Meredith Shiner & Joseph Kelly

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:00)
Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast, and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds, and an American research group poll has Trump's disapproval on handling the economy at 70%.
We have such a great show for you today. The New Republic's Meredith Shiner stops by to talk about Trump's stupid war, driving down his popularity. Then we'll talk to historian Joseph Kelly about his new book, The Biggest Lie, The Prehistory of American Fascism, 1818 to 1915 But first, the news.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:40)
Smiley! Arizona, we call it a purple state, but one of the reasons it's feeling more and more like a blue state is Republicans there seem to drink from a water tap that is absolutely fucking insane.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (0:52)
Yeah, you know, this is such an interesting thing. Republicans in Arizona cannot get out of their own way. So they are a purple state, but they nominate people like they're Alabama. And it is true, right?

**Meredith Shiner** (1:08)
They, every candidate.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:11)
If you said to me, here's 10 Andy Biggs quotes, here's 10 Tommy Tuberville quotes.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:15)
You couldn't tell the difference.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:16)
Well, yeah, you and I would probably fail the test.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (1:18)
I'm not in Tommy Tuberville. I'm thinking Roy Moore here. I mean, Andy Biggs, he's a great candidate. If you're in Alabama and if you're in a state like Arizona, which is a state that is both really has a Democratic governor right now, is very blue, has this history of activism because of Sheriff Joe Arpaio. It's just an insane thing to nominate Andy Biggs, and especially when David Schweiker is actually a more normal candidate to run against Katie Hobbs. So what do Arizona Republicans do? They nominate Biggs. Biggs is a former chair of the House Freedom Caucus. You may remember them as being bat-shittery, anyone.
So now what he is going to run against Katie Hobbs, this would be her second term. Katie Hobbs is now in a much better, you know, this is one of those like move the rating from lean D to likely D. Again, anything could happen, but he is an election denier, which it turns out is also not so great for turnout when your candidate is an election denier. Hobbs, you know, did not have a primary challenge, and now it is, it's a favorite Democrats. Amy Walter this month from Cook Political shifted the rating from toss up to lean Democrat. Let's get Andy Biggs on the trail so we can go from lean Democrat to likely Democrat.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:55)
Yeah, or just like, you know, give him the password to his Twitter account. So yesterday, we had these headlines that Republicans were in disarray because Trump seems to have no plan with this war. Today, he kind of put out his plan, which is, I'm going to bomb bridges every time you hold up a boat in the Strait of Hormuz, and everybody's going, oh, great, that's the solution.

**Molly Jong-Fast** (3:16)
So here's the fundamental problem about this war, is that Donald Trump thinks that Iran, which is a very religious country, is going to operate the way that he operates. So, for example, he offered them a lot of money last week, and they were like, no go, my dude. This week, he's like, I'm going to just make things horrible for your citizens, but what I think he doesn't understand is that they don't have elections in Iran, and making things horrible for the Iranian people is not a motivating factor for this administration. And I think what's really scary about this moment is that if you don't have much interest in protecting civilians, and you're a country that doesn't really, I mean, America now pretty clearly bombed the school, there's all sorts of allegations that we've done other stuff.
There is some evidence that this administration is misrepresenting the number of casualties, you know, military casualties or some of the injuries they may have gotten on the field. So there's a question of like, here you are, you have one country that doesn't care about civilians, and you have bombing another country that doesn't really care about civilians. Like this could get really, really horrendous really, really quickly. And I think that all of us need to worry about the Middle East, because this is the kind of stuff that ultimately creates a very unstable region. And we have benefited a lot from the stability in the Middle East. And to watch this sort of go out the window, because Donald Trump doesn't understand second-order effects is so bad. And it's also like, you know, there's another story today that Donald Trump wants to let Mohammed bin Salman start with a nuclear program. Like this is insanity, okay, wants them to be able to enrich nukes. This is a guy who is bombing Iran because he doesn't want them to enrich nukes. Like the difference between Saudi Arabia and Iran is that Saudi Arabia funded the 9-11 attacks, right? Like, I mean, this is just an insane and MBS is known to be really unstable and really, you know, put members of his own family in jail.