0:00

Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this

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is Fast Politics, where we discussed

0:05

the top political headlines with some of today's

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best minds. And Wyoming

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has purged twenty eight percent of its

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voting roll, kicking off anyone who

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didn't vote in twenty twenty two. It's

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not how any of this is supposed to work.

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Dinny Jommy stops

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talk to George Whitesides, who is running

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for Congress in California's twenty seventh

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district against the very vulnerable

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Mike Garcia. But first we have

0:45

the host of the Origin Story podcast,

0:47

Ian Dunt. Welcome back to Fast

0:49

Politics.

0:50

Ian Well, I thank you very much, thank you for

0:52

having me.

0:53

I'm so excited to have you like I

0:55

am such a humongous

0:58

fan of yours and I think are so

1:00

funny. And also because

1:03

your country doesn't matter at all, we can never have

1:05

you on.

1:07

It's extraordinary. There's a real pattern

1:10

to your praise. I've noticed

1:12

your praise as soon as it begins.

1:14

I think there's a terrible black

1:17

hole that's emerging in front of me, and I'm about

1:19

to fall directly into it. And once again

1:21

it's taken place.

1:23

So just catch us up and

1:25

what's happening in the most

1:28

important European country after

1:30

Germany.

1:31

It's definitely not that. I mean, you

1:33

certainly put France.

1:35

I was going to save Germany and France.

1:37

Yes, yeah, I think Portugal

1:41

arguably Spain. I

1:43

mean I think we're still more important

1:45

than Italy. I think we can make it.

1:49

Congratulations, Yes, you

1:51

you got Italy bead.

1:53

We have decided to have as

1:56

many prime ministers as Italy on a monthly

1:58

basis, but now way

2:01

through people at a kind of Italian

2:03

pace really, so in a way we really emulated

2:05

them, except for you know, for culture and

2:07

the love of life, food yeah

2:09

and the two yeah yeah, and the

2:12

history yeah. So but apart from that, I think we're

2:14

directing.

2:15

Them exact good exactly, But

2:17

so catch us up. I had the displeasure

2:20

of seeing that your head of Lettuce,

2:23

I mean, former Prime

2:26

Minister Liz trust whatever

2:28

fucker the that person was

2:30

in America trying to sell a book written

2:33

about her ten days as Prime

2:35

Minister.

2:36

Yeah, she's taking a route that is

2:38

actually fairly common for disgraced

2:41

Brits, which is to see if

2:43

they can go to the US where no one's really heard

2:45

of them and stuff again. And

2:48

the trouble is, there was no reason that she would

2:50

be stopped by virtue of what she'd done in Britain. I

2:52

mean that the main obstacles to her succeeding in

2:54

the US were precisely the same ones that prevented

2:56

her from succeeding in the UK, which is that

2:58

she has no cognitative ability,

3:01

she has no presentational ability. She's a kind

3:03

of charisma black hole. So you

3:05

watch her and you feel it's almost that you can

3:07

feel your own will to live

3:10

just soaking its way into the marrow

3:12

of your bones. And there's an interview with her

3:15

on Fox News that I saw actually because you

3:17

you retweeted it, which tried

3:20

to promote Yes, thank you so much for that. I really can't

3:22

tell you how that's right.

3:23

With the book where she had a backwards

3:27

You think, well, look, so what you're going to do is you're going to say

3:30

anyway, it's not classy to have an interview

3:32

on a news channel and hold up your own book

3:34

as you're talking, like, what do you think you are?

3:36

Like pelling cars on a game, atrociously

3:40

bad form, but to not even do

3:42

that correctly, to hold up the book the wrong way,

3:45

not once, but twice before

3:47

succeeding in holding it correctly.

3:50

Is there no end to your terminal

3:53

inadequacy? And the answer back question is no, there

3:55

is no end. She is now exploring because

3:57

she's decided that, you know, maybe America

3:59

is the forum for her particular set

4:01

of skills, a much more

4:03

kind of dubious politics

4:06

even than the form that she used

4:08

in the UK. So she's taken, now that she's

4:10

crossed the Atlantic, to using phrases like the

4:12

deep state, which are really not used

4:15

in British politics and which are taken as a kind

4:17

of red warning sign for the worst

4:19

kind of political lunacy. So she's

4:21

really dredging the depth over there in much

4:23

the same way, but to a slightly more extreme

4:25

degree than she did here.

4:27

Right, So she's just trying to

4:29

sort of find a second act.

4:32

I guess, but you have a prime

4:34

minister right now. You've told

4:36

me he wasn't as bad as she was discussed.

4:39

He isn't. He's just I mean, but you

4:42

know, we need to be clear with I mean, I mean, he's still

4:44

shit, He's just not as shit as

4:46

she is.

4:47

Yes, However, I have.

4:49

To say that his recent behavior has

4:51

been so obscene, so

4:54

lacking in any kind of basic

4:56

decency, that it really is becoming difficult

4:59

to even hand him that level of

5:01

credibility. The predominant form

5:03

in which has taken place is on refugees.

5:05

Jesse says mister Bean in

5:07

a nicer suit.

5:10

I think that's very unfair

5:12

to mister Bean.

5:13

Yes, mister Bean is a beloved

5:16

hero of British culture.

5:18

He is, He's loved by many cultures,

5:20

you know, Yes, one of Britain's just

5:22

the export. The exports

5:25

quite well, mister Bean, because in

5:29

that way, Richie Sunak really does not

5:31

export very well, although we would really

5:33

like to export him, but ideally Silicon

5:36

Valley, which is clearly where he wants to be. So look,

5:38

his recent activity has been with refugees,

5:40

and this has been taking on a more stridently

5:43

reactionary, i mean, really

5:46

quite authoritarian, draconian

5:49

streak in recent days. The policy is

5:51

the Ruanda policy, and the Rwanda policy

5:53

is basically to say we're going to send

5:56

anyone that gets to this country, to Ruanda,

5:59

we're not going to proce the asylum claim, so

6:01

we're not even going to We have essentially shut down

6:03

our entire asylum system

6:05

and said, look, whoever comes, will send them

6:07

to Rwanda. Rwanda can process

6:09

them, decide whether they're real a refugee

6:12

or a failed asylum seeker, and then they

6:14

will stay in Rwanda regardless

6:16

of the outcome of that process. So

6:19

it's essentially giving up any kind of moral

6:21

or national responsibility over people

6:23

that come here. Now, the vast majority of people that come to the

6:25

UK seeking asylum are given asylum

6:28

because they are from Eritrea, from Afghanistan,

6:31

from Syria, from Iran, from countries

6:33

in other words, where you're very likely to have your asylum

6:35

claim accepted, because they are war

6:38

zones where you're very likely to be subject to persecution.

6:40

He is entirely forsaken any kind

6:42

of principle on this and decided to enact this policy

6:45

this week. That yesterday, the Home Office

6:47

put out a video of police smashing

6:49

down the doors of asylum seekers, leading

6:52

them away in handcuffs, taking them to detention

6:54

centers in advance of a Rwanda export

6:56

program. These are people who are some of the most

6:59

marginalized and bud people on the

7:01

face of the earth. They have committed no

7:03

crime except to come to the UK seeking

7:05

help and believing in its better nature, and that at the

7:07

moment is the kind of treatment that they're being handed by.

7:09

Rishi Suna. So

7:12

right, I wish I had more good news here, but I'm

7:14

afraid that I don't. It's just a moral chasm

7:16

all the way down.

7:17

Yeah, sides being terrible that immigrants,

7:20

you guys, also your economy is completely

7:22

fucked right, this is correct.

7:24

Yeah, Yeah, We've been in stasis now for

7:27

really very long time. I mean really since the

7:29

financial crash in two thousand and eight.

7:31

And this happened because

7:34

you guys, you sort of enacted

7:36

republican part.

7:38

That is entirely correct. Essentially, we

7:40

had the same initial problem that you had, which

7:43

was that we were massively exposed

7:45

to the financial sector, and the financial sector

7:47

was heavily underregulated when it came to

7:49

glatteridized debt, obligations, to securities,

7:52

to all sorts of dubious games

7:54

that they were playing with their products. So we

7:56

shared that problem. The difference is that

7:58

after the financial crack, you guys did

8:00

not pursue an austerity program. You

8:03

know, interest rates were low, you were still

8:05

able to borrow and to invest,

8:07

and you pursued a pretty moderate form

8:09

of Kynesian stimulus. You then

8:11

pursued a much more substantial form of Kenjian

8:14

stimulus. Under Biden, we did

8:16

the exact opposite. So, even though interest rates

8:18

were low, we brought in borrowing, we

8:20

cut down on spending at the exact

8:22

moment that the economy was in a moment of real

8:24

difficulty of precisely the type that

8:27

economists have understood since the nineteen thirties,

8:29

since John Maynard Kines wrote the general

8:31

theory of how you deal with this kind of situation,

8:34

which is to borrow and spend to stimulate

8:36

demand to get yourself over trouble. This country

8:38

did the exact opposite, under a form

8:41

of kind of Milton Friedman Frederick

8:43

Hayek fiscal feticism,

8:46

a kind of BDSM fiscal

8:48

policy, eventually and punished

8:51

and destroyed our own economy over and over

8:53

again.

8:53

Laughing because it's funny, I'm laughing because

8:56

it's tragic.

8:57

No, I spent a lot of my life in a sort of

8:59

you know, that great zone in between tears and

9:01

laughter, wondering which it is I'm experiencing at

9:03

any given moment. Now I would now done that, you

9:05

know, really for about fifteen years,

9:07

essentially for a generation. In fact, you

9:09

could even say that's the entirety of my career

9:11

has taken place in that period of economic

9:14

stagnation. And instead what we get,

9:16

instead of any kind of viable economic policy,

9:18

which is just there to reach for if you want to, is

9:20

this constant right wing populist

9:23

victim game where someone else is always

9:25

responsible for your own inadequacy. And it can be immigrants,

9:28

it can be europe, it can be civil servants,

9:31

it can be metropolitan liberals, but it's

9:33

always someone else's fault rather than you, the

9:35

people who have been in charge for the last thirteen

9:37

years.

9:38

Yeah. I think what happened in the States,

9:40

which was smart, was that we had

9:42

seen in two thousand and eight what it's

9:44

like to not fund your stimulus right,

9:47

to only save the banks and

9:49

the corporations, and so we

9:51

did a much more false pumping

9:54

into the economy, which ultimately ended

9:57

up leading to a boom.

10:00

The luck of the political cycle

10:02

in the two moments that you really needed

10:05

people in the white House who are going to stimulate

10:07

the economy rather than put in spending. They're

10:09

in place at the right time. You also had Keynesians

10:12

around Obama, Roma in particular,

10:14

and the same I mean, I think with Biden you've seen a really

10:17

quite I mean from a European

10:19

point. You know, back in the day when I was growing up,

10:21

it was you guys that were the economically right wing

10:23

guys, and Europe were the ones that were

10:25

the you know, the much more spendy, you

10:27

know, quasi socialists, left wing

10:29

economic policy. Those roles have now completely

10:32

reversed. And that is not just the UK US

10:34

thing that that accounts for the continental Europe

10:36

as well. I mean, Germany, despite the factor,

10:38

has a center left government, is not expounding

10:41

the kind of ideas that are anywhere

10:43

near as left wing economically as that which

10:45

is coming from the Biden White House. So I

10:47

have to say some of that's quite confusing for us over

10:49

here when we see the level of disenchantment,

10:51

including on the left in the US with Biden,

10:54

so we sort of think, you know, we wouldn't

10:56

mind a bit of that. Actually, that looks pretty

10:58

good for us right now, as do your economic res Yeah.

11:01

You're going to be shocked to hear this. But you know, I do

11:03

all these interviews I said with these people,

11:05

they say, like the biggest environmental

11:09

investment ever, right, climate

11:11

investments. We're building chips,

11:13

we're building chargers, We're building

11:15

high speed trains. Well I don't know if they're

11:17

going to be high speed, but we're having trains. I

11:19

mean, we're doing all the stuff that

11:22

should make everyone on the left happy. Now

11:24

we have some other stuff going on. I don't

11:26

know if you know that's

11:29

problematic in other ways, but I'm

11:31

not even going to talk about it because I can't even

11:33

talk about it. I do think that

11:36

some of these investments are incredible,

11:38

and I do think that they will ultimately

11:41

get us where we need to be.

11:42

Yeah, it's true. I mean there is an international

11:45

consequence, of course to what's happened in the

11:47

US, and you feel that in Europe quite quite

11:49

starkly, you know, And when we were brought

11:51

up, you know, we were brought up in

11:54

a US created international

11:56

order after nineteen forty five with British

11:58

contributions again from Mainard Canes.

12:00

When you look at you know, the creation of the Breton Wood

12:02

system, et cetera. But it was essentially a rules

12:04

based order that said, look, everyone benefits

12:07

from free trade. As long as we all stick to

12:09

the rules and we do not discriminate in our trading

12:11

arrangements with each other, then we will all

12:13

ultimately benefit. Now that is not the program

12:16

that Biden follows at the current White House follows.

12:18

There's a much more. It's essentially

12:20

a kind of left wing nationalist economic

12:22

program in that it's about, you know, direct

12:25

making sure that the supply chain is provided

12:27

in the US and with its trading partners,

12:29

it is discriminating in its trade arrangements,

12:31

and it's freezing out China to create a

12:33

kind of dual block in the world,

12:36

dual trading blocks now in Europe, that obviously

12:39

creates all sorts of sentiments and has

12:41

created a tremendous amount of resentment of what

12:43

Biden is doing, including among very

12:45

reasonable and impressive politicians like Emmanuel

12:47

Macron in France. And what it's prompted,

12:50

and interestingly in a UK case, is

12:52

having to think, well, actually, what do we do then?

12:54

Because we cannot source all of our supply

12:57

chain, we cannot secure it. Just in the UK,

12:59

we cannot make a car in the UK, we

13:01

make a car in the continents

13:04

of Europe as part of that supply chain.

13:06

So I see in a strange way

13:08

towards Europe in a way

13:10

that hasn't really been politically understood on

13:13

the side of the Atlantic quite yet.

13:14

So that's where I wanted to go

13:17

with this. Always it's funny

13:19

because it's like there's always this you know,

13:21

quiet conversation that people have with each

13:23

other on the left about

13:26

what happens if Trump wins

13:28

and New York State and California

13:30

are not, you know, they have to then pay

13:33

for Trumpism, right, So we're always

13:35

there's always sort of a thought process which

13:37

is like, can we get out?

13:39

And the reality is this would

13:42

be the same as brexit. You know, it's

13:44

more taxes and more regulation put

13:46

together. I mean, it's this same idea

13:48

that you don't like where you are, so you

13:51

make life much harder. And that's

13:53

ultimately what's happened to you guys.

13:55

Right, yeah, except that there was nothing you know,

13:57

the distinction there is that there was nothing wrong

14:00

with where we were.

14:01

No, no, certainly not yeah, yeah, no,

14:03

no, We're much more found to than you guys. And it was

14:05

also part of what happened was that the people

14:07

didn't really know what they were voting for.

14:09

They didn't really they did

14:12

know that they wanted less immigration.

14:14

They got the opposite. We now have more immigration, of

14:16

course, because this country requires immigration

14:18

in order to survive. It's just that instead of

14:21

coming from Europe for immigration, those numbers have

14:23

fallen catastrophically. They're now coming

14:25

from India, from Pakistan, from all

14:27

over the world. So I'm not entirely sure

14:29

that the average Brexit voter was really really

14:32

intending to swap Polish people for Indian

14:34

people, but that's what they've got now.

14:37

They were lied to, I mean, they

14:39

absolutely were that. You know, the campaigns were all

14:41

about you will take back control, you'll

14:43

have more money for your health service. People have less

14:45

control over their lives now there is less money

14:47

for the health service. The crucial thing, though, is

14:50

the pulling has changed on Europe completely. I

14:52

mean, the level of support for rejoining

14:55

Europe is now very very high, very

14:57

very consistent play out over years.

15:00

It's almost i mean, it's not far off double

15:02

the level of support people saying that they want to stay out.

15:05

That is a really different thing, I think, to

15:07

actually being able to deliver on a

15:09

referendum campaign. In which

15:12

you rejoin. There's very little appetite

15:14

for that. People are talking in abstract terms

15:16

without the reality of it being presented to them,

15:19

and most importantly, without having to emotionally

15:21

think, oh fuck, we're going to

15:24

have to have that conversation again for

15:26

year after year after year, talking about tariff

15:28

arrangements and customs checks and regulatory

15:30

borders and all of the most tedious sentences

15:33

that are potentially formulated in the human

15:35

mind. But nevertheless, they are

15:37

kind of open to the idea.

15:40

And demographically, that's

15:42

where the real change is happening. You know, young

15:44

voters much more comfortable with multiculturalism,

15:47

much more comfortable with wanting to travel, have

15:49

a much more diverse sense of identity.

15:51

They can be English, they can be a Londoner,

15:53

they can be British, they can be European.

15:56

All At the same time, those voters

15:58

are obviously coming online every day

16:00

more and more of them turn eighteen and

16:03

older. Voters much more likely to be uncomfortable

16:05

with multiculturalism, much more likely to have voted

16:07

four Brexit, are going offline,

16:10

shuffling off life's mortal coil every

16:13

day time. So the demographics

16:15

have completely shifted. And even that alone,

16:17

even if no one had been convinced of the era,

16:20

that alone, at the moment would be handing us a significant

16:22

polling advantage.

16:23

But you have an election coming up, Yeah.

16:25

We do. We're going to come up sort of six months

16:27

was so, and the Conservative government

16:30

is about to get the most almighty biblical

16:33

spanking of its very long life.

16:36

So what does that look like?

16:38

I mean at the moment, like there are polling

16:41

forecasts of the moment that are properly

16:43

old Testament. They're like the great

16:46

the literally just the one that came out today put

16:48

the Conservatives on eighteen percent. The

16:51

Conservatives I don't think have been on eighteen percent

16:53

at any point in my life. I'm forty

16:55

two years and I think they've ever hit

16:57

that number. Labor is currently polling

16:59

between twenty and twenty five points

17:01

above them, very very big

17:03

gap between the two parties. To give you an impression

17:06

of how that plays out, you would have a

17:08

sort of as few as eighty to

17:10

ninety Conservative MPs with

17:13

the rest of the chamber. That's six hundred and

17:15

fifty MPs in total, comprised of Labor

17:17

and other parties. Let's say maybe four hundred

17:20

and fifty five hundred labor MPs.

17:23

The scale of it is so impossible to grasp.

17:25

We don't know how to fit them in the room in

17:27

the House of Commons. In our parliament. We have

17:29

no system that because we have to have them

17:32

sitting opposite each other. Right, if you have that

17:34

few MPs in the opposition party, you

17:37

just have to start populating their benches

17:39

with the governing party's MPs. More

17:41

than that, you need them to shadow government

17:44

departments. You need at least one hundred MPs to be able

17:46

to do that, and the current polling indicates that the Conservatives

17:48

will not have that number. They are essentially

17:50

polling so badly that they've broken

17:53

the operating mechanics of British democracy

17:56

at the moment. And unless something changes,

17:58

and it may well change, but it hasn't changed

18:00

for quite some time, it looks like that's the

18:02

kind of really pulverizing

18:05

result that they can look forward to when they do eventually

18:07

go for a general election.

18:08

This is like the greatest thing I've ever heard,

18:11

And there's no way you can do that here.

18:14

What do you mean, I mean, just transmit

18:16

all of that sort of energy for or

18:19

winning, can

18:23

you?

18:24

I would like to translate that you

18:26

know what the key thing, the key distinction between

18:28

us and you, And I think have noticed this a couple

18:30

of times. It was like it's the moment the

18:33

spell broke. And for a

18:35

long time I thought Boris Johnson would have

18:37

the same spell over people that

18:39

Donald Trump had, and he

18:42

doesn't. He didn't like when he

18:44

in the end, when he had a scandal, you know, having

18:46

parties in Downing Street during COVID

18:49

going against the legislation he had himself written,

18:51

something just snapped in people. The people

18:53

that supported him, right wingers, reactionary

18:56

you know, anti immigrant voters, they

18:58

just turned against him. You know, they had this sort of

19:00

innate sense of the injustice of that.

19:02

Now I just don't I don't believe for a second that if

19:05

Donald Trump had done that, had parties during

19:07

you know, lockdown people his supporters

19:09

would have turned against him in any way, There's something

19:11

more profound in the link he has with his

19:13

base that Boris Johnson was just unable

19:16

to secure. And at that moment, the

19:18

Tory polling died and it never came

19:20

back. It just gets well, I mean, obviously it plummeted

19:22

even further when Liz Trust came and

19:25

catastrophically blew herself up,

19:27

you know, over the space of forty one days. But

19:29

nevertheless, it just got worse and worse from

19:31

that point. That mythic link with your

19:33

support Trump has it, Johnson didn't

19:35

have it, and that is the core reason that we've managed to

19:37

turn things around.

19:38

Unbelievable. Thank you so much for joining

19:41

us.

19:41

Not at all. I'm glad that for the first time, after

19:44

talking to you for years, I finally have some good news

19:46

to report about what's going on in this country. And maybe,

19:49

just maybe, in four years,

19:51

we won't start one of these conversations with you telling

19:53

me how catastrophically shited is

19:55

here. We'll find out.

19:57

Yeah, it's the dream

20:08

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to fastpolitics dot com.

20:29

Non Denny Jommy is the co founder

20:32

of check my at. Welcome back to Fast

20:34

Politics.

20:34

Non to me, Hi, mom, so excited

20:37

to be here today.

20:38

We're so excited to have you. What you guys

20:40

are doing is amazing, So tell us about

20:42

your organization and then we'll

20:44

go from there.

20:45

Absolutely, So check my

20:47

Ads is the digital advertising

20:50

Watchdog. We are a fully

20:52

independent organization working to

20:54

protect your right to an Internet free from

20:56

scam, lives and manipulation. And

20:59

we do that by working towards

21:01

transparency and accountability in the

21:03

Internet economy, which is basically

21:05

ads.

21:06

So walk us through the thinking here, because

21:08

this started as people

21:10

not knowing advertisers not knowing

21:12

where their ads were showing up.

21:15

Right, My work personally started in twenty

21:17

sixteen with the launch of

21:19

Sleeping Giants, which was looking

21:21

to demonetize Brightbart and then after

21:24

that was successful, we successfully

21:27

lost them ninety percent of their ad revenue

21:29

in just three months, just by alerting

21:31

advertisers to where their ads were running.

21:33

I started to look at

21:35

other websites, and Gateway Pundit

21:37

was one of them, and I found that interesting

21:40

because the ad agencies

21:42

and ad exchanges, which are basically

21:45

the companies that run ads

21:47

on behalf of advertisers, had been

21:49

doing a lot of work to say

21:51

and to convince their clients the advertisers

21:54

that they were no longer running ads on websites

21:57

like Bredebart, and I was seeing

21:59

ads from big advertisers

22:01

on the Gateway Pundit. That's

22:03

kind of where where my work led

22:05

to tell.

22:06

Us what you did with the Gateway Pundit, This

22:08

is a.

22:08

Long time coming.

22:09

In the summer of twenty twenty, the Gateway Pundit

22:11

had a lot to say about the Black Lives Matter protests,

22:14

and around this time I

22:16

started checking into them more and I noticed

22:19

that they were running ads from

22:22

major ad exchanges, and

22:24

I basically started to contact

22:27

these companies which had previously dropped

22:29

Breitbart, but we're still working with this

22:31

website, so it made no sense to me. So what

22:34

I did was I contacted each of these companies,

22:36

in some cases publicly, in some cases

22:38

privately, and sometimes both,

22:41

and I asked them point

22:43

blank, what are you doing running

22:45

ads for this website?

22:47

And once that's on

22:49

the record, like once I've sent that email

22:52

or that tweet.

22:52

The balls in their court.

22:54

And because ultimately they serve advertisers,

22:57

they can't just ignore me when I

22:59

point out one thing that is detrimental to their

23:01

client, so they kind of have to respond.

23:03

So pretty much all of.

23:05

Them, one by one confirmed with me that they

23:07

were dropping the Gateway Pundit.

23:09

It was actually really easy.

23:10

So the Internet sucks

23:13

a lot of times because there's

23:16

no government regulation.

23:18

Right.

23:18

Congress could have said, you have

23:20

to have verified news sources,

23:23

you have to have content that's vetted,

23:25

you have to have Twitter can't

23:28

link to sites that aren't true. They

23:30

could have made checks and bounces, but

23:32

they decided not to. But the

23:35

only real ability

23:38

that we have as a country and

23:41

as citizens to fight back againstuff like

23:43

this is legal, right.

23:45

I would disagree that we

23:47

want Congress to be

23:50

the ones to decide what is.

23:52

I mean, they're not going to. I think they

23:54

could have years ago stopped

23:57

a lot of the junkie stuff on the

23:59

Internet by saying that tech companies had

24:02

to really pay for content

24:04

for magazines and newspapers. I mean

24:07

they didn't, but you you know, there's

24:09

incentives for everything else. Right.

24:11

I think it's a bit more complicated than that because

24:13

a lot of these disinfo outlets that we see

24:15

today kind of snuck into

24:17

the advertising ecosystem, the

24:19

media eCos by classifying themselves

24:21

as the news and companies like Google and

24:24

all the other exchanges face I mean, I don't

24:26

want to speak on Facebook, but these companies

24:28

just kind of are working at scale

24:31

and they don't want to look into it both for

24:34

you know, they don't want to put the resources into it and they don't

24:36

want to have to make those kind of decisions.

24:38

It was just kind of the result

24:40

of I think it just kind of.

24:42

Snuck up on the tech company

24:44

well as as a society.

24:46

But the thing that we can

24:48

control.

24:49

That's outside of the government that I think is

24:51

very very key to solving this problem.

24:54

I mean, ultimately, this problem is fueled

24:56

by advertising. The Gateway

24:58

Pundit was launched twenty years

25:00

ago, almost twenty years and

25:03

their rise was fueled by

25:06

unbridled access to digital

25:09

advertising revenues. We're talking The

25:12

Center for Countering Digital Hate did a study

25:15

and will never know the exact number,

25:17

but they estimate that in the twenty

25:19

twenty elections leading up to the

25:21

insurrection that the Gateway Pundit

25:23

made around one point one million dollars in

25:26

revenue from Google ads alone.

25:28

I mean, Jim Hoft lives in a very

25:30

very nice house.

25:31

So that is where we can make

25:34

a difference, and we can do it because

25:36

these ad exchanges all have supply

25:39

policies, and these supply policies

25:41

are essentially an agreement that they have with

25:43

advertisers who do want to advertise

25:45

in as many places as they can, but they don't

25:48

want to end up on polices like Gateway Pundit.

25:50

So these exchanges, the vendors

25:53

have explicitly

25:55

written out in their policies that they won't work

25:57

with websites like the Gateway Pundit. And

26:00

by the way, a lot of these at exchanges adopted

26:02

this language after our Sleeping Giants

26:05

campaign against Breitbark And.

26:06

I want to just pause for a second and

26:08

talk about Jim Hoff for one second.

26:11

For people who are not quite as read

26:13

in as we are, Jim Hoff is

26:15

a guy who just basically makes stuff

26:18

up and it's all very

26:20

crazy, Republican,

26:23

trumpy kind of Can

26:25

you give us sort of an example of

26:28

one of his stories.

26:30

I mean, where

26:32

do I even again? I mean, they're really

26:34

really out there.

26:35

He said a lot of stuff about I mean, he was one of the

26:37

biggest voices against

26:39

COVID vaccines. And the funny thing is he's

26:42

now on the record thanks to a documentary

26:45

from a French filmmaker which I do want to talk about

26:47

shortly, that he doesn't believe anything that

26:49

he said.

26:50

Right, which is shocking because I always just thought

26:52

he was really stupid. But yeah,

26:55

me and a lot of just

26:57

completely crazy just to have targeting people

27:00

dominion staff the whole nine yards.

27:02

He now has declared bankruptcy.

27:05

In the summer of twenty twenty, I

27:07

successfully managed to get Jim

27:09

hoft Gateway Pundit kicked off of like

27:12

three or four AD exchanges, which

27:15

was awesome because someone

27:18

was watching.

27:18

And that someone was a woman named aud

27:20

Favra.

27:21

She is a French content creator,

27:23

documentarian, filmmaker, and she

27:26

contacted me to say that she was working

27:28

on a documentary about AD

27:30

funded disinformation and then she was specifically

27:33

working on the Gateway Pundit. What

27:35

I didn't know until later, until almost

27:37

before this documentary aired, was that she managed

27:40

to get a meeting with Jim

27:42

Hoft,

27:44

invited her into into his

27:46

home, showed her all his giant,

27:49

magnificent rooms filled with fancy chandeliers

27:52

paid for by Google ads, where he told her

27:54

I.

27:54

Don't actually believe the stuff that I publish.

27:58

In that same documentary, add also

28:01

managed to get an interview, an on

28:03

camera interview. This is so unusual

28:05

and rare with a Google representative,

28:09

and what she did was so smart.

28:11

She took print outs.

28:12

Of all the crazy stuff that

28:14

that Gateway Pundit has. Maybe not all,

28:17

because that would be a really big folder, but

28:19

she got a really good samplus set of Gateway

28:21

Pundits articles and confronted

28:25

the Google rep on camera with printouts

28:27

and says, don't these articles violate

28:30

your policy your supply policy?

28:32

And the Google rep was just clearly

28:35

flustered. He was not expecting this. He

28:37

thought this is going to be a softball

28:39

interview. Basically didn't know what to

28:41

say in the face of this clear

28:44

evidence. There's no other answer

28:46

to this other than you're right, they should

28:48

not be monetized. And what happened was

28:51

a few days before this

28:53

documentary was set to launch

28:55

in France on National TV, Google

28:58

dropped the Gateway Pundit and flat

29:00

out just devastated the Gateway

29:02

Pundit.

29:03

Again.

29:03

I can't speak to the numbers, but

29:05

we do know for a fact that Google Ads is

29:08

the biggest ally and

29:10

funder of disinformation in

29:13

not just in the United States, but.

29:14

In the world.

29:15

So when you have ads, when you have access

29:17

to a Google Ads account, you have access to in

29:19

theory, unlimited funds, which is one of the

29:21

reasons why Jim huffed, you

29:24

know, produces eighty one hundred

29:26

articles per day, because each one of those

29:28

articles is money. I mean, he's literally

29:30

printing money. So getting him kicked off

29:32

of those ad exchanges, particularly

29:35

Google, was huge. And

29:38

while it did not put him out of business

29:40

immediately, what happen is when

29:43

he was sued by

29:45

the election workers who he defamed, he

29:48

lost a lot of resiliency.

29:50

That money isn't coming in anymore.

29:51

I suspect that he can't afford

29:54

to fight these lawsuits because the money

29:56

isn't coming in. Wow.

29:58

I mean the Gateway Pundit was also like a favor

30:00

of Trump. He fed a lot of

30:02

the lawes that then we

30:04

saw. I mean, these far right content

30:06

creators, I feel like they are

30:09

a mobius strip and one

30:11

feeds, the next feeds the next,

30:13

and it ends up on a way

30:15

and right, I mean there's a whole

30:17

sort of there's a way this works, right.

30:20

Absolutely, They feed off of each other, they

30:22

cross link, they feature each

30:25

other on each other's videos. They're constantly

30:28

cross pollinating. And this is frankly,

30:30

it's very good marketing. And they're

30:33

very smart and very good at what they do and

30:35

That's why they need to be That's

30:37

why these supply policies are so important

30:40

because that because marketing is

30:42

great, but if you're but if

30:44

you're marketing in a way that is

30:47

detrimental, dangerous, or derogatory,

30:50

that needs to be nipped in the bud.

30:51

Right and that is is the

30:54

way to do it. So in this country,

30:56

three hundred plus million people, what ten

30:58

million read newspapers, I mean

31:00

much less than that, but a couple million watch

31:03

cable television. There's a majority of people

31:05

in this country who are not getting their

31:07

news from cable television or from

31:10

newspapers or magazines. So

31:13

are they getting it from these sites? I mean,

31:15

what are the numbers on this sort of

31:17

traffic on these sites?

31:19

I couldn't give you an answer to that specifically,

31:22

but but more generally, I would

31:24

say that that the

31:27

disinfo outlets that were

31:30

the most prominent in twenty twenty

31:32

and in the years before that are seeing

31:34

a fairly significant decline

31:37

in traffic. That is because Facebook

31:40

has been deprioritizing

31:43

news and political content in our news feed,

31:45

so that has had a really strong effect

31:47

on these outlets. It's unfortunately

31:49

also had a strong effect on real

31:52

news outlets. The fact is that

31:54

the tech companies refuse

31:57

to differentiate between disinformation

32:00

and news. Let me tell you something that's really

32:02

interesting. Samsung. So if

32:05

any of your listeners have a Samsung TV and

32:07

you watch Samsung TV live, turn that

32:09

on. There is various categories

32:11

of channels that you can watch, and

32:14

one of those categories is New than Politics, and

32:16

on News and Politics, you'll be able to

32:18

watch channels like a

32:20

cs NBC, ABC, and

32:23

you'll also be able to watch Steve

32:25

Bannon's War Room on Real Am.

32:28

Really yeah, And what Samsung does

32:31

is they bundle up all of these

32:33

channels under News and Politics and

32:35

they sell the bundle

32:37

to advertisers to run their ads on. So

32:40

two years ago, Bannon was

32:43

bragging to the Atlantic about how

32:45

he's doing so great that he's added another

32:47

hour to his show to accommodate

32:50

his sponsors. And I was like, what the hell is

32:52

he talking about? So I turned on my TV. I

32:55

saw ads for Edsy, Volvo,

32:58

Audi, Nissan, and BMW.

33:01

I mean, the biggest brands in the world,

33:03

Procter and Gamble brands tied

33:06

and that.

33:07

I have Evolvo.

33:10

Favo.

33:10

What are you doing?

33:12

They don't want to be on there, and that's

33:14

the thing these advertisers have

33:17

already set. Etsy was one of the first

33:19

companies to block Breitbart back

33:21

in twenty sixty.

33:22

Yeah, so these guys, they don't want their ads

33:24

on here.

33:24

What's happening is that their vendors are feeling

33:27

them, and they do it through these sneaky, sneaky

33:29

ways. So I have asked

33:32

Samsung, why is it that you have bundled

33:34

a news site with a disinformation

33:36

outlet like Real America's Voice,

33:38

I mean Bannon's on

33:41

in the morning, followed by Charlie Kirk, followed

33:43

by I don't know, Jack Pisobiac.

33:45

This is not news. Whatever this is, it's

33:47

not news.

33:48

They just keep getting away with it.

33:49

And so that's why what we do is

33:51

so important, because we work with advertisers.

33:54

We talk to advertisers, and we speak to marketing

33:57

and brand representatives about what's happening,

33:59

because a lot of the time they

34:01

aren't aware of what is happening with their ads,

34:04

and because there's constantly new

34:06

places for these bad guys

34:08

to be expanding their little empires

34:11

into. Like Bannon is a great example.

34:13

He went from websites to a TV

34:15

show on streaming TV and streaming

34:18

TV is like the wild West of digital

34:20

advertising. If you talk to any advertiser,

34:22

they're going to be like, God, I hope my ads aren't running

34:24

on like it's on rushing state

34:27

TV because it's impossible to

34:29

know what's actually happening.

34:31

I think that it's right. And I also

34:33

think that, like what you're doing here,

34:35

which I think is really important, is

34:37

everyone is so busy and everything

34:40

is expanded so quickly that there

34:43

have to be people checking on

34:45

what's happening. And because and again

34:48

I know that I said this earlier and

34:50

maybe you thought I was being a little bit nutty

34:52

about this, but I'm actually right, I

34:54

promise, because there's no regulation for

34:57

any of this. There's no one to regulate

34:59

it, right, there's no industry, there's no FDA

35:01

for streaming.

35:02

I do want to point out that regulation is

35:04

very important and core to what

35:07

we're doing at check my ads, but oura

35:09

of regulation is slightly different.

35:11

So we operate from the insight that

35:14

I.

35:14

Just said, which is that advertisers don't

35:16

even know where their ads are running, and

35:18

oftentimes, almost all the time,

35:20

the ads that end up where they do happened

35:23

without the knowledge or consent

35:25

of the advertiser. So imagine how

35:27

much money did Volvo fork over

35:30

to Steve Bannon. I bet they're

35:32

not happy about that. What this really comes

35:34

down to is the fact that there is this six

35:36

hundred billion dollar digital advertising

35:39

industry that is operating under

35:41

almost like just a

35:43

cloak of darkness. We know

35:46

how money is being spent, so when it comes

35:48

down to an advertiser saying,

35:50

or even if anyone ever

35:53

mandated, you know, don't run your ads

35:55

on X or Y, there's no

35:57

way for us to verify that because

36:00

the digital advertising vendors

36:02

are keeping that information

36:05

advertisers, they.

36:07

Don't need to produce the transparency,

36:09

so they're not going.

36:10

To exactly And that's why

36:12

this keeps happening. Because advertisers can't

36:14

see where their ads are going. They don't have visibility,

36:17

and so we're in a situation where

36:19

billions of dollars every year advertisers

36:22

are just basically handing them over to

36:25

strangers.

36:26

I think this and Congress

36:28

could say that there needs to be

36:30

clarity about that, and they could make

36:32

finds, but god forbid, I'm

36:34

sorry, everybody's off. It's a Thursday. Thank

36:37

you so much. This is so

36:39

important. I hope you'll come back and talk

36:41

more about all of your victories

36:44

and what an important service you're providing.

36:46

Oh well, thank you so much, Molly for letting me talk about

36:48

this today. I really appreciate it.

36:51

George Whitesidees is a candidate for Congress

36:53

in California's twenty seven district.

36:56

Welcome too, Fast Politics, George

36:59

white Side, Thank you so much, Molly,

37:01

it's great to be with you. Explain to

37:03

us what you're running for.

37:05

So I am running for Congress,

37:07

trying to bring a voice for pragmatic

37:10

leadership out in California's twenty

37:12

seventh congressional district, which

37:14

is on the north side of La

37:17

County, and I'm running against super

37:19

Maga Mike Garcia.

37:21

You are a congressperson from Los

37:23

Angeles running for a seat

37:26

that is occupied by a

37:28

Republican make it make sense, and

37:31

a Maga Republican.

37:32

It's absolutely nuts.

37:33

Right, So just a little bit about me. So,

37:36

I am a space guy, right. I

37:38

was chief of staff of NASA for President

37:40

Obama. Grew up wanting to work in

37:42

NASA and did

37:44

that under the Obama administration absolutely

37:46

fantastic. Then went on to

37:49

move out to the district to run an aerospace company

37:51

called Virgin Galactic did that for about

37:53

ten years. Amazing experience and help

37:56

the community in a lot of ways along the way, particularly

37:59

in wilds in COVID And we can

38:01

talk about those things. But you know, the crazy

38:03

thing, Molly, is that on the door

38:05

side of La County is arguably

38:08

the best chance to flip a seat

38:10

for the Democrats to help out and

38:12

flip the House in the entire country. And it's

38:14

this district that Biden won by twelve

38:17

and a half points.

38:18

Jesus, how did Democrats

38:20

lose this district in

38:22

Sanitay.

38:23

Well, it's complicated.

38:25

It's okay, we don't have to go back there. Yes,

38:28

so explain to us how

38:30

we got here, with why

38:33

you decided to run, and also

38:35

tell me some horrifying things about Mike

38:37

Gercia.

38:38

How we got here is we're in a

38:40

purple district that's trending blue. All

38:43

of the underlying indicators of this district

38:45

are really heading in our direction, right, So

38:48

voting for Biden by twelve and a half points Democratic

38:50

registration advantage of twelve points.

38:53

It's a district that voted for Prop

38:55

One, which was this California amendment

38:57

protecting reproductive freedom by almost twenty

38:59

four points, right, and so all these things

39:01

are sort of, you know, indications

39:03

that this is a district that we should have, and yet

39:06

we have this representative now, Molly,

39:08

who is stridently

39:11

anti choice. Right. He was

39:13

one of the co sponsors of what we call

39:15

the National Abortion Band Life of Conception

39:17

Act. He was one of these guys who voted

39:20

to you overturn the presidential election

39:22

in twenty twenty. And he votes

39:25

to cut the budget by thirty percent.

39:27

It votes for Mike Johnson and Jim Jordan

39:29

and all these things. And so we've got a great

39:31

opportunity here to flip

39:33

a seat because like, our district is pro

39:36

choice, it's pro Biden, it's

39:38

moving towards the Democrats, and it's

39:41

kind of the perfect time to flip

39:43

one of these four seats that we need in the country.

39:45

So what is Mike Garcia like, he's

39:48

embraced MAGA. Tell us more about

39:50

that.

39:51

Well, he's just going to do whatever Donald Trump

39:53

wants, right, and so you know that's

39:55

what he did back in twenty twenty when

39:57

they wanted to overturn the election.

40:00

And he's just really really out of

40:02

touch.

40:02

He also secretly sold Boeing

40:04

stock ahead of a Dan report.

40:07

Oh yeah, you heard about that. Yeah, it's

40:09

actually absolutely bonkers, right because

40:11

you know, I worked in the Obama administration, which had

40:13

these super high ethical protections

40:16

and did very well, right, Like, we had very few

40:19

ethics issues. If anybody had done anything

40:21

even vaguely like what Garcia

40:23

has done, they would have been so out during

40:25

that time. But that's just an indication of how crazy

40:28

it is. Let me just summarize what happens for your listeners.

40:30

So basically, back in twenty twenty,

40:32

my boning Garcia was on the Transportation

40:35

Infrastructure Committee in Congress,

40:37

which was investigating Boeing at

40:39

that time for those terrible accidents that they had,

40:42

and so they were about to come out

40:44

with this very damning report on

40:47

Boeing as a company, and so right before

40:49

then, Garcia sold fifty

40:51

thousand dollars worth of Boeing

40:54

stock, And that in itself is

40:56

like totally unethical and terrible.

40:58

But more than that, he then didn't

41:01

report it as he was required to under congressional

41:03

rules until after the election. And

41:05

this is an election that he won by three

41:08

hundred votes, So like, it is absolutely

41:10

insane that he's like essentially there

41:12

because he was he seems to have been

41:15

hiding unethical stock creating

41:17

behavior.

41:18

I mean, I shouldn't laugh, but

41:20

again, if you do, when I'm

41:22

going to make you promise me right now

41:25

that you will that you guys will

41:27

work on this.

41:29

We got to fix this.

41:30

Members should not trade stocks.

41:32

It's just like bad idea jeans,

41:34

you know, for your older listeners. It's just a

41:36

terrible idea.

41:39

We got to change that. We got to fix a lot of stuff.

41:41

And I mean, like that's what I'm a pragmatist,

41:43

right, I'm, you know, one of these guys who just wants

41:45

to get stuff done. And

41:48

I am so disgusted by what I see

41:50

in Congress now under Republican leadership.

41:53

It's just so it doesn't do anything.

41:56

And like that is one of the things that we got

41:58

to do. But I think we got to go under the hood in a lot lot of

42:00

ways and really reform

42:02

Congress because it's just not up

42:05

to snuff to answer the challenges

42:07

of you know, the twenty first century.

42:09

Yeah, it is sort of shocking

42:11

to me. And there's so many things that this Congress

42:14

does, like the Appliance

42:16

Messaging Bill, the anti science

42:19

rhetoric. So here you are, you were at

42:22

Virgin Galactic, You've confronted

42:24

science and you believe in it. Talk

42:26

to me about this. You know, they want to

42:29

make sure that Democrats can't ban gas

42:31

stoves because God

42:33

forbid anything that. And

42:35

Democrats don't even want to ban gastobes.

42:38

But the thinking mind this was at gastoves and

42:40

I have a gastobe. They league, but

42:42

the idea that this Congress would then run

42:45

with it as a sort of like

42:47

tenant of the new Republican

42:49

Party seems nuts to met.

42:50

Yeah.

42:51

Part of the reason, a big part of the reason why I'm

42:53

running, is that I think we need more people

42:55

who are literate in science and technology

42:57

in Congress to address these huge challenges

43:00

we've got coming down the road. And so,

43:02

like, what are those challenges, ai, you

43:04

know, the social media and

43:07

how it affects our kids. I have an eleven

43:09

year old and a thirteen year old, and I am just

43:11

absolutely terrified about what's about

43:13

to happen over the next ten years in their lives.

43:15

Climate change, you know, healthcare.

43:18

We have to have people who understand this

43:20

stuff, or at least understand it enough

43:22

to like address the fundamental issues

43:25

and you know, I like to say my favorite movie is Apollo

43:27

thirteen, of course, and there's this great scene

43:29

in Apollo thirteen where you know, the spacecraft

43:32

is broken. It's out in lunar orbit or whatever

43:34

it is, and back on Earth, they like get

43:36

their smartest engineers together and

43:38

they kind of throw on the table all the stuff

43:40

that they think is inside the capsule and they say like, Okay,

43:42

you got to fix it, you know, with this stuff. And

43:45

I kind of feel like we're at that kind

43:47

of moment with American democracy. You know, it's like a

43:49

failure is not an option. We got to

43:51

we got to take what we have, and good

43:53

people have to you know, run towards

43:56

the fire. Not to mix my metaphors,

43:58

but I'm also really into the wheld fire

44:00

challenge we can talk about, you know, like we have

44:02

to have good people run towards this dumpster

44:05

fire that is the Republican led

44:07

Congress to fix it. Because these challenges

44:10

that we've got, whether it's technology challenges

44:12

or whether it's housing or you know,

44:14

clean energy or affordable healthcare, Like

44:17

we got to be smart about addressing these things.

44:19

And if we ignore the science, if we ignore

44:21

the facts, like we're just not going to solve

44:24

this stuff. And so that's that's a big part of

44:26

why I'm running it is.

44:27

But the Biden administration, they've done sort

44:29

of incredible generational climate

44:32

change legislation.

44:33

Absolutely, I mean they have done amazing

44:36

stuff, right and you know we should

44:38

give them do credit for huge,

44:41

huge things that they have done.

44:43

Will be the only people doing it, but yes,

44:45

we'll do it right now, very unshe.

44:47

At least here you and I are going

44:50

to give them credit. And so I

44:52

do that. I give them credit. You know, I think back to the Obama

44:54

instration administration it's very similar, you know, like

44:56

amazing people going into work in

44:58

the federal government. And by the way,

45:01

we need more people like that, right, Like we have

45:03

to inspire people that you can do

45:05

good work inside the government, right that you

45:07

you know that it's not this thing that you should burn down,

45:10

because the government is going to be a key part of

45:12

the solution. I'll give you an example at NASA, we

45:14

really wanted to reinvigorate NASA in a lot

45:16

of ways, and not just increasing

45:18

the Earth Science budget, but also sort of like figuring

45:21

out how we can interact with the private

45:23

sector in ways that work better, and so

45:26

we made some changes under the hood, and now

45:29

like great things are happening in the

45:31

American space industry. We're discovering all

45:33

this stuff in space, and our companies

45:35

are doing really well, generating thousands,

45:37

tens of the thousands of jobs all across

45:39

the country. And we took some tough

45:41

decisions back there. And that's what we have

45:44

to do, is we have to like really be smart about

45:46

these big policy problems. Certainly, the Biden

45:48

administration is doing awesome work in climate

45:50

and healthcare and many other things. And

45:53

I'm just like terribly worried, honestly

45:55

about what this fall holds and

45:58

the crucial importance of Tea taking

46:00

back the House not just for these issues,

46:02

but also for you know, the issues around

46:04

democracy. Right, Like I say to everybody,

46:07

let's keep in mind, you know, these are the people going

46:09

to be certifying the election in twenty twenty four. Yeah,

46:11

I didn't go so well, you know, I mean, it went fine,

46:13

And imagine if some of

46:15

these people are in charge of that when we

46:17

get to that point, we can't have that right, So we have

46:19

to flip the House.

46:20

One of the things I was actually thinking about when we're

46:22

talking was that if Democrats

46:25

don't flip the House, the idea that

46:27

Mike Johnson, who Trump decided

46:30

he was his guy because of

46:32

the briefs he wrote about the twenty twenty election.

46:34

Right, absolutely, this is what's so

46:37

terrifying about this scenario. Right, I

46:39

mean, you play it out, and I mean you are

46:41

doing such a good job of exposing these issues

46:43

because we have to be really honest

46:46

and focus on the reality of what we're

46:48

heading towards. We're heading towards a reality

46:50

where if we don't flip the House, we have a bunch of election

46:52

deniers in control of the House. We're controllingscation,

46:55

we have the possibility of a president

46:58

who could be the end of American democracy. I

47:00

wrote a note as I have a good friend of mine

47:02

in Congress today, a guy named Derek Kilmer.

47:04

He's a really amazing guy, represents

47:07

Washington State, and he was, you

47:09

know, in Congress in twenty twenty. And I remember

47:11

sending him a text message in

47:14

the middle of the afternoon on January sixth, and

47:16

I said to him, and we were texting back and forth, he was

47:18

alone in the Capitol, and

47:20

you know, of course number one, I was like, you know, are you

47:22

o pay. But number two, he

47:24

and I were talking about the importance of

47:27

getting back into the capital, you

47:29

know, and certifying the presidential

47:31

election. Think of you know, if

47:33

we had a Republican controlled

47:36

Congress or House at that moment

47:38

in time, you know, and how catastrophic

47:41

that would have been at that moment. So you

47:43

know, this is really existential. Every election

47:46

is the most important election, Molly,

47:48

right, but this really really is, I

47:50

think, and that's why I ran, you know, like in

47:52

twenty sixteen. It was so existential,

47:55

right, We all felt that concern and worry when Trump

47:57

was elected, and I didn't feel like I was

47:59

at a point where I could exactly step back

48:01

from the company and stuff, but I

48:03

knew like I had to step up. That

48:05

we all have to step up. I mean, you step up every

48:07

week or you know, all the time. We

48:10

all have to do that right now because if we're not,

48:12

but we have serious problems if

48:14

we don't flip the house.

48:16

You know, it seems like such an existential

48:18

threat. But there really are people

48:21

on the other side who really believe

48:24

in Trump and trump Ism And can

48:27

we do two seconds on climate change? Because

48:30

you worked at Virgin Galactu

48:32

and you are coming from Los Angeles.

48:35

Are you shocked and how quickly

48:37

it's happened around us? And also

48:40

are you shocked by how little

48:43

people have admitted that it Like there's

48:45

a sense in which there's like a faked

48:47

in fatalism about it that I'm very

48:50

surprised by.

48:50

Yeah.

48:51

So I have a degree in remote sensing, you know, which is

48:53

like satellite imagery of planet

48:55

Earth. And you have worked at NASA,

48:58

and the data

49:00

that we're getting.

49:01

Right now, Molly is very scary.

49:03

You know.

49:03

You look at the temperature of the

49:06

oceans and they're

49:08

literally off the charts, like literally

49:11

that is not an exaggeration. They are off the charts

49:13

of what they have been over the last you know, ten

49:16

twenty thirty years. And that's where a lot

49:18

of the heat you know, of our planet is

49:20

absorbed in the oceans. And if those are

49:22

now shooting up. But it's methane,

49:24

right, It's a lot of things. But the

49:26

point is that the scary idea,

49:29

and it's not yet confirmed, but the scary

49:31

idea is that we may be on a new curve

49:34

for warming for planet Earth.

49:37

And this is the way that I bring it home

49:39

for voters in my district. Because

49:41

climate change can seem sort of, you know,

49:43

abstract to some people. In our district,

49:46

we have a huge threat from

49:48

catastrophic wildfires, which of course

49:50

have you know, swept the American

49:52

West over the last five or ten years. And

49:55

people are worried about two things. They're

49:57

worried about their homes burning down and their commune

50:00

unities burning up. My wife, by

50:02

the way, grew up in Santa Rosa where they had a terrible

50:04

fire where five thousand homes were burned.

50:06

They're worried about that catastrophic risk,

50:08

but they're also worried about the financial risk

50:11

embedded in their insurance policies.

50:13

So hundreds thousands of

50:15

Californians in our district are currently

50:17

getting kicked off their insurance

50:20

because these private insurers are basically

50:22

just leaving the state or they're refusing

50:24

to write new coverage, and so what they're

50:26

what our voters are being forced

50:28

to do is to get on a state backed

50:31

plan which costs thousands of dollars

50:33

more. And what I say to folks is like, this is

50:35

really climate risk becoming

50:38

very real for all of us, and so we

50:40

need to have smart people who can actually

50:42

address these climate risk related

50:44

issues. Like wildfires,

50:48

like hurricanes, like other things,

50:50

and you look at the other side and they don't

50:52

take any of this seriously. My

50:55

opponent doesn't think that climate change

50:57

has anything to do with wildfires, and

50:59

that kind of attitude, that blindness

51:01

to the reality of our world is

51:04

really catastrophic and presents huge,

51:07

huge problems for our ability

51:09

to use solve these issues.

51:11

Yeah, I mean, what do you think

51:13

those numbers are? When you look at

51:16

the new climate change track

51:18

percentage warming?

51:20

Unfortunately, it's it's quite clear we're going to

51:22

exceed this one point five degree celsius

51:24

thing. You know, by the way, we have got like

51:26

a tactical mistake that we made was to

51:29

present all these numbers in celsius. It's

51:31

really like a three degree thing. But that's

51:33

just like global average. A lot of places

51:35

will be looking at you know, you know, ten

51:37

degrees fahrenheit, fifteen degrees,

51:40

twenty degrees fahrenheit.

51:41

I live in New York. It goes from

51:43

sixty to eighty. You know, it goes

51:46

from forty to eighty. I mean, none

51:48

of that is normal. We don't have snow anymore.

51:50

It's really scary and so but we need

51:52

to have hope, right and This is not just in

51:54

the area of climate change. It's in the area

51:56

of like democracy, it's in the area

51:58

of all these things that we need to be thinking about.

52:00

Like we need to have the hope that we can

52:03

solve these challenges. And I do believe

52:05

that we can, like if we get good people into

52:07

government, if we get good people into Congress,

52:10

you know, if we keep the White House, like we

52:12

have the capacity to solve these problems

52:14

nationally, globally and locally. Like

52:17

you know, I talked to a lot of young voters in our districts.

52:19

It's just over at community college College of the

52:21

Canyons, and you know, some kids are

52:23

really bummed out now and I

52:26

try to get them excited that like, no, we

52:28

can solve these problems, but we got

52:30

to address them honestly. We got to like look at

52:32

the facts and if we do that, we can

52:34

we can have a positive impact.

52:36

We just can't lose hope.

52:37

Yeah, it's really true. Thank you so much,

52:40

George, and good luck.

52:41

Thanks Molly, it's great to speak with you.

52:45

A moment.

52:48

Jesse Cannon, Mally

52:51

Jung Fast Trump particular

52:53

with the Roe versus weight, he really likes

52:55

to pretend that public sentiment is something that's

52:57

not what are you seeing here?

52:59

So Trump says that

53:02

a lot of people like it when he floats

53:04

the idea of being a dictator, again,

53:07

I don't like it. It's bad. American

53:09

democracy is fragile. Trump said

53:12

that a lot of people like it, he told the

53:14

Times. This is from this Time magazine

53:17

article which has Trump

53:19

talking about deportation camps. They're not

53:21

for you, or maybe not for you yet.

53:24

And if states want to monitor

53:26

women's cycles, he's okay with that. Well.

53:28

He also wants you to know that people

53:31

love his authoritarian rhetoric.

53:33

And not since the

53:35

Civil War have freedom and democracy been

53:37

under insult at home as they are today because

53:40

of Donald Trump. Trump is willing to throw away

53:42

the very idea of American

53:44

democracy and we're seeing it right

53:46

here. And for that Trump's

53:49

authoritarian leaning

53:51

and his belief that people like it, that

53:54

is our moment of our gray. That's

53:57

it for this episode of Fast Politics,

54:00

and every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to

54:02

hear the best minds in politics makes

54:04

sense of all this chaos. If

54:06

you enjoyed what you've heard, please send

54:08

it to a friend and keep the conversation going.

54:11

And again, thanks for listening,