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Assembly Required: Rachel Maddow on Winning America’s Fight Against Fascism
00:54:20
Today, the What A Day team is off. But we’re excited to bring you a recent episode of Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams. In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, we’ve watched Republicans erode American democracy with alarming speed. While this political moment may feel unprecedented, it isn’t new. America has dealt its share of far-right movements, fascist provocateurs, and anti-democratic threats. But time and again, heroes have risen to meet those moments. In this episode, Stacey unpacks how we’ve fought fascism before – and won. She’s joined by the host of MSNBC’s The Rachel Maddow Show and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Prequel: An American Fight Against Fascism. Subscribe to Assembly Required wherever you get your podcasts and on YouTube. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.
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- [00:00]
Stacey Abrams
Hey, Jane here. The what a Day team is off today, but we're leaving you with something worth your time. It's an episode of Assembly Required, hosted by the one and only Stacey Abrams. In this episode, Stacey teams up with Rachel Maddow to break down the first 100 days of Trump's return and how history shows we've beaten back fascism before. From past resistance to present threats, this is your crash course on how democracy survives when people rise up to defend it. It's a conversation about how change actually happens in this country and how to be a part of it. Because I think that nothing is more important than knowing how you can make something better, not just how bad something already is. If you love the show as much as I do, make sure to subscribe to Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [00:51]
This is Stacey Abrams with Assembly Required. Last week marked 100 days of Republican control of the United States government. And in that 100 days, we have witnessed the erosion of not simply Democratic norms, but a nearly uninterrupted rise of contempt for everything we once celebrated about our nation. We have a president who willfully ignores human rights and civil rights while he profits from schemes that would make a con man blush. We have. We have a complicit Congress that has abandoned its basic obligations to serve the people rather than accrue their own power. We have a judiciary that is grappling with the fruits of its own permissiveness, although recent decisions do show some sign of patriotic intent. But in the midst of counting up the ways Republicans have made our nation weaker, our people more vulnerable, and our values more tenuous, we here at Assembly Required have tried to do a little bit more than just catalog all the wrong. We've attempted to deconstruct the attacks and demystify the processes that they're using so that we can navigate this moment together and so we can imagine what might be next, what we can build next. One of the most effective ways to survive where we are, though, to build what we need to imagine what we can, is to understand that while this political moment might feel new, feel fraught, feel unwieldy, there is nothing about what we're facing that is original. This isn't new. It is news. But it's not new. Because while this administration and this Republican iteration and its enablers pose a uniquely current threat threat, our nation has actually had its fair share of far right fascist instigators and anti Democratic inhumane movements. We've been here before. Each one of Those times has left a dangerous legacy that lingers. And because we don't remember, we seem surprised when it starts again. But not one of those cowards or their minions has ever been so insurmountable that all hope and all progress has been lost. We have won before and we can win again. We are a resilient people. And each time we have faced these internal hazards in our past, we know that there were patriots willing to do whatever they could to mitigate the harm and fight the destruction from what happened in our far past, our near past and yesterday. We know how to fight back. We just have to remember. You see, every time this happens everyday, Americans, whether they are freed or enslaved, whether they are native or not, whether they are immigrant or native born, we have always had people in this country who saw themselves as part of the solution and refused to let the problem overwhelm them. We have people who understood that they could become activists and politicians, that they were freedom fighters and, and that they were protectors of democracy and the people democracy serves. They took risks, they stood up, they stepped up and they inched us towards a better future. So what can we learn from their battles, from our 249-year-old history? What can we learn that can guide our strategy and steel our resolve? Well, as I thought about this, as I thought about what we faced and where we are, I could not think of anyone better to have this conversation with than our guest today. She is not only one of the most dedicated truth tellers who's helping audiences weather our modern day political tumult, she is an acute observer of history. And that's why I am thrilled to welcome host of MSNBC's the Rachel Maddow show and author of the number one New York Times bestselling book prequel, An American Fight Against Fascism, the one and only, the brilliant Rachel Maddow. Rachel Maddow, it is such a joy to have you on the show. Thank you for joining. Assembly required.
- [05:15]
Rachel Maddow
It's great to be here, Stacey. It's really great to see you.
- [05:18]
Stacey Abrams
Well, the last time I saw you, we were on stage talking about your extraordinary book prequel, which should also be called Preview and prescient. And I wish you'd kept it to yourself because we are now in a time where what you talk about so eloquently in that book is coming to pass. And so I wanna really spend today just picking your brain on behalf of everyone listening. You've studied authoritarian movements both in the US and abroad. And prequel, which is coming out or came out in paperback on May 6, make sure, you go pick it up. Your podcast, Ultra explores both America's battle with fascism in the 20th century, but also the efforts that people made to stop it. And we spend time on this podcast really talking about how do we step back from the deluge of news, and how do we instead turn to history to learn more about not only the present moment, but how we make it through. So you are the perfect guest, because I think what you do is constantly remind us that we've been here before, and if not in this exact moment, in some iteration of it. So can you start today's conversation by sharing why you think learning about our history is so particularly important right now, given the mood of this country?
- [06:43]
Rachel Maddow
I think the bottom line, basic thing that kind of brought me to this type of work is that fascism is really boring. Strongmen are really boring. They are the same story everywhere, and every time, they all look the same. They're all trying to do the same kind of things. They all follow the exact same playbook, whether it's in Hungary or Russia or Italy or Germany or the Philippines or Brazil or India or wherever it is and whatever time period you're talking about. And that's also true for American fascists in the various eras in which we've had to fight them. And so my job is to follow the news of what's coming out of the White House and what Trump and the Trump movement are trying to do. And I get that we need to stay up on that, but I also find it entirely predictable and very much of a sort of set piece. What is less, I think, well, trod ground and something that we sort of, I think, really benefit from learning more about is the different successful ways that people have fought guys like this in other countries and in our history. And so the prequel of the title of the book is about the previous generations of Americans who have successfully fought American fascists before us. And that's who we have to learn from. I do think we have to learn from other countries, both in our era and in previous eras. But we've got American stories to tell about it to, too. And it's actually helpful that strong men are always the same. You know what I mean? It excuses us from having to pay that much attention to their latest provocations.
- [08:27]
Stacey Abrams
Exactly.
- [08:27]
Rachel Maddow
I can tell you the next 15 things Trump's gonna do, too, because they all do the same thing. But fighting back is where the real news is. And that's really the moment that we're in right now is not the Trump movement. The moment that we're in right now is that we are the latest generation of Americans who is defeating fascism. And that's the work of our time.
- [08:49]
Stacey Abrams
So let's talk about language. So you and I, when we spoke last year, we talked about the distinction between being a Nazi and what fascism is. And these days, we're having a lot of conversation about fascism and authoritarianism, tyranny. Can you talk about the language that best describes the moment we're in and what are the distinctions? In short, how should we be using or not using these terms to describ what's happening right now?
- [09:20]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah, it's interesting. My feelings about this, the sort of linguistic specificity we should use, have kind of changed over time. I used to get really itchy about people using despot wrong, and now I sort of feel like, you know what, Whatever you want to call it, potato, potato. We all know what we're talking about. I mean, what we're. I mean, I can talk about it in the specific. In terms of what we're seeing. When you see somebody come into. Somebody democratically elected, acknowledged into a bifurcated system of government, or in our case, a trifurcated system of government, where we've got three equal co. Equal branches of government, and they attempt to arrogate all power to themselves, it's Congress's job to create agencies and to fund programs and fund agencies, and therefore to close agencies or defund programs or agencies. That's Congress's job. When the president arrogates that power to himself, he's trying to marginalize Congress and render it irrelevant. He's trying to disempower Congress. When a president not just denigrates judges, but talks about judges as having no power over the executive branch, not just talking about impeaching judges, but talking about ignoring what courts order him to do, that is an executive trying to sideline, undermine, denigrate, and ultimately neutralize the power of that branch of government. And so Trump is consolidating power in the executive, trying to eliminate our co. Equal branches. Okay, so that's authoritarian. That means you have an authoritarian leader who rules by fiat when there's no rule of law, because the courts don't constrain anything anybody does, then what determines what happens in a country? It's whatever Trump burps out after his breakfast in terms of what he decides the law is going to be, that's authoritarianism. Now, I think in terms of understanding the use of the term fascist, it's a very provocative term, and I understand that some people don't want us to use it. But one of the defining features of fascism is that the authoritarian leader seeks to collapse civil society, and indeed the economy and the business world, into his consolidated system of power. So there's not allowed to be any form of civil society competition in terms of what counts as a source of authority, a source of expertise. Business leaders and everybody in the economy is expected to go along with his whims, tariffs, and anything else that he wants. I mean, that's the hallmark of a fascist leader, is that there is nothing in the society except the state. And the state ultimately goes to the impulses of one man. And so I think we're there. You know, I don't think there's. We don't have to talk about the threat of authoritarianism now. We're living through it, but the public gets a vote, both literally and in the figurative sense, in which I mean it right now, when we're not in an election cycle. Just because we've got an authoritarian seeking to consolidate power in this country and overthrow the system of government that we've had for 250 years, doesn't mean by him trying, he gets it, and the public is stopping him at this point from doing what he wants.
- [12:38]
Stacey Abrams
Right. And I wanna stay here for a second because I think there's a braiding together of what seem like disparate moments that you can help folks just really connect, which is the reason he's going after Perkins and Cohey and Jenner and Block, and the reason there's this looming threat to nonprofit organizations, the reason they have hollowed out or attempted to hollow out the Park Service. It's not just that they don't like things. And yes, you have this banner of the deep state as a justification, but these are all things that you do. If you want to collapse civil society, you collapse those who provide services, those who defend the provision of those services, and those who fund the gap between those services being provided and the needs that get unmet. Can you talk a little bit about how we should take each of these moments and understand why this is not unique to America, but why it is specific to America's version of fascism?
- [13:40]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah, I mean, it's really interesting. I think the ruining of the government, what they're doing in terms of just wrecking stuff. I feel like they made an error in the way they sequenced that. Okay, do tell. Well, I think.
- [13:58]
Stacey Abrams
I think.
- [13:59]
Rachel Maddow
And not just like an oops error, like, oops, we accidentally fired the people who handle nuclear weapons. Like, yes, like, errors like that actually mean strategically, they Messed up. Because ultimately, what does a dictator want? What does an authoritarian want? They want to get rid of the rule of law so that they can discredit, criminalize, exile, or kill their opposition. They want to make it either impossible or illegal or uncomfortable to oppose them even outside the political system. And they want to be able to take what they want for themselves everywhere and always. Every authoritarian leader is the richest person in his country, and if not, the richest person in his country is among his oligarchic centers. And these guys want to turn the power and riches of the United States of America into a conveyor belt to enrich themselves. And they don't see any other use for the government besides that. And to the extent that the government does anything other than enrich them, they don't value it and they don't want it. And they'd like it to go away. The problem is, is that they started doing that right out of the gate in the first hundred days. And the American people turns out like Head Start and like Meals on Wheels and like Social Security and like veterans benefits and like all the other things that they are reckoned. We like our national parks. We like there to be, you know, veterans burial services, which they tried to kill off, right? Like all. We like there to be cancer research. We like there to be all of these things. And it's no surprise that an authoritarian movement would try to get rid of them, but you would expect them to try to get rid of them once they had rendered it impossible to protest against them in public, once they had fully criminalized political opposition to themselves, once they had eliminated real elections as any threat of getting them out of office, including not just the guy at the top, but everybody in the legislative branch who needs to ostensibly support them. And they just, they screwed up there. And the American people have taken back as much ground as they can on those things and are really up on their hind legs and pissed about a lot of the stuff that he's doing to wreck the government. And they have no defense against it.
- [16:14]
Narrator
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- [16:45]
Summer on the south side of Chicago is heating up.
- [16:48]
Rachel Maddow
You planning revenge on here?
- [16:50]
Narrator
The shy is back on Paramount. It's the season of the women Women.
- [16:56]
Stacey Abrams
This is our chance. It's time to get to work.
- [16:58]
Narrator
But the men aren't giving up without a fight.
- [17:00]
Stacey Abrams
Trees always gonna have a villain.
- [17:02]
Narrator
No one is backing down in the Showtime original series from Emmy award winner Lena Waithe.
- [17:07]
Stacey Abrams
Why do black women always have to save the day? If we don't do it, who else will?
- [17:11]
Narrator
The shy new season now streaming on the Paramount with show.
- [17:20]
Stacey Abrams
I mean, ultimately, this is about power, about how it's acquired, how it's used. And to your point, to what end? And in this case, it seems to be in the person of the President. It's to the end of self aggrandizement and self enrichment. But I would argue that in many ways there's a Republican Party corollary that is most represented by Russell Vogt and what he's doing through Ombuds, which is less about economic power and more about imposing a vision of America that re aggregates power to a very specific Christian nationalism, anti humanity narrative. It's gotten a lot of attention because of the speed and severity of what they've done through the presidency.
- [18:12]
Rachel Maddow
But.
- [18:12]
Stacey Abrams
But I think there's this strain of Republican orthodoxy that is decades in the making. And I'm gonna push on your historical knowledge that is vast and kind of overwhelming. And I'm thinking about how Ronald Reagan started to shift the party's narrative on orthodoxy Starting in the 1976 Republican National Convention when he went in on abortion and a few other issues and really changed the narrative. Or how the decimation of the Voting Rights act in 2013 was presaged in the day after the passage of the VRA in 1965. Can you talk about how we are seeing echoes of not just a Trump authoritarianism, but a Republican Party embrace of authoritarianism and fascism and what that means for who we are today?
- [19:02]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah, I mean, I think I see these things not so much as a continuum, but as a sort of dovetailing of interests. Okay, Right. So I think that we have seen the Republican Party recognize from the time that you and I were born, roughly, that they were heading into, both demographically and ideologically, into a minority position from which they were never really going to recover. And so that meant voting restrictions. That meant the idea of voting as a privilege rather than as a right, and as a political favor to be doled out to favored groups and withheld from others. It meant a sort of reimagining of the civil rights movement as a cultural Marxist overthrow effort from the real white America, rather than being an effort to try to bring Americans of every hue into equal legal standing.
- [20:02]
Stacey Abrams
And.
- [20:06]
Rachel Maddow
That is its own project. And that has a slightly different tone to it than, we don't want there to be a Congress anymore, and we don't believe there really ought to be courts that are anything other than window dressing. We just want there to be one guy in charge, and we don't want him to face election, to be removed from office, because any election that removes him from office is by definition, illegitimate. Those things work together very well when you start to weaken the idea of democratic accountability. But it's still a leap to go from weakening it to ending it into arguing against elections, which is the movement that's holding the White House right now. And so all of these things help. Denigrating government helps stoking not just racial resentment, but hopefully racially specific legal representation in terms of your protections under the Constitution, that certainly helps. And a form of hostility to expertise and a hostility to education, particularly higher education. All that stuff works very, very well together. But we have taken a leap with this movement. The movement that's in the White House right now is much more like the insurgent fascist movements that I covered in prequel in the late 1930s and early 1940s than it is a continuation of Reaganism, I think.
- [21:37]
Stacey Abrams
So talk about what you see as both a distinction and then what should we be learning? Like, what are the tactics that they're employing that we may not understand, are echoing their history and create this dovetail.
- [21:50]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah. You know how sometimes you go to the doctor and you've got something going on and you don't know what it is, and the doctor suggests, like, well, let me give you this antibiotic or this treatment, and we'll see if it cures it, and then that will tell us what you have. I sort of feel like a little bit of the same way about fascism. Like, it's a nasty infection, but how do we cure it? That might be the way that we figure out exactly what it is. And for me, I'm interested not only in what Americans before us have done and that. I mean, the story in prequel is the story about prosecutors and journalists and activists of a really specific stripe, Basically spies infiltrating that movement, how they did their work to try to discredit and ultimately bring down the people in this country who were trying to overthrow our democracy and try to get us to join World War II on the side of the Nazis, but we've also got these other, more recent examples from other countries that are, I think, really helpful. Like, if you look at France Both what France had to do in the 1930s and what France has had to do recently against the fascist party represented by Marine Le Pen is that they had to do democratic organizing along popular front lines. So they had to reorganize French politics to say, you know what? We disagree on everything. We have been at each other's throats on everything. We can't stand each other personally. And all of our policy objectives are at odds, except we're against fascism and we want to preserve something. We like that. We want to preserve the Republicans. And on that ground alone, we will join together for the purposes of a popular front, democratic, pro democracy, anti fascist movement, and we will block the fascists from power. France has had to do that multiple times. I feel like we could learn from that in this country. All these people who say that the moment that's happening right now, the most important thing in politics is like the Democratic Party figuring out its position on light rail or whatever are just like, nah, nah, who cares? Let's fight about light rail next year.
- [23:59]
Stacey Abrams
Next year, make sure that freedom of movement is still possible before we figure out how we get there.
- [24:05]
Rachel Maddow
Thank you very much. Exactly, exactly. So there's that, I think, in Poland, which recently fended off something I think very similar to ours in terms of essentially fascist and authoritarian movement that was going to take power by democratic means and in fact did take power. How did they oust that authoritarian movement in Poland? By street demonstrations, by a peaceful, large, repetitive culture of street demonstrations against it that ultimately the government had to cede to and recognize that they had not persuaded the people, they did not have the support of the people, and they were going to have to change. In Russia, where the Russian opposition continues to inspire me every day, despite the fact that Putin is in power today and will be for a long while yet. I think the thing that we have learned from then, particularly from Navalny's movement, is to never stop reporting on their corruption, because authoritarians everywhere are always stealing. The whole point is that they capture the state for their own purposes and for their own family and their own cronies, and they rob everybody blind. And public opinion matters, even in dictatorships, perhaps especially in dictatorships, when there aren't other democratic means of feedback towards the leader. And no matter what the leader is doing to try to keep the public on his side, nobody likes to be stolen from, and nobody likes to know that the guy in charge is pooping at a golden toilet because he's kept the rest of the country poor so that he can become a trillionaire and all of those tactics, the street demonstrations, the popular front, Democratic or small D, Democratic organizing, the focus on corruption, the protection of the courts, the protection of journalists, the willingness to be brave and intrepid against these guys. You have to do it all. And you never know. No one piece of it is ever going to work. The only thing that we know doesn't work is doing nothing. But you got to do all of those things all at once. All different kinds of people are activated and called upon to do all sorts of things for their country right now. And if you haven't already joined something or gone to a demonstration or contacted your member of Congress or started to run for something or become a spy for fricking infiltrating your local proud boys group, like you're not meeting the moment, frankly, we've all got something to do.
- [26:26]
Stacey Abrams
Well, we could end the show right now, but we're not going to. We're going to keep talking. So you've used the phrase popular front a lot. And that raises for me the issue of populism. And we know. One of the things I loved about prequel is how you trace the rise and fall of Huey Long, who was, you know, a populist who gets credit in the south, particularly for some of the very real social justice advances that he made, but they were undermined by the hyper authoritarianism state capture that he also oversaw. Can you talk a little bit about Huey Long? And then I want to contrast that with the argument that Trump is or is not a populist. And you said he isn't. I agree with you, but want to dive there. But let's start with Huey Long. Can you tell our audience a little bit about Huey Long of the great state of Louisiana?
- [27:20]
Rachel Maddow
So Huey Long is, I feel like he ought to loom a lot larger in American political understanding. I do think he looms large in the south for obvious reasons, particularly in Louisiana. I mean, you can't look at the state capitol without knowing that he built it and put his own personal apartment at the top of it. He did, but Huey Long was the governor of Louisiana. And Stacey, when you say that he has sort of populist achievements to his name, I mean, one of the reasons that he was so popular is that he made school books free in Louisiana and he built roads and bridges. He put paved roads in Louisiana at a time when they did not have them. And he did a lot of stuff that had practical help to people. He built hospitals. He also robbed the state blind and used an unofficial, heavily armed cadre of Gangsters and thugs who he called the skull crushers to physically abuse, kidnap, and in some cases, allegedly murder people who got in his way. And who were his opponents? He was definitely a les tat, c' est moi kind of guy. Like, he believed that the whole government was him. He effectively bribed and intimidated the state legislature into just working for him. And ultimately, in the 1930s, Franklin Roosevelt in Washington feared the competition, the electoral competition, of precisely one person in the United States, and that was Huey Long. And had Huey Long not been assassinated, that's who FDR worried the most about, beating him out for the presidency because of his. His talent for arrogating power to himself, but also for his ability, his skill at oratory, at selling his ideas, at selling the idea of a populist champion of the people and doing some stuff to back it up in terms of providing people with some of the stuff they needed. But the observers of the time, the best biography of. Of Huey Long, the subtitle of it is like America's Rehearsal for Dictatorship. He really was openly described as America's Hitler. And I think we are losing something in terms of protecting our democracy if we don't recognize that the guy who comes from the far right or from anywhere after Donald Trump, who's going to be more talented at actual populism and at actually delivering some things for people, is going to be an even bigger threat to our democracy than Trump in all his incompetence is ever going to be.
- [30:14]
Stacey Abrams
So talk about why Trump is not a populist and why you reject this framing of him under this banner. I mean, populism has been used globally to, through legitimate means, install these. These strong men who become these fascist leaders. But I should share your very strong disdain for the notion that Trump is a populist. But for those who don't know what the language actually reflects, talk a little bit about why you think he's not.
- [30:43]
Rachel Maddow
The idea, basically is that you've got a leader who says, like, screw all the elites. I'm for the common man. And we're gonna have government that's all about the least among us and the regular people and the real people of this country, and we're gonna take, for regular people. And certainly Trump is a talented campaigner along those lines, like some of his language. But he's only been in office 100 something days, and it was a real quick trip from Make America Wealthy again to. You only get two dolls.
- [31:16]
Stacey Abrams
Yes, and one pencil. One pencil and one pencil.
- [31:20]
Rachel Maddow
And you should be happy to have those. I Mean, that is not a populist sentiment. Let's just say, I mean the idea that he was gonna make everybody rich and that he was the guy on TV who you saw with conspicuous consumption, but he was a regular guy too and he can't spell and that's cool. And he's just like you, except he's the guy who made it and we're all gonna make it just like Trump. Well, not anymore. The idea of, I think that idea was an effective campaigning technique for him. But in office, for him to be telling people, yeah, my economic policies are really going to ruin Christmas and you're not gonna be able to buy anything for your kids and cars are gonna get really expensive and this is gonna be really painful. But it's okay cause it's my idea. Like it's just the opposite of populism. But I'm curious Stacey, as to why you on the populism line, like why it's been chafing for you so much as well.
- [32:20]
Stacey Abrams
Similarly, it's that populism is usually guised as an attempt to make your life better and that I am one with you. A populist doesn't often invite NBC News and to watch his gold plated refurbishing of the Oval Office. There is a lack of connectivity to humanity, a lack of connectivity to people. And to your point, it was a great campaign slogan that even then rung a little hollow. But in its actualization, you don't run a crypto scheme out of the White House as a populist moment. You don't run a populist movement that says we're going to collapse the economy so that the people I like have to come and beg me for what they need. And I think it's so important for us to know what the words mean. It's why it's I love the fact that you spend so much time explaining and pulling out these are what they are saying and this is what it actually should sound like and look like so that we understand what to be aware of for the next time. So to your point, when the next guy and I think we can name at least two or three of the contenders to the throne when they start to distance themselves from his behavior, when they become champions of Medicaid as a pretext for why he did it wrong. But I'm really the person you were looking for. I am the one you were waiting for when I oppose this tax cut for trillionaires so I could make sure that state captured got to continue at a lower Hum, that's the person I'm afraid of. And it's one of the reasons I get very concerned when we focus all of our attention and ire on Trump himself as opposed to on the Republican Party and a larger set of orthodoxies that are creating the space not for him to have a third term, but for there to be a fundamental shift and what we understand America to be.
- [34:12]
Rachel Maddow
That's right, that's right. And that's why, again, going back to, I think what is a really thin and in most cases navel gazing discourse about what's going on in the Democratic Party. I mean, right now, the Popular Front idea is, listen, like in America, the idea is this, you compete in the political arena and if you lose, you leave office and you don't get killed. And you're allowed to compete again on the basis of your ideas. And your ideas are mostly about helping people have better lives and us being a good country that keeps to our word and follows the rule of law and where it isn't dangerous to participate in civic life. Like, okay, if we're all there, we got lots of different ideas about how to best serve the people, but let's fight about how to best serve the people. Let's not fight about whether or not you're allowed to exist in this country. If you ever disapprove or criticize something that the Dear Leader once uttered because he saw it in a movie and thought it was real. I mean, there's a simplicity to the idea of democratic governance that is, I think, noble. I mean, I'm a person of faith. I think that it is in some ways divinely inspired. But the basic idea is that there is no God among us. We are citizens who are equals. Our liberty is given to us by God, and the government is supposed to protect our liberty and advance our ability to pursue happiness. And it's like, you know what, let's just, if we start there, 90% of the people in this country are there and the 10% of the people or 12% of the people who are strongly in favor of what Trump is doing right now and like the idea of there being some sort of dynastic, non constitutional monarchy in this country where it's just Trump and his kids who rule us forever. Like, I'm willing to defeat them in argument. We don't need to defeat them in some sort of civil war, I think most people agree this is the wrong thing to do. And that's why in the history of polling, there has never ever been an American president who has been less popular 100 days in than this president. It's because the public does not like this, does not like what he's doing. And I take great comfort in that.
- [36:34]
Stacey Abrams
I take comfort in it. But what worries me is our willingness to have our understanding and grasp of reality changed. So we watched Trump, in his interview with NBC, say blithely, well, I don't know if the Constitution actually applies, but I also pull back and think about Mike Lee a few years ago, saying that he wasn't exactly sure that everyone had the right to vote and that democracy was a good idea. And we've got these narrative threads that have been pulled through over the last 15 to 20 years that often come with this sort of folksy, the sort of pseudo folksy notion that it's a reasonable position to question what we know, our eyes to see and our ears to hear. And you don't have to go to law school or, you know, read the Constitution or watch Schoolhouse Rock to wonder, you know, well, maybe do they have a point? Part of my worry is that when you think about how authoritarianism rises, can you talk about how effective it is to make people question their own grasp on reality and how that's worked, or it's been rebuffed?
- [37:49]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah, it's. It's a really important point. And it's. And I feel like it's. It seems like an esoteric point. So it's one of these things that's kind of hard to get around. I feel like, for me, there's sort of like four things that you watch for when a democracy is at risk of becoming an authoritarian system, and one is just the technical aspects of competing electorally, like when they are messing with the electoral structures. Right? When it becomes hard or dangerous or contested to vote and have it counted as it was cast. That's one thing that you watch for. You watch for violence leaking into what should be a safe civic space in which people compete. And you watch for the idea that truth is something that nobody can count on anymore, that expertise is suspect, that journalism is an act of opposition and an act of Marxism and an act of evil. You watch for the idea that higher education is itself some sort of insidious thing against the nation. The idea that nothing is true, nothing is provable, there's no such thing as facts leading to obvious conclusions put you in a position pretty quickly where you're left to discern what's happening in the world based only on what people you trust tell you to believe, and you can't prove it yourself. And that's one very quick tick away from just go with your gut. And then you put yourself in the tender hands, the tender ministrations of the demagogue who tells you what your gut should tell you, who dehumanizes his or her enemies and makes us think that the people who are who we previously thought of as our fellow citizens or our neighbors are instead the enemy. And it's just when you dislocate people from the idea of the truth, you end up very quickly putting people in a place where they can be manipulated into pretty evil stuff. And it's again, like, it's a boring tactic. It's the same tactic that we see in every generation, in every country where they do all this stuff. They attack the journalists, they attack the intellectuals, they attack education, and they try to replace everything with propaganda, replace all rationality with emotion. And it's to get us to be pliant and confused so that we do what they tell us. And I think we're smart enough to resist it. But we do need to defend sources of authority and expertise and truth.
- [40:32]
Narrator
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- [41:03]
Summer on the south side of Chicago is heating up.
- [41:05]
Rachel Maddow
You planning revenge on here?
- [41:07]
Narrator
The shy's back on Paramount. It's the season of the women. Women.
- [41:13]
Stacey Abrams
This is our chance. It's time to get to work.
- [41:15]
Narrator
But the men aren't giving up without a fight.
- [41:17]
Stacey Abrams
Street's always gonna have a villain.
- [41:19]
Narrator
No one is backing down. In the Showtime original series from Emmy award winner Lena Waithe.
- [41:24]
Stacey Abrams
Why do black women always have the sex? If we don't do it, who else will?
- [41:28]
Narrator
The shy new season now streaming on the Paramount with Showtime plan.
- [41:38]
Stacey Abrams
Well, one of the reasons that I wanted you today and will follow you anywhere is that on your podcast, in your book, on your show, you not only explicate the challenges, you highlight the heroes that push back. You just, you know, encouraged our audience to infiltrate and become spies. Can you. But. But you're not just pulling that out of nowhere. Can you talk to us about people like Leon Lewis and John C. Metcalf and why they are as important in the story of how we resisted tyranny in the 30s and 40s, and what you think we can learn from them and any other names you want to throw in there?
- [42:13]
Rachel Maddow
Yeah, thank you for asking about that. I. I mean, I just feel like there is, like, the. But the bottom line, the takeaway from this is you never know what exactly your country's gonna call on you to do. And there's places for all different kinds of heroism. And when we look back at the World War II era, we think about our armed forces going abroad and defeating fascism and making the world safe for democracy. But in Leon Lewis in Los Angeles, he comes home as a World War I veteran, and he's Jewish, he's a lawyer, and he recognizes that what's happening in Los Angeles is that there is a fascist movement organizing in Los Angeles, in this case, with direct support from the Nazi Party and ultimately the Nazi government in Germany. And they're organizing his fellow World War I veterans along the same lines that Hitler's movement did it in Germany. And he recognizes what's happening, sees the sort of populist appeal that's being made to these veterans about them not being well served by their country. And the veterans are the real Americans, and they ought to get rid of democracy and stand up and use violence to get their way. We got to take this country back. And he sees where this is heading, and he organizes. He was a member of a bunch of different veterans groups, and he organizes. He was Jewish, but the veterans who we organized mostly weren't. They were mostly German Americans, Christian German Americans, who infiltrated the Silver Shirts and other Nazi militias and pro Nazi militias in LA and created this incredible private activist spy system in which they infiltrated all of these groups, got into the leadership, created very detailed dossiers of everything that they were planning, and then tried to interest law enforcement in what they had found. And that's some of the real drama. The FBI and people like the sheriff in LA and San Diego being like, we're not interested. We're actually on their sides. They're fighting the Jews and the Communists. And by the way, who are you? But he stuck with it. It was at incredible danger to both himself and the guys who he had working in his spy system. And ultimately, when the Justice Department came around to recognizing after there'd been a few explosions at munitions plants and other sabotage, that made them realize this was a real threat. When the Justice Department came around to realizing, actually, this is a problem in this country, and there was finally a willing recipient for some of his information, they were able to hand over this stuff that made it possible to break these groups up. And some of it was through the FBI and the Justice Department. Some of it, interestingly, was from the Navy. The Navy Intelligence service had an interest in making sure that their own members weren't getting recruited to essentially become fifth columnists inside the US Armed forces. So we had like Marines stealing stuff from US Military armories and handing it to these Nazi militia groups. And these private spy groups that were spying on them ended up exposing that and handing, I mean, it was just, it's so dramatic. You can't believe that this isn't a movie already. Hopefully it will be a movie. But that Leon Lewis came home from World War I to be a lawyer in Los Angeles. He didn't expect to be a spymaster. But when your country calls, you never know what they're going to need from you.
- [45:42]
Stacey Abrams
So let's talk about what happens next. You have very artfully and very effectively detailed the first 100 days, but you recently started talking about what's the next 100 days. What do you think we need to know about and what are we to watch for in the next 100 days? And I want to widen the lens out from not just what's happening in this administration, but what's happening in our institutions, what's happening with Congress, what's happening with our courts. Please predict the next 100 days and tell us what to do.
- [46:17]
Rachel Maddow
No pressure, right? Not at all. I will tell you some things that I'm watching out for. One of them is that Trump has created a military zone along three states at the southern border. And I really just encourage your listeners to, whenever they hear something about the Trump administration or the government doing something that relates to immigration or that relates to the border or that is, that is classified in the news as being that type of a story, just read that story without any attention to the fact that it's about immigrants or it's about the border. Because everything that they are doing to immigrants and everything they're doing at the border is a dry run for what they want to do to Everybody else, including U.S. citizens and the interior of this country. And so setting up a military zone where they've, for example, at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, they've declared that a non contiguous miles long strip of land in another state in New Mexico is technically part of Fort Huachuca in Arizona for the purposes of having active duty US Military personnel have arrest powers and crowd control powers inside that zone. I mean, just ignore the fact that it's at the border. What that is is Trump giving active duty U.S. military the opportunity, the legal authority to arrest U.S. citizens on U.S. soil. That means he's got the U.S. military not on the border facing out, but on the border facing in at us. That's a huge red flag and it hasn't received a lot of attention again, because I think it's getting shunted into this idea of like, oh, that's just about the border. The border is all of us and immigrants are all of us. And there is no bright line between the treatment of immigrants and the treatment of citizens. And don't let them do stuff to immigrants that you would not a seed to if they were doing it to you. So that is one another thing to watch for, I think, is now, I think, coming into clearer focus in part because of some good journalism, particularly at places like Wired magazine and at the Washington Post, which is the master database stuff that's happening. So the mystery about Doge and Elon Musk's role in government, as shambolic and stupid as it has been, is that for all of the mysterious mistakes they've made and all of the dumb stuff they've done and all the stuff that they've done that's had to be reversed, we can tell sort of what they're not doing. They're not saving money. Right? The daily government spending is up under Trump compared to Joe Biden. It's not about saving money. It's also not about cutting waste and fraud and abuse and rationalizing government spending. It's not that with all of their embarrassing even once they acknowledge our mistakes, they haven't fixed them right. They haven't stopped doing any of those things. They haven't even slowed down in doing any of those things. So avoiding mistakes or doing anything rationally defensible to the government is not what's going on. What is the thing that they are actually doing? What is the purpose of what they're doing? It is accumulating data. It is getting personal data and sensitive data about every American and every person resident in this country and combining it so that it can be used by an authoritarian leader for his own purpose. Like that's the purpose of Doge. That is what they are doing. And the creation of a master file on everybody in the country is an authoritarian dream. And that is what we that needs to be stopped in every way that it can be stopped. It needs to be broken once they've assembled, needs to be undone. That is something that can't be ignored. So that's the second thing, and then the third thing that I would say is Social Security. We all know that they've been messing with Social Security and it's had a reasonable amount of attention. But I want to just raise a flag on that for your listeners as a. That is a slow motion disaster. And when you break Social Security, you are breaking things for people who have no other resources and nobody in many cases, advocating on their behalf. And it is their one lifeline. And they're breaking and messing with that lifeline. And so what they are doing to Social Security, the way they have broken it already is going to be fatal in this country. And it is up to us as Americans who have resources and who have neighbors and who have family members and who are connected to communities to make sure that elderly and disabled people who need Social Security are not killed by them messing with it and by them interrupting those services and making it impossible for people to get help when they've got trouble with their Social Security payments. And we've got to do some emerging community response. And the way that people have been standing up for immigrants who've been snatched off the streets, we need to stand up for people in our own communities, look in on our elderly and disabled to make sure that what they're doing to Social Security isn't killing people. And we've got to make some people pay politically for what they've done to mess with that, because that is they are hurting the most vulnerable people in our country. And as Americans, it's our heart, it is our soul. It is something that as people of faith or just as people of civic decency cannot abide. And we've gotta protect those people right now. Right away.
- [51:34]
Stacey Abrams
Rachel Maddow, thank you so much for joining us today on Assembly Required.
- [51:38]
Rachel Maddow
Stacy, it's great to see you. Long may you wave, my friend. Call me anytime. I'm ready to do anything with you.
- [51:45]
Stacey Abrams
I'm dead serious. We're gonna be in touch because you've given me four new ideas and we're gonna get at least two of them done.
- [51:51]
Rachel Maddow
Yay. Yay.
- [51:52]
Stacey Abrams
Thank you.
- [51:52]
Rachel Maddow
Thank you so much. Thanks, my friend.
- [52:02]
Stacey Abrams
As always on Assembly Required, we like to give our listeners actionable tools for facing the challenges of today. So here's this week's toolkit in which we encourage you to be curious, solve problems, and do good. Be curious. As we learned from my conversation with Rachel Maddow, history can be an extremely useful tool to help us navigate the present. So pick up her book prequel, now available in paperback anywhere books are sold Also, I encourage you to pick up our Assembly Required Recommended Read the Dictator's Learning Curve by William J. Dobson, which chronicles a number of the resistance movements in recent years, the ones that Rachel referenced. Number two, let's solve some problems. The best thing we can do right now is your show up. Use our voices and make it clear to our representatives that we need to put a stop to the Republican Party's numerous assaults on democracy and our people. And we can do this at the local, state and federal levels. There are two key ways to do this. The first is a method that is tried and true and absolutely consistent with the spirit of the show. Call your elected officials, be they Democrat, Republican, Independent, it doesn't matter. Tell them where you stand and why it matters to you. And don't hesitate to ask your county commissioner how they're checking in on the disabled or asking your state rep if they've shared your community's concerns with your U.S. senator. Remember, they all work for you, so put them to work. Secondly, get involved locally. Join a protest. Volunteer to support a community that is particularly vulnerable right now. Support a grassroots group in your area. Change starts with us showing up, so let's get to work. And then third, let's do some good. Not only have they waged a war on books, they are now waging a war on independent businesses. So if you're interested in reading any of the books I mentioned today, purchase them at a local bookstore. If there isn't a local option near you, or if you just prefer the convenience of online shopping, check out small businesses that operate online, like Octavia's Bookshelf. Listen. Guests like Rachel Maddow remind us that we've got work to do, but that that work matters and so we need to know what we face so we can fight back. So I'd like to reach even more people who are interested in knowing more and who want to pitch in as we fight for a fair America and the world we deserve. And you can help me by sharing an episode of Assembly Required with someone who may not know we're here. Remember to hit subscribe on all of the places that carry our show, including Apple, Amazon, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcast. And if you like what you hear, rate the show and leave a comment. And please continue to tell us what you've learned and solved or what you want to hear about next. You can send an email to assemblyrequiredricket.com or leave us a voicemail and you and your questions and comments might be featured on the Pod Our number is 213-293-9509. Remember, we can fix what they're breaking, but there will always be some assembly required. So I'll meet you here next week. Assembly Required with Stacey Abrams is a Crooked Media production. Our lead show producer is Ilona Minkowski and our associate producer is Paulina Velasco. Kiril Palaviv is our video producer. This episode was recorded and mixed by Charlotte Landis. Our theme song is by Vasilius Fotopoulos. Thank you to Matt De Groat, Kyle Seglin, Tyler Boozer and Samantha Slosberg for production support. Our executive producers are Katie Long, Madeline Herringer and me, Stacey Abrams. Our production staff is proudly unionized with the Writers Guild of America. EAS welcome to Birch Lane, where you can find a fresh take on classic furniture and decor. Every piece is handpicked and crafted to last for years to come. At Birch Lane, you can explore everything from outdoor sets to living room furniture and everything in between and get fast free shipping. It's classic style for joyful living. Shop now@birchlane.com USAA knows dynamic duos can.
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Rachel Maddow
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