 This is Politics for the People, welcome to joining us. I'm your host Stephanie Stoll Dalton. Our topic today is the persistence of our toxic politics and who and what for. You know we have a panel of discussions for this topic and I'd like to introduce them. We have Jay Fidel and we have Karen Buzzer today and I'd like to start with asking Jay, how have toxic politics as we've mentioned in the title of the show has it any boundaries in the current climate? Is there any boundary for it you can imagine? Not yet. You know we're waiting. We're waiting to see God rails. We haven't seen them you know. Is there nothing the GOP won't do and we haven't found the limit yet. It's outrageous what they do and it's destructive to the country and I find it interesting that you know people who probably finished high school, some of them college, some of them have actually traveled, not many. They take the position that they don't take a position and the important thing for them is to remain in power and to support the club, the GOP club and Trump, I guess especially Trump cult. And so in the process they really don't do anything for the country and it's amazing, A, that they they can do that. They don't care. They simply do not care and B is that the system you know voting and responding to constituents doesn't seem to affect them. I find it amazing so many places in the country where this republic is doing completely destructive things to the country and then anybody who finished high school would see that. People apparently don't see it and don't do anything to control them. You would expect their constituents would be lining up outside their door in their local offices and talking about federal delegations in their local offices and banging on the door. That's happened in the past obviously and it does affect it has affected their votes in congress but that doesn't happen now. They do whatever the GOP wants them to do. The GOP is very well organized but it's only to achieve power and to retain power and to feed its own needs, say needs for power. So the bottom line is that what we have is a government that is completely ineffectual, congress that's completely ineffectual because you don't have the senate and because of mansion and cinema and you have the house by a thin margin and the likelihood of course this is the you know the baseline of our discussion that in November the probability is that the republicans who are very well organized to win elections by hook or crook emphasis on crook you know will control both houses and then we'll see no god rails at all. I mean god knows what kind of strange bills they will pass at Trump's suggestion. So as I understand it Stephanie the point of the show today is to ask whether there are real indications that this is changing and there are some indications that it may be changing. I think we dilute ourselves to think that those changes will carry the day. Well you know in in addition to the lack of any qualifications whatsoever if I hear you correctly there's also absolutely no policy plan there there's no platform so so in addition to no no know how no experience being brought to it we have we have no plan for. Well there is there is policy I think I think the democratic rhetoric overstates that this policy the policy is anti-immigration isolationist populism the policy is racism a bigotry the policy is you know don't take care of the disadvantaged in any way the policy is let the 1% thrive and let the rest of the country go to hell. The policy is to I guess for a lot of people the support the dictators overseas including Putin and the policy is all you know negative wrong destructive policy that's the policy it's just not without policy it's just awful awful policy. Well you know I this toxic politics coming out of that circumstance and being built by that implied platform I suppose and policy and and with examples such as the RNC censure of the GOP members who are serving on the January 6 committee has has this toxicity escalated to unexpectedly higher levels Karen I mean like has it grown up? Yeah I would say so yes when they're censoring their own members that's pretty toxic and you know it's all based on whether they fall in line with Trump and his coup or not you know if he if they don't support the coup then you know they're out if they support the coup then they're in although there does seem to be to be honest some breakage with a line recently there are a few Republicans Mitch McConnell is the most prominent one who's starting to suggest he doesn't want Trump back so the question is I guess who would who would they run if not Trump would there be somebody that could follow the same in the same lines as him the other thing with Trump is of course his legislative issues whether he will be in jail or what will be the status will be a criminal you know violating a a felon of some sort so we don't know until then what how the cards play out. You know can I jump in on that we had a show a couple months ago where we looked at the likelihood that Trump would be caught by all this by all these you know lawsuits and potential prosecutions and all and I made a list of 50 tactics that he might employ I think the last one is that he would move to Russia and and take all the classified information with him that was my last but you know there were like 50 things that he could do we haven't even started that list yet there's so many things you know intimidation of witnesses intimidation of jurors and intimidation of judges you know claiming it's all a witch hunt having his people get out in the street and protest there's so many things that he could do to derail all of that so although you know the liberal press tells us that there's progress made in in those investigations in New York and I guess in Georgia and the liberal press tells us that you know there may be prosecutions of one kind or another coming down the pike because of the insurrection as you said Karen his insurrection it belongs to him it's his baby all the way you know the query whether it's going to catch up with him we don't have that much time but in the meantime and on the other side of that coin the republicans we can never forget this any day of the week the republicans have been busy busy busy dismantling our voting system and they have done a remarkable job you got to hand it to them you know whether democrats you know complain and and blame and you know talk high high policy and high high moral values fact is the republicans have already done a really good job in screwing up the voting system and really that's that's the issue of the day from now till after november 2022 whether the voting system has enough left to work well and in regard to Karen's comment about mcconnell being maybe a tiny little green spot in this in this dear dearth of any positive signs at all but um he was critical of the the rnc's chastising the the members on the january 6 committee and um is it true that as trump then said to um the world in his way now that the senate leader does not speak for the g.o.p and neither does he speak for the vast majority of the voters for the republican cause so um let's see let's go back uh karen can you talk to that did he is that true that he said that and what's the value of that comment from well i think it's very valuable because he took a stand not only against trump but against the republican national committee who you know said that it was a normal i forgot how they phrased it it was a normal political activity to stage a coup or whatever uh and they got a lot of pushback from those remarks including um not just mcconnell but a lot of other uh like um uh mit romney i think pushback and there was other republicans who pushed back against those remarks so uh but one of the things i did happen to look at recently was just speaking of voting restrictions as j brought up a minute ago there have been a lot of voting restrictions put in place but conversely even though we don't hear about it uh there there's also uh voting expansion occurring in a lot of estates through the democratic states so both are happening at the same time we hear a lot about the restrictions and i think the scary part of the restrictions is the intimidation of the electors who are you know trying to keep it impartial like they've had a huge mass resignation of people who are you know working in the voting arena like the electors and they they're afraid because they're getting all these threats and intimidation i think that's really horrible that you know they can't even uh have a fair election without being intimidated or a threat their family's being threatened but there have been some laws passed and that is according to what i found 25 states have expanded voter access particularly through voting making it easiest to register automatic voter registration in some states whereas that's true the there have been some states who went the other way you know the usually the southern states which they've removed the mailboxes so they can't put their ballot in mailbox and they've uh done i think that's the drop box you're referring to the drop box right right the drop box right and they purged a lot of people from the rolls they gave uh they put in place as part of their new legislation deadlines on when you could vote or when you registered a vote so a lot of people didn't know about the deadline so like they kicked in georgia like half the voters off because they missed the deadline so they're doing stuff like that but it's interesting they have so far failed their big goal according to the brennan center they introduced 440 restrictive voting laws but the ones that failed were the ones that attempted to exert partisan control over the election results where the officials like brad raffensperger um you know they wanted them him to call the election for trump and he refused so that's kind of where the pressure point is right now i think well they they're they're trying to elect republican acolytes to those offices to raffenberg burger's office all over in every state and they and they put them on the ballots and these guys are absolutely unqualified and they're absolutely not impartial they're partial they're republicans and they're and their sworn duty is to screw up the election um now i just want to mention i i saw something on one of the um the channels that i do watch uh it was a uh non-profit an org by the name of uh run for something run for something dot org run by a woman named litman that's all i remember but this was a very worthy organization because they were running candidates against these g.o.p acolytes um and and they were trying to beat that initiative um you know in every state where it has appeared um and i thought to myself you know we talked about last time we definitely we talked about deciding where you would put your money to make a difference and that is an organization where you could put your money to make a difference it's a pressure point as you said it's a pressure point and if we can't have a clean vote you know i mean if there's confusion people won't vote at all if there's fatigue call it political fatigue they won't vote they've given up a lot of people in 2020 um the people voting because they were somehow activated and that carried today not not not a sweeping result but it carried today uh clearly what's going to happen in 2022 it may not be the same right result uh it may be that people are really tired of all this toxicity um they're tired of the the daily fight they're tired of the lies and and they've kind of given up and then they find things like the republican effort to um control the secretary's secretary of states um and you know with people who are sworn to destroy the voting system there's all these efforts that we find that trump has made and could again try although he doesn't have the power of the white house he could again through his acolytes try to find ways to do the same kind of terrible things and so i think it's and of course then there's confusion there's confusion as to which of those bills that karam was talking about which passed and which didn't pass and which prevailed in what state and what are the rules are there dropping boxes or not um can you actually have your vote counted this i swear there's going to be huge confusion even if you stop all these efforts right now today uh here in february um i think the confusion will last right through election day and so that's a factor to consider as to what is going to happen here and there is election day going on okay so today in texas it's early voting it started today and it started with at least 40 percent of the the mail-in ballot applications which are due tomorrow being rejected and disqualified and sent back so my question is jay doesn't this apply to republicans as well as democrats is this not as inconvenient one way as the other um uh who's happy about a logical point of view you would think it does but you know they are attacking people on the wrong their view of the wrong side of the racial equation they're trying to de-friend even disenfranchise uh african-americans uh latinos uh anyone that's um not a republican they they have made a calculation i'm sure this is not you know a wild effort this is a calculated effort that although this may affect some republicans too by and large it's going to affect more democrats that's amazing and more minorities i should say but everybody gets old no matter who you are and gets those same difficulties to deal with and this these are not the days of a literacy literacy test i mean and i was thinking that might be another reason but that that's not the same kind of club that they had many many or even a century ago but it's been going on for a long time so good well okay so that so you were asking about or talking about what this is looking like and going to be in the effect so what what do you think this voting outcome in texas will mean to the politics and will it increase the toxicity or lessen it or what what what what are you seeing coming out of this since texas is evidently up first here what are we going to find out you're asking me or karen um oh karen yeah let's go over to you okay well uh texas was one of the ones that passed the most restrictive voting laws so it's not surprising uh i don't know per se exactly what they passed but uh they were consider their four states that passed the most restrictive that was georgia iowa texas in florida so i think uh they're going to continue to try to politicize the voting process just like they did with covet i mean it seems to be that's a major strategy is to politicize everything that doesn't seem like it was political before it used to be just a process that we followed and you know that we went to the doctor and got a vaccine but now uh it's politicized and used as a kind of issue to fight the other side with so i think it's um not a good sign but i do think that if we look at these candidates as you mentioned stefanie that have been placed on the ballot against this the state um the secretary of states who have vowed to um state with trump then uh that's a huge defeat for democracy there's no way around it but you know the other thing that's interesting with the uh trump thing is if if he was if he was if the election was fraudulent then all the congress people were fraudulently elected not just him so the whole congress would so no one's even mentioned that like uh uh the republicans that got elected also be considered you know if it's fraudulent it's fraudulent not just that's not what he would say though he would say is that the fraud is being done by the democrats and the republican the public and congress people um that they were properly that's what he would say because you know the man lies he's a pathological liar and when you identify a pathological liar i don't know about you guys but you know i i have met pathological liars you know and the old question after you watch them for a while is how can you tell when they're lying and the answer is when their lips are moving um okay i think it was one of the factors stefanie that we have to consider and uh let's call it the the canada phenomenon let's call it the the bridge the bridge to canada phenomenon you know that was largely organized by the GOP here in this country and you mentioned florida florida was among the states um it was recently um a a tabulation of the money uh that flowed into canada for that protest and it was uh you know certain certain states were prominent in the money that came from those states to support to create that protest so i would say the protest was created in the united states by the GOP and the money came from states like florida and maybe texas too uh to support and and foment that unrest and i mentioned all this because i think the GOP it goes beyond what we were saying early on about the toxicity these guys are dedicated to bringing the country down i you know it's just completely madness it's madness it's it's out of germany in the 30s it's out of this world but people go along with it because they don't see it well it's a cult and so what we have here is uh six or eight months and although some elections are happening right now we have a period of time in which it is entirely possible that the truck phenomenon or something like that some kind of what do you call it economic insurrection or maybe another real insurrection in the capital or something like that if we sat here for a while we could think of some things that they could do will take place before november and that will absolutely affect the calculus well now i wanted to ask you and and karen about the what you're mentioning here with people dis unqualified dis unqualified for the positions and there seems to be no no a bar at all um is this it is this due to what um i've seen um described as g.o.p embracing the the pickup truck and uh gun rack voters group and so that these are the people that are stepping in and trying to run for office even if they participated in the january 6th assault but um is this something that's going on and why they're not noticing that only trump lost the election all the rest of the republicans won their 2020 election so i mean there's one huge fact out there and it's an irony that the one guy that lost it's just been having a fit ever since and is about ready to destroy our country so um jay can you respond to that uh as to um the pickup truck and gun racks group i love documentary movies there's one documentary movie i want to say it's on prime called the gilded age and it's an examination of the years after the civil war until 1900 in this country and of course that's when we had our industrial revolution that's when carnegie you know uh and vanderbilt carnegie for steel vanderbilt for railroads and ultimately john d rockefeller for oil and they controlled the country and and wall street they controlled the capital of the country it was quite remarkable without income taxes or estate taxes how wealthy they became as against the ordinary person and in that period and the movie goes into this it's and i studied the subject in college and i didn't know a lot of the things the movie taught me um is that we we wound up with a divisiveness by the year 1896 uh where uh william jennings brian wrote wrote uh he uh he ran for the populace the people's party which had been developing over the past decade or so um and uh william mckinley uh ran for the capital concentration in wall street and it was a kind of um attorney point it was a mandate what did what did this country really want did it want to be controlled by the people and the populists in in the center in the hinterland of the country those guys who ride around with the shotguns in the back of their pickup trucks those guys uh and don't and don't care much about what happens on wall street or um would it be controlled by wall street um and mckinley won and um and and that's kind of where the movie goes it's very interesting i i was aware of that in some vague way when i when i studied at college but now i'm more aware of it and and i think that has stuck with us and that had that has pervaded the 20th century and probably still now today there are a lot of people who would like us to be a liberal country a democratic country a country that cares the biden type people um but at the end of the day it's the capital that counts and in the process you have this tremendous division that started in the 19th century yeah um you know between the the cities the coasts the business sector and the agricultural sector in the hinterland well you know um i think that we could go back and talk a little bit about mcconnell after that interesting point jay but um karen was trump's comment threatening to mcconnell the one we mentioned earlier about how he doesn't speak for anybody no matter that he's the said the senate leader um and and um is is is is mcconnell mcconnell getting threatened by trump and also those who are you all have all talked discussed those running in primaries as trumpers who promised to not mcconnell out if they win i think at least two of them have made a promise about that or or or that they they may danger um the gop majority what do you what do you think about mcconnell mcconnell and trump are definitely at odds right now and uh in fact he has a new name for him turtleneck or something i can't remember what he calls him he's you know how he always comes up with these derogatory names he has a name for mcconnell down and uh so he gets on the media and and you know uses that and so um and then i think mcconnell was one of the ones if you remember after the um coup the attempted coup that he stood up and said that that was wrong you know at the vote afterward and he kind of caved after that but i think he's going back to that um point of view i don't think he wants to see trump and again and so he's going to try to use his power to make you know if he such that he has uh to make sure that he doesn't come back mm-hmm it's an interesting interesting element there is that if you accept um you know the the common view that mcconnell is only into his own power that's what that's what he lives for you know i mean i would like to say like good literature that people change you know in good literature people change and you see the dynamic of human development and it's you know it's always the study in good literature well i don't think mcconnell changes i think he's into power he was into power then and he's into power now um and uh i think the reason that he dishes on uh on trump is that um he thinks that ultimately trump is going to attack him i mean at home in an election and and unseat him so it doesn't a it doesn't matter if he attacks trump and b he's got to gird his loins he's got to solidify his position and he thinks it's the smartest thing to do in terms of the next election for him yeah very good right well we um are out of time and i thank you panelists jay fidel and karen buzzard uh for this wonderful show discussion without much more to say maybe next time i am stephanie stole dalton your host for politics for the people we'll see you next week thank you and aloha