SIO474: They've Been Telling Us They'd Do This for a Long Time. Many Just Weren't Listening

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:16 Thomas: Hello, and welcome to Serious Inquiries Only. This is episode 474. I'm your host, Thomas Smith. Quick announcement, if you haven't already heard, you probably have, we're finally releasing Gavel Gavel to the public. It's available for everyone. And we're doing so with our new series on the Blake Lively, Justin Baldoni lawsuit stuff. It is so fascinating. If you check out that first episode, you can hear me talk about why we're doing that. And I think you're going to like it. I think it's really more important than people might think. And it's very, very interesting. So much legal drama and there's so much more to come. So that's what we're doing. It's on Gavel Gavel. Search up Gavel, Gavel anywhere podcasts are sold. All right. Well, today's episode is Katherine Stewart. You might remember Katherine Stewart from about a year ago. She wrote the book, The Power Worshippers, which was made into to a documentary. And last year we had a really fascinating conversation. I love talking to Katherine Stewart. Her books are very vital to understanding the right in a complete way. And I don't mean like, oh, understanding their ideas and what, no, not that. Like the mechanics of how the billionaires and the racists and the Christian nationalists and all the different components of the right, how they actually function together. Because it is a weird alliance, several weird weird alliances. And Katherine Stewart's books are so good for that. Her latest one is Money, Lies, and God, and that's where we're going to focus today. And so after this break, which you can avoid by going to patreon.com/seriouspod, we'll get over to the interview. And I'm joined by Katherine Stewart. How are you doing today?

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0:01:56 Katherine: I'm doing great. Thanks so much for having me.

0:01:58 Thomas: Oh, thank you. It's my pleasure. You know, I look back and it's been about not quite a year, 11 months or so since you came on to talk about when your previous book was made into a documentary that I know 95 % of my audience was was watching and talking about at the time. And so it's been a, you know, been a weird year. How are you doing?

0:02:14 Katherine: It has been a weird year. It's absolutely true. I was really hoping that my forthcoming book, Money Lies in God, I was hoping it would be less relevant, and unfortunately, it's really not. I mean, they've been telling us for quite some time that they were going to destroy the institutions that safeguard our democracy, and that's exactly what they're doing. We can sort of see it playing out in the headlines now. I think many Americans at the time really didn't recognize it or chose not to believe what they were seeing. And I think it's really hard to deny what we're seeing right now.

0:02:51 Thomas: Boy, that couldn't be more true. I feel like we touched on this a little last time. I just want to, I can't imagine people would remember a conversation from a year ago with all that's going on. I can'T remember a conversation from five minutes ago, but I did listen to it cause I was excited to talk to you again. And so I would just want To recommend if people want to hear some of your backstory, story, which is really fascinating the way you kind of got into this reporting and your old mentor. And we talked about a lot of cool stuff. So people should go back to that episode. I'll put in the show notes. So we'll not rehash the origin story, but I just wanted to flag that it was really fun and people should check it out if they'd like to. But yeah, to your point, it feels like people like these Christian nationalists have been saying, we're going to do this. We're going to ruin the country. And then people like you, folks like you have have been saying, hey, they're saying they're going to ruin the country. And for, what is that, 15 years at least? At the very least, I think, in your reporting, right? 15 years or so?

0:03:47 Katherine: That's about 15 years I've been reporting on this movement. I mean, it's not that they're hiding what they're doing. It's a lot of people aren't listening.

0:03:54 Thomas: That was the third part. It was people like me and the public being like, Katherine, can you settle down a little here like this?

0:04:00 Katherine: Absolutely.

0:04:00 Thomas: You're being a little extra in your, you know, and all you've been doing is just reporting what they're sayings they're doing. And then once you know it, they're seeing it more every day. So it's like each and every passing year, I'm sure you're You're saying, I would love for this not to be relevant, but it continues to be.

0:04:17 Katherine: I was really hoping that my current book, Money, Lies, and God would be less relevant. But you know, it really grew very organically from my reporting. I do a lot lot of my research by spending time in that world and going to strategy gatherings and conferences and pastor gatherings and the like. So let's say you go to a diverse conference of pastors in Virginia and all of a sudden they're talking about election fraud and you realize that they're funded by a California billionaire and David Barton, who you know who he is, he's a sort of chief myth mythmaker of the Christian nationalist movement, and he's getting money from these billionaires, all of a sudden you start to think that the story doesn't really fit within a simple frame about, say, white evangelicals or demographic change. So, you know, you realize that there's something deeper here. So as I kept researching Christian nationalism, I realized the topic was, frankly, bigger than I had imagined. I started to see we really can't talk about Christian nationalist socialist ideology, without looking at the larger role that it plays in the political economy, it really started to look like one part of this bigger story. And that's really how my focus shifted. And then, of course, as I was researching the international side of this, I also came to view that this issue, this sort of rise of an anti -democratic movement, is not nearly as uniquely American as sometimes we think it might be. So money lies in God is really the consequence

0:05:49 Katherine: Of all this sort of deeper reporting.

0:05:52 Thomas: Absolutely. And what I'm really loving about this book, Money, Lies, and God, is that I've had this feeling, I'm sure a lot of people have, that when you look at this thing, I think, you know, my brain keeps trying to put it in one category, you know, where it's like, well, it's the Christianity. Well, now it's racism. It's the sexism. Well, wait, it's just these billionaires. It's just the billionaires, you Know, and it's like I keep switching and switching. And then what I'm noticing about your book is it really feels like you are giving us a really useful framework and it kind of just, it is all those things. And I see if you put things into categories, I think you're going to be really helpful. And it feels like what's happening is it's not that it's one thing and it's not even that it'S like switching around. It's that it' s these different forces that are all working together and sort of against each other, but are making up this anti -democratic movement that's taken over. And so why don't you talk about that a little bit?

0:06:42 Katherine: Thanks. You know, I titled the book Money Lies in God because first, money is a huge part of the story, but in complicated ways. So meaning that huge concentrations of wealth have destabilized the political system in all of these different ways. Second, lies or conscious disinformation is another huge feature of this this movement. And number three, God, because the most important ideological framework for the largest part of this movement is Christian nationalism. And I sort of want to break that down a little bit. So first, in Money, Lies, and God, I pay very close attention to the money people, a group I call the funders. These are the beneficiaries of massive concentrations of wealth over the past five decades. And, you know, they're investing a portion of their fortunes in And the destruction of democracy, I mean, I'll just give you a few examples of the folks involved. I'm thinking of people like the Corkerys or Bereside or the folks behind the Bradley Foundation and Bradley Fund or the Wilkes Brothers, Tim Dunn, etc. Here's the thing. These funders are not any one type.

0:07:47 Katherine: So some are evangelical, some are Catholic, some Are Jewish, others are atheistic. Religiously, to be honest, they're all over the place. But what they agree on is the need to crush liberalism, right?

0:08:00 Thomas: Yeah.

0:08:00 Katherine: And what they are increasingly referring to as the so -called administrative state. So in addition to that, I shine a spotlight on a group of intellectuals that I call the thinkers, many of whom are affiliated with a group called the New Right. Right. Technically, I would say the intellectuals on the new right, there's some variation, but they aren't quite what you'd call Christian nationalists.

0:08:21 Katherine: Some adopt that phrase almost like for tactical reasons and others don't seem to bother. Some seem quite nihilistic. Some draw inspiration from political theorists associated with the Nazis. I kid you not. But for them, it's really more about power. And, you know, they criticize liberal elites, but they're really aiming to become a new elite. Then Christian nationalism, as I mentioned, is arguably the single most important part of the anti -democratic reaction that motivates a lot of the vocers or local activists, people I refer to as foot soldiers. And a lot those folks might not think of themselves or identify as Christian nationalists, but with their vote, with their efforts, with their actions, they're actually lending support to a Christian nationalist agenda. And I think distinguish the foot soldiers from a cadre of leaders, of political pastors, national activists, cohorts that I call the sergeants and the power players who are often the ones driving the agenda.

0:09:23 Thomas: Yeah it just broadly. It feels like we're always at a disadvantage I say we sorry folks like me I won't speak for you but like I don't progressive minded people who want to try to help make things better for people who are not privileged in our society. Sure. Yeah. Yeah, people who I mean, broadly speaking, I feel like I'm on the more progressive end, but broadly speaking people who want to make stuff better.

0:09:37 Katherine: I'll see anyone in sort of the moderate, liberal, progressive spectrum, you know, big tent.

0:09:51 Katherine: Yes, proper conservatives. I mean, I think a lot of people who were truly conservative, who believe even preserving institutions of value that have undergirded our sort of broader prosperity as a country and undergirdered our freedoms. Many of them are also sort of on the outs because this is a movement that seems to be defined more by what it wants to destroy rather

0:09:58 Thomas: Right. Well, that's that's what's interesting. Right? Right.

0:10:14 Katherine: Than it wants to create. I don't think a lot of those folks really bargained on turning our government over over to an unelected billionaire, multi -billionaire, and his teenage minions. Really?

0:10:27 Thomas: Well, that's the, yeah, yeah. It's just that. So it was just that dynamic I was getting at where it feels like, like I am when you're on the more progressive side, it feels like a constant battle between trying to get people to do the right thing for others that might seem hard, even though I don't really think it is, but it might seem hard to broader society. It might involve helping people. It might involve taxes. It just feels like there's all these forces that are currently benefiting from the status quo. And it's so easy for them to align and say, let's stop this progress. Let's stop whatever this is. But then to your point, it feels like in addition to the folks that are more trying to preserve the status quo that favors them, there's also this burn it all down contingent that has been united with them to an extent. But if you could talk more about maybe those incentives, because I don't think the billionaires, I don'T think they want to burn it down. I mean, it seems maybe I'M wrong, but I'M skeptical of Musk is at the forefront of that right now. So maybe I'm wrong.

0:11:26 Katherine: Know, I think that a lot of those folks actually have interests that the different categories have interests at odds with one another. I think there are different funders who have different interests as well. And they're all sort of, I would say, rowing in the same boat right now. But there are a lot of fissures. And I think those, you know, a lot of differences, those differences can be identified and highlighted and underscored in order to help break apart this movement. I mean, a lot of people are going to get hurt if Musk and his minions and his sort of people who are on board with his agenda succeed in destroying a public administration subject to ethics rules and replace it with a privately controlled state managed by a corporation with multiple conflicts of interest. And this is where the lies in my title fits in, right? There's been a massive propaganda campaign against government. So when Americans are surveyed about the level of waste and fraud in government, they always come back with pretty ludicrously exaggerated estimates. Now, that's not to say that waste and fraud and government agencies doesn't happen. It does. There's often and almost always room for improvement, just as there is in the private sector.

0:12:45 Katherine: I mean, if you want to look at waste in the private sector, there's plenty of that too, right? But people need to be reminded of the very good things that government does, along with the very many bad things that happen in countries with kleptocratic, cronyistic government, or those with an absence of effective government. You know, according to the free market fundamentalists who are funding the movement, business is always amazing, infinitely better than government. But I think a lot of Americans have a sense that these corporate leaders are really just out to sort of take their money while enriching themselves and their people at the top with massive payouts. You know, the health insurance industry, for example, is not the only one that is widely despised. So I think we need some more truth -telling on that front, too. I think the lies, as we show in my book, Money, Lies, and God, aren't just limited to the idea that government is always bad. I mean, there are massive disinformation or propaganda campaigns that exist to basically inculcate fear

0:12:47 Thomas: There's a lot of waste on the top end. I've noticed. Absolutely. Yeah.

0:13:46 Katherine: In the American people, to make them think that they're being victimized by the deep state or a woke elite, or that any political opposition to Trump is literally demonic or satanic. So I feature one of these engines of conspiracism in my chapter on Reawaken America, which is a pro -conspiracy MAGAfest taking place in megachurches around the country.

0:14:09 Thomas: Oh, wow. That sounds scary. I was going to go a different place, but then you just said that.

0:14:14 Katherine: Do you not know what Reawakened America is?

0:14:16 Thomas: It sounds familiar, but I don't remember that.

0:14:20 Katherine: Well, it was organized by Mike Flynn and Clay Clark and some of Trump's most trusted allies. Usually one of the Trump sons shows up to speak. They hold these massive gatherings at megachurches around the country. They draw thousands of people, and they are conspiracy fests. I mean, you're going to hear about the Deep State. You're going hear about one world government, George Soros, the Rothschilds. Every single conspiracy imaginable is sort of spewed out from the speakers. It's usually like a two or three day event. And not every single person attending, you know, there's a JFK conspiracies, there is ivermectin, COVID, you know, whatever, like everything, health conspiracies government, financial conspiracies. So not everybody attending these events believes every single conspiracy. But the one conspiracy they're all absolutely convicted of is the idea that Donald Trump is like a perfect person who never did anything wrong.

0:15:22 Katherine: And every prosecution, every charge against him was nothing more than a politically motivated witch hunt. There's a lot of references to political opposition as being literally demonic or satanic or under the thumb of Satan. That's the thing. It's not just these events. It's also when you go there, you see a ton of podcasters and YouTubers and people posting, you know, with big telegram following rumble. So it just becomes this epicenter of conspiracism, which sort of spills over into different factions of the right. And what they do is, you Know, leaders of this movement know that if you can separate people from the facts, it makes them easier to control.

0:16:02 Thomas: I was just going to say, it's long been a truth to just like in the skeptic movement that I've been a part of that conspiracy theories don't have to agree with each other. Like even on the same conspiracy, you know, like hollow earth, they all can have different or flat earth. They all can Have different ideas of why the earth is flat and which government is doing it and who's doing it and what, and it doesn't really matter. Like they can be contradictory. It doesn't Really matter what this is like just throwing spaghetti at the wall. And it feels like the point is just don't believe in facts. Like just, just separate, as you said, just separating them from facts, separating them from any trust in the system or government, or even, I don't know, society. And then it makes it easier to just ruin everything. You've thrown so much at me. I wanted to comment on, but okay. Keep, go ahead.

0:16:46 Katherine: Well, yeah, I mean, here's the thing, you know, this is a movement that's always bashing experts, you know, and expertise. Here's the thing about expertise. Experts stand in the way of an autocrat, like a government that is, you know, run in a sort of functional way and that, you know, is subject to ethics constraints and that also has to answer to reality, has to answer to reason and the idea that policy should actually benefit people. That stands in the way of an Autocrat who wants to, you and this is why they love Trump. I mean, he just shifts the goalposts all the time.

0:17:19 Thomas: But why do the, why do the people love Trump? Like he's not a Christian. He pretends to be a little more now. Cause after almost getting shot, I think I feel like he uses a little bit more of God language, but like, that's the part that's so wild. I get breaking down the trust and everything, hating everybody, being wary of everything. And then you have a billionaire who's clearly not a christian he can do no wrong how do they do that I don't understand that part

0:17:47 Katherine: You know, it's interesting. I spend a lot of time in this world. You know? I go to a lot of those gatherings. And if you can sort of suspend what you know about reality for a while, and you spend time in that world, andyou can sortof believe all the nonsense they're spewing about people on the, I don't even want to say other side of the political aisle, anyone who doesn't agree with them, including any sort of moderate or progressive Christians, I mean you would just think that, you know, Trump is amazing. He's, you know, saving us from absolute apocalypse. I think of Christian nationalism, not just as an ideology, and not just as a political machine, but also as a mindset. And I think there are really four features to this mindset. So first, there's a sense of, it's like identity politics, you're with us, you're against us ,you're one of the pure versus one of the impure, you've got God on your side, or you're in league with Satan, right? So it makes people will think in this very binary way, divide and conquer. Movement leaders want to divide the populace, and so they do. They divide people into the sort of worthy and the unworthy. And then the second part of this comes with this idea that good conservative Christians, implicitly white conservative Christians—but, you know, you can be a part of that group if you vote the right way, you don't believe the right way—they're the most persecuted group in society. Their religious rights are being trampled, and this goes against all evidence, of course. If you look at evidence of hate crimes, if you look At evidence of discrimination, there are a lot of groups in society that are getting discriminated against, and white conservative Christians is frankly not at the top.

0:18:31 Thomas: Yeah yeah christians control all parts of our government now the supreme court the every part of it but they're still the victims all the

0:19:29 Katherine: I know it's privilege in many ways, but they create this narrative of persecution that is so important to their movement. And then, of coarse, and we'll speak later about about the international side, but this is not just something that happens in America. We can talk about the sort of narrative of persecution. And then third, you've got this sort of sense of we're standing on the edge of an absolute apocalypse. It's a permanent emergency. The consequences of loss in the political arena are too dire to ignore. If we lose this election, we're going to go under the control of Satan. So this clears the way for the acceptance of a strongman, a rule breaker, some guy, you know, the rules have to be suspended because the other side is satanic. So we need to suspend the rules and break the laws and destroy norms as long as we have a tough guy on our side who's going to save us. That clears the way for the authoritarian leader. This is an authoritarian movement. I mean, the new right, which I spoke about a little bit earlier, that group of intellectuals I call the thinkers, many of them are explicitly monarchical. They want monarchical form of government. Sometimes they talk about a red Caesar or an American Caesar. And this is something that they've been, frankly, doing for some time. They talk about how democracy simply won't work because wokeism, which, you know, who knows how they define it. Maybe it's like just women's equality or the fact that a person of color might have received, you know, sometime a raise that they don't think they deserve. So, you Know, this, they think is the greatest terrible problem of our era. We can all think of a lot of problems of our era, such as the fact that 11 .4 million children in America live in poverty, gun violence is the number one threat to their lives, etc. No, they think that the factthat women have equality and people of color, you know, diversity, blah, blah. Whatever they think is happening.

0:19:40 Thomas: Time what yeah it's a mythology we cover I have a show called where there's woke where we cover these myths and it's just it's all lies they just they've been doing it for well I've been covering this for not as long as you but I don's 10 years and they're all you check every story every scare story college professor fired it's all lies every single time it's a lie there it's not even like one out of ten they're all lies no I think

0:21:42 Katherine: It's amazing. It's really shocking. And this isn't to say that there aren't some diversity programs that, you know, could there be improvement in this area? Are some diversity programmes overstepping or is there some stuff that, you know... I think there are some. I mean, well,

0:22:01 Thomas: No not to a degree that matters is I guess my my answer there's nasa right didn't they just say don't Don't make references to female leadership in NASA. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

0:22:05 Katherine: That's the thing. Yeah, of course, there's always room for improvement in what we do. But what they're doing is declaring a total war on anti -discrimination law. And what they are doing now, there is a sort of military organisation, organization, one of the government agencies, where they're literally covering up pictures of women who are being featured. I saw two pictures of women.

0:22:32 Katherine: Right, you can't make references to female leadership. They're covering up images on the wall of, you know, they had all these pictures of these different military people, and they covered up the images of the women and two people of color with brown paper. I mean, it's really shocking. And then the list of, it is a movement that claims to stand for free speech. But of course, the list of words that they're now prohibiting from like federally funded medical studies is shocking. It includes the word women. You can't refer to women in medical studies. I mean, it's really shocking because you know that for many years, women weren't even included in clinical trials. So, you know, all the clinical trials or almost all of them were done on men and male bodies. And therefore, you you know, we have genetic and biological differences, and sometimes medications will work differently on different sort of, you know—depending on your gender—but they weren't experimenting on women and all the—or using women for clinical trials, and now they are. But all of a sudden, we can't even use the word women in clinical trials. I mean, it's really shocking.

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0:23:36 Thomas: Going back to that question of why Trump, it feels more like, it feels less like there's some in -universe reason for it, some like mythological reason for, and it feels like, you know, it feels much more from what you're saying. That's like, he just eventually got the endorsement of enough different factions. And when you get that endorsement because of the all or nothing thing. And because of the way that I don't, that's, it tends to work. It becomes not just, oh, we like this guy. It's he's infallible. You know, it feels like a group after another, whether it's your church, whether it'S Fox news, whether IT's whoever it is, faction after faction starts endorsing this guy is infallable and perfect. And then all of a sudden he's the infallble perfect leader of this religious movement of which he's not religious at all. And he's a billionaire, but it's also a movement of people who think the elites are destroying everything you know it's it feels more like that maybe oh

0:24:23 Katherine: Well, there was that meeting. There were a couple things before the 2016 election. Trump had a meeting with over a thousand evangelical leaders in New York City. It was It was organized by Bill Dallas, who was the head of United in Purpose, which was one of the sort of really important digital organizations involved in getting out the vote. So they had a thousand plus evangelical pastors, including some very powerful pastors of parachurch networks, where he said, basically, if you give me your support, I'm going to hire Mike Pence as my VP. VP, I'm going to have an evangelical advisory council, and I'm going to have, he held up a list of sort of names of judges he would appoint to the Supreme Court. And he said, right, Leonard Leo approved. He said, all of these judges are pro -life. I'm going to be appointing people from this list.

0:25:09 Thomas: The leonard leo right yeah

0:25:17 Katherine: And it was a kind of like, you'll do for me and I'll do for you. I mean, he's a dealmaker. So they threw their support behind him. And then at every gathering I've ever He speaks at Road to Majority, Pray, Vote, Stand. He comes and speaks to Moms for Liberty, like a lot of different organizations, pieces of that Christian nationalist organizational infrastructure. They have these conferences and he'll show up and at every one or March for Life, he'll say some variation of, I think I gave you everything you wanted and I actually think I gave your more. So there's that sense that what do they get from him? They get unprecedented access and unprecedented political power.

0:25:55 Thomas: I mean they got roe v wade struck down yeah yeah

0:26:01 Katherine: They got their courts. It's not just Roe v. Wade. That's very important for them, but also they want to destroy public education so they can capture a flow of that taxpayer money and have it flow to religious schools that their people are running or charter networks run by people with a right -wing and religious agenda. Agenda. So they're getting policies. They privilege their faith. They want the right to discriminate against people who they disapprove of. They Want public money and they want private money. So They really got a lot with him. And, you know, I think in the run up to the 2016 election, I would go to these gatherings and sometimes you'd find somebody who could, you could tell really didn't want him. Like I think Ted Cruz was a favorite of a number of the Christian right leaders. But once it was clear that he was going to, he had the popular touch, right? Once it was clear that they all threw their support behind him, every single one.

0:26:55 Thomas: That's another part of it is he does have the charisma that the the voters like you can't prop up somebody who just is dead on arrival so it's like yeah it's that interplay of

0:27:07 Katherine: He's got that common touch, yeah.

0:27:07 Thomas: More endorsements and then yeah yeah and he is likable to voters to those voters. And it just, yeah, this perfect storm. And now it's just, even though he wanted to kill Mike Pence, it doesn't matter. It's crazy that the person he once used as a bargaining chip for Christians is now like, oh yeah, but I wanted that guy to be publicly executed. That's fine. No one cares. It doesn't mater. Crazy.

0:27:29 Thomas: But I did want to go back to, it may be hard to remember, but there was a time, gosh, probably two years ago where there was Republican primary. And if If you remember, the cringiest bullshit song became popular during that. It was the Rich Men, North of Rich Men or whatever. And that was their whole anthem for that thing. They all tried to like play off of that. And it just reminded me. So I want to go back to it when you're talking about some of the stuff about the elites and the government and all that. Because it really was a sign to me how prevalent this misinformation and lies about the government is. Is because like the message of that song that resonated and that they tried to co -opt for each Republican tried to co -opt, you know, for their little campaign. If you look at like the worldview of that sung, it's that we're all poor. Like people are having a hard time because the taxes are too high. And then the politicians are like getting that the taxes, which is fundamentally a very stupid, like you could, there's just elements of like, yeah, there is grift and you know, sure, whatever there's going to be grifting government. And there's, there was a level at which like some amount of that you could argue is something. But the idea that like for the average person struggling to buy a house or struggling to make rent or whatever, that taxes are the reason is just silly. And it's amazing that like that kind of a message could resonate that hard to the point where also that guy, that musician who was trying to make like he's not beholden to anybody and is not really a Republican or Democrat, not really like his His quote unquote kind of neutral message for the people was a conservative lie about government and taxes. I just really felt like that showed how prevalent this misinformation is. And I know it's going back a step in the conversation, but I just, were you around for that moment? Were you reporting on any of these folks for that moment of that viral song?

0:29:16 Katherine: Of course. I mean, I've been reporting on this movement for 16 years in Money, Lies, and God, and my third book on the topic. I think it's a great book. I've read it a lot. I love it. I mean it sort of gets to the point we were discussing earlier about the oligarchs. I I mean, yes, they're one faction and they're pursuing what they believe to be in their interests in the short term. I think many loyalist oligarchs are going to be rewarded with policies that are beneficial to their pocketbooks. And by the way, they are actually helping sort of intensify economic inequality and make it harder for the average member of the rank and file to succeed. But there are two things we should really keep in mind. First, these oligarchs really depend on the support of a huge part of the population that is not benefiting from their initiatives. If they understood properly what was going on, they wouldn't support it. And second, I think that these oliguarchs are not nearly as smart as they think they are and as they're portrayed as being. They think investing in the corruption and dismantling of democracy

0:30:17 Katherine: Is going to be a

0:30:17 Thomas: A good long -term bet for them. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah.

0:30:18 Katherine: Good thing. And it's going to give them some short -term payouts, right? But in the long run, they're making life much worse for themselves or their children or grandchildren if they have any. Yeah.

0:30:30 Thomas: What do we do? I mean, you have, I think, rarely does anyone have solutions, obviously, because we'd solve it if there's easy solutions. But do you have some thoughts on what we start to do? How do we come at this?

0:30:41 Katherine: I mean, there are so many things that we can do. I have a whole final section of Money Lies in God where I talk about what is to be done. There's no short answer because it's a sort of multifaceted challenge that we're facing. There's no magic bullet. But I think that the authoritarian movement may have an edge, but they haven't managed to eliminate or silence us yet. So as long as we can resist authoritarianism, as long as мы can speak freely, as Long as we can get involved in political organizing, and work toward a better future through democratic institutions, we will there's a couple things I'll say, you know, without getting too deep leap into the weeds or getting to all the things I discuss in my book.

0:31:22 Thomas: Well, people have to buy the book. They got to grab the book.

0:31:25 Katherine: Yeah, well, not only that, but like, I think there are things we can do as individuals. And then there are things we do when we join together with others. So as individuals, it's not just about voting. It's not about getting your inner circle to vote and holding them accountable to do it or getting involved in voter turnout operations. That's very important. All of this is super important. You need to help people understand why their vote matters. You You need to get people to vote. If you're part of a community, a faith community, any civic community, you need to work on people and get them to understand why voting really does matter. As Ralph Reed said, he's one of the movement's key strategists. He said, pay no attention to our numbers. Our numbers are shrinking. All that matters is who turns out on election day. They win by voter turnout. That's how they do it. And we need to just turn out our base. And, yeah, you might have like an uncle who has been sort of worked on and persuaded by the propaganda, and you could bash your head against the wall trying to get that uncle to shift, but your energy might be better put into people

0:31:32 Thomas: Though, please do that, everybody. Yeah? Getting a young person to vote? Yeah. Yeah.

0:32:31 Katherine: Who are more likely, people more likely to join with you. And then go after low propensity voters. This is something that they did. Look, in 2024, they went after the Amish and they succeeded. They really, they fine knew, they sure did.

0:32:44 Thomas: They got the Amish to vote for them. Oh, my God.

0:32:47 Katherine: They went after The Amish in Pennsylvania and they got them to vote. I mean, they're always looking for people who might seem a little apolitical, but you get to them and you give them messaging, their certain kind of messaging, you can get their vote. So look, there's no feature yet in the American political system that would ensure that the MAGA movement is going to rule indefinitely. And if we can really, we have to take heart from the fact that Trump won by a relatively small margin, proportionally speaking, especially compared with other presidents. And also, he won about the same amount of votes in 2024 as he did in 2020. What happened is that, yes,

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0:33:24 Thomas: Well, he gained three million votes. He did gain three million. Yeah.

0:33:27 Katherine: But the Democratic vote was suppressed. Not suppressed intentionally, but depressed. Enthusiasm for the Democratic votes was not what it was in 2020. I continue to believe, frankly, that more Americans would support democracy and its institutions over some sort of cronyistic kleptocracy with theocratic and authoritarian features. So if you can work to sort of convey that fact to people, then you can actually make a difference. And then when it comes to joining together with others, I think that's really important. I can't tell individuals what they should do, but there are no shortage of avenues for engagement. I heard somebody say once, I think it's really important to join together with others who are working for these sort of democracy building initiatives. I heard someone say the other day, find someone who's doing something that you admire and do that, like join them, do that thing too. I also think it's super important to get involved in local politics. I mean, what do we think Moms for Liberty was all about? That was all about drafting and minting like a new generation of people engaged in local politics. And if we sit back and think someone else can handle it, guess who steps in to the gap? It's the people like the Parents Defending Ed, the Moms for Liberty, and the types who really want to tear down public education and and destroy these key features of our democracy. So we really need to be locally engaged as well.

0:34:55 Thomas: Absolutely. It just feels like so much all the time, you know, and it's that fundamental problem does seem like what worries me the most is the fundamental problem seems to be the information environment, because there's a a lot of people who want to come at it from like campaign messaging. And I get it. Like we should all be hoping we find the perfect candidate to do everything for us. But I also don't know that that's it. I've looked a lot at the 2024 election. And for one, I mean, it's hard to say that Democratic enthusiasm was lower because the number one issue in 2020 was COVID. And that issue did not exist in 2024. So I think people inappropriately set this new watermark, like, oh, this is our new threshold of votes that we have, our new baseline of votes, based on really a once -in -a -century anomalous situation with an issue that was gone in 2024. So from that lens, I don't think Democrats did particularly badly. I mean, she got the second, what is it, the third most votes ever, I guess it would be, because it's Biden. But anyway, something like that. But also, what worries me is the reasons people say they voted for Trump or didn't vote for Biden are things that aren't real. Like they aren't true. They're just incorrect things about the world and how the world works. So it's like, I've been getting a little frustrated with this idea that, oh no, we just need to say better things and we need to save the race. But maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Do you get the sense that that would break through? Or is it about maybe to what you said a moment ago, it's not about focusing on those people who have been kind of radicalized the other way it's about focusing on people who maybe haven't engaged yet one way or the other yeah oh yeah do a coup yeah yeah

0:36:33 Katherine: Think that's really important. Look, I meet people out there every day working to cut through the disinformation and strengthen our democracy rather than tear it down. Now, to be sure, there's a lot of work to be done, but I refuse to believe that it's in vain. You know, I recently was at America Fest. It's an annual gathering put on by Turning Point USA. Say, there's 20 ,000 people at the Phoenix Convention Center, and I heard Steve Bannon speak, and he was talking to his people, right? He's got this sort of faux populist, and he puts on his flak jacket, even though he's bandying about with billionaires and, you know, grifting. He's taking donations, and apparently he was, I believe, prosecuted for pocketing some of them. Yep, so he said to the crowd, when you lost in 2020, you didn't get into bed and suck your thumbs. You decided to get out there and fight. And that's why we won. And, you know, I think we would not want to emulate the most craven tactics of the right. We wouldn't want to lie to people. We wouldn'T want to sort of spread disinformation, but we would do well to take note of their determination and perhaps just sort of bring some of that fire into the struggle to build

0:37:48 Katherine: A better democracy for us all. We have elections in less than two years. We have institutions to protect. We need we have a lot of folks to message to. I mean, I hate the term messaging, but a lot OF folks to reach. We HAVE a lot of folks to PERSUADE that their vote matters.

0:38:05 Thomas: And I've been thinking about this too because I mean I think one of the the core advantages they always have is that you know negative emotions are more powerful anger is more powerful so it's way easier to be mad and about you know your Your identity, all these identity issues, it's ways you'd be afraid. It's where all these things that aren't good. Like you say, we don't want to lie and make people afraid all the time. But the thing that occurred to me is we actually have the real version of that. We have like they have a fake victim complex. Yeah.

0:38:30 Katherine: And we need to truth tell about what they're doing. Now I know, I

0:38:33 Thomas: And we have the Real Victim. Like they literally they've seized every branch with their religious fundamentalism. They've taken away all this stuff. It's like we have The Real Version of that, but then you get a bunch of people on the other side saying, or not the other side, the other that argument saying, well, you You can't just campaign on not being Trump and fear of them. You have to, you know, say what you're offering. And then that runs into this problem of, yeah, but our government is broken because of the filibuster and because of the courts. And so we can't actually deliver on the things we want to promise. And then we lose credibility. And there's this cycle that just goes on and on and on. I. Yeah. We're still in the aftermath of the. Yeah. Right.

0:39:05 Katherine: Think we need TO BREATHE. I think you need to breathe. Breathe and listen. Listen, I mean, there's, you know, there is a lot of room for improvement. But, you know, I think that a functioning government with a functioning democracy is better than living in an autocratic, kleptocratic, I think of religious nationalism is not unique to America. And when leaders around the world want to consolidate a more authoritarian form of governance, they'll bind themselves very tightly to these ultra conservative religious religious figures in their own countries to consolidate that autocratic power. You know, you could describe these countries as theocracies in a certain fake sense, in that there is an official religion and they may be basing parts of their law on the holy texts. But what they really are is autocratic kleptocracies, where there's absolute suppression of free speech, suppression of political opposition, and very tight controls over how the ordinary people are allowed to behave. And, you know, there's a reason people want to move to America. I mean, we have freedoms. Would you rather live in an American democracy or in some kind of theocratic, kleptocratic autocracy where the top dude and his inner circle are stealing the public treasury for themselves and impoverishing the people? I mean, most people, frankly, don't want to live that way. So there's a lot to fight for.

0:40:30 Thomas: Totally agreed. I feel like we could do better to communicate that there's no way that these folks who are anti-elite and also seem to be pretty economically populist in terms of the voters anyway, how could they think that these billionaires rooting around and destroying everything is somehow like a good result for the average person? I think we could really hammer home the kleptocracy, the oligarchy a little bit more probably.

0:40:57 Katherine: Exactly. We need to communicate the fact that expertise and administrative competence within the federal government, number one, are powerful obstacles to authoritarian designs. We also need to point out that true religious freedom is the freedom to worship any God or sacred idea or none. It's also the freedom from having to worship if you don't want to, the freedom from being forced to fund a kind of reactionary state religion with your tax dollars if you don't want to. And I think Americans should value and I think most Americans do value to religious freedom. We need to show how this movement is really undermining that. And then I think we need to how this kind of religious religious nationalist autocracy is really an impediment to trying to fix some of the structural problems in our democracy and in our economy, our political economy and our actual economy, which I address at length in Money, Lies, and God.

0:41:57 Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, yeah, as we're coming to a close, anything else from the book you want to let people know about or any other anecdotes or stories from this reporting that you want to tell us?

0:42:07 Katherine: Well, I mean, I'm just really grateful to you for hosting me in conversation today. There's so much more in the book. There is a lot of reporting on a lot different aspects of the issues. I do a lot first-person reporting, So you'll get those stories in the book, and it's on sale now, Money, Lies, and God, anywhere books are sold. And you can also follow my work on Blue Sky, Katherine .Stewart at Blue Sky. And then I'm also still, for now, at least, on Twitter. It's Kath S. Stewart. There are two S's there. So thank you so much for this great conversation I

0:42:43 Thomas: Oh, absolutely. I'm gonna have to make sure I'm following on blue sky. I don't remember I converted over as well. I gotta make sure I get all my follows converted. But yeah, thank you so much. Yeah.

0:42:51 Katherine: Know it's taken a while to sort of do that but I'm still on Twitter for now at least I'm not sure how long I'll be there but it's a good you know I follow all kinds of different messaging platforms because it's you get different kinds of information on

0:42:57 Thomas: Yeah, it's just Yeah, sure. Well especially as a reporter. I mean, there's if you want to be where a lot of the right is, the new right specifically, I think Twitter's still a place to be. But yeah, as always, thank you for your time. Money, Lies, and God, the new book. Can't wait till this one's made into the movie version. Is Rob Reiner called yet? We'll see. All right. Thanks again. Hopefully we talk again next book.

0:43:21 Katherine: Each thank you some much yeah thank you so much really a pleasure great conversation