How to Think (and What to Do) About Another Trump Term

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • The Red State/Blue State Debate with Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsome

  • The Threats of Another Trump Term

  • Outside of Politics: Ghost Influencers

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TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:09] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.  

Beth [00:00:10] And this is Beth Silvers. Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.  

[00:00:14] Music Interlude  

Sarah [00:00:34] Welcome. We're so glad you're here. On today's show, we're going to talk about the Red State-Blue State debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom on Fox News on the Hannity Show. Then we're going to move on to the very unique threat of an increasingly inevitable nomination of Donald Trump for next year's presidential election. And we're going to end the show talking about what's on our mind Outside Politics. And right now, that's ghost influencers.  

Beth [00:01:03] If you are a premium member, it is an exciting week for you because it's Book Club Week. We're finishing up our Fall Book Box this week by discussing Jane Ferguson's spectacular memoir, No Ordinary Assignment. If you are part of that premium community, you can hear an interview that I did with Jane that is, I think, really excellent. She was such a pleasure to talk with. You can also join us Thursday night, December 7th, for a live discussion on Crowdcast of the book and we'll be kicking off sales for our first book box of 2024 next week. So this is a great time to join us as we're cruising into 2024. I hope that you'll spend more time with us with Sarah's Good Morning, my More to Say, the book club and all of the fun things that we do behind the paywall.  

Sarah [00:01:48] Next up, we're going to talk about the Red State-Blue State debate.  

[00:02:07] Music Interlude.  

[00:02:07] Beth, the Red State-Blue State debate. I had such high hopes. Why did I do that to myself? Why did I have high expectations for this event?  

Beth [00:02:16] It was marketed as a high expectations event.  

Sarah [00:02:20] It was. They tricked me.  

Beth [00:02:22] Red state-blue state implies a serious consideration of policy at the state level, which is something we don't get access to very often. I spent a lot of time thinking about what need this is trying to meet. And even though Sean Hannity is behind it, I think there is a need that it's trying to get to.  

Sarah [00:02:41] I agree.  

Beth [00:02:42] I think people do want to flesh out fundamental differences between today's Republican and Democratic parties-- not the parties of yore, but today's parties. Especially given that Covid is such a canvas to write those differences on. And we're far enough from it now that we could do that with some meaningful reflection. So I think it was sold as something different than what it ended up being, because I think all three people involved walked in with totally different objectives.  

Sarah [00:03:15] Yes. There were flashes. I mean, when we started off with Sean Hannity, he kept saying, "I want to give it time to breathe. I want to give this debate time to breathe". And I was like, bless your sweet heart. And he would ask questions and I would think, okay, that's a fair, reasonable question. And then he would ask questions and I would think, that was not a question. That was a sermon about how terrible Gavin Newsom is and then giving him a chance to respond. The bias, especially towards the end, was really shining through. But we started pretty strong. I thought the first question about the blue state migration was fair and reasonable. He basically said, "Why are people leaving the state of California?" And they are. Now, first, Gavin Newsom just didn't [inaudible] answer it. Whatever. It's a debate. We can expect a certain amount of that. Okay, fine. But then I thought he started somewhere. Really well.  

Audio playback Gavin Newsome [00:04:03] California has no peers. California dominates sizable 21 state populations combined. It's the fifth largest economy in the world. We dominate number one manufacturing state. We dominate in two way trade and research and development, access to innovation, more scientists, more researchers, more engineers, more Nobel laureates in the state of California than any other state in the nation. The finest system of higher education. It's the birthplace of life-science and biotech and nanotechnology. We dominate in green tech. We dominate in high tech. We dominate in artificial intelligence. So with respect, I think it's an interesting campaign strategy for Ron DeSantis to be bashing the state of 40 million Americans when California simply has no peers.  

Sarah [00:04:47] I thought, okay, keep going. Talk about like, I'm here because I think this is interesting, but do not compare California and Florida. California has twice the population of the state of Florida, and Florida is no shrinking violet. It's a pretty big state. And I thought if you could carry that across the line, I think it really would have set up the whole thing for I'm going to sit here because I want to talk about the Biden administration's perspective. I want to talk about what California gets right. But to refuse to admit that, yes, we are peerless and that also means we have challenges other people don't have and that sometimes we get things wrong, then I don't trust you the rest of the debate. I mean, I think overall it wasn't terrible for Gavin Newsom, but what does he have on the line? As he said in the first three minutes of the debate, neither of us are going to be our party's nominee. And so I wish he'd kind of framed that up. I thought he was going somewhere that really could have produced some interesting policy debates, but then he kind of petered out.  

Beth [00:05:43] The tricky thing about that first question I thought is that it illustrates the California and Florida are uniquely bad stand ins if what you're really trying to get to is a red state versus blue state at the state policy level conversation. Because California is so different, its economy is so large, there are so many people. Its coastline is unique in the world. And I appreciated how Ron DeSantis acknowledged that at the end. Florida is also unique because of the presence of Disney. Neither of these governors contends with a suite of issues that is that similar to most other states. These are two pretty unique places. That said, they still could have had interesting conversations and I think tiptoed around some interesting conversations. But it was both useful to acknowledge that they're different and then diminishing of the purpose of the whole event at the same time.  

Sarah [00:06:39] Yeah, because paradoxically, yes, they're so different, but they are leading the way in many of these policy debates. This is not I'm yelling about it on Fox News or the floor of Congress where nothing will get passed and signed anyway, doesn't matter. They're passing legislation in the states of California and the states of Florida. They're doing things that are very different from each other. And when they could hold those in stark contrast, I thought that's where we got the most interesting moments. I thought the next question about your very different tax approach was great. I thought Gavin Newsom's answer was good. You don't have income tax? That's regressive. But then he didn't own up to the fact that there is a lot of income inequality. And those taxes, even on things like gas, do affect people in California who are already struggling under the cost of living. You want to own California's success, you have to own that some of the repercussions of that is an incredibly high cost of living. And I don't think that means you're doing anything necessarily wrong or makes you bad to own it, to just acknowledge, yeah, it's an expensive place to live. And we have done a lot of things to try to deal with that. And we haven't quite cracked that nut yet because who knows if it's even trackable. But I did like his answer on regressive. I think no income taxes where a lot of these red states are going (I'm terrified Kentucky is going to be next) I don't love it. I don't love that tax policy. And I think there's a lot of easy things to point to of why it's hard on people. And he started to-- but again, I felt every step of the way with Gavin Newsom. I'm like, just own some of this. Own some of the things that California gets wrong. You don't have to stand up there and pretend that it's a perfect state.  

Beth [00:08:06] This is where I think, though, the different objectives they walked into with matter, because I do think Governor Newsom was there to be a Biden-Harris surrogate, not the governor of California, And Ron DeSantis, who should be operating at that national level, always is just here as the governor of Florida. That is his whole personality. So he strangely was better at owning some of what's happening in his state because he does think about Florida constantly. I thought the tax answers started off in a pretty impressive way as well. But to me, this illustrated that Gavin Newsom did not prepare for this debate any differently than he would have prepared to just show up on Hannity's show as a media hit. If he had prepared, I think he could have carried that answer a lot farther and made a more persuasive case for California's approach versus red states that are rolling back income taxes.  

Sarah [00:09:03] I mean, he clearly had some answers ready. He had stats ready. He had some oppo research on Ron DeSantis ready. It just was the lack of sincerity, which would be hard if you're standing up there with Ron DeSantis and Sean Hannity, especially as Sean Hannity continued through the night. And the bias just kept shining and shining through.  

Beth [00:09:21] But what are we here to do? Was he there to do oppo attacks on Ron DeSantis or to talk policy between red and blue states? You know what I mean? The purposes just kept getting in the way. I think Gavin Newsom thought that he would walk in and wipe the floor by showcasing Ron Desantis's hypocrisy or connections to Donald Trump. If you are going to be asked about really specific things state by state, that stuff is irrelevant.  

Sarah [00:09:53] Yeah. And then they both just kept doing "Well, you're lying."  

Beth [00:09:55] You're a bully. You're a liberal bully. Well, you are a conservative bully.  

Sarah [00:09:59] There was so much talking over each other, I didn't think I was going to make it through. And of course, you mentioned the fertile ground of Covid. Stark contrast between the two. And, again, I didn't expect myself to be here, but Hannity had a good question. He said "You had very different approaches, but your death rates are not that different. What do you think that means?" And I was like, oh, what does that mean? I don't think I know the answer to that. And they did not either. Neither of them knew the answer. They just kept arguing over the statistics. Of course, it led to a really, really bad moment for Ron DeSantis when Gavin Newsom says.  

Audio playback Gavin Newsome [00:10:32] You did that, you followed science. You followed Fauci. He followed science.  

Audio playback Ron DeSantis [00:10:37] That's not true. 

Sarah [00:10:37] I mean, that's not a clip you love. You don't want someone saying, "I followed the science," and going, "No, I didn't."  

Beth [00:10:43] I just wonder what it would have been like in an alternate universe for them to all say, "That's really interesting. What can we learn from that? This was a once in a generation situation that was hard to confront. It was scary. I worried every day about business failure. I worried every day about people dying. I worried every day about nursing homes and prisons. And I did the best I could. And I am trying to learn what I can learn in retrospect. But we both tried hard and we both lost a lot, and the people of our states did too." I think that could have been a healing moment for America in a parallel universe where perhaps this wasn't happening with Sean Hannity and Fox News and these two.  

Sarah [00:11:26] Well, and it was interesting because I felt like as the evening progressed and Hannity sort of let go of this idea that the debate was going to break and we're going to have a real policy discussion, he got more biased and Newsom's answer got better. That's how I kind of was watching. The abortion question was super biased. I thought the way he framed up the parental rights was pretty ridiculous. I did feel like they'd been listening to our show when Ron DeSantis held up the literal page I was talking about in Gender Queer as like a trap. It felt like a trap. I was like, this is the trap. This is the exact trap I was warning us about.  

Audio playback Ron DeSantis [00:12:01] Some of it's blocked out. You would not probably be able to put this on air. This is pornography. It's cartoons. It's aimed at children, and it's wrong. So this should not be in schools.  

Beth [00:12:12] This is where it really fell apart for me in concept. I think Newsom's answers got better because it became more what he expected it to be, that Sean Hannity was kind of helping prop up DeSantis, beating up Florida. You know what? I wondered about this whole section. What is Hannity's goal here, other than ratings and trying to be relevant? I don't think I understand. And, look, I don't want to spend a whole lot of my one life thinking about Sean Hannity's motivations. I don't think I understand where he is on Trump now. But in this whole section, I kept wondering, is this to help DeSantis or harm DeSantis? I don't know the answer.  

Sarah [00:12:51] Yeah. It didn't help him. I feel confident of that. I did not feel that this debate helped Ron DeSantis. And I don't know what Newsom's objective was. I felt like he got some points across. I was disappointed at the final question, which I thought was good, which is what's your favorite thing about each other's state? And Ron DeSantis answered it sincerely. He talked about going to California and what a beautiful and amazing state it was. And Newsom didn't. And I was like, man, it's not that hard to say something nice about Florida. I did like his line about it's not red versus blue, it's red, white and blue. But I was disappointed he didn't actually say something nice about Florida. Even I can say something nice about Florida and we all know what are my stances on Florida.  

Beth [00:13:28] It made the red, white and blue seem so hollow that he couldn't back it up by saying something. If you want to be a player on the national stage, you need a compliment ready for every state in this union. You do. And it's not hard to have one if you've spent any time out and about in these places. I thought that was terrible. I just found all three of them unimpressive and it felt like such a lost opportunity. I'm surprised that I got as into this conceptually as I did in advance, and then it just fell really flat for me.  

Sarah [00:14:03] Yeah, it was disappointing because there were so many things I thought, man, we really do need to talk about 'parental rights'. And I like Newsome's point of you are using this as a sword for your cultural purge. I think he's right. And I thought the best point he made was distinguishing between curriculum and just the presence of media inside the school. I was like, that's really good. That's a helpful framework to move forward in this discussion and say what's being taught and what's just present in a library. I thought that was good. I think Sean Hannity could have pushed both of them hard on homelessness. They both have a homelessness problem. They both have a cost of living problem-- we all do, especially with aging populations. And that's going to continue to affect all of us. And there was just so many things like that. I thought the distinguishing between property crime and violent crime was really important. There were so many points where I thought Gavin Newsom got us half a step forward. And I thought the immigration part where he said, "You don't have a plan, all you guys do is complain about the border. I don't see a Republican plan on immigration." There is like so many parts of this I thought, that's good. I like that. I wondered what the Biden administration thought or the Biden campaign. Were they happy? Did they feel like he did move the ball forward? I just wish that Ron DeSantis had shown the capacity to do anything but just call Gavin Newsom names and sort of engage around the policy even a little bit, which I really did not feel like he did. He was so defensive. I don't think he's got it. I think Gavin Newsom has a little bit of it, but not enough for a national campaign. Not now. I do think he feels sleek to people for a lot of reasons, some within his control and some outside of his control. But there was just enough there that I thought, man, there is some stuff here we really have got to talk about. And I think the reason that appealed to both of us is we're not going to get this in the presidential campaign. There is no damn way Donald Trump agrees to a presidential debate.  

Beth [00:15:56] No. And some of this you just have a different level of responsibility in the state. The president cannot look at these issues, every single one of them in the depth that a governor can. Parental rights is a perfect subject for a governor to governor discussion. Crime rates are a perfect discussion. The president of the United States should not be thinking about retail theft. That is not the level of the job for the president. These are appropriate subjects to talk about as states. And that's why, even though I imagine that the Biden campaign is happy that Governor Newsom sees himself as a powerful surrogate for them, that was not the level of debate this was supposed to be, and that was annoying to me. I did want to hear him say, especially about homelessness, I thought there was a real opportunity again to just say this is hard. We are struggling in California with respecting people's autonomy and their rights to decide what kind of lives they want to live and helping people out of generational poverty and addiction and circumstances beyond their control. Just like a lot of families struggle when someone has mental health issues or addiction to figure out the balance of how much do we jump in and try to save this person versus this is an adult who is making their own choices. It's very, very hard to do that in a family or on the state level. So here are some things that we're trying. I just think, again, some of this could be so healing and build so much trust with the public and the people who are trying to do this work. I know Gavin Newsom has hired really smart people who are working really hard on these issues. And I think because he comes across in what to me is a very egotistical and my eye is on the national prize way, he misses those chances to show the good work that I think is being done.  

Sarah [00:17:56] Well. And, look, I think Gavin Newsom is smart and I do think he cares. I think that he appears slick for some things that he can't control and some things that he can't. He can't help that he looks like central casting, slick politician, that's not his fault. But I think that's a really interesting distinction because the truth is, so many of these issues that Sean Hannity chose to bring to the forefront are what people care about and they're what people are going to care about in the presidential. I think parental rights will still be in front of mind. Obviously, I think crime rates will still be front of mind. And I think that will be a real challenge for the Biden campaign to say-- because nobody wants to hear a president come forward and say, "Well, I don't have any power over that." That's not a winning message. It's a very tight rope to walk to say, "I care about this. But there are other people better equipped to deal with it." Appearing with governors and mayors that are doing a good job, that are addressing this as part of the challenge. But I think that's an interesting sort of insight after decades of saying our politics is being nationalized. And I still think that's true. But this is like this paradoxical effect where it's also being localized. All these local issues that affect our day to day are becoming absorbed into our national politics, probably because we've lost so much of our civic infrastructure that helped us funnel that dissatisfaction and frustration to the appropriate people.  

Beth [00:19:24] I think that's right. And I think that journalism is a huge piece of this, that we have everything covered by the national media because local journalism has been so underfunded and unsustainable as a business model. And so, of course, you sort of flatten everything out.  

Sarah [00:19:44] Yeah.  

Beth [00:19:44] I impose on what's happening in my community all these dynamics that I'm reading about at a national level. And maybe there's nothing really wrong with that. Maybe it's fine for parental rights to be discussed at the site based council meeting all the way to the presidential race, and everybody sort of weighs in. And the president says about crime, here's what we can do for jurisdictions that are struggling with this. Here's the support the Department of Justice offers. Here are the bills that I would put in front of Congress, the funding that I would request, whatever. But I think reminding people that there are those distinctions, there is more than one problem solver. Then the president is a big deal.  

Sarah [00:20:26] Well, up next, we're going to talk about the unique threat of a Donald Trump presidency where there might not be more than one level. That seems to be the warning, is there might not be other levels of problem solving. It might just become a dictatorship. We'll talk about that fun topic up next.  

[00:20:42] Music Interlude.  

[00:20:53] So, Beth, you sent me an opinion piece from The Washington Post. A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending. The New York Times has a cover piece about this. Liz Cheney's book is coming out full of warnings about a second Trump term. And I find all of these warnings both accurate and hyperbolic at the same time. Can I do that? Can I say both and?  

Beth [00:21:24] Well, I love having that question on the table. Can I put my big question beside it? Here's what I'm struggling with. I read that Washington Post piece and thought, I don't really disagree with a single word of this. And as I hear people saying there will be fewer guard rails on him in a second term, he has alienated anyone who would constrain him in any respect. He would be validated against our justice system by voters electing him again when he's facing these criminal indictments. As I read these warnings and I think that's right, that's all true, I don't know what the call to action is for me from that. I thought the Post piece, which is a very long, detailed-- and as you said, it is a dramatic read-- is best understood as not addressed to the general public, but to people serving in Congress. Hey, are we going to take this seriously or are we just going to repeat the last cycles? Or are we going to get real about where we're going? But among the citizenry, just here in my little life, having my hair on fire about Donald Trump all the time did me no good and persuaded no one around me. And that's the question that I have. What do we do? How do we comport ourselves? How do we behave and talk about the election without repeating our same mistakes from the past?  

Sarah [00:23:01] Well, I think it's really interesting because the Post piece is an opinion piece. The Times piece is a story. Interesting choices of both papers. I did not like the opinion piece for that exact reason. Do not just lay out the world is on fire and there's nothing we can do about it. I mean, I thought inevitable in the headline was maybe just an incendiary headline, which is The Post way. But it was not. That's basically the message. All is lost. That's what it felt like the message of this piece was, all is lost. And I do not believe all is lost for a lot of reasons. One, the election is still a year away. And, yes, I do believe that Donald Trump will be their nominee. But Lord knows what could happen. These men are old. One, both of them could die before then. Who the hell knows? Like you said, I don't necessarily disagree with the points, but I just think you can never ever neglect the fundamental truth about Donald Trump, which is that he never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity. All the things in these pieces have always been true about him. And if they were true at the level that the opinion piece in particular was warning against, we would be in a Trump dictatorship now. I don't think that just because the institutions were weakened, because the party is weakened. I think that there are still aspects of his personality about his managerial style, about the people surrounding him, about the decentralization of our institutions. All these things are still true. I don't disagree that he weakened them. I don't disagree. Maybe he's learned. Actually, I do. I don't think he learns and adapts. I don't think that's Donald Trump's way. Maybe the people around him have, but I don't think they're a brain trust either. So, I don't know. I struggled with it. I fought with it in my head. Am I just telling myself this to make myself feel better? No, I think he will be the nominee. Ezra Klein had a polling expert on his podcast, and I completely agree with him that I do think there is an anti MAGA majority. It doesn't feel that way right now because we're talking about the Republican primary voters and that has a MAGA majority that is under a mass delusion, which is weird and frightening. And I think that's what all these warnings are speaking to. But I do not believe that about the general population and the general voting population, even in red states. Maybe it's because I'm feeling hopeful coming out of our gubernatorial election, but I just think that playing this out, taking him winning the nomination and playing it out to the general makes any sense.  

Beth [00:25:40] I read that sense of hopelessness in the piece as deliberate because of the point where the author said, "If we thought there was a 50% chance of an asteroid hitting earth, we would do everything we could to prepare for that." So I actually don't think there is a belief by this writer that it is inevitable. But I think there is a belief that it is likely enough and the risk of it is severe enough that people need to be taking it more seriously. And what evidence do we have that that's happening? I read this in part as a call to action for members of Congress, in part as a call to action for other members of the media, because it is a fact that Donald Trump is saying very scary things and newly scary. It is not just a 2016 redux. He is speaking about new topics and dramatic actions that he intends to take if he's the president again. I think I have made a mistake over the past few months in, one, just wanting to ignore Donald Trump and hope that ignoring him takes that rocket fuel of attention from him. And, two, assuming that everyone will hear this and think it is bananas. And when he comes back into everyone's awareness (which will inevitably happen once he's the nominee) we'll remember, no, we don't want this again. And I hope that's true. And I hold on to that hope with you. I worry that because we're all like Trump fatigued and it's so outrageous and beyond the pale to imagine that he could be elected again, I worry that we will miss opportunities to persuade people who are still persuadable.  

[00:27:45] And not just persuade people who are still persuadable not to vote for Trump, but to vote at all. I think this next election is so fragile in terms of motivating people because Trump and Biden are known qualities, because it's not exciting to think about the two of them, because we now have a lot of conversation about third parties, because of Israel and Gaza. Just a long list of reasons where you could see enough people in the right districts staying at home. I would feel so differently about this were it not for the Electoral College. Because if it were just a popular vote election, I do agree with you that we have an anti MAGA majority in the country who would show up to defeat Donald Trump if not to enthusiastically re-elect Joe Biden. But I am concerned about the unique confluence of factors happening. And I think I agree with you that Donald Trump doesn't learn, but I do think he adapts. I have been imagining lately what would January 6th have looked like had there been no Covid? I think Donald Trump was so significantly weakened by his poor handling of Covid and by the economy starting to come apart because of Covid, that he had a weaker hand in trying to stay in office than he might have otherwise. Hell, he could have been re-elected. I don't know. But I think he had a weaker hand that he might have otherwise. If he were re-elected now, if enough people in the right districts showed up to vote for him, that it got him across the finish line, I do think it would be different this time. If he were re-elected against the backdrop of all of these indictments, this is where I take those warnings seriously.  

Sarah [00:29:34] But enough people took these warnings seriously last time that it would be different because we changed the law in the process around the Electoral College. We enshrined in legislation. There is no role here, right? We did put additional protections in place. He weakened institutions, but he strengthened other ones through January 6th. The legislation we called out and called out on the show passed as law. I think there's a balance. I think a certain subset of voters do need to be reminded of how terrible he is, but you can't do it too soon. You can't do it too soon or it starts to sound like noise. I think he was weakened, particularly by his diagnosis with Covid so late in the cycle because he does have a unique ability to use weaknesses as weapons. But he needs time to do that. So I don't actually want to start bombarding people now with his comments, calling people vermin and his unhinged truth social posts, just save it all up into a nice pretty little package. And about the end of the summer, although we'll have plenty of opportunities for him to do crazy shit between now and then, remind people this is who this man is. Do you remember? Do you remember? Put it all together. The package starting back in 2015. Every hateful, terrible, violent thing that he has said. And people will still vote for him. And there will be millions more than I wish would vote for him. I think there is a majority of Americans, even in the right districts, even across swing states, who want the future. Now, that's a tough sell when the other guy's 80 and I get that. And I don't think that this is a perfect scenario. But I don't know what's going to be in place by even next summer, by next March. I just don't think that there are a lot of moving pieces and a lot of surprises left. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we'll be sitting here at the beginning of November and 2024 with Biden and Trump, and they'll be locked neck and neck. I sure as hell hope not, but crazier things have happened.  

Beth [00:31:40] I want to maintain that posture of humility alongside you, that we don't know what's coming. I am persuaded that the threat of this is great enough to take it very seriously. So I would prefer to see all of that sweet new Coke brothers money, that Nikki Haley is supposed to be coming into, doing this now, saying to Republican primary voters-- and I would like to expand the definition of Republican primary voter. This weekend, I changed my registration. I am now in Kentucky, a Republican again, so that I can vote in this primary. I would like more people to do that, to jump in and say the threat of Donald Trump as the legitimate nominee of one of our two major parties is too great. It's too great to risk him getting to the general election. He needs to be defeated at the ballot box at the first opportunity. How different would life be if that were possible? And I know that is an outrageous lift. But if the money could consolidate and the people who understand what really motivates folks who have voted for Trump in the past focused on this problem, I have to believe that the primary still matters, that it's still possible for someone else to win the primary. And I would take that risk even if it meant that it is less likely that a Democrat is re-elected. I think a Nikki Haley would be much harder for President Biden to defeat than Donald Trump.  

[00:33:10] I don't know if I really believe that, as I'm saying it out loud, but I think I do. I think I believe that Nikki Haley would be harder to defeat. And I'll take that gamble versus having the risk of Trump winning the general election again. I just think it is too great. And what really bugs me is that all of this feels like we're back in the upside down, because I think that if Trump were to be the nominee, he would be so competitive over these personal issues like we were talking about in the first segment, that it would be because of grocery prices and this book my kid read at school that made me uncomfortable, or the fact that their friends use they/them pronouns. I think it would be because of those things and it is hard to persuade people to talk about the structural aspects of our democratic republic in the face of those things. And yet if we go on this march toward dictatorship, it will absolutely be felt very personally. Republicans use that all the time to turn out Hispanic voters to talk about what it's like to live under socialism or communism. What happens when there's a dictator? But that is the direction this would go and it would be felt very personally. It's just hard to convince people of that because we didn't see enough of it during the first Trump administration.  

Sarah [00:34:30] Yeah, if that opinion piece had ended with everybody just changed your registration to Republicans so we can stop this before it starts, I'd have been a lot less angry at it. I do not appreciate the sky falling with no direction forward. I'm going to say something controversial. Maybe there is only one way for people to understand that, and that is to live it. Maybe there is only one way for people to understand how valuable what we have in America is a constitutional system with freedom of speech and freedom of the press and civic institutions that are enshrined both literally and figuratively in our country. When we read polls that say I don't really care about the Constitution, these protections don't mean anything to me, maybe people need to feel that in a real way. I don't know. I'm just getting to the part in my life where I'm old and I just feel like the younger generations I thought felt that threat, understood the first term of a Donald Trump presidency and what was lost. But my own son told me there would not have been a big difference if Hillary Clinton would have been elected. So I think we can only intellectualize and verbalize this so many times. We can only say this is dangerous. The part of the piece that I found most convincing-- I actually don't think it was in this piece, I think I read it somewhere else-- is that the really felt experience of losing a right, of losing the right to an abortion has been incredibly motivating electorally for people.  

[00:36:17] And for some reason, despite the fact that he appointed three of the six justices that voted to remove our right to an abortion, Donald Trump has not been saddled with that. And that does concern me. And I think that should be a number one strategy of the Biden administration, because that is something people lived and experienced and can see. When your vote does matter, the difference does matter. You best believe that. The first thing I brought up-- actually, that was the second thing I brought up with my son. The first thing I brought up were the children removed from their families at the border. I don't know if it's because we live so much of our lives online that so much of this is intellectualized and Covid in the ways that it did become a felt experience to people, didn't play out in one easy policy conclusion or even partisan conclusion. But there is this sense that I don't think just saying, "He's scary. What if he wins" is going to work. And maybe he will win and maybe we will face a threat unlike any we've done before to our constitutional structure. Maybe we will. There is no stasis. 

Beth [00:37:32] I try to point out in conversations with my daughter that America's system got a running start. That we are a younger country. And so our Constitution was built on experiences that lots of other countries had had at that point. And they said, "What can we take from this and learn and how can we build on it?" With the anticipation that we would continue to do that, that we would say, what can we learn from this and how do we build on it? And everything happening around Trump concerns me that we are less interested in learning from experience than I wish that we were. And I think your posture is close to where I want to be. Not all is lost. The world is ending. But it is very consequential. It is very consequential. And it would be so sad for us to have more rights eroded. And it would be unforgivably irresponsible for us to fritter away what has been built here. I can't even articulate for what. Because we're a little bored? Because we don't want to do the hard work of persuading other people of our opinions? We just want to tell them that they have to get on board with us? And I never want to do anything in a both sides way, but I do kind of mean that in a both sides way. I am frustrated by our intolerance for slow progress. I was reading Matt Iglesias's essay this morning about how across the English speaking world, incumbents are unpopular. Joe Biden actually outperforms some of his peers across the English speaking world. And it doesn't matter if they're conservative or liberal, it's that people don't like incumbents. I think that says something that we really need to meditate on. That he has to live his record. He has to live the current problems right now, even those he didn't create, even those he's trying to fix. And it is very easy to always believe that the next thing could be better. And I really thought we concluded that experiment around Donald Trump with his first term and hope that we would develop a little bit more patience. But that seems to not be where we are if the current polling is to be believed. And I think polling has been very good around the last few sets of elections, even as everyone wants to say polling is dead. It's been very good, surprisingly accurate in the last few elections. I'm thinking about the midterms. I'm thinking about even the polling around Kentucky's gubernatorial race, around some of these ballot initiatives. The polling has been right on. That's why I take this really seriously. And I'm looking for those meaningful calls to action. Okay. Well, I'm going to go vote in the Republican primaries. That's something that I can give to this. Where else can I be enlisted to be helpful?  

Sarah [00:40:37] Well, I don't think the polling has been right on. They thought Andy and Daniel Cameron were close. They weren't close. He whipped him. And I think that even in the midterms there was a lot of misses. So I'm less optimistic. I'm less bullish than you are on polling. But here's sort of with age Buddhist approach to living in democracy. I do live in a democracy with historically irresponsible people. I just do. There's nothing I can do about that. There's a large proportion of people who have lost their damn minds. But what am I going to do, kick them out? Well, I can't do anything about it. They vote. They're delusional. They live in an alternate reality where I as a Democrat are trying to a broad spectrum of things for sex changes on their children, kill babies. I mean, just whatever. That's just the reality they live in. I mean, we hear messages all the time from our listeners that their relatives are detached. They are detached from reality. And so we used to all the time on the show say maybe if we faced a unique challenge, it could sort of reset it, right? We could have this sort of reset where we can see what we share. We can see what we're working towards together. Now, the unique historical part of Donald Trump is that he was in charge during that. I think we could have had that moment in Covid, but he destroyed it. I think it would have been hard. I think you still would have seen people unhappy with approaches that the government was taking, as you do in all these historical times that we like to create narratives around, including World War Two, but I think it would have been different.  

[00:42:19] But I don't have a time machine. I can't go back and change that. I can't erase this man from American politics. Believe me, if I could, I would have by now. And so there's just a part of me that's like, not to use sort of the language of addiction and therapy, but maybe we've got to hit rock bottom. Maybe we have some situation in which he really is becoming a dictator. He really is shredding our democracy before our eyes. I mean, I think he already has to a certain extent. I agree with that part of the article. I do think that he did that. I think he should be held legally responsible. I wish that Mitch McConnell and his like had held him electorally responsible. And this is on their heads. It's on their legacy. I've never voted for Mitch McConnell in my life. I sleep easy knowing that. That's on them. I did what I was supposed to do. If it becomes worse and we need to have civil disobedience and protest in the streets, I will do what is required of me then. But I live in a big, big democracy. There is only so much I can control. And living in a big democracy with some people that live in the right district who are historically irresponsible is just the reality. That's the reality in which we live. And the other reality is that we also live alongside Donald Trump. And so I just have to sort of hold that as best I can. It's not my favorite. I wish I had more control. I wish the threat was less. I wish people had made different decisions. But I can wish, and I can wish, and I can wish. And that's exhausting. And that encourages people, I think, to opt out. And like I said, I much prefer your conclusion and your form of action over the article. That was just all is lost.  

Beth [00:44:08] I think the unique event that is the challenge of our generation is not Donald Trump or Covid or January 6th, it is the erosion of truth. I think all those things are manifestations of the way that the volume of information that we can share makes us incapable of relying on information. I'm interested in what's going to happen in terms of whether the DC criminal trial related to the election for Trump will be televised. I don't think it should be. I think having voluminous video out there to be clipped and altered and spread would be very destructive. I was having a conversation with a friend late last week who was telling me about how her daughter is just immersed in TikToks from Gaza and she's so angry. This young woman is consumed with anger over this and her mom is struggling with giving her guidance and acknowledging both the truth represented by those videos as well as the strategy represented. That part of the battle plan is now for a young woman in the United States to be incensed about this conflict. When we had Sean McFate on forever ago talking about the new rules of war, I think about him at least once a week now, we talked about like our brains are the battlefield. This, to me, is the unique challenge. And we don't have an opportunity to kind of rally around the cause because it is working on us at that level, right? So that's, again, why like a print piece in the Washington Post challenging people in a position to influence others to get as serious as they can get about this makes a lot of sense to me. I'm just trying to figure out, in addition to changing my registration, what else can I be doing that is constructive, that is not laying awake in my bed at night worrying about this, that is not berating my friends who like Donald Trump and my family members who voted for him. That is not posting on Facebook relentlessly about it. But what are the things that I can do to say I really value what we have here? I really value it. I value this structure and prioritize the structure over any one individual issue. I do. And I just want to think about how can I stand up for that structure as we enter what I think is going to be a really difficult and consequential year.  

Sarah [00:46:48] Well, what I find hopeful is that I do think the Biden campaign is taking the Andy Beshear approach, which is economic development and lots of government spending in a way people cannot ignore. In a way that whatever your lived reality online or partisan identity is, that they show up enough where you live and you see news coverage of the bridge or the road or the new factory or the new economic development piece is something that just works on you. Because you sent me that article and I was at an NFL game. And I thought, is it a unique threat if I'm sitting here with 70,000 people watching a football game? Because it feels like if it's a unique threat, everything should be different. And I hated every single day of the Donald Trump presidency. I hated it. I think people suffered. I think people died unnecessarily. And also I think for the majority of people, for a lot of different reasons, psychological modernity-- I mean, I could wax poetic philosophically about why this is true. But I think for the majority of people look back on the Donald Trump presidency and their lives were pretty much the same. Not significantly worse. Not significantly better. Probably true of the Joe Biden presidency. True. Not significantly worse. Not significantly better. Even with the pandemic. I just look around the stadium of people and I think, well, if we were all hobbled either way, why are we here cheering on a football team?  

[00:48:33] I just think for the majority of the Donald Trump presidency, even with the overturning Roe v Wade, even with the pandemic, the momentum of the status quo is enormously powerful. The momentum of social media and TikTok and just the daily grind and the everyday stress of health and bills and kids and family, it's a behemoth. That is a big rock to move. I think Covid got close. I really do. I think Covid got really close. But you put Covid on the historical spectrum of something like what the people of Gaza are experiencing or what the people of Ukraine are experiencing or what the people of Venezuela in South American countries where you have inflation that's like 500%, well, that's like a whole other ballgame, right? We're not anywhere close to that spectrum, even with shutdowns. And I just think that's what we're dealing with. It is both true that he was a historical threat, that January 6th was like nothing we'd ever seen. And also most people watched January 6th on their television and then fed their kids dinner and tuck themselves in warmly to their bed that night. I did. That's what I did on January 6th. So how do you make sense of that? What is the truth of that? What is the truth that we're supposed to put neatly on a bookshelf about that lived reality? I struggle in my own life, and this is what we do for a living. How do you put it all together? I say that about Roe V Wade all the time. Like for months afterwards, it was overturned to not be in an airport. We're all moving around normally. And yet everything's different. How could that be?  

Beth [00:50:15] My working answer to how that can be is that we are enormously privileged in the United States, that wealth buffers a lot of problems. That's the NFL's answer. You're in an NFL game. You're sitting with a lot of people who have an awful lot of resources. And so policy can come and go and their lives will be pretty much the same.  

Sarah [00:50:36] That's a lot of people, though. That's a lot of people that are in that situation.  

Beth [00:50:41] It's a lot of people, but it's not all the people. Those of us in that bubble tend to be in that bubble. We don't see and interact with a lot of people for whom the stakes are a lot higher. But the other thing that I think is true, as you look at the bigger picture, the historic picture and the global picture, is that our structure, our system that we've built buffers a lot of bad stuff. We can have a terrible president and still be mostly okay because this system is a good system. And that is my personal call to action, because I think this system is much more on the line this time if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. I think this system is much more on the line. And I would like to protect it because I would like to continue to live in a country where I can say, oh, my candidate lost, but things will still mostly be okay. I don't want to live in every single election is going to make a dramatic swing in my personal quality of life.  

Sarah [00:51:42] But is that the trap? Is that the trap that it doesn't actually change anything so people learn? It doesn't change anything because, yeah, you get that in an NFL game. But let me tell you something. You can go to my local food pantry and the attitude is not that much different. The attitude among people who are not benefiting from the system is still supportive of Donald Trump. Sort of nothing matters. If anything matters, it's the people that want to burn it down. Break up that polling by income level. The conclusions are not encouraging. It's not like you get to the bottom of the income. Now, I think that's not true. I think some of the parts that where I see the system shifting for those left out is in labor. And that's very encouraging to me. But I think politically I don't see it. I don't see that effect of this doesn't work for me. I mean, you do. You see this doesn't work for me. And so what I want to do in places like Europe is elect a populist. That's what Donald Trump is, he's a populist. So you say the system doesn't work for me. I'm left out of this privilege. Burn it down. That's his strength.  

Beth [00:52:52] Yeah. It's an imperfect system. It's a system that buffers a lot. And I think that's really important. And I understand why people who suffer under that system say burn it down because there's nothing that can happen within it that helps me. I just happen to believe that's not true. I think that it is a system capable of helping people and capable of doing a lot of good and worth some of the frustration that comes in the process of trying to do that because of how much it buffers the risk of someone like Trump. And I just don't want him now surrounded by an army of like minded people and no one who disagrees to come in and do-- I don't want to use the word irreversible because I don't really believe that anything is irreversible in life, but I don't want them to do historic damage when there are other people who can represent a lot of what he represents that I disagree with. But there are other people who can do it and do it with respect for the overall structure that I believe keeps us as Americans uniquely privileged in the world.  

Sarah [00:54:04] I guess that's just what I can't figure out being a highly political person for my entire life and only seen a couple of times where people could convincingly make the case. Barack Obama definitely being one of them. Bill Clinton being another one to a certain extent. The sense of like, I see the problems and we can get to them without burning it down. Populism is a worldwide effect for a reason. It's effective. It's just so much easier to build a case on fear and violence and negative change. So much harder to build the case to show people this can matter in your life. This is the effect this has in your life. I mean, I think we have a negativity bias. I think that's part of it. I think some of this is psychological and it's so difficult, I think, to see that events happen that you think, okay, this'll be it. This'll be it when people will see this is a bad approach, this doesn't work. And I have my own 14-year-old say it doesn't matter as long the neoliberals get back in. I mean, look, there's a lot of blame to be placed on the Republican side and there's a lot of blame to be placed on the progressive side. I'm sorry I said it. I don't feel bad. I've been a Democrat since I was 18 years old. The sense that it's never good enough and burn it down does not just exist on the right, it definitely exists on the left as well. But finding energy in that centrist approach is hard. It's just so hard. And it takes a very good politician. It takes the right combination of circumstances.  

[00:55:44] That's the other thing. When you say anything with an air of inevitability around a presidential election is bold because there's just so many factors completely outside our control. I think the economy could be on the upswing and then people could be feeling a lot better. We could be dropping interest rates by then. We could have inflation under control. That's a whole other ballgame. And so I just think if Barack Obama was running in this social media environment, he might not have won. Just like so many of these pieces, you have to be a person that's very Zen. I didn't used to be this way, but it's like I could not maintain the energy I brought to my very first presidential election that all is lost. All is gained. All is within our control. You're a good person or you're a bad person based on how you see this or respond to it. I can't do it anymore. And I don't think it worked. I don't think it's true. And so I think that's what is really difficult to hold in a situation like Donald Trump. But hold it we will, because that is our only choice everybody. Buckle up as we're wrapping up 2023. We've got all of 2024 in front of us, and that's why we will be here. We will be here with all of you holding it as best that we can. Next up, we're gonna talk about what's on our mind Outside Politics.  

[00:56:55] Music Interlude.  

[00:57:14] Beth, how do you feel about ghost influencers?  

Beth [00:57:18] I don't have any feeling about it because this is new to me. You're introducing a topic to me today, so I will live react to you on this subject.  

Sarah [00:57:27] Well, I really think it's a great term because I think it captures something we've had for a long time. I would call Marilyn Monroe the original ghost influencer, somebody that in death takes on an enormous influential role inside our culture. Elvis Presley, ghost influencer. James Dean, ghost influencer. We lived those. We had 1950s days at school on our dress up day, guys. I wore many a poodle skirt, many a poodle skirt.  

Beth [00:57:53] I enjoyed the poodle skirts. For what it's worth, they're cute. 

Sarah [00:57:54]  They're flattering. That's just the situation.  

Beth [00:57:57] I wouldn't mind to go to a party where I had to dig out a poodle skirt again. I think it'd be fun.  

Sarah [00:58:01] Yeah, well, listen, come to Felix's birthday party. That's what we had last year. Because he doesn't want a '90s birthday party. He wanted a 50th birthday party.  

Beth [00:58:07] I think that's mighty respectable of him. Just kind of saying.  

Sarah [00:58:11]  Love it. Now the ghost influencers are like Princess Diana. We have the new season of the Crown, which I've put off watching because, guys, I'm still sad about her dying in 1997. I wouldn't say I'm fully over it. Still heartbroken about it. Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, the late wife of John F Kennedy Jr, who died alongside him and her sister in a tragic plane crash in 1999, also the new ghost influencer. So many Instagram accounts about her and her style because '90s is surging and she had this very classic quiet luxury. She would never have called it that aesthetic. That's very popular right now, so she's everywhere. And it's just such a weird experience to watch people put on this alter in a very painless way. Someone who you experience as very painful because you remember them as alive. I feel this way about Whitney Houston. Her music is being remixed. It's everywhere. I still find it very painful to listen to Whitney Houston because I loved Whitney Houston when she was alive. But there's just so many people that have not experienced Whitney Houston as any way than of a pop star who is now dead. They have not experienced Princess Diana as any other way except a really famous lady who's been dead for a long time. And it's a very interesting aging experience I feel like I'm having right now.  

Beth [00:59:28] It's an interesting time to be talking about this, too, because we've just had these three really prominent deaths politically with the passing of Henry Kissinger, Sandra Day O'Connor and Rosalynn Carter. As you were talking, I kept thinking about Sandra Day O'Connor saying that she hoped eventually her tombstone would just say, "Here Lies a Good Judge." The end of the Mitt Romney book says something like, "You know that you might only get one line in history and you just hope it's a good line." I think there is kind of a comfort for many of us in knowing that we will be basically forgotten or that what is remembered of us will be so reduced that we will just be a footnote. And you hope it's a good one that you will just be a good judge we hope here. So to me, what makes this so complicated, we did not do to Elvis and Marilyn Monroe what can be done to Princess Diana and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy through social media. And I think this gets harder and harder as people leave different legacies. Even as you see now, the second someone hits it big, we're resurfacing all of their old tweets. That's just a different way of being. It's like we're living with our ghosts constantly before we even pass. And to have that done when you're not here anymore to write a new story, there's something in it that feels both sad because of the contemporaneousness for us. But also a little bit I don't know if disrespectful is the right word or profane sounds harsh, but there is something about it that rubs me in a really uncomfortable way.  

Sarah [01:01:16] Well, it's interesting because we were taking particularly Marilyn's image and creating art and images that were not her.  

Beth [01:01:25] Right.  

Sarah [01:01:26] She became and has become something much more than even the photographs of her taken when she was alive. And I can spot them like that, especially with Diana. When you grow up with someone alive and you see their image all the time, the second somebody puts forward an AI image, I'm like, "That's not her. Her hair was never like that." One of her hair had been like that, but it was never like that. Like, I can see it. I know exactly the second it's happening. I haven't seen a lot with Carolyn Bessette and I hope-- I mean, this is a useless hope, but I hope it doesn't because I think she would have been uniquely horrified by it. But I think what's so hard especially in the face of Henry Kissinger, who got to live to be 100 years old, and Rosalynn Carter, who's 96, and in people who live a long life, I think I'm still so tied up in their deaths and how tragic their deaths were. Princess Diana was 36 years old. She had little kids. I can tear up right now talking about it. It still makes me so sad. And so there's a part of me that's like, this is good. Like nobody wants their legacy to be their tragic death, even when you die really young. Maybe that was a better, more positive approach to Marilyn and Elvis and James Dean to immediately be like, "But this is what they were. They weren't how they died. They were game changers. They were an aesthetic atomic bomb." Everything was different because they were here even for this short time. Maybe that's a really beautiful way to think about a life cut so short. I would like to get there. There's a part of the ghost influencing that's like-- especially even with Whitney Houston, her voice is a gift. I don't want to feel sad when I hear it. I still struggle.. Like as we started watching the crown last night and I'm like, man, I don't know if I can do this because at every scene I'm like, "Don't go. Don't go to Paris." It's just so sad. It's just so sad. And Carolyn Bessette, getting a feel on this whole, she was with her sister. That sister was a twin. That poor family. They're still alive. I struggle with letting go of how sad it is, even though I wouldn't want that. I wouldn't want it to be that my death is what becomes of a life I lived. I think about this a lot with Rachel Held Evans, how unfair her death was. But I also think about her husband saying we are not owed anything. We are not out a single day. And so maybe this one time social media is doing something good and saying, no, we're just going to take the beauty of these people and the impact of these people. And we're going to let the way that they died fade away and the sadness and the tragic nature of how they left us fade away. And we're going to focus on what they left.  

Beth [01:04:18] That was very beautiful and impassioned. And I can't get there because social media never does just one thing, right? Some people do that, and then other people come in to say, well, actually, since you're building them up, I'm gonna tear them apart. Let's make sure that I tear them apart in the most dramatic fashion possible. And I think when you said the poor families are still alive, that is what is bugging me about all of this. That upon my death, I don't think I'll care what happens to my legacy. I'm pretty sure. It is what we are to other people that survives us most. And your reaction to the Crown makes me wonder how does that feel for Harry and William? People who have already been robbed in so many ways of a normal opportunity to grieve and a normal opportunity to figure out what life looks like after we've lost our mom. I can't imagine having an endless barrage of a dead relative's face popping up online. That just feels horrible. Even if it is celebratory and beautiful. There's something about it that feels exploitative to me or insensitive. Maybe just the best case, right? If you take it as a celebration and moving beyond the tragic death to the way that these folks shaped our lives. I even think about political figures, historic figures, people that we should always know about and learn about. It still has to be hard. And maybe that's the proximity in time that you're talking about of Diana and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy. Like it's still fresh for so many people that it seems like maybe we should just have like a rule, a policy that you have to wait a hundred years or something before you do this resurgence. I don't know.  

Sarah [01:06:13] I don't know. I think about that really famous-- well, it's famous to me because I think about it all the time. I don't know if it's literally famous, but there was an interview with Joan Didion after she wrote A Year of Magical Thinking, one of the absolute best pieces of writing on grief that I've ever read in my whole life. Where if you don't know, her husband and her daughter died very closely in time and they turned it into a play and she came to every rehearsal. Every rehearsal. And the reporter said, "Why do you come every day? Isn't it hard to think about this? And she said, "Because I wouldn't be thinking about it otherwise?" I don't think Carolyn Bessette's lone remaining sister is not thinking about her, whether there's an Instagram or not, right?  

Beth [01:06:52] Sure. Of course.  

Sarah [01:06:53] It's painful. It doesn't matter. And so I do think I have family members who approach death very differently than I do. They want to think every anniversary. They want to talk about every birthday. They want to go to the gravesite. And so I think there's a certain type of person that this would feel great. And I don't know about The Crown. I'm sure the royal family loathes The Crown, but it's a very caring portrayal. It's a very sympathetic to Diana portrayal. Actually, as far as I can tell, I'm only one episode in. They're bringing a lot of humanity to everyone involved. And so if I'm William and I'm Harry, what would bother me and what they've stated in interviews is the focus on their death. The pictures of her in the car, the refusal to learn anything about how we hunt people and how we treat people. So if there is a part of this that's just celebrating her and what she was about and what she brought attention to-- the first episode of The Crown, there's this scene with Tony Blair where he says there was no movement on a ban for landmines, and now there's 100 countries because of her advocacy. And I did not know that. And I know a lot about Princess Diana. I knew she worked on landmines. I did not know that's how quickly the ball kind of shifted, thanks to her focusing on it.  

[01:08:09] So I don't know. I think it's a mixed bag. Do you want them to fade so you can hold them close and keep them to yourself? Is the celebration a comfort to you? Depend on the person and there's no way to control for that. But I do think that allowing them to live on even as a story... The Marilyn Monroe we celebrate has so little to do with the real life woman. The Diana we're celebrating has so little to do. I think ghost influencer is the right word. That's not them. An influencer alive is not them. And so I think sort of just holding all that and saying, well, maybe her legacy can live on in this avatar and maybe William and Harry can hold close what they've always been able to hold close, which is the actual woman, maybe that sort of separation can serve something. For me, I think I am trying to let go of some of the tragicness around their death that affected me so much individually because it was wrapped up in my school shooting and me learning at a very young age that everything can change, whether you're rich and famous or not. Revisiting them and remembering, oh, yeah, I really did just love them before they became this thing that felt like heartache, that symbolized heartache. They were beautiful and they did have a style and they did have an influence. And I think that's kind of nice. It's kind of a nice balance to just being the sad story that we always remember. Well, we've taken the full emotional journey sad, afraid, frustrated, all the way back to the beginning with Sean Hannity. We are always so appreciative that you join us on these journeys. Thank you for joining us again today. We'll be back in your ears on Friday with an interview we're very excited about. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.  

[01:10:01] Music Interlude 

Sarah: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. 

Beth: Alise Napp is our managing director. Maggie Penton is our director of Community Engagement. 

Sarah: Xander Singh is the composer of our theme music with inspiration from original work by Dante Lima. 

Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

Executive Producers: Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. The Pentons. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh. Jen Ross. Sabrina Drago. Becca Dorval. Christina Quartararo. Shannon Frawley. The Lebo Family. The Adair Family. 

Sarah: Jeff Davis. Melinda Johnston. Michelle Wood. Nichole Berklas. Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

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