The names Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach speak for themselves. Glennon, a bestselling author, activist, and podcaster. Abby, an American soccer legend and World Cup champion. Together, the married couple is a force for good. In this episode, they join Nicolle to talk about how putting our bodies into uncomfortable places is the antidote to the dehumanization of immigrants, and why fighting for democracy needs to be a team sport.
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Note: This is a rough transcript. Please excuse any typos.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: The thing about the MAGA movement is they’re the worst winners in human history. I mean, you’re like a world-class athlete. Have you ever seen anyone win and act like such a jerk as the MAGA people?
Abby Wambach: I mean, I’ve seen it, but they’re not my friends. Right? They’re not my people.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: This is perhaps the episode of The Best People that I dreamed about, that I thought would never come to be. You two have an outsized role in my life from “Untamed” to the role of a stepparent, with the “skin in the game, but not the name on the jersey.” Was that it? Right?
You two are my core memories. I’m, of course, talking about Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach, the hosts of “We Can Do Hard Things.” Glennon, the author of “Untamed” and otherwise, the little voice in my head, and all my good moments, and a lot of my scary moments. Thank you guys so much for being here.
Glennon Doyle: Hey, Nicolle, we talk about you quite often, actually.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Glennon Doyle: We’re equally grateful for you and the work you’re doing in the world, especially now. I don’t know how you’re doing it with such precision and courage and still smiling.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: But we’ll have what you’re having.
Nicolle Wallace: No. Well, here’s the thing, you guys are doing it too now.
Glennon Doyle: Thank you.
Nicolle Wallace: But I think I even consumed news, and then I consumed my mental wellness. And so, I would listen to the news and then I would listen to you guys or Brené, or people that made me feel whole, so I could go back to the news. And what I find in Trump 2.0 is we’re done separating the two.
Glennon Doyle: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: And then you guys seem done also.
Glennon Doyle: Yes.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: How did that happen?
Glennon Doyle: I mean, the most recent iteration of it for me is I decided, at an interesting time, a few months ago, that I was absolutely done with social media. And I do think social media is toxic and an insane place to be, I still do. But it was kind of this vibe of this is what I have to do to protect my peace, and then there just becomes such a clear moment where you’re like, actually, I don’t want to protect my peace at the expense of anyone else’s peace being taken, which is what’s happening every single day.
And so, I mean, we had a cool conversation with our adult child recently, where we were talking about how many of our friends were planning exits, planning places to leave the country. And as parents, it’s confusing because we are committed to staying engaged and fighting. And then you also have this element of, should I be making another plan because of my children?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: And we were kind of talking to our kid and saying, you know, we just have to have a plan for safety. And our kid looked at us and said, my version of safety is fighting for as much safety as possible for the most amount of people.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s amazing.
Glennon Doyle: And so, we’re not separating it anymore. We’re just going to be all in and we think a lot. We were talking about the movie, “Titanic,” the other day and we were like, okay, who did we respect in that movie? Not the people who jumped in the boats first.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Glennon Doyle: And it’s Jack, right? He leaves Rose on the wood. And so, I think we want to be somewhere between Rose and Jack, right. Or we want to be the wood?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, I think the wood.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. I think it brings up an interesting point that Glennon is talking about the difference between a 22-year-old who doesn’t have the responsibility of children and the way that we work ourselves and the way that we process through this weird time, it’s vastly different than a parent who has other human beings that they are thinking for in some ways. But it’s confusing.
And, I mean, we just went on a walk the other day and I think that this is something that’s probably happening inside a lot of families right now, that depending on what social media feed or what news channel you’re consuming your news from, it’s not exactly the same. My feet is different than Glennon’s, right? And so, there’s a thing that’s happening, I think, interpersonally that is disconnecting us from each other.
Glennon Doyle: Yes. It’s like what’s going on in the house is the same thing that’s going on in the world. Like Abby and I will come to dinner, and I’m ready to just go ballistic and go to the streets and go to whatever. And Abby is like, what? I think things are fine, but that’s because my social media feed is everything is on fire, and hers is highland cows.
Abby Wambach: Yeah, baby highland cows.
Glennon Doyle: And so —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, I read about the cows.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: I did that. My parents live in Lake Tahoe, so there are all sorts of wild critters in Lake Tahoe. And I heard you talking about the cows. I did that with the cubs, the bear cubs that you see. Yeah.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I feel all of that. I mean, I left Twitter, so I didn’t leave all social media.
Abby Wambach: Same.
Nicolle Wallace: But I quit X on election day and the right mocked me, oh, snowflake can’t handle it. And for once, they’re right. Like, I couldn’t handle the bullshit on X and I didn’t want it. The thing about the MAGA movement is they’re the worst winners in human history. I mean, you’re like a world-class athlete. Have you ever seen anyone win and act like such a jerk as the MAGA people?
Glennon Doyle: I mean, I’ve seen it, but they’re not my friends. Right? They’re not my people. Yeah, I mean, the lack of humility in the winning of the election and where we’re at right now is astounding and it’s giving me the big old ick is what I would say.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. I mean, Jane Fonda has talked about this, how her way of coping with her own anxiety was activism. That it was as much about how she was going to feel her way through her anxiety about it as it was about aiding her causes. And I feel like you guys are walking that journey now.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. I think that’s, to us, always the answer. And by the way, we go through cycles. I mean, when this all first happened, we really noticed at some point that we were reacting in very different ways because everyone decides whether they’re going to be in fight, flight, or flee, right?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: Or fun, which —
Abby Wambach: Or freeze too.
Glennon Doyle: — Fox News women are in fun. But it’s an interesting, I felt so, I mean, in all of my years of activism and I’ve never felt so frozen. I was confused. I also was confused because I had this brain fog and this rage, and this inability to focus. It was very strange. It was like being in soup or something for a while —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: — for a couple months there. And I always would laugh with Abby every morning and say, okay, well, I am living at the intersection of fascism and menopause, so I never know which one it is.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, I’m right there. There has a —
Glennon Doyle: I’m like, is this —
Nicolle Wallace: — a whole line of something for us, right? Someone that would design my feed and my supplements, I would take it. I would pay a fortune. Maybe we should think of that next, you know, for the menopause brain on fascism, or the fascism brain in menopause.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s a toxic brew. I think, though, what I love so much about how you’ve talked about this is you talk about moving your body. I’m a little bit of a homebody. I talked to Rachel Maddow for one of these podcast episodes, and I said to her, you’re the only friend I have that liked COVID lockdowns because you liked being —
Glennon Doyle: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: — you know, at home with your people. But I don’t always feel pulled into the streets. I don’t always feel like moving myself into a moment. But I feel better diving into the news and getting up for two hours, and it’s an honor to cover it. I mean, not that it’s the easiest it’s ever been, but it feels I get more out of it than I think I’ve ever gotten out of it. Holding up a mirror feels like a precious privilege.
Glennon Doyle: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: And the way you talked about moving your body into this street, it seemed like the experience was really filling you guys up.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. We had this moment where we were just out on the road, just a few months ago, launching our book. And there was a person who asked me, she opened up the book and she said, okay, I love this chapter, how do I make peace with my body? And she said, you know, so many of us, especially women, have a hard time feeling comfortable in our own skin. And she knew that I had struggled with eating disorders my whole life. And she said, so how do we make peace with our body?
And I actually didn’t answer her because I had this moment of understanding, which is you can look at that question two different ways. Like, how do I make peace with my body in this little container? And, oh, my eating disorder, which I’m not mocking, I’ve spiraled around this my whole life and will forever. But the other way is how do I go out into the world and actually make peace with my body?
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: And I can’t stop thinking about the two different ways. We have been sold for so long that wellness is like this individual perfectionist project that we can stay in our house and red light our way to. And I think what we’re all figuring out, some of us later than others, maybe white women a little bit later than others, is this is a collective liberation moment.
Like, we cannot cold plunge our way to peace and freedom. Like, we have got to get our asses out and surrender to this, like, collective energy that is boundaryless and scarier because we have no control over it. That’s what I’m experiencing right now. It’s a very different energy. It’s more of like throwing myself out there and surrendering to whatever happens next, as opposed to staying in my house.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. There’s a way that, like, all of us are feeling and it’s on purpose. Like the way that we’re feeling is a plan of attack by the GOP, right? Like, this is what they want us to feel, scared and afraid that we actually don’t know what to do. We don’t know how to change it. So what makes us, you know, all of our knee-jerk reaction is to stay home, keep our people safe.
But the truth is like when I go out into the streets and I protest, when I go to a women’s sporting event, I actually am around other people who are also experiencing this moment and want to try to do something about it. It’s like the only place I actually feel hopeful is in the streets.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. But, I mean, I studied authoritarianism on maternity leave, said no one, but I did that.
Glennon Doyle: As you do.
Nicolle Wallace: As one does. And their cheapest, most reliable tool is our despair.
Glennon Doyle: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: I mean, what they’re doing now is expensive, handcuffing Senator Padilla costs them something. Not all of their people love that. Some of their people get off on that. But our despair is the most reliable, the most easily deployed. It’s why it’s part of why I left X, because it was just peddling in things. That feeling that people feel on the pro-democracy side under that umbrella is their cheapest way of defeating us.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: I think one of the most important things to actually leaving our house and getting into these spaces is that as fascism rises, propaganda rises. Truth is suppressed. We cannot trust anymore. We cannot stay home, watch TV, and think we know anything. I think all the time about that Jonathan Foster quote, like when one side says it’s raining and the other side says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote both. It’s your job to look out the fucking window.
Nicolle Wallace: Yes.
Glennon Doyle: And in the midst of rising fascism, we don’t get to stay home and judge everything by the TV. When we take our bodies there, we see how many people. We are not alone. The despair goes away because what they want us to think is that we are alone and we are the only people who are against this. But when we get out there, it gives us the courage that that collective kind of movement does. Embodied experiences are going to be more important than ever, I think.
Nicolle Wallace: What does it say about our country, that people didn’t believe the warnings, or that they liked Trump so much, they voted for him anyway?
Glennon Doyle: I don’t know the answer to that anymore. I feel very humbled by this entire experience. And what I think is that I have to believe that if anyone is seeing and hearing what I am seeing and hearing constantly, that they wouldn’t be making the decisions that they’re making. So what I have to believe is that we are playing two different board games. We have different information. We have different voices.
That’s what I think scares me the most is that they must have not heard the warnings that we did. They must be seeing this through a completely different lens than we are. Otherwise we would be at the same conclusions. So I don’t have an answer to that, but that’s what I feel is happening.
Nicolle Wallace: I think that’s the faith piece, though, right? Like, we have faith in humanity. That’s the leap that we’re all taking, and the leap is we believe that if everyone saw what you guys saw in family court, in immigration court, there’s no way they would’ve chosen this. There’s no way they would’ve left a 2-year-old to fend for themselves. And that for me, especially on the news side, is the hardest piece to cover.
You know, when people ask me off, where does your faith come from? My faith comes from the same place. I refuse to believe that people want someone leading the military who thinks that those who suffer grievous injuries are losers and suckers. Like, I refuse to believe that people want that. They either didn’t believe that account because it came from a media with our own credibility problems or, I don’t know, but that’s, for me, the murkiest piece of it all.
Glennon Doyle: It is. I’ve been a part of the evangelical church. Okay. So I know firsthand how indoctrination works. And I also know that, to me, there’s the really bad guys at the top. Okay, this is my official educated analysis. There’s always some really bad dudes at the top, who actually don’t believe anything they’re saying. Okay. They don’t believe it. They just know they have a smoke screen for they can convince a bunch of people beneath them to be true believers in this thing that they’re not even true believers in. So like with evangelicals and abortion, these dudes never cared about that before. It became their pivotal issue, right?
I have watched people in the church, in my church, they were true believers. Like, they really believed this stuff about abortion and babies, and they actually really believed it. And so, I know, I’ve been inside of it. I don’t know how to break in this time. Like, I don’t know.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. I think about it from a team perspective because I have so much experience being in a community of a team, right? And being a person who represented this country and I’ve consider myself very patriotic in many ways, and yet my relationship with my country is very complicated because of all the things that go on inside of our administration, the things that we’re seeing.
But I do believe that one of the things that Trump and the administration are geniuses at is getting people to believe that they’re part of this community, right? Like, this community piece allows people to not pay attention to every little thing, right? They’re stoking them in a way that keeps them believing that they are a part of something that is good, even if there are some consequences that are happening in order to get to this. Like, it’s like the end justifies the means in some way.
And when you’re developing team camaraderie and team culture, it’s actually a very smart way to do it is to say, we will take care of you, just stick with us, right? And I think that, you know, you’re seeing some folks going, wait a second, I didn’t sign up for all of this. And that’s laughable to me because he wasn’t hiding the playbook. I think part of them probably felt like, oh, the playbook is just like, that’s just never going to happen, right? Like, that’s too far down. Like, that’s not ever going to happen. Let’s just get him an office. He’s a good businessman.
And I also think that there’s probably a sector of people that were like, yeah, we want all of this stuff to happen. I think it’s a smaller version, but I do think some of the folks that voted for him are probably questioning their vote and also embarrassed to go back on it, because it’s like once you get entrenched into that community, it’s like if you get out, where do I go? Like, it’s almost as if there is no place for folks who want to actually jump ship to land, because they can’t see themselves in all of our world.
Nicolle Wallace: Can you reverse engineer it to how do we get out of it? We have to answer every question you just asked. What do they belong to instead? How do they save face? How does their vote and support for Trump live alongside their decision to maybe off ramp at a point that doesn’t feel like America anymore?
And I think that what you guys are doing right now with “We Can Do Hard Things” is how you change the country. I mean, I think bringing all the people in your world along this journey of what’s happening in the country and asking those questions, because I think 90% of Trumpism is the vibes.
Abby Wambach: It’s the vibes.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s the feel. Like, they think he’s hilarious. And you ask a MAGA voter, how they feel about the person in their community who’s been there 40 years, being deported, and they don’t believe that that person will be targeted. They will tell you, with a straight face, no, he’s only going after the criminals.
And again, back to believe what you know, no, he’s not. Open your eyes. And it’s, as you guys pointed out, I love your conversation about what you saw at the protest and what’s happening in immigration court. They are doing family separation now, and it was so bad in the first term and it’s happening again.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. We were very involved in family separation 1.0, and we are working with a network of organizations all over the country who are standing with these kids. These kids are alone for many different reasons. Some of them, their parents, what I view it, has made the impossibly brave decision, the only hope they could see for their children’s future above their own desire to be able to do life with their children.
Like, I would hope to God that I would have that sort of selflessness and courage. Some of them cross the border with their babies, desperate for anything that looked like hope and then were separated there. Some of them are now alone because of these ICE raids all over the country. And we see all these adults being taken.
The follow-up question is where the hell are the children? So the answer to that is that the children are in these things called “detainment centers” all over the country, in almost every state. They’re in the basement of hospitals. They’re in the basement of churches. They’re in basements, basements.
There’s always been, developed under the Bush administration, okay, so, a fund to make sure that unaccompanied children have, at the very least, advocacy in these detainment centers and representation in court for their deportation hearings. Okay.
Now what we’re seeing is since that fund has been frozen and unfrozen and threatened, all over the place, we saw with our own eyes, with our own bodies, 2-year-olds, 3-year-olds, 4-year-olds who are being walked into court, sat down at the front by themselves, sometimes in booster seats so that they can see, with earphones on because they’re in this place that they don’t know where they are. Many of these kids, when a person finally gets to them and asks them if they know where they are, they say they’re on their way to America. They do not believe that they’re there because they’ve been told they will be treated with respect and kindness in America. So they don’t believe they’re here. Defending themselves, there’s a Homeland security lawyer at the next table and a big judge, the whole scary intimidating situation, and the 2-year-olds are representing themselves. And that is what is happening right now.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: We’ll take a quick break right here, more with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach on the other side. We’ll be back in a moment.
(Music Playing)
Nicolle Wallace: Is your theory that people don’t know that? Is your hope that if they do, they’ll have a different opinion about the Trump administration’s deportation policy?
Glennon Doyle: Maybe. I’m at the point now where while everyone works on changing the outcome of the situation, while we decide, as a country, whether this is who we are, that this is how we treat children, I am obsessed now with caring the most about changing the experience for these people.
When I think about my own baby being in that scenario, I need there to be other adults in that room that when they look around, they can make eye contact with someone who is witnessing this, who is with them, who is standing in. When I think about if I had to send my babies away, I would just lay in bed every night and pray that there would be mothers, that there would be adults in that other country who would step in and mother my children through that moment.
So what I care about right now, I do care about changing the outcome. I don’t know any more if it matters. What I know that I can do right now is be a witness, just to put my body there so that I can see what’s happening, so that I can be a loving presence. You know, our friend, Lillian Aponte Miranda who runs the Florence Project in Arizona, always says, we don’t know if we can change the outcome. We cannot tell you that these kids are not going to go through hell, but we can make sure they’re not going to go through hell alone.
Abby Wambach: I don’t know. I think that we have to have some bottom lines, right? This makes me so emotional because we sat in that room and there was a 16-year-old little girl who was pleading with the judge, where’s my mom? Where is my mother? Take me to my mother. They have no idea. This is not their fault. And like the bottom line, if the bottom line can’t be children for you, I’m not really sure there is one for you.
Glennon Doyle: That’s right.
Nicolle Wallace: My colleague, Jacob Soboroff, did a doc on “Separated,” and the book and the doc felt anthropological during the campaign. It came out during the campaign and you thought, wow, thank God, someone chronicled this horrible chapter in America’s history. Like, the internment camps are like any stain on our country. And the fact that we’re doing it again faster, more aggressively and on a larger scale feels unbearable. And I wonder how it felt to be in that courthouse.
Glennon Doyle: We were sitting. There was a little 4-year-old girl sitting right next to me. Like, her knee was against mine and she was playing with this little pen with a flower on it. And I was stunned by how in it we were.
Also, the woman who was doing the translating, who was sitting beside the judge, she was translating for these babies. She had to translate the very harsh things that the judge was saying to these children, and she kept leaving the courtroom and I felt very annoyed with her. I felt very annoyed. Were you annoyed?
Abby Wambach: Yeah, because the proceedings had to stop until she came back.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. And I was like, God, did you have something more important to do? It turned out she kept leaving because she was bawling. She had to look at these children and say these things and she could barely take it, and so she kept leaving.
And then the judge was being so harsh and so cold, but there was something that I could see in him. We were all so completely separated from our humanity in this wild paradigm that was not allowing any of us to be human.
So the woman who was translating, was handling that by leaving and crying. The man who was judging was handling that by just steeling himself against these children’s humanity. What I noticed was that we were all stuck in this absurd dehumanizing moment in which each of us had different defense mechanisms up to handle the horror.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: So it felt like a microcosm of everything that’s going on in the whole world, that we all have a different defense mechanism against this. And the best thing that I knew how to do was to just sit there and feel all of it, and have no defense mechanism because that is what gave us the gas and the fuel when we got home, to get to freaking work, surrender to the actual reality of the brutality of it. We are in the middle of amazing dehumanization. So staying human and feeling it all and witnessing it all feels like really the only antidote right now.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. It took all of me and my body to not get up and yell and scream and say, what are we doing? Look at what is happening. This is ridiculous. Like, I really wanted to pull my hair out, and also I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t. I didn’t want to cry and make these kids feel even more scared.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: It was horrific.
Nicolle Wallace: You know, people in the first term have confronted Trump about child separation and it was sort of a shrug, like that’s the deterrent. Maybe they shouldn’t come here. I said this term during the campaign, we need to rehumanize —
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: — the people that have been successfully dehumanized, because the only way you get to a point where the political party I was once a part of, are waving around signs that say mass deportation. The Republican I worked for, in this heart of hearts, believed in amnesty. Ronald Reagan did amnesty. I mean, it’s not a traditional Republican position to believe in deportation. So that’s new. That’s a global phenomenon of dehumanizing the other. But it doesn’t thrive, if the truth gets out.
And I remember in, I think, 2017 or ’18, Trump said to his supporters, don’t believe your eyes, don’t believe your ears, only believe me. And I wonder what role you guys think the propaganda and the lies play. I mean, what you describe should make everybody’s heartbreak. And it’s a really important note for us about just going in and telling one story about one day in one courthouse, with one judge, and one court reporter, and one group of kids might be the most impactful thing you can do.
Glennon Doyle: I think so. I mean, this has to be done with great care. But whatever you can get your body to go see, as someone who got myself out of Evangelical Christianity, which is only based on do not believe what you see here feel. Like, that is the entire vibe. Do not lean on your understanding. Your heart is wicked. God works in mysterious ways. Do not trust yourself, trust me. That is how strong men, whether it’s with a religious, state, political thing, that is how it works and that’s how propaganda sets in. Getting your body to these places is the way propaganda won’t work anymore when you see it.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: Because at the end of the day, we are all human, and then you think all of the arguments go away. I mean, my God, the people who are saying, well, why can’t they do it legally? That’s what they’re doing. They’re getting arrested at the hearings.
Abby Wambach: At court. Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: They’re in the process, right? So, you know, none of them, they don’t work. They’re getting arrested at work. They’re not educated. They’re getting arrested at school.
Abby Wambach: At school.
Glennon Doyle: Right. Just pay attention, right? You just watch. I do think that getting our bodies into these places and viewing it ourselves is what breaks the heart open and breaks through propaganda.
Nicolle Wallace: What does the pod squad think? Because it seems like you have been trying to talk them through the very understandable reflex of not taking in all the news, not taking in all the information. But as you guys have turned, they’ve seemed to have turned with you.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. I mean, I think that I really feel like the pod squad is an incredible, like, pocket of people. They’re people who are ready to be activated, and they are not wanting to do the whole spiritual bypassing of let’s just all just protect our peace while the Titanic sinks. I think that they are waiting for action.
We were talking about it the other day. I was rereading this old Michelle Alexander essay from the first Trump administration, and she was writing about how we need to rebrand. We are not the resistance, and I’m just going to not describe this well. But basically, she was like, this is this kind of yearning for freedom and for unity and for liberty is the river, and like they’re the dam. You can feel that to be true, right? You can feel this sort of unstoppable yearning for liberation is more the river than the dam.
But it feels to me like there’s a fleet of boats that has been on the river for a very long time, right? And like every boat has a different name, you know, Medicare for all, protect higher education, trans lives, protect trans kids. All these different movements that are their own boats, but all connected into one fleet. And to me, the rise of fascism really succeeds, clearly not because the right is so smart, but because the left is so splintered.
Nicolle Wallace: Correct.
Glennon Doyle: Right?
Nicolle Wallace: And the only time it works is when the pro-democracy side comes together. And what I love about this space is no one is competitive with one another.
Glennon Doyle: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: The pod people are all the first people that said, oh, you’re starting a podcast. Do you have any experience with that? And I was like, no. But they all came. I mean, you guys are here. Rachel came, Kara Swisher came. Again, I, for nine years, have oriented myself editorially around, well, what stories does Trump really not want me to cover? I mean, I think in 2.0, it’s what do they not want us to do? They don’t want us to crowd them out of the manosphere, which is happening. They want us off their lawn, right?
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: And their lawn is we own the narrative. We dominate the narrative. And the reason their movement relies on that is because a lot of it is bullshit. And I wonder what you feel about this banding together under the pro-democracy umbrella. I mean, Kamala Harris made room for Liz Cheney, which I loved, and I don’t think that’s why she lost. But I wonder what the movement feels like having come up short in November with the stake so high.
Glennon Doyle: I would say that, personally, this is the hardest one for me because I tend to be more of a purest than as helpful. Okay. Like, I wanted my particular brand of anti-fascism, to everyone to get onto my particular brand. So my challenge of myself right now is to value saving our democracy more than proving that I’m right. So it actually is an ego exercise for me.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: Because if we stick to our political purity, we are going to sink. So right now it’s forming alliances and showing up arm and arm with people who maybe during better times, hot, right?
Nicolle Wallace: We fight right in my living room.
Glennon Doyle: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: These are the people you fight with over taxes. You know, I think Rachel, as our north stars, you can tell, that’s why I talk about her all the time.
Glennon Doyle: Yes, of course.
Nicolle Wallace: But she modeled this in an interview with Liz Chaney. Like, you’ll come back and we will fight about the stuff.
Glennon Doyle: Yes.
Nicolle Wallace: But right now, we have to save our democracy.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: And I understand why that’s hard for people. You know, it’s so tricky to think you’re so progressive and anti-fascist, and then have a 20-year-old who thinks everything you say is incorrect. It’s just a real mindfuck over here right now.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: So I’m trying to hold the line of like, I see your idealism and I think you’re right, but we’re still in harm reduction mode.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. I think about it a lot in terms of how leadership and captaincy of our women’s national team worked, right? And for the generations and the reason why our women’s national team has found so much success, and I don’t mean to compare sport and fascism.
Nicolle Wallace: No. It’s right.
Glennon Doyle: We’ll take whatever we can get.
Abby Wambach: But I think it’s an important thing to think about and for your listeners to consider. All of my teammates and I, we weren’t all necessarily best friends. We would gather around meal tables. We would discuss politics. Politics ranged from every end of the spectrum. And yet we were still able to go on the field and perform at our highest and best selves.
How are we actually able to do that? And one of the things that I think about is that we had this like one common thread that bound us together through thick and thin. And it was that we were here sacrificing our personal lives, sacrificing our bodies, putting ourselves at risk to win, as a byproduct of representing this thing that was greater than us.
And I think that we have lost sight in the democratic, pro-democracy world. I think we have lost sight of, because everybody wants to just be the most right. And unfortunately, when you are in a team and you’re trying to win, you all have to be a little bit less right in order to actually win. And I think that if we could kind of come to the tables, right, and get into one of your boats, but don’t scream at another boat in your fleet going, you’re doing it wrong. You’re wasting energy.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. Get in my boat. Why aren’t you in my boat?
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Glennon Doyle: We need everybody in their boats, and the only thing we should be yelling at each other is keep going.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Glennon Doyle: Keep going, keep going.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Glennon Doyle: We’re with you. And then our job is to get more people in our boat. So let me just explain that if we’re just bitching at each other and shaming each other for not knowing something that we just learned seven minutes ago, nobody is going to want to get in our boat.
Abby Wambach: Right.
Glennon Doyle: Right? Like, people do want belonging and that’s what MAGA does so well. I’ve seen over and over again in like cult vibes that people have two human needs, and one is belonging, and the other is individuality and free-thinking and integrity. And people will give up their integrity and free-thinking and individuality over and over again to get belonging.
So we have to become a place that offers both belonging and individuality, because we only offer individuality right now and people do have a basic human need, especially in times of fear, to belong. So we have to create, in these boats, a feeling of loving, true belonging. I think there’s some kind of answer to all of this in that soft, loving, free, challenging, but place to land for people.
Nicolle Wallace: Who do you see and feel, and connect with in the Democratic Party or under the pro-democracy umbrella that has that skillset?
Abby Wambach: Good question.
Glennon Doyle: I don’t know.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: I don’t know. I mean, I’m listening to and watching AOC and Bernie. I don’t know.
Nicolle Wallace: Would either of you ever run for office?
Abby Wambach: No. But I actually was thinking that when you asked that question, I was like, I would go and follow Rachel Maddow anywhere. I mean, right now, what she’s talking about, in terms of, we knew what Trump was going to do and I guess the only question is up to us, it’s like whether we’re going to let him do it or not.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Abby Wambach: That’s it. Right? And I think that when I watch her, when I watch you, people who are in the know, who are still awake, who are still fighting, I would never run for office.
Glennon Doyle: We have to get shit done.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: But that’s the best. You know, it’s like being working parents, right? What is it like parenting in this moment?
Abby Wambach: It’s like —
Glennon Doyle: I —
Abby Wambach: How?
Glennon Doyle: I sit with Abby all the time and I think, okay, you know how you take somebody to a party. Okay. You have a friend and you take them to a party. And then you get there and you’re like, this party is the most toxic environment I’ve ever been in and you feel responsible for their experience at the party. I feel like I am so glad that I had children before I thought it through.
Nicolle Wallace: That is another one. Be careful.
Glennon Doyle: No. You’re saying it’s too late. It’s too late.
Nicolle Wallace: No, because I have all those thoughts.
Glennon Doyle: I think one of the thing that scares me is that we taught our children to be very brave on the streets and very outspoken under different rules.
Nicolle Wallace: In a democracy.
Glennon Doyle: In a democracy. So I think, if I was being super honest in my body, that’s what I can’t figure out yet. Like, I don’t know how to say, I know I taught you to do all of these things, but that was when we had due process. That was when there was a system to protect you. I feel like I taught them under false pretenses, how to be. And now they’re out there being that, and I’m constantly saying to them, just so you know, go ahead and do it. I can’t protect you afterwards. I have no idea what’s going to happen.
I mean, going back to the conversation about mass deportation, I wish we would stop using those words because we’re not talking about deportation. Deportation is a process. It’s a legal process that includes due process. We’re not talking about deportation anymore. That’s not what’s happening. What we’re talking about is disappearing, is kidnapping, you know, just things happening behind the screen.
And so, that’s what scares me about teaching our kids to be a certain way, and then having all the rules change. I feel like in real-time, I’m trying to figure out what to say to them —
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: — what to model to them. But I also feel like, and I tend to be dramatic, but I have to take things —
Abby Wambach: A little bit. So we live on a little bit ends of the spectrum in that way.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: And so, there’s a balancing that has to happen.
Glennon Doyle: Highland cows, the world is on fire, get yes. So I do tend to take things to the end just so I can make my little decision. So I have to go to worst case scenario.
Nicolle Wallace: It’s an anxiety management technique that I’m very familiar with.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. And also, I just think like, from my perspective, you know, I’m trying to be realistic and honest, and not put my head in the sand, absolutely.
Glennon Doyle: Of course, you are. I didn’t mean to suggest that.
Abby Wambach: No. But I think it’s important because there’s some people who are doing that. I’m not, fully on doing that, but I do sometimes just need some highland cows in my life.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. That’s fair.
Abby Wambach: And making sure that our children aren’t being traumatized by us.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: Right? Like —
Nicolle Wallace: By our anxiety.
Abby Wambach: Exactly. So how do we bring them the truth with groundedness, with regulated nervous systems, and with thoughtful information rather than, you know, so when he got elected, we kind of made a pact with our family around the dinner table, we’re not going to talk about him or it.
Glennon Doyle: But the rest of the day, we are. We’re just going to all sit in silence at dinner.
Abby Wambach: Yeah. But then you don’t want your children to be stewing about this stuff on their own —
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Abby Wambach: — and spinning in their rooms because they have their own social media platforms that they’re looking at and seeing the stuff, so careful.
Glennon Doyle: But can I say one thing to parents? For a while, I thought, okay, I have to get my shit together when my kid is home so that he can feel some peace, so that he doesn’t feel scared all the time. And so, my kid came home from college and I, Nicolle, was like, here’s mommy painting and listening to Bob Dylan. Here’s mommy being so happy. Like, I just became this fake happy person. Our kid was devastated by it. This is something we talked about later. Okay. Our kid felt like, I came home and nobody is feeling what I’m feeling. Nobody is caring about what I’m caring about. Nobody is seeing what I’m seeing. I cried it in front of our oldest, two days ago, just burst out crying in the kitchen, this is after an immigration call, and it was this beautiful moment where he could see that I was feeling what he was feeling, where he didn’t feel alone. We hugged and then got back to work. So I don’t think we can hide. It’s kind of a gaslighting.
Nicolle Wallace: Totally. I was thinking the same word. Yeah. I mean, this is why I think everybody loves you guys. Like, it’s somewhere between, right? Like, I do what you’re talking about, Abby, when I say, well, it hasn’t happened today.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Nicolle Wallace: So today I’m just going to go to the store and I’m going to make dinner, and then I’m going to take Izzy to the swings because it’s light until like 11 o’clock. And if you have a small person that doesn’t go to sleep and it’s light out, like your day goes on and on.
Glennon Doyle: Yes, it does. Oh, God.
Nicolle Wallace: But when I’m feeling it and I lie about it or leave, it feels gaslighting to my 13-year-old. And so, it’s finding the spaces all along the continuum, but not ignoring either end.
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Nicolle Wallace: We’ll be right back with much more of my conversation with Glennon Doyle and Abby Wambach. Stay right here.
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Nicolle Wallace: So there is sort of a piece, as a parent, of like letting them have their lives, but not acting detached from what they know we care about.
Glennon Doyle: Exactly.
Nicolle Wallace: They know we care, and they know we’re super feelers and they know that we feel what’s happening in our communities.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: Yeah. And there’s a vibe of not knowing what to say. I can’t answer my kids’ questions about what’s going to happen, what are they going to do? What’s going to happen? I’m officially willing to admit that I’m powerless against the news cycle. So my life has become unmanageable. I’m turning it over. But I can always tell them, I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: I don’t know what they’re going to do, but I can tell you what we’re going to keep doing.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: We’re going to keep loving hard. We’re going to keep fighting hard. There’s something about that constancy that I can tell is comforting to kids.
Abby Wambach: I’ve been talking about this with my therapist over the last couple sessions, like this idea of resiliency. This is requiring an extraordinary amount of resiliency to either be born from you because you haven’t necessarily needed to work on it for a lot of your life —
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: — and/or cultivated, and curated, and worked on as a tool, right?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: Because the onslaught of information, the onslaught of things that are happening on a daily basis, and the belief that we are going to figure out somehow some way, not that somebody else is going to do it, but the belief that I am going to do my part in some way, shape or form, that’s going to have a positive outcome. Like, that is what I’m leaning on the most right now is the resiliency that I can cultivate for myself, my family and my community.
Nicolle Wallace: That’s good. What is it like to have so much of your life out there for people that you’ve never met?
Abby Wambach: I love it. I’ve got a big ego, so it’s fine. Look, I played professional sports for 30 years or 20 years, and played soccer for 30 years because I was just like wanting the attention from my mother. So like perfect job decision, perfect job and career avenue to go down. I don’t know. I just think that we’re all put on the earth to do certain things and I like to have fun. And to me, I do have an ego and I do check it, and I have humility also.
Glennon Doyle: If reincarnation is real, I want to come back as someone like my wife because I have done my time as someone like me. It is not my comfort zone. I love to share myself in writing. That’s my safe place where I can kind of pour out my insides, and other people can see it where they’re too far away to boo me to my face.
So doing things in public is a challenge for me, but I consider it, especially I think like during times where a lot of us aren’t doing super well. We’re not doing well and that is okay because all of this terror and toxicity and scariness can’t be going on in the world where we’re not feeling it in our bodies. And so, I’m used to deciding that, when I’m doing well, when I’m mentally strong, when I’m in a good place, that’s when I go out and do my stuff. And I just figured out recently, I can’t do that anymore.
Like, if people who are not sad and scared and brokenhearted don’t show up and speak anyway, then the only people who are showing up and speaking are the ones who are not sad and scared and brokenhearted. And that is the last thing we need. The brokenhearted people have to show up now before they’re ready, before they’re perfect, all of that, because that’s offering solidarity and courage to all the other brokenhearted people. So we’re just showing up all jacked up right now and hoping for the best.
Nicolle Wallace: Your love story is my favorite love story.
Glennon Doyle: Same.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, I love it. I just love it so much. Do you allow yourself to sort of look back to where you were when you wrote “Untamed” and to everyone knowing how you fell in love, or is it all just cumulative because there’s so much of you guys out there day to day?
Abby Wambach: Yeah. I mean, look, I think that I love our love story. I think that Glennon is an extraordinary writer and she has this beautiful way. I mean, even when I read it for the first time, I was like, wow, like I feel proud of myself, like good job. Like, this is you. You did this.
But, also, we are extraordinarily normal, boring human beings who, you know, in every marriage that’s lasted for a good while and with children, and you’re in your 40s and you’re looking upon menopause, and fascism is taking hold. Marriage is a little bit like, wait, what’s going on? Right? Like, I don’t think I have time. It feels like sometimes I’m like, we need to like just think about our marriage just today.
Glennon Doyle: I know. I know.
Abby Wambach: And when we went on a walk like literally three days ago and we were talking about how this moment we’re all in, it probably is making so many people feel isolated in their own bodies because everybody is watching their own particular version of the news. Right? We actually made a pact that we’re going to try to sit down and watch the news for 30 minutes every single night so that she and I can feel that connection.
Glennon Doyle: That’s amazing. Our romantic time together is going to be 30 minutes —
Nicolle Wallace: It’s like a level set. I get it.
Glennon Doyle: Sounds so depressing.
Abby Wambach: It is. It’s so important. But at the end of the day, this is the shit that we vowed —
Glennon Doyle: Yeah.
Abby Wambach: — when we decided to get married. This feels like a sickness, but it’s a sickness that’s happening to our country. And how are we going to manage through this? You know, we’ve built our marriage on, I think, a very strong foundation, right? And the resilience that I call upon is like, they will not fuck with me. I am not going to let that regime enter into my family, in my marriage and fuck with us. Like, I want to protect us with everything in my being and every strength that I have.
Glennon Doyle: But see, that kind of passion, I think that we can get tricked into thinking there is no time to focus on the people we love. There is no time to nurture our relationships, to go outside and be in the sunset, to listen to beautiful music, to be in museums, to experience all the beauty of life, and any of that is a diversion from the fighting. But I think that’s like the gas station.
Abby Wambach: Yes.
Glennon Doyle: Like, it has never been more important to hold onto the things that make life worth fighting for. Because if we don’t, we forget what makes life fighting for. And the relentless effort to dehumanize us, to make us care less about our lives and our freedom and other people’s lives and freedom, we have to double down —
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: — on the things that make life worth living, so that we will have the energy we need to fight for it. So we do need to do more than watch the news together.
Abby Wambach: We do. We did. We had a good weekend.
Glennon Doyle: Okay.
Abby Wambach: Our kids weren’t here, so it was helpful.
Nicolle Wallace: It is a lot, fighting fascism, the families, the kids. I had a weekend like that with a two-day baseball tournament, to war in Iran. You know, it was a multitask.
Is there anything that you guys are feeling or thinking about the way we’re covering this moment, as a media, that we drop or we don’t tell the full story, now that you guys are as steeped and well-versed in what’s really happening, especially on immigration, just about anybody we cover?
Glennon Doyle: No. I’m just always craving from our side, oversimplification, but from our side, I’m craving the simplistic, repetitive talking points that the other side has. I do wish that we could just all get in a room together and decide, yes, this 85-minute conversation is beautiful and nuanced. But what are the three sentences that we are continuing to hammer? Because we have all the messaging. Like, our message is more hopeful. Our message is more clear. I wish we could just have a meeting where we could get our talking points in line.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: Right? I think that’s what we’re missing.
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah. And some of that is a leader that comes and says, I feel all these things. But these are the three things we have to take, you know, to the streets. Abby, why do you think athletes are speaking out maybe less frequently this time than the first time that Trump was president?
Abby Wambach: I think it’s a good question. It’s something that I’ve been thinking a lot about since we sat in that courtroom, that immigration courtroom. I think people are scared, I think that athletes and celebrities. My question is the same, like, where is everybody?
And also, people have to put their money where their mouth is right now. Like, we have to start figuring out where we’re going to be putting our funds to help save this thing, right? I think that there’s a fear of attaching ourselves to any kind of ideology, because then you become “less marketable” to all brands, right?
And we also know that the corporate engine and the corporate institution is so embedded right now inside the administration that I think that people are worried about their livelihood and their ability to earn money for themselves, their ability to get marketing deals, brand deals, brand opportunities, whatever. And so, if people stay “agnostic,” then they could potentially continue to earn and do their thing. You know, who was it that said like shut up and play?
Nicolle Wallace: Yeah, Laura Ingraham said, “shut up and dribble.”
Abby Wambach: Dribble. Right. I think that there was like a reverberation, an echo that went out into the athletic world and celebrity world around that. I am not attaching myself to that at all. I think that we have to keep speaking out, to keep speaking out for what we believe and what we think is true and right.
Glennon Doyle: And no judgment to people who are building whatever you decide. But there is a magic for people who have enough. Like, for people who have enough and who have privilege, if you decide what is enough, then this is the time to spend whatever, social capital, whatever you have built, now is the time to spend it. If not now, when is the moment —
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: — that you’re going to speak out. And you know, a decade from now, two decades from now, nobody is going to care what you silently believed in your house. It doesn’t matter.
Nicolle Wallace: Right.
Glennon Doyle: The only thing people are going to ask is, were you one of the people who put your voice and your platform, and your Instagram account, and your corporate deals on the line to stand with people who are less, who are more vulnerable? And that’s another reason why going to places matters. When you sit in an immigration court and you see a 2-year-old, you realize I might feel small and powerless. I am not as small and powerless as that kid. Let me use whatever size and power that I have to protect people who really are powerless.
Abby Wambach: Yeah.
Glennon Doyle: That happens in your body when you show up.
Nicolle Wallace: I wonder if you’d see a moment on the horizon where, you know, moment will force a team or an athlete to speak out. I mean, you’ve seen it a little bit in L.A. with Kike Hernandez spoke out about the immigration raids.
I mean, I can’t believe that that baseball hasn’t said more. I mean, it is an international sport. Soccer is an international. I mean, all these sports are dependent on America being a place people want to come and work and play and be part of our towns. But do either of you see a moment on the horizon where sports will be thrust, even if they don’t want it, into the spotlight?
Abby Wambach: Well, it’s a good question. I mean, I think a lot of people in leadership of these teams, organizations are looking ahead. We have the FIFA World Cup coming next summer. We have the Olympics coming in 2028. And I think that there is a fear that is kind of reverberating around, that is if they make waves, the administration will make it difficult for them.
But I just think it’s fear, like people are scared and rightfully so. Like, you know, I don’t blame them, especially women athletes when, truly, their lives are actually dependent on some of these brand partnerships that they have, and that that might be, you know, something that these brands, they just want it to be apolitical and neutral, which I think is hilarious for a woman athlete because they themselves are just a political force of nature, by being on a field in a jersey. But I don’t judge them.
Glennon Doyle: I do.
Abby Wambach: I know you do, but I don’t judge the women. I judge the men a little bit more because they have more financial resources and safety and security because like when we’re talking about athletes too, our careers are very finite and short. You have to recreate yourself into something completely different when you’re done playing. And so, that’s scary.
I don’t know. Like, I put myself back in the shoes of an athlete, and it’s just more complicated. You know, we are in a position that we can speak out. I own my own business. I’m not attached to a team that also has people that have belief systems from all different ways. Right? And so, there’s all of these complications when you are a professional athlete that you have to consider.
Nicolle Wallace: You’ve been so generous with your time. It’s such a privilege to talk to you. Thank you so much.
Glennon Doyle: Thank you for your work, Nicolle.
Abby Wambach: Thank you.
Glennon Doyle: We are in your corner. We are with you. We are grateful for what you’re doing. We will all continue to hold the line together, and thank you so much.
Abby Wambach: And we love this podcast.
Glennon Doyle: Yes, we do.
Abby Wambach: Honestly, I’m so glad that you started this thing because it is important to see other people that are doing good work in the world, that are on the charts, that are crushing it. So just keep doing.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you so much for doing it with me.
Abby Wambach: Thank you. We love you.
Glennon Doyle: Thank you, Nicolle.
Nicolle Wallace: Thank you, guys.
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“The Best People” is produced by Vicki Vergolina and senior producer, Lisa Ferri, with additional production support from Pat Elliot and Ranna Shahbazi. Our audio engineer is Bob Mallory, and Bryson Barnes is the head of audio production. Izzy is helping me out here. Pat Burkey is the executive producer of “Deadline: White House.” Brad Gold is the executive producer of content strategy. Aisha Turner is the executive producer of audio, and Madeline Haeringer is the senior vice president in charge of audio, digital and longform.
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