20:38

who's dressed up for a war that he's never

20:40

gonna fight and he's never gonna be

20:43

in the a fire. And what he's saying

20:45

to the other people in the senate chamber

20:48

is, don't do any damage

20:50

here. This is still a sacred

20:52

place. Right. And so this is a

20:54

very different thing -- Right. -- than what we've

20:56

seen in these kinds of things in the past.

20:58

And, you know, yeah, they killed a cop.

21:00

And that is the story. The

21:03

real horror of what they

21:05

physically did was that they

21:07

killed a cop in there. And everybody

21:09

involved in that, which by the way

21:11

is literally everyone, everyone,

21:13

because your ability to kill a

21:15

cop depends on your numbers.

21:17

If you're gonna kill a cop with your hands,

21:20

it depends on how many of you

21:22

you have. And it's a it's a real

21:24

accessory to murder. Right. For every

21:26

single one, every single one of them supported that crime,

21:28

everyone. Right. But I do think nothing was

21:30

at stake. And as soon as I was watching it,

21:32

I was just looking at my watch going,

21:34

Well, the capital police, their job, which

21:36

no one understood on TV. Their

21:38

job is to get the people out

21:40

of the building. The only way to

21:42

get them out of the building is voluntarily. They

21:45

don't even have clubs. The only crowd

21:47

control device they have is guns. You

21:49

can shoot them or you can talk to Those are their

21:51

only choices. And so they talk to

21:54

them, and it took four hours, and

21:56

they all walked out of the

21:58

building voluntarily Nobody had to be dragged out.

22:00

That was good police work

22:02

described on TV at the time as

22:04

cowardly police work because we weren't

22:06

clubbing them like we did in Chicago

22:08

in nineteen So

22:09

Kurt, let me frame it this way. You

22:11

know, the media and the political

22:13

discourse in America is very, very, except

22:15

on Lawrence's show, is free of Nuance

22:17

to a large extent. You know, I

22:19

think it's just to say it this way. It's

22:21

important to be able to say all of the

22:23

following things that what these

22:25

people represent is something genuinely dangerous

22:28

American life. That is a malignant force that

22:30

could be profoundly dangerous

22:32

to the stability of our Democratic

22:34

society. Number

22:35

one, And it is also the case that this was not just

22:38

a protest that got out of control. It

22:40

was not a mob with a riot that was

22:42

just those things. There were people there that had the zip

22:44

ties and they had plans and they had floor plans and there

22:46

was planning coordination. There was an

22:48

insurrectionist quality to

22:48

this. They had intent.

22:51

And they made plans. So you can

22:53

say those two things and there was

22:55

a cop that was killed and and be

22:58

thereby to

22:58

kind of grasp the gravity of it

23:00

and the potential long term,

23:03

medium term and short term dangers

23:05

of it. Without coming

23:06

to the conclusion that if not

23:09

for, you know,

23:11

x, y, and z, we could have

23:13

woke up on the

23:15

seventh and the democracy, democracy would have come to

23:17

an end. And when I hear people saying stuff like

23:19

that, which has been said by a lot of people, and

23:21

some people I admire, people

23:23

who are on the side of the angels have been fighting against against Trump and

23:26

Trumpism for the last four years and will continue

23:28

for the next four

23:28

years, I still think that is a bridge too

23:30

far in terms of describing what happened.

23:33

That day.

23:33

I agree with you, as I agree with Lawrence. We all

23:36

agree. And again, I look at it

23:38

in a couple of different ways. One

23:40

is I use the

23:43

biological pathology analogy.

23:45

You know, you can have cancer cells

23:47

floating around in your body and they

23:50

don't kill you. They don't even form tumors necessarily.

23:53

But they're there and they're worrisome and

23:55

that's what didn't happen and that's what

23:57

really didn't yet have

23:59

the capability of happening in

24:01

this one appearance of

24:03

these cancerous

24:06

pathogens in the capital for a

24:08

few hours. The other thing is, of course, in

24:10

this television show, this

24:12

show aspect that it

24:14

was. Yes, they're all accomplished as to

24:16

murder. Yes, absolutely. It's a really

24:18

important point that this couldn't have

24:20

happened without the numbers.

24:22

Therefore, everybody who

24:24

entered that building as a member of

24:26

these thousands is responsible. That's

24:28

what allowed everything else including the murder of the

24:30

cop to happen and the death of the other people. And

24:32

there are these ugly scenes of people hurting cops and

24:35

all that. But as Warren said, now that I didn't that's

24:37

why I think that so many of them in

24:39

so many of the videos, if you look at all

24:42

of them, we're just like

24:44

tourists. And and like, oh, here we

24:46

are. We're touring the

24:48

capital. We're here as revolutionaries, I

24:50

guess. So this this combination of

24:52

fiction and reality and cosplay

24:55

and insurrection can't

24:57

be denied. And that's what they

24:59

were in it for. That's

25:02

frankly, I think what their

25:04

leader that he shall not

25:06

be named was in it for because, of course,

25:08

that's what he is. All he is

25:10

is fucking TV performer. I mean,

25:13

throughout the Trump presidency, it's been a

25:15

tricky thing

25:17

to learn when to

25:19

be really alarmed

25:21

and when not to get

25:23

to hysterical. Right? Right. And certainly,

25:25

people in media, and that's a problem. And everybody,

25:28

games, says everyone in media, oh, no, you're not

25:30

being serious enough. Oh, you're being too

25:32

hysterical. All of those things happened and happened all

25:34

the

25:34

time. But I agree that this was

25:36

a reality show run amok.

25:38

I mean, certainly the risk

25:40

of many members of Congress being

25:43

murdered was that could have happened. Yes.

25:45

Yes. Right. And and we shouldn't diminish

25:47

that. Right. Right. But the

25:49

Republic falling in

25:51

the the taking of

25:53

the Bastille beginning the French

25:55

revolution. That wasn't in the

25:57

cards and it's why I I

25:59

wasn't, panicking at

26:01

any moment during the

26:02

thing, even as atrocious and

26:04

grotesque as the spectacle

26:06

was. Right. You know, people were calling me it was happening, and I

26:09

I kept telling them, no, it's no big deal. This will

26:11

be fine. And and the reason the capital

26:13

police aren't doing

26:15

anything is because they are a

26:17

police force whose entire job takes place

26:19

indoors, which means they

26:21

are trained very strongly on don't

26:23

ever fire your gun. You're firing a

26:25

gun indoors. It has to be

26:27

for a very serious reason, and

26:29

then there's the perspective of

26:31

how bad can it

26:32

get? How bad was this? Right? And that's the way

26:34

I always look at everything. Have I seen something

26:36

worse? And

26:37

it turns out pretty much all the time I've seen something

26:40

worse. Nineteen fifty four. Okay?

26:42

Four people enter the

26:45

visitors gallery in the House

26:47

of Representatives. They

26:50

unfurl a Puerto Rican

26:52

flag and they start shooting down

26:54

into the house chamber and they shoot

26:57

five members of congress

26:59

-- Right. -- for the cause of Puerto

27:01

Rican independence. Yes. And

27:03

they are all sentence to, you know,

27:05

fifty five years in prison. Jimmy

27:07

Carter lets them out in nineteen seventy eight

27:09

in the hope of better for

27:12

reasons that don't make sense very much

27:14

sense in hindsight, but so that's

27:16

completely forgotten. I mentioned it on

27:18

the first night of this

27:20

event, And I mentioned it in passing

27:22

to try to give people a sense of

27:24

kind of the worst things have had occurred.

27:27

And I gave up on the concept

27:29

very quickly. Of of trying to frame

27:31

this as worse things have happened

27:33

because -- Right. -- when you've

27:35

been in a terrible car accident,

27:37

there's no point in me telling you there's been worse

27:39

car

27:39

accident. So you know, there's just no

27:41

point. Let's get back just to last

27:43

week. And of this context against this,

27:45

all the backdrop. Right? So last week, I wanted to ask

27:47

you guys a question about Joe Biden, a question about Donald

27:49

Trump, and then we'll take a quick break. Here's

27:51

the question about Joe

27:51

Biden. The speech

27:54

was, I think I agree with you guys about

27:56

its effectiveness. There was very much a self conscious

27:58

desire on the part of the Biden people to

28:00

have this a realization that in

28:02

our modern world that you can't

28:03

be FDR. You don't get to give a big speech and

28:06

then do fireside chats. You gotta kind of roll it

28:08

all up into one. And so the vernacular

28:10

piece of this was very much there was

28:12

half oratory half fireside chat by design.

28:15

And again, we played that piece

28:17

of sound because, you know,

28:19

Biden very much wants to say, this is fucking

28:21

hard right Guys. We have these crises.

28:23

There's four of them, arguably, with five of

28:25

them, we gotta pull together. But I I

28:27

think setting expectations and making sure people

28:29

understand that how

28:31

large these challenges are that we're facing.

28:34

So that's super important. Right? Another

28:36

super important thing though was this other theme

28:38

in there, which was I will always level

28:40

with you. You said it about COVID, but it really is a theme for the

28:42

entire administration going forward. And I ask you

28:44

guys both this, you

28:46

know, they've foregrounded the

28:48

notion that after the end of the

28:50

four years of the most promiscuous

28:52

pathological liar in the history of the Oval Office

28:54

of your president has

28:56

lied, Some of them relied a lot, none of them relied the way Donald Trump

28:58

has lied, leading to the big lie that led

29:00

to the insurrection. They

29:01

are, like, we are always gonna tell you the truth

29:04

about everything. Lawrence does it strike you that

29:06

that is a tenable way

29:07

of proceeding? It's obviously a

29:09

refreshing contrast with the past.

29:12

And trying to get back to the ground of we're not gonna

29:14

live in fantasy land. We're not gonna live in a land

29:16

in collusion. We're not gonna live in a world of alternative facts

29:18

all the time. But to kind

29:20

of have the approach of we are

29:22

gonna be straight with you all the time.

29:25

I think a lot of people who've been involved

29:27

in previous administrations would say you're

29:29

leaving a pretty big hostage portion there in a lot of

29:31

ways, kind of by staking your your claim

29:34

around unequivocal unrelenting

29:36

honesty all the

29:37

time. Well, this

29:39

is the moment where that actually

29:41

can work and it can work even

29:44

strategically. And it's a stronger opportunity for that

29:46

than I've ever seen. And I know what you mean

29:48

in in normal times, that would be a

29:50

ridiculous thing to say. I would laugh

29:52

at it. But when you're coming

29:54

after or the world's craziest liar, the world's

29:56

craziest nonstop liar.

29:58

There is

29:58

reason to believe that

30:01

you will get credit

30:03

for telling the truth even

30:05

when it is, you know, to borrow

30:07

Al Gore's phrase, inconvenient. So

30:10

Biden is not just saying, he'll tell you

30:12

the truth. You know, Jimmy Carter said

30:14

and, you know, I didn't believe that then and

30:16

no one should have in the way he said

30:18

it. But, you know, most if you look back on

30:20

him, you're not gonna find Like Bill Clinton never

30:22

stood up there and said, I will always

30:25

tell you the truth because that would have

30:27

been laughed at. You know, because just just

30:29

get it Yeah, his

30:31

first presidential campaign showed that that's

30:33

not the way he lives his life. You know? And so it

30:35

it's just not it's ridiculous. Right?

30:37

And so Biden is saying that, and then he's saying

30:39

this other piece, which I think is a really important

30:41

other side of that coin. And he keeps

30:43

saying, when we make a mistake, I'm

30:45

gonna tell you. I'm gonna tell you we made

30:47

a mistake, I'm gonna admit it, and we're gonna

30:50

do our best to go on from there.

30:52

And I think they might actually do

30:54

that. And what I is

30:56

the day they have a mistake that

30:58

they have to own and Joe Biden

31:00

owns

31:00

it. I

31:01

wanna see if his poll numbers go up a

31:03

point or two because the

31:06

thrill of Americans watching

31:08

a president after the last

31:11

one, actually doing

31:13

that. It it's the ultimate opportunity,

31:15

actually. For Joe Biden to show you how

31:17

new this is. In a world

31:19

where no one ever admits

31:21

making a mistake, it can be

31:23

so powerful if that moment comes for

31:26

him and they handle it for

31:27

right? No. I think that's right. You use the

31:29

word vernacular, John. I think that's

31:32

the idiomatic common parlance

31:34

vernacular. We're gonna level with you. We're gonna

31:36

be straight with you. We're gonna level with you. Not

31:38

this, prissy, I will never lie to you.

31:40

I will always tell you the truth. And

31:43

is is good. Another

31:45

thing, Warren's mentioned mix and Carter. I

31:47

mean, back then, it was just, okay, he didn't water

31:49

gave me a light about to cover up. It was

31:51

a simple kind of conventional political

31:55

crookedness that was a lie. But

31:57

with this guy, partly because

32:00

it's fifty years

32:00

later, partly because it's this guy.

32:02

It's a whole other orders of

32:05

magnitude of falsehood.

32:07

It's lies. It's

32:09

fantastic versions of

32:11

reality alternate facts. It's

32:13

so far beyond that, as

32:15

Lawrence is suggesting, I think,

32:17

it is this moment where simply

32:20

saying, no, I'm gonna be a normal

32:22

person like your neighbor, like your

32:24

friend, whatever. I'm

32:26

not gonna be a crazy

32:28

person. I'm not going to have this

32:30

other version of reality that I'm

32:32

insisting is the case like

32:34

Baghdad BOB during Iraq

32:36

War. The thing you could do if you were a

32:39

walk, you know, is which Joe Biden

32:41

is not, is saying, well,

32:43

in this land of alternative realities,

32:45

I'm going to be an empiricist. No.

32:47

No. No. No. Just say I'm in a level with you because it

32:49

covers all that stuff. In one

32:51

simple, understandable term,

32:53

Joe Biden's now in, Donald Trump is now

32:56

gone.

32:56

The exit of Donald Trump

32:58

this week to whatever now

33:00

awaits him. There's a large debate

33:03

you know, is Trump now that

33:05

he's not president anymore, no longer has Twitter? Is

33:07

he gonna recede with surprising quickness? We're

33:09

gonna suddenly forget about Donald Trump six months for now.

33:11

It's gonna be like, that was a bad dream, but

33:13

he's not gonna be relevant to our

33:15

lives, our politics, our society, our culture

33:17

going forward, or are you guys in

33:19

the camp that Trump is a

33:22

big figure with tens of millions of

33:24

cult like followers. And this man, one way or the

33:26

other is gonna continue to be an important

33:28

powerful force, malignant

33:30

all the rest, but that we're gonna be contending with

33:33

Trump in a meaningful

33:34

way, not just for the days

33:36

ahead, but potentially for the months and years ahead.

33:38

You know, I've always believed that a

33:41

couple of things. One, that he was never gonna be able

33:43

to get reelected. I never had

33:45

the doubt about that because he never tried to talk to

33:47

a voter who wasn't already with him. And

33:49

then that when he was a loser,

33:51

he would drift into this special

33:54

place America holds for

33:56

losers. You know, I I knew people who were just in

33:59

love with John Carey until he

34:01

lost and then never wanted to hear his

34:03

name again. that's the way

34:05

America treats losers. And

34:07

then I believe that's part of what's gonna happen

34:09

to Trump, just the basic loser

34:12

them of his life now. The other part

34:14

is there's now ninety

34:16

nine percent certainty he's gonna be a

34:18

criminal defendant possibly in multiple jurisdictions.

34:21

The new reporting on what

34:23

he was doing with the justice

34:25

department, you gonna fire the act

34:27

attorney general to put in the other guy, every

34:29

federal prosecutor looking at that is

34:31

saying, those are federal crimes right there. There are

34:33

also state crimes in Georgia.

34:35

I I just

34:36

now am living with no doubt

34:38

that Donald Trump's future as

34:40

a defendant, both criminal

34:43

and civil, and when his fans are

34:45

watching him just get crushed

34:48

that way, and he's

34:50

creating a go fund me page to pay for

34:52

his

34:52

lawyers. The

34:54

guide is gonna sink lower and lower into the loser life.

34:57

Kurt, I agree with that.

35:00

I mean, It's a

35:02

converse of the Donald Trump

35:04

projection phenomenon where he's always

35:06

accusing everybody else of what he's

35:08

doing himself. What is the accused everybody of a loser? A third rate of

35:10

a loser? A third rate of a

35:12

loser. Excuse me of that a couple of

35:14

times. So

35:16

I think the man saying all of

35:19

this stuff, behaving this

35:21

way, saying fuck you to the lips

35:23

and fuck you to the meeting

35:25

and all that. Was really exciting when he was running

35:27

for president the first time and really

35:30

exciting when he was president.

35:32

As soon as you unplug him from the White

35:34

House wall,

35:36

I think it's me, it it deflates. Yes, of course,

35:39

there will be thousands, tens of

35:41

thousands, hundreds of thousands, a

35:44

few Heilemann. People who still for a while, regarded him as

35:46

their dear leader just as there were

35:48

people who invented religions

35:50

after the world failed to end in eighteen

35:54

forty three. You know. So, yeah, they'll still be there and and

35:56

they should be watched

35:58

and guarded against and everything else.

36:00

But I think after some

36:02

time to recover,

36:04

you know, Republicans, self identify

36:06

whatever quarter, third of Americans

36:08

who call themselves Republicans? Large

36:11

fractions of them will still say, no, he was good, he was fine, he

36:13

he didn't cause their instruction

36:16

blah, blah, strongly

36:18

believe that most of those people,

36:20

whatever they tell pollsters, six

36:22

months from now, aren't gonna

36:24

care about Donald Trump. Which

36:26

isn't to say that all of the

36:28

resentments and bigotry's and misunderstandings of why

36:31

they've been screwed

36:33

are going to keep being in the

36:35

atmosphere, but Donald Trump as the vehicle for

36:38

them. Nah. Well, from your lips

36:40

to the

36:42

non exist a god that all three of

36:44

us don't believe into his ears. Let's take a quick break and play some advertisements and then we'll come back

36:46

with Kurt Anderson and Lauren Sedano here on

36:48

ODonnell High Water.

36:52

That would be one way to get to

36:55

unity. As New York

36:57

Times columnist wrote, this morning,

36:59

Biden really wanted unity, he could

37:02

start by lynching vice president

37:04

Pence. It just gives you a sense of

37:06

the ferocity and

37:08

the anger and and

37:10

the hatred that underlies

37:12

the

37:12

modern left. Now,

37:14

there's gonna

37:15

be a real reaction to

37:17

the idea that you should start having a lynch mob

37:19

going around on the senate

37:21

floor, picking out the people who

37:23

wants to destroy.

37:25

So that's new

37:25

Cambridge, former speaker of the house

37:28

representatives. I can still I can't believe I actually say those

37:30

words. We're back. We'll we'll drop you

37:32

down the proper references. former

37:34

speaker -- Yeah. -- house reference purposes. You can't

37:36

when you go out the way he

37:37

did, you can't ever leave out

37:39

the word disgrace. So we're back with

37:41

Kurt and Lawrence here on Helen High Water, and there's that

37:43

was New Kingridge on Hannity, another

37:46

disgraced repulsive

37:48

repugnant, toxic Force and American life, but

37:50

he was on with Handy last week. And the reason I

37:52

play it is to

37:54

raise this question. That's just exactly what you think

37:56

Newt would say. Incredible things to say. He says Joe Biden as people to exterminate

37:58

Republicans. That the left is

38:00

suggesting the lynching of Mike

38:03

Pence when, of course, the

38:05

truth is the only people were suggesting lynching my pence with

38:07

people on the right on January

38:09

sixth. You know, you've got him

38:11

talking about America is at stake. He's

38:13

still basically making that argument. He's trying to inflame that culture war and using the

38:16

most kind of inflammatory language you can

38:18

imagine. And the reason

38:20

again, I play this is because it

38:22

opens up a discussion that I think is important,

38:24

which is this one. You know, twenty twenty,

38:26

apocalyptic year,

38:28

right? COVID recession,

38:30

racial justice, you have

38:32

police brutality, protest riots, then

38:34

we have Trump, the big lie, leading to

38:36

the interaction. All this stuff happened, you know, we

38:38

building towards it. And then we say last week, well, it's time to turn the page. You know, we have an

38:41

operation job. I you know, we're moving on.

38:43

Twenty twenty, the apocalyptic end

38:46

times year of twenty twenty is now

38:48

in a rearview mirror. And yet, at this moment, when you hear Gingrich talking

38:50

that way and others, it's like, really,

38:52

have we turned a page at all?

38:55

Or is it the case you guys that what's really

38:58

happened here is that in first three weeks of twenty

39:00

twenty one that we're seeing that, like, the

39:02

furies have

39:04

been unleashed and the genie's out of the bottle. And,

39:06

you know, with all due respect to Joe Biden, that

39:08

nothing about Joe Biden is gonna change that

39:10

and that we are

39:12

contending now with a period where twenty twenty one could make twenty twenty

39:14

look like a day at the beach. How do you

39:16

guys feel about that question

39:18

about what we have seen and what we're headed

39:20

into

39:21

and the very quick move back to,

39:23

like, nothing has really changed, nothing you know, with a new president, which

39:25

is great. One thing I feel obliged to point

39:27

out about what

39:30

Ingrid was

39:33

referencing was the person he's

39:35

talking about Bill Wilkinson former

39:38

Caito Institute

39:40

Libertarian now a same, brilliant person, made an

39:42

unfortunate Twitter joke

39:44

suggesting that, oh, all those

39:47

trumpists in the

39:50

capital were saying, hang my pants and

39:52

Biden could now create

39:54

comity and unity by reaching across the

39:56

island, giving him what they wanted. It

39:59

was a joke. It was a bad joke. He got fired.

40:01

He apologized for it. So it's just important to say that the basis for

40:03

that whole thing was a

40:06

gigantic defamatory a

40:09

lot. Right? I just wanna make that clear. Beyond that, I mean, the

40:11

kingriches, the Hannities, the other

40:14

prime time Fox News

40:16

hosts, the Lynn

40:18

Baugh's until he dies and his wannabe Limn

40:20

Baugh's are are not gonna miss a beat

40:22

because, of course, they are people acting

40:25

in total bad faith. Without

40:28

any desire to have

40:32

government return and and politics and

40:34

the discourse return to some

40:37

version of functional normality. Howard Bauchner:

40:39

You know, Gingrich and

40:41

inflammatory language is the

40:44

brand. That's what

40:46

he invented. In the House Representatives. He was really the only member of the

40:48

House Representatives using inflammatory

40:50

language. When he realized there are

40:52

C SPAN cameras on the House

40:55

floor all the time. If I go out there when no one's doing

40:57

anything and no one is trying to speak

40:59

at, you know, eight o'clock at

41:02

night, I can get up there and it'll be on

41:04

video and then we can send that video

41:06

around. And so he did, a junior member

41:08

of the house, go out there, give these

41:12

inflammatory speeches at the time. And if you

41:14

were to look at what was then considered

41:16

inflammatory language, who's mild

41:18

compared to now, But if

41:20

flamethrowing is your thing,

41:22

over time, it just has to get hotter

41:24

and hotter and hotter. So the language you

41:26

hear now is the

41:28

twenty first century version of

41:30

Cambridge. And, you know, if you really

41:32

stop over it, you can

41:34

show that every single word

41:36

is a lie. Yeah. He said, someone wrote this in the New York

41:38

Times. No. It was a

41:40

tweet. The New York Times would not have put

41:42

that in anyone's opinion

41:44

column as

41:46

a joke. They wouldn't have allowed it because they're standards. And so, this

41:48

has been his life. This is his whole

41:50

thing. And, Gingrich has been doing

41:52

this thing during every

41:54

other period, you know, of the last

41:56

thirty years that we thought was

41:58

a relatively pleasant period.

42:00

Nuclear's was still

42:02

out there. Saying this kind of thing to the Russian

42:04

audience all the time. So, yeah, that's

42:06

just a condition. That's gonna happen

42:08

until he takes his

42:10

last breath. And, you know, what it will

42:12

mean in our lives in twenty twenty

42:14

1II don't think is very much.

42:16

I think twenty twenty one is

42:18

gonna be should go back to

42:20

your question just dramatically

42:22

better than twenty twenty. I think it's going to be

42:24

the sharpest

42:26

year difference of my life

42:28

that I've ever experienced even more

42:30

dramatic than the year

42:32

after the final year of our

42:34

involvement in Vietnam because

42:36

that ramped down gradually, you

42:38

know, and this was bank

42:41

twelve noon January twentieth.

42:43

And I actually felt my

42:46

body change, and I didn't know

42:48

this, but somewhere in

42:50

January twentieth,

42:52

I started to realize and

42:54

then January twenty first really realized how

42:56

much I was defending

43:02

physically with myself defending

43:04

against the madness of the last

43:06

five years, which included the

43:08

first Trump presidential campaign. I

43:10

hated everything Donald Trump had

43:12

to say all the time, and

43:14

I tried to hold myself at

43:16

an emotional distance from that.

43:19

To kind of do my work.

43:21

And the amount of

43:24

energy and strength that it used up

43:26

to hold myself at a

43:28

distance from that was nonstop

43:30

twenty four seven for all of those

43:32

years and suddenly it was

43:34

over and I was ready to sleep for

43:36

a

43:37

month. So I wanna just step back and and

43:39

think about, like, a little history here for a couple

43:41

reasons. One of which is you guys have known

43:43

each other for a long time. Forty

43:45

six years. Right? Since you were both at Harvard together. I

43:47

mean, I could have done the math, to be honest with you. But you

43:50

guys met at the Harvard

43:51

lampoon. Right? Yeah. We were

43:53

about halfway through. And Kurt was,

43:56

you know, one of the brilliant

43:58

writers on the lampoon, of which

44:00

there were more than a

44:02

few. And people like me who were there with no talent could

44:04

look around the room, go, oh, well, you

44:06

know, he's gonna do this and he's

44:08

gonna do this and he's gonna

44:10

do that. Or she, Patty Marks, and others, and Lisa

44:12

Hanson, obviously. And so,

44:14

you know, being able to hang with those people

44:16

was really, really lucky

44:20

for me. And, you know, there were two ways you got on the

44:22

lampoon. One is you wrote

44:24

piece of three ways. You wrote pieces

44:26

that were considered great

44:28

and funny and other

44:30

was you were an artist and so you would

44:32

do these drawings that would be great for

44:34

the cover or something. And then the third

44:37

for the dummies was you could

44:39

sell advertising for the magazine. So

44:41

I sold one ad to one

44:44

buy where I knew the owner of that

44:46

buy in Brighton. And that was

44:48

it. My one ad got me on the

44:50

lampoon and then I contributed absolutely

44:52

nothing to it for my entire time

44:53

there. I simply sat around

44:55

and and laughed. You were,

44:57

like, one of one of the starting players

44:59

on the team and Lawrence is the ballboy of, like,

45:01

you know, the Yeah. Quick second. I mean, that's good

45:03

on it. He he he was a person we

45:05

all welcomed and wanted badly once we

45:08

were shown him. But I I

45:10

wanna say that the moment literally

45:12

the moment, he was just I got a new guy in

45:14

the shampoo and not great, fine. He's,

45:16

you know, wouched for by some of

45:18

those brilliant people that Lawrence mentioned

45:20

earlier. And so if they're saying

45:22

he's great, I

45:23

I agree. There was a

45:26

night when we were hanging around the headquarters

45:28

of the lampoon. And

45:30

this small guy, a

45:32

young guy who had a diminutive fellow,

45:34

was somehow being hassled and maybe even

45:36

like pushed around and shoved around and

45:38

like, I don't know, threatened

45:40

by a bunch of Harvard

45:44

assholes outside. Suddenly,

45:46

there I was outside watching

45:49

learned some young beautiful handsome Florence O'Donnell, with

45:52

a large log from the

45:54

fireplace inside threatening

45:58

to to I don't know. No. Beat up. Whatever. WORD

46:00

away these attackers of this little

46:02

guy and did so successfully. And

46:04

it was again like an implausible scene

46:06

from a

46:08

film And there it was, I said, oh,

46:10

you know, my hero even though it wasn't me he was defending.

46:12

But again, to show you

46:14

even at this place was

46:18

all about irreverence and irony and all

46:20

the things it was about. This

46:24

extraordinary powerful moral compass that

46:26

this dude

46:27

this Boston dude, this son of

46:29

a cop, had, was just

46:32

it was explored

46:33

by his way. Isn't

46:34

large Charleston? He's

46:35

from Charleston. Gotcha. I'm from Rochester, which is the other

46:38

end of the red line

46:40

subway where when I was a kid, HyVOD

46:42

station was the endpoint. They've extended it

46:44

beyond that.

46:46

And and Harvard was literally a joke. My

46:48

friend, Tom Broderick, one day, I I

46:50

didn't know what his father did. We're in fourth

46:54

grade. And And I said, what's your father do? And he

46:56

said, oh, he works at

46:58

Avid, and there was this perfectly

47:00

timed comedic

47:02

beat. Station. And his father

47:04

worked worked worked worked

47:06

in the change booth in in Hyatt

47:08

station, you know, that's where you get

47:12

your tokens from him to to get it

47:14

was a joke. It was not it was it

47:16

was like Saturn. You know, it was a a

47:18

planet that we were never gonna get to,

47:20

never gonna

47:22

and I never even saw it. My mother is from North Cambridge, and

47:24

this part will have to be in Boston accent.

47:26

So my mother was from North

47:29

Cambridge, and so I would go visit my grandmother in

47:31

North Cambridge. And we would take other

47:34

subway to Harvard station, and we would take a

47:36

trolley that would

47:38

come up from underground beyond Habit Square. So I'd

47:40

never seen Habitat until

47:42

I went there to move in.

47:44

So you guys have both written books

47:48

courts written a lot of books. Why aren't you written fewer books than Curtis? Although that's

47:50

not really saying much because Curtis written, like,

47:52

four hundred and thirty five books.

47:55

I have read from creditors. I

47:57

have luckily, happily been asked to blurb a couple

47:59

of these books. And I believe, Lawrence, I blurb your

48:01

last book, which was a book about nineteen

48:04

sixty eight, playing with fire the nineteen sixty politics

48:06

in Kurt. I also absorbed your last book

48:08

which was called evil genius's The Unmaking

48:10

of America and before that

48:14

was Fantasy Land, how America went, hey, why are the

48:16

subtitles of those two books are a little

48:18

close for my taste, but they are kind of of a

48:20

piece because the books are

48:22

both about how the country

48:24

got so fucked up. Fantasy land is the legacy of the sixties, and how

48:26

sixties culture, the liberation

48:28

movements, and so on, led to

48:30

magical thinking

48:32

fact free society, conspiracy theories, etcetera. And evil

48:35

genius is as more about what came out of

48:37

the eighties and the the takeover of

48:39

the far right market

48:42

economics with the consequence

48:44

of enormous disparities of

48:46

wealth and all of the cultural

48:48

implications of all of that

48:50

how America's changed by the way that the right took

48:52

over, remade our economy and thereby,

48:54

remade our politics, remade

48:56

our culture. There are all

48:58

in ways books trying to explain how

49:00

we got where we are right now.

49:02

Right? About things that happen in whether the

49:04

sixties or the eighties respectively and politics or

49:06

economic respectively. Like you both

49:08

just to talk, this is gonna be a big, like, kind

49:10

of, open field running question for the two of

49:12

you. And maybe, Curt, you can start

49:14

because I I think if you stitch your two

49:16

books together, there's a kind of

49:18

unified field theory that

49:20

explains where we are now. You know,

49:22

the conspiracy theories that kind of came out

49:24

of the sixties the market

49:26

economics and the white grievance on the

49:28

lower end of the economic scale that came out of the

49:30

eighties, it kind of like explains an

49:32

awful lot about where we are. And I know you're not

49:34

a conspiracy theorys, but I've heard you say, and I've obviously talked to you many times

49:36

over our friendship about your

49:38

kind of yen for unified field

49:40

theory. So talk about how

49:42

your two books kind of explain

49:44

where we are right now in modern

49:46

America? Yeah.

49:48

Certainly, Fancy Lane spends

49:50

a lot of time in the late sixties and

49:52

seventies as one of it stops along the

49:54

way, but I do wanna say that it's a

49:57

stop along the way because America had

49:59

this chronic condition for three hundred years that

50:01

was kept in check by a variety of

50:03

grown ups and gatekeepers and

50:06

so forth. And then

50:08

along with everything else, you know,

50:10

I'm a pro sixties guy. I always

50:12

thought of myself as a pro sixties guy until I

50:14

started doing the

50:16

research for How did this fall apart? How did there start being so

50:18

many nutty beliefs by so

50:20

many people in America so fervently?

50:22

And I

50:24

saw that there was this kind of big bang moment late

50:26

sixties that then became

50:28

hesitant to use this overused

50:31

simply weaponized but weaponized given

50:33

an infrastructure by the Internet

50:35

and cable news in the form of Fox and

50:37

talk radio and all the rest. So

50:40

one, Angela, the subject is

50:42

this chronic condition of Americans of

50:45

this weakness for exciting

50:47

falsehoods of various kind. Religious,

50:50

political, medical, scientific,

50:52

and otherwise. That really is

50:54

not unique to America, but a

50:57

very definingly American trade

51:00

and character for many hundreds of years that was

51:02

then, you know, accelerated

51:04

turbocharged in the nineteen sixties. When

51:06

so many other things were happening, and and everybody could believe whatever

51:08

they wanted, and ultra individualism ruled,

51:11

and anti establishment is

51:14

a rule. Or better and now we see very much

51:16

so for worse. So that was this

51:18

chronic condition that this

51:20

rattle, if if I can use

51:22

that phrase, who who

51:24

believed all kinds of nutty things.

51:25

The rights

51:26

and the Republican Party and

51:28

now Donald Trump, but especially

51:31

before Donald Trump, these highly

51:33

rational people who didn't believe any of this nonsense, decided,

51:36

we're rich, we're

51:37

powerful, we control

51:40

big business, we're not gonna

51:42

be able to wield

51:44

power in a normal democracy unless

51:46

we get a bunch of other people on our

51:48

side

51:49

who believe this racist fantasy or

51:52

this fantasy that there's

51:54

no such thing as climate change or whatever the

51:56

set of fantasies are, how do we

51:58

exploit that? How do we

52:00

make them our army?

52:02

And so that's really how these two things are

52:04

connected. And that was done, you know,

52:07

with presidential candidates and presidents

52:10

for forty years from

52:12

Reagan through candidate

52:14

Mitt Romney, with these

52:16

respectable front men essentially

52:18

who hid the fact

52:20

that there was all

52:23

this increasing nonsense that was at the very heart

52:25

end starting this century, the mainstream of the

52:28

Republican orthodoxy, and then

52:30

suddenly Trump

52:32

came and and made it not hidden anymore. And that became inconvenient

52:34

to use the word we've used before

52:36

in this

52:37

podcast. Or the

52:40

people really running the Republican Party for their economic benefit, which

52:42

is to say that Charles Coats and

52:44

business round tables and rich

52:46

people of

52:48

the world. Laurent just run with that. Yeah. And it folds your book into it

52:50

because I do think, you know, you and Kurt obviously have

52:52

been having a long running conversation for a long time

52:54

about these things, and it's funny as I listen to

52:56

Kurt talk as both of these books

52:58

are coming together, and I would hear about Curtis

53:00

who was thinking these things through, there's an

53:02

awful lot as we've seen on this podcast of Heilemann.

53:04

know, we're all of like minded about a lot of these things

53:06

I couldn't recommend two books more to try to understand what happened

53:08

in the second half of the twentieth century and

53:10

now bleeding over into the first

53:12

twenty years of the new century

53:15

they really do give you an incredible amount

53:17

of perspective on not just what

53:20

happened, but the particular kinds of

53:22

ailments and afflictions that we're coping with

53:24

right now that truly are the challenge, great challenges

53:26

that we're facing going forward. Some of them are economic, but

53:28

I think maybe more of them are go to the heart of kind of

53:30

political economy and

53:32

our culture. Just fold

53:34

in the way you think about sixty eight and

53:36

how in your book, how that kind of

53:38

snaps into Kurt's

53:40

theory of these two big moments.

53:43

The sixties in its implications, the eighties in its implications

53:45

and how they lead to

53:47

Trump, Trumpism, and the democratic challenge

53:49

we now face.

53:51

I do think nineteen

53:53

sixty eight is the

53:55

departure point to how

53:58

we got

53:59

to hear in the Republican Party

54:02

personified

54:02

in the choice between Richard Nixon

54:04

and George Romney. But

54:06

let

54:06

me just say before that.

54:08

Fantasy land and evil geniuses as companion volumes

54:11

explain more about how

54:13

we got to where we

54:15

are now than any

54:18

collection of pages possibly could.

54:20

And one of the

54:22

geniuses of Kurt Anderson's writing, and

54:24

this is not the first time this

54:26

has happened. Is

54:28

his writing can explain things

54:30

that haven't happened

54:31

yet. Let's remember, Fantasy

54:34

Land was

54:36

written before QAnon existed and

54:37

it explains QAnon better than

54:40

anything you can read today

54:42

about QAnon.

54:44

And how can these people be standing there after

54:46

the end of the world was supposed to

54:48

arrive and they're still attached to this theory that

54:50

was based on the end of the world being yesterday.

54:53

Fantasy Land explains that, and that is the thing

54:56

that I could never have figured

54:58

out how to explain. Here's this

54:59

turning point in nineteen

55:02

sixty eight. The Civil Rights Act has passed, the Voting

55:04

Rights Act has passed by Lyndon

55:06

Johnson. The Republicans

55:08

have a presidential primary coming

55:12

up And the big contenders

55:14

are gonna be Richard Nixon who

55:16

is trying to revive

55:18

a career

55:20

from having been a loser, which is the hardest thing you can do in politics.

55:23

Nelson Rockefeller, who

55:25

is a liberal Republican.

55:27

George Romney, who

55:30

is a liberal Republican, George Romney, who is

55:32

very much on the side

55:34

of the voting rights act,

55:36

the civil rights act. He's completely

55:39

supportive of that. And they choose Richard Nixon because Nixon

55:41

ran a brilliant and professional

55:44

campaign and

55:46

Roger Ailes made his

55:48

entry into politics there on the

55:50

Nixon campaign and changed the

55:52

way television advertising operated

55:54

in political campaigns. It was the first really

55:57

truly corporate presidential campaign,

55:59

and the corporate principles

56:01

of organization worked very

56:03

well for them. So Nixon

56:06

was running against the civil

56:08

rights act and running against the

56:11

voting rights act. In what

56:13

we would now consider a profound only subtle

56:15

way. And he was taking the language for phrase first

56:17

coined by George Wallace, which was

56:19

law and order. George

56:21

Wallace had gone from segregation

56:24

now, segregation forever to a

56:26

few years later when that became an inadmissible

56:29

statement in politics law and

56:32

order, and everyone knew what he meant. The

56:34

segregationist battle cry had

56:36

switched to law and order.

56:38

And Nixon adopted it himself.

56:40

Everybody understood. Everyone in the south

56:42

understood what he was saying. It

56:44

was very clear. There was no doubt

56:46

about it. If Richard Nixon had

56:48

been president, There would have been no civil rights act. There would have been no voting

56:50

rights act. And here's the really important

56:52

thing. He never had to say that

56:54

out loud. You know,

56:56

you cut to twenty

56:58

sixteen and you have an embassyolic

57:00

Republican candidate who's trying

57:02

to do the same thing. does

57:04

he have to do? He

57:06

says, we're gonna repeal

57:08

Obamacare. We're gonna repeal

57:10

Obamacare. Okay? You didn't have

57:12

to say we're gonna repeal

57:14

the civil rights act in nineteen

57:16

sixty eight. Because everybody in the world of

57:18

political reality understood, well,

57:20

that's impossible. And everyone will

57:22

know you're an idiot if you say

57:24

that. But the people who would like

57:26

the Civil Rights Act repealed are all

57:28

gonna vote for you because they're getting

57:30

the signals. And

57:32

so if you combine the

57:35

way presidential Republican

57:38

politics track, from nineteen

57:40

sixty eight forward where you

57:42

go from Nixon to an even

57:45

more conservative Republican, Ronald

57:48

Reagan, you you're seeing how it

57:50

tracks into the story, the

57:52

much more complex and important

57:54

story in many ways that Kurt

57:56

is telling an evil geniuses. The story evil geniuses

57:58

is mostly happening outside of

58:00

the frame of what the cameras

58:03

aimed at our politics would

58:06

pick up. Because they're gonna aim at candidates. They're

58:08

gonna aim at policy

58:10

positions. They're gonna aim at debate

58:12

points and all of

58:14

that stuff. And what Kurt tells us in evil

58:16

geniuses is aha, but those debate

58:18

points didn't arrive out of,

58:20

you know,

58:22

someone just thinking what's the

58:24

cleverest politics for speaking

58:26

to people in Wisconsin? It was a

58:28

very careful and concerted

58:30

development, which I didn't know about. Without

58:32

reading Kurt's book that was happening off the stage of our

58:35

politics. And that's really the

58:37

turn. You know, if the

58:39

Republican Party could have seen Civil Rights

58:42

Act and lived with it for a few years as they

58:44

did by nineteen sixty eight

58:46

and thought, you

58:48

know what? The Democrats took the heat for doing it, but we're

58:50

glad they did it. This is a better

58:52

way to go, which by the way,

58:54

let's pay attention

58:56

to this. The Republicans did exactly that with

58:58

Social Security. They opposed

59:00

it. Then when it settled in, they went,

59:02

you know what? We're not gonna mention that.

59:05

No Republican ran on, hey, we're gonna Eisenhower

59:08

didn't run on. We're gonna repeal Social

59:10

Security, you know. And so and,

59:12

you know, they did the same thing with

59:14

Medicare. You know, passed around the same time in the civil rights act, they said,

59:16

you know what, we're gonna stay quiet about

59:18

that. Ronald Reagan said Medicare

59:20

was the end of America.

59:23

Ronald Reagan, when Medicare

59:25

was being considered, and the Congress said

59:27

if you pass this, there's no difference

59:29

between us and Cuba and the

59:31

Soviet Union. And you know, it was hysterical.

59:33

And Ronald Reagan never said a negative word about

59:36

Medicare, you know, and it's his turn to finally

59:38

run for

59:40

president successfully. So they made

59:42

that choice of

59:44

we are on the side

59:46

that will resent the civil rights

59:48

act and the voting rights act for the

59:50

rest of

59:51

time. And you can see how everything

59:54

everything just grows out of

59:56

that month.

59:57

Laurence, that is a great point about Reagan

59:59

and the hypocrisy

1:00:02

on display.

1:00:06

Acast powers the world's best

1:00:08

podcast. Here's a show

1:00:10

that

1:00:11

we recommend. The

1:00:13

briefing room is for anyone

1:00:15

who wants to understand the perspective

1:00:17

of law enforcement. It's

1:00:19

an opportunity for to talk about what comps are

1:00:21

doing out on the street from day to

1:00:24

day. Why comps do what they

1:00:26

do? And also to

1:00:28

discuss where

1:00:30

comps go out of bounds.

1:00:31

When we're out on patrol, when we go to a call, when we make

1:00:33

a traffic stop, it's not always

1:00:35

about enforcement. What we're doing with the briefing

1:00:37

room is we're

1:00:39

trying to edge kate the

1:00:41

public. It's not about a lecture. It's you

1:00:43

probably didn't know this is why

1:00:45

the police

1:00:47

are doing this. And hopefully we can provide the answers

1:00:49

to our listeners. The briefing room

1:00:52

launches January twenty seventh

1:00:54

wherever you get

1:00:56

your podcast

1:01:05

a there man who now lie lie

1:01:07

unized by not just every Republican in the

1:01:09

world, but strangely by a lot of Democrats.

1:01:12

Anyway, I wanna get into

1:01:14

that more and get your

1:01:16

thoughts curt on what Lawrence just

1:01:18

said to and talk about the

1:01:19

future. But first, we gotta take a quick break here

1:01:21

before coming back with two of you that is

1:01:23

Lords of and Kurt Anderson on this

1:01:26

episode of Helen

1:01:28

High Water.

1:01:30

When day comes, we ask ourselves where can

1:01:33

we find light in this

1:01:36

never ending shade.

1:01:38

The loss, we carry a sea.

1:01:40

We must wade. We've braved

1:01:43

the belly of the east.

1:01:46

We've learned that quiet

1:01:48

isn't always peace in

1:01:50

the norms and notions of

1:01:52

what just is. Isn't

1:01:55

always just us.

1:01:57

And yet the dawn is

1:01:59

ours before we knew

1:02:02

it some how we do it.

1:02:04

Somehow, we've weathered and witnessed a nation

1:02:06

that isn't broken, but

1:02:10

simply unfinished, we,

1:02:12

the successors of a country,

1:02:14

and the time were a

1:02:16

skinny black girl, descended

1:02:18

from slaves and raised by

1:02:21

a single mother can dream of

1:02:23

becoming president only to find

1:02:25

herself reciting for

1:02:28

one.

1:02:29

That's Amanda Gorman who was the

1:02:31

unequivocal star of the inauguration and

1:02:33

was poetry personified and promised

1:02:36

impossibility personified,

1:02:38

I think, you know, everyone was stunned by her, and I wanna come back we're back with

1:02:40

Lawrence. And Kurt, I wanted to let Kurt pick up where

1:02:42

Lawrence was talking about the historical piece,

1:02:44

but I do then wanna thrust

1:02:46

forward and curtish as you make

1:02:48

whatever point you are about to

1:02:49

make, take that point and then

1:02:52

turn to where we're

1:02:54

headed out of that And I I'll just say,

1:02:56

I mean, not only was the Managormen is

1:02:58

her hoe tree beautiful, and not only was she

1:03:00

incredibly composed, incredibly

1:03:02

charismatic, and you couldn't laud her enough. You couldn't be more impressed with her.

1:03:04

Nothing you could say would be hyperbolic about

1:03:06

her. But she also

1:03:08

know how pessimistic and

1:03:10

cynical you are about where we're going.

1:03:12

Pessimistic cynical, concerned, fearful,

1:03:14

terrified about the future of the country. You

1:03:16

could not help but watch that young woman

1:03:19

reading that poem and giving that performance and not

1:03:21

feel some degree of hope for where we're

1:03:23

headed. So that's all big tea up, but please, Kirk,

1:03:25

take it from there. Well, as it happens fortunately

1:03:27

and we didn't arrange this, the point I

1:03:29

was gonna make goes

1:03:32

directly and specifically

1:03:34

toward her, which is that

1:03:36

in nineteen sixty eight, Lawrence

1:03:38

mentioned George Wallace, who was running as a

1:03:40

third party candidate in nineteen sixty

1:03:42

eight got fifteen, in seventeen, eighteen, something like that percent of the

1:03:44

vote, which is to say,

1:03:46

Nixon Plus, as a Republican, plus George

1:03:48

Wallace as an independent in nineteen

1:03:50

sixty eight, was a

1:03:52

landslide. It was a landslide

1:03:54

for quiet dog whistle

1:03:56

racism of Richard Nixon and

1:03:59

segregationist George Wallace. What the

1:04:02

Republicans did and the right did

1:04:04

after that was it rid of this

1:04:06

embarrassing, explicit

1:04:08

segregationist George Wallace stuff,

1:04:10

we'll just have, you know,

1:04:12

the Bob Dooles and and bushes

1:04:14

and and Rodney's of the world run,

1:04:17

and we will still make those appeals. But as we say, in

1:04:19

a dog was away in a

1:04:21

quiet way, that changed. It

1:04:24

changed slowly in this

1:04:26

century as the bigotry and

1:04:28

racism against immigrants and black people

1:04:30

became more out

1:04:32

the open. But not until Donald Trump did it become fully out in the open.

1:04:34

So I was just gonna make that point that the

1:04:36

southern strategy such as

1:04:38

it was

1:04:40

among other things was No. No. No.

1:04:42

Get rid of the George Wallace's, but get all

1:04:44

of those people that voted for him in nineteen

1:04:47

sixty eight. And here we are. George most

1:04:50

famously, stood at the

1:04:52

door of Dheeraj in Alabama

1:04:54

to prevent black students from

1:04:57

going to school there and

1:04:59

was then thrown in the dustbin of

1:05:01

history promptly, except not

1:05:06

George which became more and more part of what

1:05:08

Republicanism was and

1:05:09

is. I mean, as buying a job

1:05:12

as good a job as Joe

1:05:14

Biden did, with a

1:05:16

real challenging complexity there

1:05:19

before him. Their miss

1:05:21

Gordon Harvard twenty

1:05:24

was

1:05:24

just giving us all hope, not talking

1:05:26

about the possibilities of hope,

1:05:28

old white man, but embodying

1:05:32

so, thrillingly, and and creating

1:05:34

by household, anyway, such goosebumps

1:05:36

and so many tears. So,

1:05:38

yeah, that was a a

1:05:41

moment of genius and a moment of hope

1:05:43

and she she was talking about politics

1:05:46

there and and recent events. But

1:05:48

in this

1:05:50

poetic way, that didn't, you know, alienated anyone,

1:05:52

aggravated anyone. There she was, just this

1:05:54

brilliant person, embodying

1:05:56

a large part of

1:05:59

what the American future can be if we're

1:06:01

lucky and play our cards with.

1:06:03

Howard Bauchner: So, Lawrence, here's my question.

1:06:05

My main question about the future

1:06:07

that I'd like issue of you guys to both

1:06:09

address, but I'll start with Right? What evil genius is is

1:06:12

about is the

1:06:14

extraordinarily successful

1:06:15

transformation of American life in a

1:06:18

profoundly

1:06:18

deleterious way. And the rise

1:06:20

and and primacy of market capitalism has

1:06:23

created all of these negative after

1:06:25

effects. But he says, basically, we've reached an inflection

1:06:27

point now and that this could be a

1:06:29

moment where there could be

1:06:31

a more fundamental reordering

1:06:34

of our policies, priorities,

1:06:36

perspectives around primarily around

1:06:38

economics that would therefore then

1:06:41

change a bunch of things related to our

1:06:43

politics and our

1:06:43

culture. And it's

1:06:43

all about, you know, is this an inflection point

1:06:46

that could lead to progressive kind

1:06:48

of change? He raises that question,

1:06:50

talks

1:06:52

about what would need to happen for that to occur.

1:06:54

And I guess I ask you whether, you

1:06:56

know, under these circumstances,

1:06:58

at such a profoundly

1:07:00

divided country, a profoundly divided Washington,

1:07:02

a fifty fifty senate, a narrow majority

1:07:04

in the House that these are the more quotient

1:07:06

aspects of what Joe

1:07:08

But on the larger scale, progressive candidates

1:07:10

repudiated in the twenty

1:07:12

twenty presidential campaign. Joe Biden

1:07:14

beats Bernie Sanders and

1:07:16

Elizabeth Warren. You know, the

1:07:18

politics we live in right now with

1:07:20

that level of division

1:07:22

and the lack of primacy

1:07:24

of progressive economics

1:07:26

right now You know, a, are we at an inflection point? And b

1:07:28

is the reason for hope?

1:07:30

Or do you look at where we are right now and

1:07:32

think, man, you know, it's

1:07:34

gonna be tough for Joe Biden to take on any of

1:07:36

these four cascading crises that

1:07:38

he cited in his inaugural. We're already

1:07:40

seeing Washington Within

1:07:42

days of Joe Biden's

1:07:44

inauguration, Washington is reverting back to the

1:07:46

norm and we're gonna see gridlock, we're gonna

1:07:48

see poisonous partisanship

1:07:50

that the challenges Biden faces are not just steep but

1:07:52

perpendicular. That's the dark

1:07:54

assessment. But is there a cause for

1:07:56

optimism around this notion that these crises

1:07:58

are so

1:07:59

big? They are creating an inflection point where something big

1:08:01

and fundamental could change. Well,

1:08:03

let me begin with the note of hope because

1:08:06

I might

1:08:08

forget that. Because it's not easy for me to keep that in my

1:08:10

in my mind. But it

1:08:12

is Amanda Gorman. Here's this

1:08:14

twenty two

1:08:16

year old. Who as she says

1:08:18

was brought up by a single mother in Los Angeles. She

1:08:20

makes her way to

1:08:23

Harvard where she finds a

1:08:26

student body that is two thirds graduates of public schools, you know, not not

1:08:28

the image that a lot

1:08:30

of people have of the place.

1:08:33

And two thirds of them are

1:08:35

on financial aid. And they've all worked very, very, very get from

1:08:40

their public schools, to

1:08:42

Harvard, to get that financial aid, to go on with their education.

1:08:45

Those are

1:08:48

the people who have always

1:08:50

done what they were basically told to

1:08:51

do, you know, do your homework so that you can get

1:08:53

a good

1:08:54

education, so that you can get yourself

1:08:59

to a stronger place in life. Okay?

1:09:01

And our politics is

1:09:02

never about them ever.

1:09:06

Our politics is always

1:09:08

about talking

1:09:09

to the people who are in

1:09:11

the same high school

1:09:13

classes. As those kids in

1:09:15

public school who didn't pay as much attention

1:09:19

to their homework maybe they

1:09:21

weren't as academically talented. We don't know. But they didn't pay as much attention

1:09:23

to their homework. And they're living

1:09:25

in a world where they

1:09:28

don't have.

1:09:30

The same range of opportunities that

1:09:32

the kids who did do their

1:09:35

homework have. And they also

1:09:37

do not have the same ability to process information. They

1:09:39

do not have the same ability to distinguish fact

1:09:44

from fiction which is the

1:09:46

central problem of American citizenship in the age of Trump. The inability to separate

1:09:48

fact from fiction, which

1:09:51

in Trump's case is astonishingly

1:09:55

easy, astonishingly easy. If you

1:09:57

just have a minimal set

1:10:00

of

1:10:01

mental equipment, And so there's a question

1:10:03

of whether the American

1:10:05

educational system is capable

1:10:09

of producing the right amount which your

1:10:12

Biden used used a very key

1:10:14

phrase when he's talking about unity.

1:10:16

He said enough of us. Enough

1:10:19

of us. Came together basically to create this presidency.

1:10:21

So, you know, we're never

1:10:23

talking about getting everybody on

1:10:26

the same page. We're never talking about getting everybody to

1:10:28

have the same level of intellectual ability

1:10:31

to separate fact from fiction, but we

1:10:33

needed like a solid sixty percent

1:10:35

who can do that. And then

1:10:37

we can have disagreements, you know,

1:10:39

among that group. But the whole concept of unity that the

1:10:43

media likes to think about in terms of governing unity from

1:10:46

the federal government is

1:10:49

structurally impossible and

1:10:52

was created that way by the

1:10:54

founders, you know, an eleven year old girl in Washington who's lived in Washington her whole

1:10:56

life, whose grandfather was a

1:10:58

staff person in the

1:11:00

hospital. Representatives

1:11:03

working for tip O'Neil watched

1:11:05

the invasion of the

1:11:07

capital on television not far

1:11:09

from

1:11:10

her home.

1:11:10

And turned

1:11:11

to her mother and said, are

1:11:13

we the United States

1:11:15

of

1:11:15

America, or are we just

1:11:18

the states of America.

1:11:20

And that's a really

1:11:23

profound question. And what

1:11:25

is Alabama's unity

1:11:28

with New

1:11:29

York. What is Mississippi's

1:11:32

unity with

1:11:33

California? That's not

1:11:34

an easy thing for me to describe

1:11:36

if if I had to do that. The founders created

1:11:38

the United States Senate. Many of them were

1:11:42

staunchly opposed. Most of

1:11:45

them were staunchly opposed

1:11:47

to having two senators

1:11:49

per state. They wanted

1:11:51

to be proportional the House of Representatives. But in order

1:11:54

to get the summoners to go

1:11:56

along with this, that's

1:11:58

what they had to give And

1:12:00

so they gave away democracy in the

1:12:02

founding. Because in the process of doing that, they

1:12:04

created an electoral college based

1:12:07

on the same formula of

1:12:10

the United States Senate. And so you have these two

1:12:13

sharply anti Democratic institutions,

1:12:15

the electoral college, which is

1:12:18

the only reason Donald Trump got to play his game for two months after election day.

1:12:20

And you have the United

1:12:22

States Senate. These are profoundly undemocratic

1:12:24

and institutions

1:12:27

twenty million more people vote for Democratic senators than

1:12:29

Republican senators, and yet you have an

1:12:31

equal amount. The

1:12:33

senate's never gonna be reformed. You will never hear me use the

1:12:36

phrase, our democracy. I haven't used it since

1:12:38

I worked in the Senate for a big

1:12:40

state for

1:12:42

New York state. We don't have one. And

1:12:44

I've been an election observer once in

1:12:46

a foreign country. And I have to

1:12:48

say, if at the end of the

1:12:50

couple of days, we spent, you know,

1:12:52

seeing their processes ahead of

1:12:54

time, looking at their ballot boxes and thinking like, well, okay,

1:12:59

that's good enough. And then spending, you

1:13:01

know, the day with the election returns coming in, the day after looking at all the

1:13:03

election returns. And

1:13:07

then doing our certification, which is to say, you know, when we certify

1:13:09

one of those elections, all we're saying is we

1:13:11

didn't see anything wrong. We can't

1:13:14

prove to you that nothing wrong

1:13:16

happened. But if you ever

1:13:18

said to us as we were about to leave the conference room having signed the certification that

1:13:20

we didn't see anything wrong. If we

1:13:22

were leaving and you said to us,

1:13:26

hey, thanks a lot. It's been great. By the way,

1:13:28

like six weeks from now, we're gonna have an

1:13:30

electoral college meet and they're gonna decide. We would

1:13:32

have gone, oh, no no no. Give me back.

1:13:34

We're not we're not signing anything. We'll dig, stop it. We're

1:13:37

not gonna certify this thing. This

1:13:39

is insanity. And so if

1:13:41

you look around the world, Much has been

1:13:44

borrowed from the founders for

1:13:46

creating other democracies around the

1:13:48

world and not one

1:13:51

country on the planet. Not

1:13:53

one has borrowed the electoral college, which is a

1:13:56

condemning

1:13:59

sting on the claim of

1:14:02

democracy for the United States of America. I agree with Lawrence how damning that

1:14:04

is about the

1:14:05

electoral college, but it pleases me to

1:14:07

say this, which is that Kurt

1:14:10

Anderson, you're gonna get to have the last word on this

1:14:13

podcast. Since Lawrence never gives me

1:14:15

the last word on this program.

1:14:17

I don't get first word. I don't get the last

1:14:19

word on black. You know, if I'm the black, don't the first some minute long, you

1:14:21

know, monologue at the top

1:14:23

of every show. So never

1:14:26

get the first word or the last word. like on It's stuck bun. get to Curt

1:14:31

Anderson, Now you get to

1:14:34

have the last word here on Helen Eye Water, Kurt. Please give us some cause for hope and optimism,

1:14:36

please. I'm

1:14:40

not sure I can do that. I

1:14:42

was simply going to say that when we talked at the beginning of our conversation

1:14:44

about the Democratic crisis

1:14:47

that Biden didn't mention, because

1:14:49

he was talking two weeks after this storming of the

1:14:51

capital, which was to Lawrence's

1:14:54

point about the deeper

1:14:58

built

1:15:00

in crisis of our democracy is two senators from

1:15:02

every state

1:15:02

no matter how whether they have

1:15:04

five hundred thousand people or thirty

1:15:07

million people. And the reflects that. Here we had

1:15:09

an insurrection that was saying what?

1:15:11

We haven't rigged to

1:15:13

this extent and we

1:15:16

still lost No. That's

1:15:18

what that was about. And that was just a crazy reality TV outburst

1:15:24

saying what? No. We

1:15:26

had this whole thing rigged. What? But this deeper thing that doesn't involve idiots

1:15:28

and furs and

1:15:30

running into the capital

1:15:32

to

1:15:33

Hang Mike Pence or whatever

1:15:35

they meant to do. It involved

1:15:37

this real, real problem of non democracy that

1:15:39

nobody would accept as

1:15:43

Warren says in other countries, or if positions were reversed as they

1:15:45

have been for the last one of yours, the

1:15:47

right god knows would

1:15:50

not except. So, hopefulness on

1:15:52

that score, I would simply

1:15:54

say, if and when Texas actually

1:15:57

boats under the current electoral column system for a Democrat for president.

1:15:59

You're see the

1:16:04

Republican Party very

1:16:06

rapidly saying, yes, this electro collars thing, it's nonsense. Because by the way,

1:16:08

fifty years ago, in

1:16:11

nineteen seventy seventy one, We

1:16:14

almost did away with it. There was a serious

1:16:16

bipartisan effort to get rid of the

1:16:18

electoral college. As soon as it's

1:16:20

not working for the Republicans, which, I

1:16:23

mean, Texas looked like it

1:16:25

could have gone voted for Biden

1:16:27

last fall. Then

1:16:30

if we Democrats are are willing

1:16:32

to let them do that and do the right thing.

1:16:35

And I

1:16:35

think that would happen

1:16:38

that's the great hope for curing that problem

1:16:40

is, yeah, this electrocollege thing

1:16:42

is a terrible vestige of

1:16:44

this deal with the devil and

1:16:46

the slave

1:16:47

states. You know, two hundred forty years ago. Let's get rid of it. What could happen?

1:16:49

I could really talk to you guys for

1:16:51

an infinite amount of time. You're

1:16:53

both utterly brilliant

1:16:56

and delightful We'll do a whole podcast at

1:16:58

some point where we can talk about the complicity of Liberals. Another big part of Kurt's book, the complicity of Liberals

1:17:00

with giving rise to all of

1:17:02

the problems we see on the right

1:17:05

another whole huge topic. You'll both come back if you'll be kind of generous enough to grant me the

1:17:07

ability to interview you get in the future, but it's time

1:17:09

for hell and how are

1:17:12

you gonna

1:17:13

thank you, Lauren. So Donald and Kurt Anderson

1:17:15

repeat on the podcast. Today, and we'll see you next

1:17:17

time here on Helen High

1:17:18

Water is a podcast from the recount and iHeartRadio.

1:17:21

Again to my friends, Laurence O'Donnell and Kurt Anderson for being here. If you like

1:17:23

this episode of the podcast, please it and leave a nice rating for us

1:17:26

on the Apple Podcasts app that helps people

1:17:28

figure out we're

1:17:31

doing over here. I am your host and the executive editor of the recount

1:17:34

Heilemann, Grace Weinstein is a cocreator of Helen

1:17:36

High Water. Aliyah Jackson and

1:17:38

David Wilson engineered the podcast Justin

1:17:41

terminal and Diana Rowden handle the

1:17:44

research. Stephanie Stender is our post producer. Sarai

1:17:46

Software is our producer and Christian Beadell, castor

1:17:48

Russell,

1:17:50

is our executive producer.