Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and a new Harvard poll puts Trump
Speaker 1: at a dismal twenty nine percent approval among young voters.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project's owner Rick Wilson joins us to discuss Trump's
Speaker 1: indefensible pardons, and we'll talk to Tim wu about his
Speaker 1: new book, The Age of Extraction, How tech platforms conquered
Speaker 1: the economy and threaten our future prosperity. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, you may have heard on Sunday news shows
Speaker 2: Scott Persent loves to talk about how he is a farmer.
Speaker 2: He's no longer a farmer.
Speaker 1: Aw what happened?
Speaker 2: Well, Molly, I don't know if you've heard what This
Speaker 2: economy is not very good for a soybean farmer like
Speaker 2: Scott Persent.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you know what happened.
Speaker 2: He sells the soybean farm because everybody's getting out of
Speaker 2: this economy and out of this market because it's about
Speaker 2: to go very bad from Scott p acent stupid decisions.
Speaker 1: I'd be real curious to know who he sold it
Speaker 1: to and how much they overpaid. I could see like
Speaker 1: Trump World tends to get really good offers for things
Speaker 1: they're selling, and I just I'm very curious as to why,
Speaker 1: if that makes any sense, Like why do people love
Speaker 1: to buy things from Trump World? Why do foreign countries
Speaker 1: love to give Jared money to invest? Why? I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so interesting that these people are making so
Speaker 1: much money. Now, it's odd.
Speaker 2: Why Well, if there's one thing, I know, it's really
Speaker 2: just so sad to me that he's not gonna be
Speaker 2: able to talk about this on the Sunday shows.
Speaker 1: You know, it's worth just for a minute pulling back
Speaker 1: and thinking about Scott Besson, who is now ultimately out
Speaker 1: there defending some pretty stupid moves that our government has
Speaker 1: made and trying to make the case that like all
Speaker 1: of this is on purpose, when in fact it's clearly not.
Speaker 1: The tariffs are not working. Bessend thinks that if he
Speaker 1: goes on, you know, if he goes to the Deal
Speaker 1: Book conference and yells about the New York Times and
Speaker 1: goes on Morning Joe and yells at the Morning Joe anchors,
Speaker 1: that this will somehow make Trump happy. And the problem
Speaker 1: with like having this imperial presidency, which is what we have,
Speaker 1: this Project twenty twenty five fantasy of conservative think tanks,
Speaker 1: this presidency that controls all the arms of the federal government.
Speaker 1: Is that so much of what's happening in the federal
Speaker 1: government is to please Trump and not to make the
Speaker 1: economy better or help people or solve problems. Like it's
Speaker 1: literally just to please one person who happens to be
Speaker 1: basically a child, and a pretty dysfunctional child. So it's
Speaker 1: just really such an incredible waste of a federal government
Speaker 1: to use it all just to make some Orange guy happy.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of Trump's cabinet of misfit sociopaths, Tom Holman,
Speaker 2: my least remember, is defending President Trump after he called
Speaker 2: the Smalley community garbage.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So part of what happens every weekend is that
Speaker 1: members of Trump World go on television to defend his
Speaker 1: most indefensible projects. Trump is going after Somali immigrants why
Speaker 1: because everything else is not working for him? And he
Speaker 1: remembers that when he ran for president in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: when we were all young, when I was in my thirties,
Speaker 1: Do you remember your thirties? I remember my thirties when
Speaker 1: I slept through the night and anyway, in our thirties,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump came down that elevator and he said, all
Speaker 1: Mexicans are rapists, and some I assume are good people.
Speaker 1: And what he did was that he activated a base
Speaker 1: that had been low frequency, that had felt that they
Speaker 1: couldn't connect to a mid Romney Republican party because they
Speaker 1: wanted the red meat of racism. And Donald Trump when
Speaker 1: he brings up ilhan Omar, he's doing that because he
Speaker 1: can't get anything else to get his people, except it's
Speaker 1: a distraction from all of his other problems. And that
Speaker 1: is why it should not be taken seriously. It should
Speaker 1: be dismissed and condemned and move on, agreed, and also
Speaker 1: make every Republican elected defend it because they know it's wrong.
Speaker 2: The Eric Schmidt quickly discussed later in this episode with
Speaker 2: Rick was really really telling because he lost his shit
Speaker 2: that Stephanopoulos asked him more after he tried the normal
Speaker 2: deflection of I haven't seen the tweets. He loses his
Speaker 2: shit on him because they can't believe they're ever being
Speaker 2: held accountable for this, and they're defending the indefensible corruption
Speaker 2: that we see.
Speaker 1: Today and good for Stephanopoulos.
Speaker 2: Agreed, I'll give him a rare W from me.
Speaker 1: No, he's done a lot of he's done.
Speaker 2: I agree, Yeah, he's done a lot of good. There's
Speaker 2: some bones to pick though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well you're wrong.
Speaker 2: The Education Department has picked up one of our favorite patterns,
Speaker 2: molly having to rehire workers that these fucking idiots threw
Speaker 2: away because they thought that the government most so bloated
Speaker 2: and then they realized, fuck, we need this to do things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so look this is again, this keeps happening, This
Speaker 1: keeps happening. Republicans are like, what does the federal government
Speaker 1: do anyway, let's disassemble it, you morons. You can't do
Speaker 1: it this way. The federal government is not moral lago.
Speaker 1: It's actually not nearly as big as you think it is,
Speaker 1: and it does a lot of services. So the Education
Speaker 1: Department has hundreds of fire employees to return temporarily. This
Speaker 1: is just like doge. This is just like when they
Speaker 1: fire the people who are, you know, guarding the nukes
Speaker 1: and then they had to rehire them. This is just
Speaker 1: what keeps fucking happening. It is absolutely so beyond stupid,
Speaker 1: and it's like they just keep solving problems they themselves created.
Speaker 3: Yep, So what are the.
Speaker 2: More interesting that the Democrats are going to get too,
Speaker 2: particularly a senator who refused to endorse Zoramumdani and a
Speaker 2: Congressman who was reluctant to They're really going after Trump
Speaker 2: for affordability, and now we see the GOP congressmen are
Speaker 2: cowering from it because they know it's going to work.
Speaker 1: Trump said this week that affordability was a con job.
Speaker 1: That he said that on Wednesday, it's a con job.
Speaker 1: What I think he meant was he can't do anything
Speaker 1: about inflation. That's what I'm pretty sure he meant. He
Speaker 1: said affordability is a con job. They have a real
Speaker 1: problem when it comes to affordability, because inflation is a problem.
Speaker 1: Republicans are going to be saddled with it. Blaming the
Speaker 1: president for the economy is what people do. It's a
Speaker 1: non partisan issue. I don't so I don't know what
Speaker 1: Trump is thinking. They have And by the way, if
Speaker 1: you're worried about inflation, just wait because the ACA tax
Speaker 1: credits are expired and that means everyone tells insurance is
Speaker 1: about to get way more expensive. And Trump is a
Speaker 1: real fucking problem here. I don't think there's an easy
Speaker 1: solve here. And by the way, again, it's this problem,
Speaker 1: which is that Republicans need to separate themselves from Trump
Speaker 1: while still not making Trump mad. And like you know,
Speaker 1: that was hard enough to do with someone like Joe Biden,
Speaker 1: who supposedly may have given some permission, though I don't
Speaker 1: necessarily believe that that you could separate yourself, but like
Speaker 1: Trump will not do that because Trump is a child.
Speaker 1: So I think that's going to be a real problem
Speaker 1: for Republicans. Over at our YouTube channel, we have some
Speaker 1: really exciting stuff. Jesse and I have made a documentary.
Speaker 1: It's called Project twenty twenty nine, A Reimagining. It's a
Speaker 1: series about how demic can deliver popular policies when they
Speaker 1: regain power. The first episode is up now. It's the
Speaker 1: first part of the series, and we're going to examine
Speaker 1: what went wrong with some of the Biden administration's approach
Speaker 1: to policies that may have prevented Democrats from being able
Speaker 1: to deliver the broad anti corruption legislation that needed to happen,
Speaker 1: and by the way, that would have prevented some of
Speaker 1: the corruption we're seeing right now. The first episode dives
Speaker 1: deep into the first step of fixing American politics. It
Speaker 1: may sound unsexy, but it's a big, important issue, and
Speaker 1: that big subject is campaign finance reform. For this episode,
Speaker 1: we talk to some of the smartest people we know,
Speaker 1: professors and academics, people like Lawrence Lessig, Tiffany Muller, Michael Waldman,
Speaker 1: and Tom Moore. Republicans were prepared for when they got
Speaker 1: the levers of power. Democrats need that same kind of preparation.
Speaker 1: That's why we need to start the conversation on how
Speaker 1: Democrats can do the same thing. So please head over
Speaker 1: to our YouTube channel and search Molly Jong Fast Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty nine or go to the Fast Politics YouTube
Speaker 1: channel page and you'll find it there and help us
Speaker 1: spread the word and stay tuned for more episodes. Rick
Speaker 1: Wilson is the founder of Lincoln Project and the host
Speaker 1: of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 4: Rick Wilson Molli Jong Fast with your cute pets in hand.
Speaker 1: I have a little hairless dog on my lap, and
Speaker 1: we're here to talk about how things are going. And
Speaker 1: in case you're wondering, this week, Donald Trump pardoned a Democrat.
Speaker 1: A Democrat Congressman Henry Kuehlar yep of the Rio Grande
Speaker 1: Valley and R Plus. He's like a mansion character, right,
Speaker 1: a Joe Manchin. He's from a district that a Democrat
Speaker 1: would not win. Correct he pardoned him. Who knows why?
Speaker 1: Maybe because he just loves freedom or he considers white
Speaker 1: collar crimes to not actually be crimes. That's my theory.
Speaker 4: That is, I think that theory's got a lot of weight.
Speaker 1: He pardons him. Quahlar then immediately registers to run again
Speaker 1: as a Democrat. Chef's kiss, Baby, Chef's kiss.
Speaker 4: You know, this is one of the things, Molly that
Speaker 4: I find fascinating about pardon palooza. So we're killing people
Speaker 4: in speed boats down in Verslila and in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: That's because they might have drugs. So they also might
Speaker 1: have fished.
Speaker 4: They hypothetically might have conceivably had drugs, but they weren't
Speaker 4: going to the US. They were going to Surinam. But
Speaker 4: you know, we might kill him anyway.
Speaker 1: We plan got a distretch from the Ebstein files.
Speaker 4: Yep, we pardon the president of Honduras, who is serving
Speaker 4: federal time for engaging in massive cocaine smuggling and ventnol
Speaker 4: smuggling into America because Roger Stone, that degenerate fop weirdo
Speaker 4: miracle of phrenology, takes Trump a letter that he clearly
Speaker 4: wrote like Imperial Lord Trump, I love the he Pardons
Speaker 4: Chuair for whatever reason. I don't know if somebody said, hey,
Speaker 4: maybe he'll switch or maybe we've got a deal, and
Speaker 4: then turned around and screwed them. But if he did
Speaker 4: turn around and screw them, I salute him for that,
Speaker 4: honestly mad props game nos game brother.
Speaker 1: Well you know who doesn't salute him me? Do you
Speaker 1: know who is not happy with this development?
Speaker 4: Donald John Trump?
Speaker 1: He had a truth today which was then, you know
Speaker 1: it's an important truth because Rapid Response forty seven then
Speaker 1: tweeted it so we could happen.
Speaker 4: Rapid Response forty seven in cell weirdo, who's taking doing
Speaker 4: that from curating his anime doll collection.
Speaker 1: He is real mad. And there are a lot of
Speaker 1: words that are capitalized in this very long capitalized but
Speaker 1: I'm going to read you sort of the the highlights.
Speaker 1: Will you were treated so badly? Explanation point. I signed
Speaker 1: the papers and said to the people in the Oval
Speaker 1: office that I did a very good job saving things God,
Speaker 1: was he happy that day? Then it happened explanation point.
Speaker 1: Explanation point. Only a short time after signing the pardon,
Speaker 1: Congressman Henrykiler announced that he will be running for Congress.
Speaker 1: He puts running in quotes in the great State of
Speaker 1: Texas as a Democrat.
Speaker 4: Donald's mad.
Speaker 1: Now, such a lack of loyalty. Explanation point. Oh well,
Speaker 1: next time, no more, mister night Sky. Explanation point. And
Speaker 1: it's signed President Donald J. Trump.
Speaker 4: No, thank you for your attention to this matter.
Speaker 3: That would have been it official.
Speaker 1: I do enjoy a thank you for your attention to
Speaker 1: this matter. But I think that the point here is
Speaker 1: that my man is a mobster.
Speaker 4: And so I guess the correct analysis of Donald Trump
Speaker 4: is that he is a crime boss. Yeah, there's no
Speaker 4: alternate analysis of it. There's no there's no secondary analysis
Speaker 4: of it. Everything he does is motivated by graft and
Speaker 4: greed and scamming and making money.
Speaker 1: It's quid pro it's quid pro.
Speaker 4: Do, it's you know, the whole thing is the guy
Speaker 4: is just absolutely yo. Quid pro yo works too, But
Speaker 4: the whole thing is just absolutely flagrantly corrupt at every turn.
Speaker 4: And there's nothing about this raft of pardons he's been
Speaker 4: doing that in any way has anything to do with justice.
Speaker 4: They're all criminals. I mean, he's partnering all these cyber
Speaker 4: bros who were literally in business with his sons.
Speaker 1: There's a graph that shows that Donald Trump has partnered
Speaker 1: more than a thousand people. This is like about ten times.
Speaker 4: Well, it's like sixteen hundred if you count.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so if you count to January, sixth rioters, which
Speaker 1: is hundreds of people that he also partned. I think
Speaker 1: there are a number of important reasons to talk about
Speaker 1: pardon Beluza, but the biggest of which is that he
Speaker 1: is clearly running some kind of situation here where he's
Speaker 1: partning people.
Speaker 4: Listen, they were doing it in the last in the
Speaker 4: end of the last administration into the last Trump administration,
Speaker 4: where Matt Slapp and Rogerstone are all these other guys
Speaker 4: and Gates were going to Trump and getting these pardons
Speaker 4: for people, and there was reporting at the time that
Speaker 4: cash was changing hands, and I nothing would surprise me
Speaker 4: less than this being a pay to play.
Speaker 1: Jesse has brought up a really important point, and then
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the problem Republicans find themselves
Speaker 1: in which I think you'll appreciate. Jesse has a quote
Speaker 1: from George Stefanopolos. He is interviewing Eric Schmidt. You may
Speaker 1: remember Eric Schmidt. He is the senator from Missourra, Missura. Yep,
Speaker 1: he says Stephanoppolos, and I think this is really the
Speaker 1: thing that everyone needs to ask Republican senators. And I
Speaker 1: think it gets me to another thing I want to
Speaker 1: talk about, which is Stephanoppolos says, do you support this
Speaker 1: pardon of the former Hondurian Hondoran president? And the senator says,
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar.
Speaker 4: This is the twenty twenty five equivalent of I didn't
Speaker 4: read the tweet. Remember in the first administration, that was
Speaker 4: always well, I didn't see the tweet. Whenever Trump would
Speaker 4: say something horrible or racist or insane, I didn't see
Speaker 4: the tweet. Now it's I'm not familiar with the details
Speaker 4: of that case. The Senate in particular has been an
Speaker 4: embarrassment about holding Trump to account because they have a
Speaker 4: relatively greater amount of political power to do so. The
Speaker 4: House is just, you know, the House is what it is.
Speaker 4: I do find it kind of amazing that even somebody
Speaker 4: as dull witted as Eric Schmidt thinks he can get
Speaker 4: away and fool people that this is somehow not missed
Speaker 4: it lavish corruption that he's completely aware about.
Speaker 1: Now, I'm going to take you somewhere with this because
Speaker 1: I think it's really important going on an event. We're
Speaker 1: going on an Inventor. We see Republicans unable to separate
Speaker 1: themselves from Trump because they're scared of Trump. But as
Speaker 1: Trump gets to be more and more kryptonite, they find
Speaker 1: themselves in a problem. And I'd love you to talk
Speaker 1: about that because, like I feel like we see people
Speaker 1: illustrate this. Like here's Stephonic fighting with Mike Johnson, obviously
Speaker 1: trying to show that she's like could be a normal
Speaker 1: bluestate Republican. Right, talk us through what's happening here.
Speaker 4: Look to bifurcate that question. Let me do at least
Speaker 4: really quickly. She is going to desperately try to be again.
Speaker 4: She's going to try to reclaim her normy kred. Watch
Speaker 4: what happens. She'll be all of a sudden back like oh,
Speaker 4: I was at the Harvard Institute of Politics. I have
Speaker 4: mem Romney, I work for George Book. You watch what
Speaker 4: she does. It will not work. Kathy Hockel may not
Speaker 4: be a the you know, America's favorite governor or New
Speaker 4: York's favorite governor. But if it's twice beeing Kathy Hockel
Speaker 4: and elis staphonic. The Gretchen Wieners of American politics, at
Speaker 4: least define is going to get blown out. She cannot
Speaker 4: move to the center. There's no getting there. The video
Speaker 4: of her talking about Trump over and over and over
Speaker 4: and over again, it's the quotes that launched ten thousand ads.
Speaker 4: As for the rest of these guys, there was a
Speaker 4: stat out the other day about the twenty six districts
Speaker 4: where they are the most vulnerable Republicans and of those
Speaker 4: twenty six, twenty one of them vote with Trump one
Speaker 4: hundred percent of the time. That is psychotic, that is
Speaker 4: not that doesn't happen. Ever, Barack Obama didn't have Democrats
Speaker 4: vot with him one hundred percent of the time. Well,
Speaker 4: Clinton didn't have Democrats voting with him shit sixty percent
Speaker 4: of the time. This is insane. It is not a
Speaker 4: sign of a strong party. It's a sign of a brittle,
Speaker 4: weak party that is so afraid of losing a primary.
Speaker 4: Because Trump has a mean tweet about them, that they're
Speaker 4: going to strap themselves to the sky and they're going
Speaker 4: to ride the burning wreckage all the way down. They
Speaker 4: can't get away from him. And if they break from him, remember.
Speaker 1: Take him down.
Speaker 4: There's nothing Trump hates more. Trump doesn't even hate Democrats.
Speaker 4: There's nothing he hates more than a Republican who doesn't
Speaker 4: obey him.
Speaker 1: Is that true? Rick, tell me more? No, fail, you're
Speaker 1: speaking from personal experience here.
Speaker 4: I am, indeed, but this is a long running pattern
Speaker 4: with Trump. He has more hostility toward apostate Republicans or
Speaker 4: anyone who would dream of opposing him from his own party,
Speaker 4: than he does for the most liberal Democrats. You know,
Speaker 4: In fact, you saw this with the mondami on Donnie Trump,
Speaker 4: you know, sat there feeling weirdly conflicted about Mondamie in
Speaker 4: the Oval office because he likes game, game, knows game.
Speaker 4: But he with Republicans. His favorite hobby is to humiliate
Speaker 4: the ones that kiss his ass and then deviate even
Speaker 4: in the slightest little bit. That's why he's going after,
Speaker 4: you know, not only the mtgs, but he'll start going
Speaker 4: after these other people and their consultants. I know this
Speaker 4: for a fact. I spoke to a Republican polster who
Speaker 4: handle's House and Senate and governor's races about ten days
Speaker 4: ago now most just after Thanksgiving, so call it ten
Speaker 4: days ago, who told me, Yeah, we're trying to find
Speaker 4: a way. We're trying to find something to split off
Speaker 4: on that they won't kill us over. And it's really hard.
Speaker 1: And here's the problem is as Trump does less and less, well,
Speaker 1: like you need him to turn out low frequency voters
Speaker 1: because he's alienating the indies.
Speaker 4: Right, the Independents are now basically fifty to twenty against Trump.
Speaker 4: So that's insane, by the.
Speaker 1: Way, right, So you're alienating the indies. Dems are not
Speaker 1: going to vote for you. You're splitting apart Republicans and
Speaker 1: that See, that's one of the other things I want
Speaker 1: to talk about because I think the reason Donald Trump
Speaker 1: went after ilhan Omar this weekend that was another thing
Speaker 1: you did, was because he cannot get any traction on anything,
Speaker 1: so he things back to the base.
Speaker 4: I thing it's working for him, Molly nothing, I mean
Speaker 4: everything he has tried in the last I mean real talk,
Speaker 4: since Epstein, since since since Pam Bondi gave that statement,
Speaker 4: we're not going to release anything, and there's no there
Speaker 4: there blah blah blah. Nothing Trump has done since that
Speaker 4: point has lasted more than about three or four days. Now.
Speaker 4: Sometimes he'll get a story tear down the White House
Speaker 4: East Wing the last three or four days. Sometimes you'll
Speaker 4: get a story like the like the last week on
Speaker 4: Ukraine stuff, three or four days, two or three days.
Speaker 4: But nothing changes the subject forever. Like it used to
Speaker 4: the center of gravity with Trump. He used to blow
Speaker 4: up the media cycle and then the next center of
Speaker 4: gravity was whatever the next media cycle was for him,
Speaker 4: whatever he blew up next. But now he blows up
Speaker 4: the media cycle. Then it's back to Epstein.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: They used to say he was the assignment editor. Remember that,
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, for sure, for sure.
Speaker 4: And look, I do think to get back to these
Speaker 4: Republican candidates, all of them know what's happening. Their consultants
Speaker 4: right now are are looking for the timing of when
Speaker 4: they break with Trump and hoping it won't kill off
Speaker 4: turnout when they break with Trump. And so we're going
Speaker 4: to see a lot of these guys after their primaries
Speaker 4: are over in the spring or early summer, say, man,
Speaker 4: I really wish the president would do something different on
Speaker 4: tariffs because they won't be murdered at that point. But
Speaker 4: it's going to be too late.
Speaker 1: It's a Tom Tillis thing, right. We see Tom Tilli's
Speaker 1: breaking with Trump because he's not running again. We see,
Speaker 1: you know. But I want to go to why we
Speaker 1: can keep going back to Epstein, because I have a
Speaker 1: theory and I want to talk to you about it.
Speaker 1: The reason that we keep going back to Epstein is
Speaker 1: because the Democrat, the ranking member of Oversight, keeps releasing
Speaker 1: stuff Epstein, and he keeps releasing stuff about Epstein because
Speaker 1: he's a young guy, right, He's a young, competent guy.
Speaker 1: His name is Robert Garcia. I talk about him a lot.
Speaker 1: I talk about oversight a lot because when you're not
Speaker 1: in power, you have very few things you can do.
Speaker 1: And one of the very few things that Democrats can
Speaker 1: do right now is message Epstein. Oversight has this power
Speaker 1: to subpoena. They subpoena the estate. If Jerry Connolly, we're
Speaker 1: still the head of Oversight.
Speaker 4: Don't even start, it would be a disaster.
Speaker 1: He died because Democratic leadership was scared to tell him
Speaker 1: he couldn't have the job, so they gave him the job,
Speaker 1: even though he was sick and he was having treatment
Speaker 1: for cancer and was in his late seventies. He died
Speaker 1: and Garcia's at the job.
Speaker 4: This is the classic crisis management problem.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 4: I've helped corporate clients, political clients for thirty years deal
Speaker 4: with crises, and when you're in it on your own,
Speaker 4: it's never as easy as it looks on the outside.
Speaker 4: But there are rules every time in a crisis management situation.
Speaker 4: Get the truth out, no matter how much it hurts
Speaker 4: in the short term. Drip drip, drip is always worse
Speaker 4: for you in the end than one big reveal. The
Speaker 4: second part of it is go out and say what
Speaker 4: you're going to do to reform yourself and your process
Speaker 4: and your company. Trump can't release this stuff for a
Speaker 4: host of reasons, both about himself and about some of
Speaker 4: his donors, and about people he likes, and about people in.
Speaker 1: The corporate world.
Speaker 4: And he can't reform himself. He doesn't care about human trafficking.
Speaker 4: He doesn't care to happen to the victims of Epstein
Speaker 4: and Maxwell. And the final part of any crisis like
Speaker 4: this is you have to learn from You have to
Speaker 4: behave in a different way in the future. You can't
Speaker 4: just say we're going to reform in this way. You
Speaker 4: have to show, you have to walk the walk, and
Speaker 4: he can never do that. He is He is an old, sick,
Speaker 4: cruel guy with a lifelong history of abusing women in
Speaker 4: various capacities and manners, much of which we know about
Speaker 4: from the legal record, much of what you know about
Speaker 4: from the from the divorce record, from the social record,
Speaker 4: from this, from from his long behavioral pattern. He even
Speaker 4: if he was still healthy, he couldn't change. And now
Speaker 4: they're stuck with him, and they're stuck with this. Republicans
Speaker 4: own this crisis.
Speaker 1: So Marjorie Taylor Green says that she talks to Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and Donald Trump says, you don't want the Epstein files
Speaker 1: released because it's going to hurt a lot of people
Speaker 1: who cares, but also who he's going too hard.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: There, answer is it's going to hurt people that Trump
Speaker 4: has political and financial relationships with. We know some of
Speaker 4: the tick tick tick on. This will end up implicating
Speaker 4: people that are in business and politics and media, and
Speaker 4: it's going to burn some people to the ground that
Speaker 4: he likes. It's going to hurt him, right, I mean criminal, Well,
Speaker 4: probably a more criminal exposure than he does, right for sure.
Speaker 1: And they're Republican donors and some of them may even
Speaker 1: be Democratic donors. And honestly, who cares because getting after
Speaker 1: people who do SAZ child sex trafficking is a nonpartisan activity.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and listen, I will say this, I have you know,
Speaker 4: I'm I'm when when Democrats screw up, I will tell
Speaker 4: them they're screwing up. But they have been very good
Speaker 4: about this about saying let the chips fall where they may,
Speaker 4: let it roll. I don't see Democrats out there saying, well,
Speaker 4: we want to we don't want to hurt anybody on arm.
Speaker 4: They don't they're doing The Democrats are doing the correct
Speaker 4: thing here by saying fuck it if Bill Clinton's in
Speaker 4: the file, Bill Clinton's in the file, Oh well yeah,
Speaker 4: And that's the right way to approach it. But Trump
Speaker 4: clearly is picking and choosing. Now, I want to ask
Speaker 4: you a question because I had somebody that they asked
Speaker 4: me a friend of mine. I said to me, he goes,
Speaker 4: do you think Trump is going through this material and
Speaker 4: going to some of these corporate people that are in
Speaker 4: there and basically blackmailing them?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 1: It really shocked me.
Speaker 4: I don't have any evidence of that, but I wanted
Speaker 4: to get your thought on that, because, I mean, if
Speaker 4: he had the files in front of him, Trump.
Speaker 1: Is never doing three dimensional chess no, so it's hard
Speaker 1: for me to imagine that he's doing something like that, Like, sure,
Speaker 1: would that make sense? Absolutely? Do I think he's doing it?
Speaker 1: Probably not. I just think he's not that organized. I
Speaker 1: think like largely what this crew does is try to
Speaker 1: is just like react to problems, right. I don't you know, like,
Speaker 1: do I think he's not firing people because it was
Speaker 1: why he had so many leaks the first time around? Yes?
Speaker 1: Do I think he liked gave Heggs at that job
Speaker 1: because he liked the way he looked on television? And yes,
Speaker 1: do I think that E's Like No, I think they
Speaker 1: you know, they have it somewhere. They're like, we're never
Speaker 1: releasing it. I mean, look, I have a very smart
Speaker 1: straight journalist friend who said they're gonna just release and
Speaker 1: release and release, but only stuff on Democrats, right, But
Speaker 1: I don't actually think so. I think they're just going
Speaker 1: to try not to release any of it for as
Speaker 1: long as they can.
Speaker 4: I think I think this the stonewall tactic is going
Speaker 4: to last through the election, then they're gonna and I.
Speaker 1: Think they're just gonna be like sue Us. I just
Speaker 1: think they're gonna be like sue Us, fuck you. Like
Speaker 1: that's the thing. It's like Trump is not putin. There's
Speaker 1: like a temptation. Like I was thinking about this because
Speaker 1: I was thinking, like when they went after Komi, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, like they're gonna just create some crimes, like
Speaker 1: the way Russia does. You know, they're gonna like put
Speaker 1: something on his hard drive and be like you did this.
Speaker 1: They're not smart like that whatever. For whatever reason, they're not,
Speaker 1: so they don't do stuff like that. They just are like,
Speaker 1: we're gonna go after him for long to the FBI
Speaker 1: because he said because of Eli and it's like such
Speaker 1: a convoluted thing that you can't so so I don't
Speaker 1: think that. And I mean, like a great example is
Speaker 1: last week when they were trying to get this indictment
Speaker 1: and they just couldn't get the indictment on Tiss James
Speaker 1: because they just didn't have anything and they kept trying.
Speaker 1: You know, they're just not so good. I mean, thank god,
Speaker 1: they're not so good at that.
Speaker 4: I was just gonna say that we should all be
Speaker 4: relieved by that knowledge. And and we you know, and
Speaker 4: if you're on the victim list, if you're if you're
Speaker 4: on the Epstein victim list, those people really want answers,
Speaker 4: they want more stuff, release, they want accountability. And it
Speaker 4: just goes back again. Anytime these people in Trump universe
Speaker 4: say it's all about the children and we're protecting victims
Speaker 4: from traffickers, it's all a lie.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it's never ever, ever about the children.
Speaker 4: No, no, it really never is, never is.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: You are as always welcome. I look forward to seeing
Speaker 4: you next week.
Speaker 1: Tim Wu is a former Special Assistant to the President
Speaker 1: and a professor of law at Columbia University and the
Speaker 1: author of the Age of Extraction, How tech platforms conquered
Speaker 1: the economy and threaten our future prosperity. Welcome to past politics, Tim,
Speaker 1: it's great to be here. We're just going to start
Speaker 1: went wrong with the Internet.
Speaker 3: That's a good question.
Speaker 5: Basically, we thought that we could trust everybody that they
Speaker 5: were going to help make everybody rich, and instead they
Speaker 5: made themselves rich. The owners and founders of the big
Speaker 5: platforms I think basically go back the nineties that was
Speaker 5: the promise. It was going to be like this technology
Speaker 5: that empowered everyone, made ever pretty rich, to everything for everybody.
Speaker 3: But it ended up making a very narrow group rich.
Speaker 1: That's all went wrong. A senator who is now very
Speaker 1: mad at me I was once at his book party
Speaker 1: and he said, there is no fact checking on the internet.
Speaker 3: I think that we thought that was going to be
Speaker 3: a good thing.
Speaker 5: I mean a lot of my new book, Age of Extraction,
Speaker 5: is about like the promises of the nineties, early thousands,
Speaker 5: the dream, you know.
Speaker 3: To blame us a little.
Speaker 5: Bit, I think we believe that if everyone could sort
Speaker 5: of have a soapbox and say whatever they wanted all
Speaker 5: the time, that like something beautiful would come out of
Speaker 5: that and pure. And I guess something could come out
Speaker 5: of it, but I'd to have trouble describing it as beautiful,
Speaker 5: pure creature of innocence.
Speaker 1: In any which way. So let's talk about where we
Speaker 1: are right now. Because I used to spend all my
Speaker 1: time worrying about AI, but I've now focused back to
Speaker 1: just worrying about how America survives having no local reporting,
Speaker 1: which is another favorite worry of mine. There is clearly
Speaker 1: a problem. They cannot be solved with substack, cannot be
Speaker 1: solved with X, cannot be solved with blue sky, which
Speaker 1: is reporting is the only way we know to keep
Speaker 1: power and check. We are in a reported catastrophe at
Speaker 1: this moment, right The people who have the money to
Speaker 1: pay for the reporting, you know, the elon must of
Speaker 1: the world, are not very interested in accountability. So is
Speaker 1: this it for the fall of the Roman Empire? I mean,
Speaker 1: is there a way to reverse this trajectory?
Speaker 3: There is?
Speaker 5: I mean, I think there's a tony of money in
Speaker 5: the system. It just goes in all the wrong places,
Speaker 5: if that makes sense. Yeah, Like I was one of
Speaker 5: the chapters in my new book, I talk about this
Speaker 5: one product of Amazon's, you know, the when you search
Speaker 5: on Amazon for like any old product and you get
Speaker 5: those weird sponsored results and like you can't really figure
Speaker 5: out what you really want.
Speaker 3: Well, just from that.
Speaker 5: Little little gimmick, Amazon makes fifty six billion dollars last year,
Speaker 5: which is more than double of all the newspaper income
Speaker 5: of every newspaper on the planet Earth. So in a way,
Speaker 5: you could have like that little thing, or you could
Speaker 5: triple the number of newspapers not in the United States,
Speaker 5: in the world and like somehow we just accepted the
Speaker 5: idea that there's the enormous extraction platforms. They don't pay
Speaker 5: any tax, they don't support anything. They occasionally buy something,
Speaker 5: you know, like Bezos bought the Post, I guess.
Speaker 1: And now he's killing it because foam parties. I mean,
Speaker 1: he just lost interest in democracy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Oh, they just turned it into a platform. I mean,
Speaker 5: at some point there was this whole like, let's not
Speaker 5: be mister nice guy anymore. Let's just like turn this
Speaker 5: newspaper into my mouthpiece, or let's I mean the case.
Speaker 5: I guess Elon Musk was the first with buying Twitter
Speaker 5: and just saying, all right, this is going to be
Speaker 5: my personal thing to make conspiracy theories mainstream. So there's
Speaker 5: a huge amount of money in the system. Like that's
Speaker 5: the craziest thing. We are living in a period where
Speaker 5: there's just tons of money. There's lots of it's all
Speaker 5: all there, but we don't tax it. It like occasionally
Speaker 5: gets given to charity, or it gets used for pet
Speaker 5: projects and to make people really wealthy. So there is
Speaker 5: way more than enough money support any of the kind
Speaker 5: of broadcasting anything you could want. He was a number
Speaker 5: of systems you could choose. You could be more like
Speaker 5: the Germans, like the British, like anything, but somehow we're
Speaker 5: doing none of it.
Speaker 1: So tell me how we fix the Internet.
Speaker 3: Good question.
Speaker 5: I think we have to decide that some of the
Speaker 5: big platforms are like utilities in our time and they
Speaker 5: get to take some money.
Speaker 3: But no more.
Speaker 1: You want to socialize the platforms. No, that was a
Speaker 1: little mean. What I mean is you want some government
Speaker 1: involvement with platform private public kind of situation.
Speaker 3: Well, no, I want to control them like utilities.
Speaker 5: I don't think government would like necessarily run like Amazon
Speaker 5: that well you know, we end up more like post office.
Speaker 5: But I do think they should limit how much Amazon takes,
Speaker 5: like just say like, okay, you get thirty percent, like
Speaker 5: the electric company. We don't say lectric company, Okay, you
Speaker 5: know you have a great product, charge whatever the hell
Speaker 5: you want.
Speaker 3: It's like there's some kind of limits.
Speaker 5: So I think we need to find the places that
Speaker 5: they're like utilities and say that's how much money you get.
Speaker 3: No more so that the rest of us, and I
Speaker 3: think they should pay some taxes.
Speaker 1: Give me this sort of broad sweep of why you
Speaker 1: are the person to make this case?
Speaker 5: Okay, So I worked in Silicon Valley back. I guess
Speaker 5: in the dot com era, that actually created a certain
Speaker 5: level of of distrust of the place. Give me why,
Speaker 5: I think because everyone needs to be a multimillionaire and billionaire,
Speaker 5: even though they also talk about wanting to help the public.
Speaker 5: So in other words, I feel like there was a
Speaker 5: lot of I guess immaturity in the sense of, Okay,
Speaker 5: we need to help everybody do this, run this thing
Speaker 5: like a charity.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of early Google.
Speaker 5: But we got to make huge amounts of money too,
Speaker 5: and like these things are never going to conflict with
Speaker 5: each other. It's like, you know, twenty year old logic.
Speaker 5: When do you think you can stay up all night
Speaker 5: and then also like be fine the next day. It
Speaker 5: has a lot of that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: They're hypocrites too.
Speaker 5: When I worked, there was a fair amount of just
Speaker 5: straight out lying, which I found difficult about our products.
Speaker 5: It was sort of more normalized and yeah, so that
Speaker 5: made me more cynical. I mean, I think back then
Speaker 5: I was still much more believer than I am now.
Speaker 5: I think it's when they just got big that I
Speaker 5: started to lose faith. I worked there, I've worked in
Speaker 5: the federal government for the Supreme Court. I worked for
Speaker 5: the White House twice, Obama and Biden and Festerer Columbia
Speaker 5: and I have basically tried to reboot the anti monopoly
Speaker 5: movement with like Lena Khan and a few others Jonathan
Speaker 5: Caanter have been trying to reboot anti monopoly.
Speaker 3: That's the other thing.
Speaker 5: I think we got to break these guys up, Like
Speaker 5: it's absurd just to have this level of monopoly extraction
Speaker 5: from a country that claims to be free.
Speaker 1: Well what that look like, because we talk about brigant monopolies,
Speaker 1: but just like nuts and balts, give me an example
Speaker 1: of what that would look like and how you would
Speaker 1: do it.
Speaker 3: I mean a good example. Ship has saled a little
Speaker 3: bit of this.
Speaker 5: But you know the fact that Google not only a
Speaker 5: search engine but then also owns like the browser, the
Speaker 5: main browser also is trying to dominate AI.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 5: I just think it should be a bunch of different units.
Speaker 5: I think Amazon should be a marketplace. It's an amazing marketplace,
Speaker 5: but shouldn't be selling in competition with its own you know,
Speaker 5: its own sellers. So you would sort of ban Amazon
Speaker 5: Amazon sales, Facebook, you would spin off WhatsApp and Instagram
Speaker 5: and make those separate companies.
Speaker 3: It just have more like, you know, more separation. Competition, Yeah,
Speaker 3: more competition.
Speaker 5: It's kind of crazy that there are just really three
Speaker 5: or four giant companies who all kind of think the
Speaker 5: same way.
Speaker 3: And it's really kind of not the American way. I'll
Speaker 3: put it that way.
Speaker 1: What would you do about Section two thirty? I need
Speaker 1: you to explain to our listeners. Just give us what
Speaker 1: it is, how it's used, and how it could imagining
Speaker 1: it as something better.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 5: So Section two thirty was passed in the nineties to
Speaker 5: be kind of a shield or an immunity for what
Speaker 5: were then tiny little tech companies who were struggling and
Speaker 5: threatened by the possibility of being sued for things. And
Speaker 5: the idea was, for example, you know back then, demone,
Speaker 5: do you remember AOL?
Speaker 3: Is that like?
Speaker 1: No, of course I remember. I mean I am that ault.
Speaker 5: So AOL like had millions of chat rooms and invariably
Speaker 5: there was like crazy things being said, and the idea was, well,
Speaker 5: if AOL is responresponsible every single thing that someone says
Speaker 5: in any single chat room, like, the whole Internet will collapse.
Speaker 5: And so all and a bunch of other people lobby,
Speaker 5: and they say, okay, we're going to get a blanket
Speaker 5: immunity to like most state laws for defamation and you know,
Speaker 5: anything else we do wrong, we're kind of going to
Speaker 5: be immune. So they have this sort of special immunity.
Speaker 5: I will note that like newspapers radio shows do not
Speaker 5: have it. Like if a newspaper says so and so
Speaker 5: is a criminal beats his wife something like that, that's defamation,
Speaker 5: has a dread disease, whatever. But they've been kind of immune.
Speaker 5: So I think that was okay in the early days
Speaker 5: they were tiny, but more and more the tech companies
Speaker 5: are kind of deciding what you should see. Like they're big.
Speaker 5: They are in the game of presenting information. They become
Speaker 5: part of the media, but they have none of the
Speaker 5: media's duties. I guess the idea is, you know, I
Speaker 5: think it's pretty simple. It's like, okay, if you're going
Speaker 5: to be AOL, fine, But if you're going to be
Speaker 5: like YouTube and you're feeding people a steady diet of
Speaker 5: like hate crimes and insanity and then they go off
Speaker 5: and do something, or if you like Eric exposing children
Speaker 5: to like suicide videos, and you're like, I'm sorry, I
Speaker 5: guess and you're the one who sent it at them,
Speaker 5: and then.
Speaker 3: You're like, oh, you know, well, the Internet's crazy place.
Speaker 3: Sorry about that.
Speaker 5: I don't think that goes anymore. So the overarging principle
Speaker 5: is like, we're not asking for a lot. I mean,
Speaker 5: even what I'm saying here, we've done nothing to kind
Speaker 5: of control the power of big tech, nothing at all.
Speaker 5: It's been twenty five years. There's some of the most
Speaker 5: powerful companies in history. If you compare us to like
Speaker 5: Standard Oil, compare it to the fifties General Motor, whatever
Speaker 5: you want to compare it to, we have a lopsided
Speaker 5: system which is out of whack with any point in
Speaker 5: American history at this point. And I guess I was
Speaker 5: starting to say this ten years ago, and it's gotten
Speaker 5: worse and worse and worse. And if we don't do something,
Speaker 5: I feel our politics will get crazier and more violent,
Speaker 5: which is already happening.
Speaker 1: The goal here is that these platforms would have the
Speaker 1: same legal constraints the newspaper might or a publishing house might.
Speaker 3: Let mean, yes, that's in section two theories.
Speaker 5: What I would say more, particularly if we want to
Speaker 5: get down the nitty gritty, is I would say that
Speaker 5: when they promote or show you content that they own it.
Speaker 5: They can't get away, you know, if they if they're
Speaker 5: the ones who are promoting something onto your feed, that
Speaker 5: that's their responsibility. If that ends up being you know,
Speaker 5: accompliced to a crime or defamation or something like that,
Speaker 5: that they start to own it once they're involved.
Speaker 3: But I think it's broader than that.
Speaker 5: I just think we have a general scheme now thirty
Speaker 5: years old, where we immunize tech companies from most laws,
Speaker 5: almost all taxation, and you know, various other things that
Speaker 5: we use to control power to Section two thirty is
Speaker 5: a part of a much larger trend of just saying,
Speaker 5: you guys get to live in a different country more
Speaker 5: or less called Silicon Valley where the laws of the
Speaker 5: United States do not apply.
Speaker 1: So is tech tobacco? Is tech oil? Are those one
Speaker 1: to ones?
Speaker 5: No, because those other industries are much more subject to laws.
Speaker 3: And have been much less successful. I mean tobacco's an example.
Speaker 5: Eventually tobacco started to become under public influence and responsibility
Speaker 5: and eventually started losing something. No one has laid a
Speaker 5: glove on big tech. The Europeans maybe a little, but
Speaker 5: it's just this kind of completely I guess sovereign industry unaccountable.
Speaker 5: I think they believe themselves now kind of by their
Speaker 5: very nature, to be superhumans who are beyond mere democratic control.
Speaker 5: So why well, if you go and spend a lot
Speaker 5: of time in Silicon Valley like thinking, I think they
Speaker 5: have the almost religious belief that technology is taking us
Speaker 5: towards some kind of nirvana, and so if you mess
Speaker 5: with it, you're evil. So that's why, if that makes sense,
Speaker 5: I think there's an entire religious mindset that goes along
Speaker 5: with it. I was reading one of Mark Andreessen, he's
Speaker 5: this well known VC investor. Oh yes, and he said,
Speaker 5: artificial intelligence saves lives, and we need to get superhuman intelligence.
Speaker 5: So if you decelerate it or get in the way,
Speaker 5: you are basically guilty of murder. Because I was like,
Speaker 5: that's a lot.
Speaker 3: That's a lot.
Speaker 5: If you don't pay your taxes so the hospital doesn't
Speaker 5: have money, are you then guilty of murder?
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm in you can say anything saying right,
Speaker 1: that's the good thing about the Internet. It's nonsensical. So
Speaker 1: I once had a different senator explain this to me.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure it's right, but I'm not sure it's
Speaker 1: wrong that the reason the Internet is so out of
Speaker 1: control is because there's a low level grift happening with
Speaker 1: senators where you know, meta employees, the daughters of a
Speaker 1: very important United States senator crypto donates to a lot
Speaker 1: of Republicans and Democrats. That the money is just too
Speaker 1: free flowing to our politicians, and that's how we got
Speaker 1: here or that's how we stay here. Is that correct?
Speaker 1: And if so, how do you stop it? And if not,
Speaker 1: what is so?
Speaker 3: I think there's some truth to that.
Speaker 5: In the Biden administration, we tried to pass what would
Speaker 5: seem like very easy laws to pass, like protection of
Speaker 5: children's privacy, protection of children against violent and horrible materials,
Speaker 5: basic privacy for all, Like things that you would imagine
Speaker 5: if they ever got to the Senate floor or House
Speaker 5: floor would pass Nearian Nasley could never ever get a vote,
Speaker 5: and no one would ever say why.
Speaker 1: By the way, that is an insane thing to say.
Speaker 1: I mean, I know it's true because I saw it
Speaker 1: happen firsthand, But just think about how insane that is.
Speaker 5: Yes, things that like if you pulled Americans it's not
Speaker 5: like Democrat, but probably ninety percent Americans think, you know,
Speaker 5: children maybe should have more privacy online, like targeting you
Speaker 5: know ads that like targeted marketing directing at children, probably
Speaker 5: not the best idea, Like I don't maybe ninety nine
Speaker 5: percent no votes?
Speaker 3: Why no votes?
Speaker 5: You know, it would always be the leader would somehow
Speaker 5: like very murky, very secret, no votes.
Speaker 1: That was when Chuck Schumer was the majority leader.
Speaker 5: Yes, just interesting, no votes, never a vote somehow maybe
Speaker 5: wait till they know, oh you know, we'll do it
Speaker 5: next term, or yeah, you know we're going to get
Speaker 5: to that, or I no votes and like that. That's
Speaker 5: the real thing about It's not like somehow these things fail,
Speaker 5: it's they get killed before the ever a vote. So
Speaker 5: I kind of began to believe that it's just you know,
Speaker 5: I do remember that there was one or two centers
Speaker 5: leaning in our direction, and then they said they got
Speaker 5: threats to Google just run ads against them in their primary.
Speaker 5: Just just what doesn't care the content, you know, So yeah,
Speaker 5: I think there's I think they want to hold the
Speaker 5: whole political system.
Speaker 3: And the recent results speak for themselves.
Speaker 5: They had no votes on any tech relating technology for
Speaker 5: the last twenty years. That's something in the late nineties,
Speaker 5: no votes on anything, not not no passage, no votes.
Speaker 5: That's where a lot of hearings, a lot of performative
Speaker 5: yelling and like bring them in and give them a
Speaker 5: hard time.
Speaker 1: Well, they see how popular it is. They just don't
Speaker 1: want to pass legislation.
Speaker 5: Yes, they want to vote, but they do want to
Speaker 5: like yell at people and like say, I, you know,
Speaker 5: gave Mark Zuckerberg a really hard time about this stuff.
Speaker 1: Kristen Cinema, one of the many senators who was against
Speaker 1: tech regulation now lobbying for data farms.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a good example.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think it's very clear in the DC
Speaker 5: that if you are on kind of tech side, you
Speaker 5: can expect a nice, easy, multimillion dollar year job. We
Speaker 5: don't have to do much ever, occasionally have a meeting
Speaker 5: and you know, kind of coast and if you don't
Speaker 5: take their side, then you can work in a think tank,
Speaker 5: you know, or whatever.
Speaker 3: Or trying to get a nonprofit job.
Speaker 5: But they just kind of it's kind of like almost
Speaker 5: like bribery in advance.
Speaker 3: Does that make sense, Like it's it's not.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And that kind of hangs over people's heads and
Speaker 5: they decide, well, do I want to get my I mean,
Speaker 5: I got myself out of that game, and it was
Speaker 5: never sort of made. I guess that he came clear
Speaker 5: to me when I was starting get that disinvited from parties,
Speaker 5: subtle job offers started to go away. So, yeah, you
Speaker 5: cross some line and you're out. And I guess she
Speaker 5: read the tea leaves and decided she wanted to have
Speaker 5: a cushy job for the rest of her life and
Speaker 5: make millions in doing nothing, which is kind of what
Speaker 5: she was doing the Senate too, but not making the
Speaker 5: same amount of money.
Speaker 1: We laugh, not because it's funny, but to keep from crying.
Speaker 1: I think that yeah, there is definitely we are clearly
Speaker 1: cross to rubicon. So if you are listening to this,
Speaker 1: sort of give us, because I'm so upset, now give
Speaker 1: us a sort of call to action.
Speaker 5: I think a lot of the stuff starts with children's stuff,
Speaker 5: Like the path towards a lot of responsibility for big
Speaker 5: industries starts with children's stuff. So I think, you know,
Speaker 5: at some point the pressure to protect children becomes unbarrel.
Speaker 5: I would agree and write, you know, and try to
Speaker 5: shame your elected representatives support child protection legislation.
Speaker 3: I think from there you build other legislation. I'm a little.
Speaker 5: Cynical because I've wasted huge amounts of my time trying
Speaker 5: to get these stupid bills fast. I think you also
Speaker 5: have to get elected representatives off the fence where they
Speaker 5: just kind of occasionally complain about things but avoid the
Speaker 5: votes or the pressure being serious about wealth.
Speaker 3: And balance in our time. I mean, it's problem for
Speaker 3: the Democratic Party in some ways.
Speaker 5: The Publican Party can even be a little more open
Speaker 5: about it all. They are also very subject to their
Speaker 5: own becoming captured and just starting complain about conservatives.
Speaker 3: So those are my call the actions.
Speaker 5: Don't let your representatives just be lazy on these issues
Speaker 5: and get away with it. And you know, more generally,
Speaker 5: I think we can turn the ship around. I think
Speaker 5: the United States has at its greatest periods of being
Speaker 5: tested responded in the progressive era, New Deal era. We
Speaker 5: just need people, I don't care you vote for, who
Speaker 5: actually pledge to do things and then actually do them,
Speaker 5: because i we just elect some people who really do
Speaker 5: not are not able somehow to let votes happen in Congress,
Speaker 5: and we just let things happen at all, and we're
Speaker 5: stuck there, and you know, some of the other stuff
Speaker 5: is a distraction. We need to deal with the incredible
Speaker 5: wealth and balances in our time, and people who get
Speaker 5: distracked from that, I think are taking us away from
Speaker 5: the real problem in our in our times.
Speaker 1: Tim. I hope he'll come back.
Speaker 3: It's been a pleasure anytime.
Speaker 1: No, no, Rick Wilson, Yes, you know what time it is.
Speaker 1: It's fuckeray time, It's fuck great time. Rick Wilson, Do
Speaker 1: you do you have a moment of fuckery?
Speaker 4: I have probably what is like the pinnacle of the
Speaker 4: moments of fuckery for a long time, and that is
Speaker 4: Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner privately negotiating with Putin, and
Speaker 4: by that I mean taking bribes from Putin, and by
Speaker 4: that I mean being paid off by Putin, and by
Speaker 4: that I mean serving as Putin's dirty little whos in
Speaker 4: order to part out and break up Ukraine. The Russians
Speaker 4: finally have figured out their best negotiating strategy, and that
Speaker 4: is to bribe Donald Trump through Jared the bagman of
Speaker 4: the family, and to bribe Donald Trump through Stephen Whitkoff,
Speaker 4: who they have been negotiating using the Russia's plan to
Speaker 4: parcel up Ukraine. And to kill it off. They're not negotiators,
Speaker 4: they're undertakers. The bad faith that's going on here is astounding.
Speaker 4: I was told that the Ukrainian hearing or the Ukrainian
Speaker 4: meeting over the weekend with Ukrainian delegation was essentially Rubio
Speaker 4: and others insulting them, saying, fuck you, take the deal,
Speaker 4: or we'll leave you, or you're gon, We're gonna leave
Speaker 4: you out to dry. And they go into Putin's office
Speaker 4: with the Golden knee pads on and leave with sacks
Speaker 4: of cash, either physically or more metaphor. It is unbelievably
Speaker 4: insanely corrupt. Witcoff now has been reported we have his
Speaker 4: voice on tape released by European Intelligence Service. We have
Speaker 4: Witcocks saying I'm gonna teach you how to manipulate Trump
Speaker 4: so we can keep Trump on your side. Yes, listen,
Speaker 4: a prosecutor about five minutes out of law school could
Speaker 4: indict that motherfucker for espionage and treason. It is insane,
Speaker 4: and I think there's no circle of hell hot enough
Speaker 4: for those two guys.
Speaker 1: For wit Coffin, Kushner, Rick Wilson, thank you all.
Speaker 3: We'll see you next week.
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