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 Democrats have staged a historic upset
Speaker 1: in Omaha, Nebraska. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today. Pawkin News is John Heilman cuts through the
Speaker 1: noise with a discussion about what happened in the twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four campaign and whether or not Biden's age was obfiscated.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin about how
Speaker 1: we push back on Trump's many, many oversteps. But first
Speaker 1: the news.
Speaker 2: Somali the Katari plane, the scandal is not landing at all.
Speaker 2: Trump blew his lid today in discussions about it, and
Speaker 2: he did a whole lot of talking about the Middle
Speaker 2: East today. What are you seeing here?
Speaker 1: Look, I think this plain thing is really a good
Speaker 1: example of corruption that first of all, it cuts through
Speaker 1: the noise. Right, You've seen Trump do other corrupt things
Speaker 1: like the Trump coin and all of the sort of
Speaker 1: family real estate dealings, but this is something different. It's
Speaker 1: a very clear bit of corruption, right, Like we've never
Speaker 1: had a president and try to take a plane from
Speaker 1: a Middle Eastern royal family before, Like, it's just so
Speaker 1: beyond the pale of normal stuff that I do think
Speaker 1: it's a standout. And if Trump were smart, he would
Speaker 1: just drop it. He would just say, who cares a wait,
Speaker 1: I'll get the plane from Boeing. I'm the president. Data
Speaker 1: da da. But because Trump is Trump, and maybe this
Speaker 1: is how he got here a little bit. Because Trump
Speaker 1: is Trump, he cannot thread the needle on this. He
Speaker 1: cannot let it go. So he just thinks that if
Speaker 1: he keeps going with this, he's going to get this plane.
Speaker 1: But it is There's nobody in the world, I mean,
Speaker 1: even the biggest Trumper, even the bots on Twitter who
Speaker 1: are saying, well, the Americans got the Statue of Liberty,
Speaker 1: even those people know for sure understand that this is
Speaker 1: not fucking right, that this is completely crazy. So we're
Speaker 1: three days into this story or four days into the story.
Speaker 1: So this is a bad story for Trump, right, the
Speaker 1: fact that it keeps going and every time he he says, well,
Speaker 1: they are just being nice. It's smart to take the plane.
Speaker 1: And this is my really my theory in life, when
Speaker 1: you're defending yourself, you're losing. When you're trying to make
Speaker 1: the case that a Middle Eastern royal family should give
Speaker 1: you a plane. Okay, and everyone in the world, including
Speaker 1: Republican senators, are bursting into laughter. You're losing, so just
Speaker 1: give up on the fucking plane. You're not getting the plane.
Speaker 1: Every day you do it, you look like an asshole.
Speaker 1: Like give it up, man, You're welcome.
Speaker 2: So today there is a disastrous hearing with Christino, who
Speaker 2: many people have disastrous for her. For her, she looks
Speaker 2: pretty pretty bad in this. Many people have talked about
Speaker 2: how she's just the spokesperson for all these horrible, horrible
Speaker 2: things I is doing. And well, I'm gonna let the
Speaker 2: tape speak for itself.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Madame Secretary. You have an important job. I
Speaker 3: think you have one of the most important jobs in
Speaker 3: the cabinet. Thank you for doing it. I want you
Speaker 3: to have credibility and be taken seriously as you do
Speaker 3: the job. And so I want to put to rest
Speaker 3: this question about mister Garcia. In this photo that the
Speaker 3: President posted on April twenty one, Madame Secretary, you agree
Speaker 3: that the letters MS and the number thirteen in Times
Speaker 3: Roman numeral font that they are doctored on this photo.
Speaker 4: Right, Congressman Brego Garcia. No, no, I'm just it wasn't
Speaker 4: based off of tattoos.
Speaker 5: It was off an.
Speaker 3: Entire and accept I'll accept that for the purpose of
Speaker 3: this question.
Speaker 6: You agree though, that this is doctor, Is that right?
Speaker 4: The same protocols that are scary.
Speaker 3: I want you to have credibility, and I want you
Speaker 3: to be taken seriously. Is this doctored or is it not?
Speaker 4: I'm taken quite seriously.
Speaker 6: Is it doctored or not? Doctor?
Speaker 4: The importance that the President has given me.
Speaker 3: To I understand is it doctored or nothing.
Speaker 4: That's important to remember is that every single time a
Speaker 4: case is.
Speaker 2: Built, we stopped at about minute one oh five. That
Speaker 2: goes on for two and a half minutes.
Speaker 1: Of course, by the way, I love that's Eric swall
Speaker 1: while questioning her and I want you to have credibility.
Speaker 1: First of all, I'm not convinced Eric wants her to
Speaker 1: have credibility. But that is neither here nor there. No,
Speaker 1: I mean, that was just an incredible bit. Christy Nome
Speaker 1: is one of the inheritors of trump Ism, so she's
Speaker 1: what's in the pike when Trump's term is over. So
Speaker 1: that's something, well.
Speaker 2: Let's put some more color on it. I think Congressman
Speaker 2: Robert Garcia did some amazing work here.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 7: Would you commit to just letting his mother know, as
Speaker 7: a mother to mother, if Andrey is alive. He was
Speaker 7: given an asylum appointment by the United States government. We
Speaker 7: gave him an appointment. We said Andrey come to the
Speaker 7: border at this time to claim asylum. He was taken
Speaker 7: to a foreign prison in El Salvador. His mother just
Speaker 7: wants to know if he is alive. Can we check
Speaker 7: and do a wellness.
Speaker 4: Our asylum applications are different than the granting of asylum,
Speaker 4: and I don't know the specifics of this individual case.
Speaker 4: This individual is an El Salvador and the appeal would
Speaker 4: be best made to the President and to the government
Speaker 4: of El Salvador on this. We've made that under my
Speaker 4: jurisdiction at METEM.
Speaker 7: Secretary, you have said that you that in Ol Salvador
Speaker 7: is one of the tools in the toolbox that you have.
Speaker 7: You have said that and has been quoted as saying
Speaker 7: that you and the President have the ability to check
Speaker 7: if Andrew is alive and if not being harmed. Would
Speaker 7: you commit at least into looking and asking of Salvador
Speaker 7: if he is alive.
Speaker 4: This is a question that's best ask to the resident
Speaker 4: and the government of l Salvador.
Speaker 7: And I think it's I think you know very well
Speaker 7: that you could ask that question, but you're choosing to
Speaker 7: do medical secretary is disregard this young man's life, this
Speaker 7: young man's family who was given an appointment by the
Speaker 7: United States. I think it is shameful that you won't
Speaker 7: even request to see if this young man is alive.
Speaker 7: His family has no idea, has no access to lawyers.
Speaker 7: I would hope that we would have that humanity, the
Speaker 7: humanity to just check if this young man is okay.
Speaker 7: With that, I yep back, it's shameful.
Speaker 1: The problem that these people have is that you can't
Speaker 1: ever go against Trump. So if something is photoshopped and
Speaker 1: everyone knows it's photoshopped, but Trump says it's not photoshopped,
Speaker 1: you have to say it's not photoshopped, so right, I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what it is. You can't she can't be like
Speaker 1: just like the people in the hearings where they would say,
Speaker 1: you know, they'd ask questions like, well, will you do
Speaker 1: what the president tells you or will you follow the law,
Speaker 1: And then they say, I can't deal with theoreticals, because
Speaker 1: what they mean to say is we're going to do
Speaker 1: what the president tells us to and we don't give
Speaker 1: a shit about the law. So that's where we are here.
Speaker 1: That's the way in which these people are painted themselves
Speaker 1: into corners they cannot get out of.
Speaker 2: Sob The New York Times has this blockbuster report that
Speaker 2: Stephen Miller is running the DOJ and Pam Bondy is
Speaker 2: just a figurehead that she is like an actor. And
Speaker 2: when I think of headlines, I don't want to see.
Speaker 2: That's very high up in the echelon of ones I
Speaker 2: would not like to see.
Speaker 1: Okay, So today I've had this conversation with six different people,
Speaker 1: like what is scarier Trump at the rains or Trump
Speaker 1: slightly diminished and Stephen Miller at the rains? And yes,
Speaker 1: there is a lot of reasons to fear a Stephen
Speaker 1: Miller presidency. But just like one Marco Rubio, the guy
Speaker 1: has fifty seven jobs. Okay, Stephen Miller is running the administration,
Speaker 1: He's running this, he's running that he's running the DOJ.
Speaker 1: For sure, I'm sure that's true. That Pam Bondi is
Speaker 1: just to pick your head. I'm sure you know if
Speaker 1: that's the reporting, I think that's probably right. But I
Speaker 1: do think that this guy can't do It's just one person, right,
Speaker 1: unless they have really sophisticated AI. There's only so much
Speaker 1: damage one person could do. Now, Canny do a lot
Speaker 1: of damage, yes, but it is only one person.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just one person with really, really really bad morals.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well no, I me and I think we can
Speaker 1: all agree that this is not the person that any
Speaker 1: of us want in charge. But that said, it is
Speaker 1: only one person. John Heilman is an NBC National News
Speaker 1: correspondent as well as a Puck News partner. Welcome, Welcome, John.
Speaker 6: Hi, how are you?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm just living the dream.
Speaker 6: You don't seem like super energetic this morning, Molly, What's
Speaker 6: what's going on?
Speaker 1: I'm energetic. I went to a party last night. I'm energetic.
Speaker 6: Or was the party?
Speaker 1: Was it the high Line?
Speaker 5: It was good.
Speaker 1: American life grinds on despite the fact that our political
Speaker 1: system is in what is what do you think the
Speaker 1: what would you say this sort of word is for
Speaker 1: this moment in American politics?
Speaker 6: Surreal? I mean just sort of terror, incognita if you
Speaker 6: want to be like Latin, this has been true in
Speaker 6: both Trump terms. This movie, it's not different, but it's
Speaker 6: just like there's just so many things for which there
Speaker 6: is no precedent, and I'm like tediously. It's not like
Speaker 6: I'm some like, you know, some great historical scholar or something,
Speaker 6: but just like I'm always like looking for some precedent,
Speaker 6: like how do how do we evaluate this thing? Well,
Speaker 6: this has happened before, and this is how it kind
Speaker 6: of came out, so there's a guide to this, or
Speaker 6: this has happened a lot before, or well it has
Speaker 6: happened very often, but there have been times when this
Speaker 6: has happened or something like this has happened. But you know,
Speaker 6: that's just constantly. Every day, there's like five things that
Speaker 6: there's no metric or artstick where you're kind of like, well,
Speaker 6: here's how we could we can get some general sense
Speaker 6: a how this might unfold on the basis of this
Speaker 6: thing that happen in nineteen sixty four. It's like just
Speaker 6: like I don't know, I mean, what do you think
Speaker 6: is gonna happen? John fucking Idea?
Speaker 1: Well there is, But it does feel like with trump Ism,
Speaker 1: there's always this sort of feeling that maybe someone will
Speaker 1: do something right like the Republicans, there's sort of a
Speaker 1: wish and I mean that ship is I.
Speaker 6: Don't have that. I don't have that feeling at all.
Speaker 6: I gave up on that feeling a long time ago.
Speaker 1: So we talk about the guard rails. We talk about
Speaker 1: sort of I mean, their courts continue to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you can't do that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the courts. The courts stopped the court the courts
Speaker 6: routinely regularly. Thank God for that branch of government, because
Speaker 6: the other one's totally suphine, meaning the legislative branch. Yeah.
Speaker 6: Uh so the courts continue to operate. That is a
Speaker 6: thing for which there is precedent. The courts, you know,
Speaker 6: I continue to act like the courts mostly, and they
Speaker 6: keep Trump from doing various things that he wants to do.
Speaker 6: And I guess I here's here's the thing that's worth
Speaker 6: thinking about. I guess in this text. And maybe you
Speaker 6: have an insight on this that I because I've just
Speaker 6: started thinking about it. It's like, if you look at
Speaker 6: what what has happened just in the last few days
Speaker 6: around the big beautiful bill. You know, there's these things
Speaker 6: that Trump, you know, campaigned on, right, you know, no
Speaker 6: taxes on tips, no taxes on overtime.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 6: You know, he recently, as you know, last week, came
Speaker 6: out and said, having kind of been towing and throwing
Speaker 6: about it for a while, finally came out and said
Speaker 6: to Mike Johnson, let's raise taxes on the rich. I mean,
Speaker 6: he set that he set the limit really high at
Speaker 6: two and a half million, but he said he'd be
Speaker 6: open to, he'd be He wants that, not just the
Speaker 6: he'd be able to. He wants that. That's not going
Speaker 6: to happen. And nor nor are a lot of things
Speaker 6: that he campaigned on, you know, pretty vocally, like no
Speaker 6: tax on tips and you know, his unfeasible. It's not
Speaker 6: like but it's not like the it's not like the
Speaker 6: Republicans are standing up and saying, you know, getting in
Speaker 6: his face about it. They're just not going to do that.
Speaker 6: You know, it's the thing he wanted. They're not going
Speaker 6: to do it. He's you know, he capitulated on on
Speaker 6: the US Attorney for uh, the District of Columbia. You know,
Speaker 6: Tom Tillis said, no, I'm not gonna this, this is
Speaker 6: fucking nuts, and Trump was like, all right, no. He
Speaker 6: put in Jeanine Perrot, you know, how long that will last,
Speaker 6: who knows. But it's like there's things where he's kind
Speaker 6: of giving up on things, you know, rather than stomping
Speaker 6: his feet and saying I must have this, I must
Speaker 6: have that, there's more things that he's willing to kind
Speaker 6: of like when somebody says no to him, he kind
Speaker 6: of goes all right. The interesting question is like what's
Speaker 6: going to happen with the with the plane and just
Speaker 6: all of the obvious corruption, right, because there's more Republicans
Speaker 6: speaking out about that than I've heard speak out about
Speaker 6: almost anything.
Speaker 1: Cynthia Cynthia Loomis burst into hysterical laughter when she heard
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 6: Yes, I mean, you know, Laura Lumer is attacking him,
Speaker 6: Ted Cruz, Ben Shapiro, all these people are now taking
Speaker 6: are Like I said, what this is like? You can't
Speaker 6: take this plane from from Cutter. That's crazy. And you
Speaker 6: know what happens now? And here's the interesting the thing
Speaker 6: that ties the two things together for me. Do you
Speaker 6: think that Trump being willing to kind of give up
Speaker 6: on shit he doesn't really care about that much, like,
Speaker 6: you know, does he really care about like raising text
Speaker 6: on the wealthy? You know, if Trump were really running
Speaker 6: for a third term, like really thought he was gonna
Speaker 6: that he had a political future. I think he might
Speaker 6: not take the plane from Cutter, you know, because the
Speaker 6: corruption of his really so naked, that is, it's a
Speaker 6: political If Trump were really running for a third term,
Speaker 6: he might want to like really press for raising taxes
Speaker 6: on the rich, because that's like a good band and
Speaker 6: esque like populist economics. I wonder whether we're starting at
Speaker 6: like and both that his behavior and the fact that
Speaker 6: Republicans are starting to either just kind of ignore him
Speaker 6: on certain things or openly criticize him, like on the plane,
Speaker 6: whether what's sinking in with people. And I say this
Speaker 6: as someone who's thought for a long time Trump was
Speaker 6: going to stay in the White House until he was
Speaker 6: dead or taken out either either leave the ovalops with
Speaker 6: a toe tag or an handcuffs. Those are the only
Speaker 6: ways you're going to get him out. I wonder whether
Speaker 6: it's starting to have like on both sides, people are
Speaker 6: kind of going, yeah, you know what, two term, Like
Speaker 6: I'm gonna we got another four years to get to
Speaker 6: do whatever the fuck I want. But I'm not gonna
Speaker 6: try to press it here and try to stick around
Speaker 6: for a third I wonder I'm right.
Speaker 1: I mean, it is the real open question, right is
Speaker 1: how much energy does he have for the authoritarianism he
Speaker 1: is very delighted and curious by.
Speaker 6: And that's the question, and whether he and whether he thinks, yes,
Speaker 6: that's certainly right. And I don't mean to suggest at
Speaker 6: all that the authoritarian threat is receded, but just that
Speaker 6: on certain things he just seems more exhausted, you know,
Speaker 6: than than he has in the path. He just sort
Speaker 6: of seems kind of like, you know, the answers to
Speaker 6: some of these questions, you know, than these interviews he's
Speaker 6: done recently. He has just seemed so flaccid to me,
Speaker 6: like he's kind of like Steve Miller, still out there
Speaker 6: talking about repeal it, taking back, about getting rid of
Speaker 6: Habeas corpus and that's super dangerous. And but I just
Speaker 6: there are times when you look at Trump and you
Speaker 6: kind of go, he looks like he's just like a
Speaker 6: little like he's a little like kind of had it,
Speaker 6: you know, He's Okay. I'm just like, I just don't
Speaker 6: have that much energy anymore. Let's just get on, like money,
Speaker 6: give me the money, let me build it, let me
Speaker 6: build the giant hotel and cutter and let my family
Speaker 6: get really rich. You can't prosecute me because I got immunity.
Speaker 6: It's just like, you know, let me give me, give
Speaker 6: me as much shit as I can get a hold
Speaker 6: of in the next four years, and I'll like go off,
Speaker 6: thank you.
Speaker 1: And and my man is in his late seventies. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not a young guy.
Speaker 6: Yes, and a lot of mileage on those tires too, moy.
Speaker 6: I mean, you know, if you if you get to
Speaker 6: be that age, I don't care what kind of genetics
Speaker 6: you have, you get to be that age and you've
Speaker 6: only eaten like Big Max and not done any exercise
Speaker 6: other than what he would pass us for him playing
Speaker 6: around the golf, right, you know that body is not
Speaker 6: cannot be like in the I don't care what doctor says.
Speaker 6: That body cannot be in the best shape well.
Speaker 1: And also he doesn't sleep. I mean, the guy looks
Speaker 1: a very frenetic, high stress life. So there's a book
Speaker 1: that's coming out that says that basically there was a
Speaker 1: cover up about Biden's age. I have yet to see
Speaker 1: anything that threads a needle for cover up. It just
Speaker 1: seems like that, you know, if I could you know,
Speaker 1: it all seems like people were you know, the things
Speaker 1: people do when other people are in power or they
Speaker 1: want them to stay in power. It doesn't seem in
Speaker 1: my mind like there's if only Democrats were organized enough
Speaker 1: for a cover up, is my hot take.
Speaker 5: But I'm curious.
Speaker 6: You're talking about Tapa Thompson.
Speaker 1: The Taper Thompson book.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I've read it. I haven't. I haven't. I'm
Speaker 6: going to interview those guys on my podcast and as
Speaker 6: I'm sure you are, and others or are they're going
Speaker 6: to publicize the book like crazy, I'm eager to read it.
Speaker 6: Those are two serious people with who are good reports
Speaker 6: and or well sourced. And Alex Thompson was was, you know,
Speaker 6: commendably resistant to the aggressive White House pushback on biden
Speaker 6: age and health stories.
Speaker 1: You know, over the everybody like, didn't you read a
Speaker 1: ton of stories about how Biden was old and doddering?
Speaker 6: And I think that you didn't know? Now, I mean, yes,
Speaker 6: you what you read was a lot of people. First
Speaker 6: of all, you've heard a lot of people on the
Speaker 6: right saying that all the time, right, I don't think
Speaker 6: that you would say that in that on MSNBC CNN
Speaker 6: and otherwise that there was a lot of like aggressive
Speaker 6: coverage like that kind of made that point. I spent
Speaker 6: you know, we've talked about this before, I'm sure on
Speaker 6: this podcast, but you know I spent when I would
Speaker 6: say on television not like doing investigative trying to investigate this,
Speaker 6: but just would say there is a consistent through line
Speaker 6: starting in October of twenty twenty one through whatever point
Speaker 6: you were talking that the American public things Joe Biden's
Speaker 6: too old for run for a second time. I would
Speaker 6: get it, but I would say that and then get
Speaker 6: there and get brutalized. And there were not a lot
Speaker 6: of people brutalized in social media and by Democrats, and
Speaker 6: you would get you wouldn't get a chorus of people
Speaker 6: who are like, yes, this is a giant problem for
Speaker 6: Joe Biden politically, and and why isn't the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: running a prime? Why isn't there a real primary? Why
Speaker 6: is no one taking them on that? That was not
Speaker 6: something that you heard of. There was not something that
Speaker 6: was like uh, that was front of the center and
Speaker 6: the coverage going forward and so but your point is
Speaker 6: about cover up. So I don't know what the book alleges.
Speaker 6: So it's it's I don't want to like knock down
Speaker 6: a straw many right, you know, My sense of it
Speaker 6: is that it's a much more interesting, complicated thing. It is.
Speaker 6: There is no doubt that the White House did what
Speaker 6: every White House always does for any income and president,
Speaker 6: which is to try to push reporters away from their
Speaker 6: political vulnerabilities and towards their political strengths.
Speaker 1: Right, And it would be malpractice to not that's what
Speaker 1: they did.
Speaker 6: So that's what they did. I think there were a
Speaker 6: lot of reporters who the Biden press shop, and and
Speaker 6: you know, was there openness about you know, when you
Speaker 6: started to hear things like I'll give you an example
Speaker 6: in like the fall of twenty twenty three, actually more
Speaker 6: like the winter of twenty twenty four. Was when people
Speaker 6: at who were donors started saying to me they thought
Speaker 6: it was that Biden looked really bad even in small groups.
Speaker 6: And what was it was even for like a ten
Speaker 6: minute off the record thing with big donors was reading
Speaker 6: off a teleprompter. Yeah, I didn't see that that was
Speaker 6: not reported widely? Now was that because those were closed fundraisers?
Speaker 6: The White House obviously didn't want people to know that
Speaker 6: that's what any White House would have done to try
Speaker 6: to protect their boss on an issue of political vulnerability.
Speaker 6: Reporters didn't seem to really super aggressively pursue it. The
Speaker 6: questions around why the Democratic Party, which is a political
Speaker 6: party last I checked, and as a political party, should
Speaker 6: be interested primarily in two things. One it's preferred policies, programs, values, ideology, whatever,
Speaker 6: but prior to that, having to win elections so that
Speaker 6: you could institute your policies, priorities, values, and ideology. Why
Speaker 6: the Democratic Party all these congressman, senators, donors who saw
Speaker 6: Biden with some frequency in various settings and now have
Speaker 6: come out and said that they had private concerns. Why
Speaker 6: those people didn't speak up and say, hey, if we're
Speaker 6: a serious political party, we should consider you know, someone
Speaker 6: should come forward and challenge the president, like, why, you
Speaker 6: know what we have concerns about this? Why did that
Speaker 6: raise the alarm earlier? I think that's a really good question.
Speaker 6: But I think that speaks more to the way that
Speaker 6: the system works to you know, it is the case
Speaker 6: that challenging a sitting president is really hard for a
Speaker 6: lot of reasons. It's hard because it's hard to raise
Speaker 6: the money to challenge that person. It's hard because if
Speaker 6: you challenge that person and don't win, your future is
Speaker 6: fucked in the party, And there's all this institutional stuff
Speaker 6: that basically protects incumbents. And I think that there were
Speaker 6: a lot of Democrats who were in denial about his situation.
Speaker 6: There were a lot of Democrats who didn't want to
Speaker 6: really know the details, the kind of thought. He looked tired,
Speaker 6: but then he would give a good state of the Union.
Speaker 6: They'd be like, Okay, cool, we can get through. Trump
Speaker 6: is fucking crazy. He's fulfilling also, And there were a
Speaker 6: lot of Democrats out there who might have challenged Biden
Speaker 6: who looked at it and said, you know the way
Speaker 6: I asked a juggernaut, they have a lot of money,
Speaker 6: there's gonna there's really hard to beat an incumbent. Do
Speaker 6: I want to mortgage my future or risk my future
Speaker 6: as a presidential candidate in twenty twenty eight, twenty thirty two,
Speaker 6: twenty thirty six to taking on a sitting president where
Speaker 6: if I don't win, everyone in the institutional Democratic Party's
Speaker 6: going to hate me forever. I think like there's much
Speaker 6: more like was it much more that the story here
Speaker 6: isn't so much a giant cover up in the way
Speaker 6: we think of a cover up, as a series of
Speaker 6: institutional things that led a lot of people to forget
Speaker 6: what the point of being the Democratic Party was, which
Speaker 6: is or any party is, which is You've got to win,
Speaker 6: you know, and it's as not you shouldn't mortgage your
Speaker 6: values or your preferred policies. Shouldn't you know, you shouldn't
Speaker 6: do anything to win. That's not win at all cost,
Speaker 6: that's not stop believing. But you have to win. If
Speaker 6: you don't win, you this is what happens. You get
Speaker 6: Donald Trump for the next four years. So you know,
Speaker 6: you have to first things first, consistent with your priorities,
Speaker 6: consistent with your values, consistent with your ethics. You have
Speaker 6: to do anything you can, everything you can to win.
Speaker 6: And that the Democratic Party was not operating on that
Speaker 6: principle when it looked just as Joe Biden's poll numbers
Speaker 6: forget about what people saw behind the scenes. If you
Speaker 6: just looked at his poll numbers, you would have said,
Speaker 6: we have a problem. Yeah, you know, for like two
Speaker 6: years you would have said we have a problem. And
Speaker 6: you know there were again we go on forever here
Speaker 6: about this, But you have some countervailing things. Biden was
Speaker 6: able to look up after the midterms and say, hey,
Speaker 6: y'all said that we were going to get killed the midterms.
Speaker 6: We didn't get killed in the midterms. Y'all think I
Speaker 6: can't give a decent speech. I did okay at the
Speaker 6: State of the Union. He had things to point to.
Speaker 6: But again, two and a half years of polling, and
Speaker 6: what you could see, which was that without saying the
Speaker 6: guy had Alzheimer's or had dementia or had just think
Speaker 6: I was old, and he looked his age. He looked
Speaker 6: his age. And if you look, if you looked at
Speaker 6: that guy and say, looked his age, he's not his best.
Speaker 6: He's lost a lot of miles per hour of his fastball.
Speaker 6: We probably, if we really think democracy is on the line,
Speaker 6: we probably should consider some other alternatives, because this is
Speaker 6: not who you put forward in an existential election.
Speaker 1: But it is interesting now. So Biden was the oldest
Speaker 1: person ever to be president. Now Donald Trump is the
Speaker 1: oldest person to ever be president. And this sort of
Speaker 1: dovetails back to what we were talking about before, which
Speaker 1: is that as someone who has dealt and just wrote
Speaker 1: a book about aging parents and my experience with my
Speaker 1: aging parents and et cetera, et cetera. Getting old is
Speaker 1: not a conspiracy theory. It's what happens to all of them.
Speaker 6: Yes, And anybody who's ever dealt with anybody in their eighties, yeah,
Speaker 6: knows that. It is not agism. Nor is it disrespectful
Speaker 6: to say people in their eighties are not who you
Speaker 6: want driving a Formula one car, you know, flying your
Speaker 6: airplane or being president of the United States. It's not
Speaker 6: They are diminished in various ways. Do they have wisdom
Speaker 6: that we don't have? Maybe sometimes yes, if they're wise,
Speaker 6: like they have certain like some of them do, not
Speaker 6: all of them. I'm like, I'm not ready to say
Speaker 6: everyone who's eighty is wiser than me, but I'm saying
Speaker 6: some are. Some are, but they don't have the reflexes
Speaker 6: of a of a forty year old, and they don't
Speaker 6: have the energy or the stamina, and they don't have
Speaker 6: the sharpness or they don't have to recall, they have
Speaker 6: a lot of things that are diminished by that age.
Speaker 6: And so you have to ask that question. It was,
Speaker 6: you know, to say someone is it's not like you know,
Speaker 6: you would say you know he's getting out of yours people.
Speaker 6: You know, you're saying that that people in their agies
Speaker 6: are worthless. I'm no, I'm not saying they're worthless. I'm
Speaker 6: just saying they probably are not the best person to
Speaker 6: have the hardest job in the world.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 1: The one thing I would say, and I'm not trying
Speaker 1: to be argumentative here, is I do think that Nancy Pelosi,
Speaker 1: as I hold of a yellow crayon, God help me,
Speaker 1: that Nancy Pelosi is pretty sharp.
Speaker 6: Yes, I'm not saying there aren't exceptions to the rules.
Speaker 1: Right, but there are exceptions to the rule.
Speaker 6: Is there are there exceptions to the rule. There are
Speaker 6: exceptions to every rule. I'm just trying to say as
Speaker 6: a general thing. You know, I am very much in
Speaker 6: the John Stewart camp, which was when he first came back,
Speaker 6: and was like, both of these guys are too old
Speaker 6: to be president. In three hundred fift I heard this
Speaker 6: all over the country, which was people would come up
Speaker 6: to me and go, whether they were Democrats or Republicans,
Speaker 6: would be like, really, two octagenarian dudes, for both of
Speaker 6: whom when you watch them, one of whom seems bonkers.
Speaker 6: That's right, And the other of whom seems like pretty
Speaker 6: as I watch him shuffle across the south lawn, Yeah,
Speaker 6: is this really the best we can do? That was
Speaker 6: what the question that people we give and I and
Speaker 6: I was always like, that's a totally reasonable question. That's
Speaker 6: like and again, it's not a dis to Joe Biden
Speaker 6: or his years of service or the various things that
Speaker 6: have made him wise, but like you know.
Speaker 1: At this point, it's just a truism. Yes, about twenty
Speaker 1: twenty four.
Speaker 6: And and people who would make this point most most
Speaker 6: appointedly to me, people in their eighties who would say,
Speaker 6: I am not what I was, what I once was,
Speaker 6: I wouldn't want this job, and proas like, what are
Speaker 6: we talking about here? Was it like old? Was it
Speaker 6: like elderly? People were like you are rallying around Joe
Speaker 6: Biden constantly? They were kind of going, they we should
Speaker 6: look at someone younger.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's true. And and I think a really
Speaker 1: good point, John. I hope you will come back.
Speaker 6: I'll always come back. Yeah, always come back back. And
Speaker 6: if I didn't tell you this story before, please I'll
Speaker 6: tell you it now. It's my last is exactly are
Speaker 6: the point were we're just on I've told one hundred times,
Speaker 6: but I'll tell it now because it was. It was
Speaker 6: literally the funniest thing that happened in the whole of
Speaker 6: the twenty twenty four election cycle. To me that Saturday night.
Speaker 1: Anything funny happened to you during that anyway, go on yes.
Speaker 6: Saturday night after the Republican Convention. You'll recall this weird
Speaker 6: span of time where Trump assassination, attempt a convention in Milwaukee,
Speaker 6: and then other things that happened immediately there after. So
Speaker 6: the Saturday night after the Republican Convention ended on a
Speaker 6: Thursday Saturday night, Dave Chappelle and John Stewart did a
Speaker 6: comedy set at the kind of like a freends and
Speaker 6: family show at the Apollo Theater at Harlem, and John
Speaker 6: told this story in his set. He said to the crowd,
Speaker 6: you know, I just came back. I've been back on
Speaker 6: six months. I've been getting a lot of crap from
Speaker 6: Democrats because I came out at the very beginning it
Speaker 6: said that both of these guys are told to be president.
Speaker 6: And you know, it's been really hard for me because
Speaker 6: how many people in the crowd have had someone in
Speaker 6: their eighties who they've had to do something hard in
Speaker 6: their family, you know, an uncle, a grandfather or a grandmother,
Speaker 6: a mother, a father, or whatever, where they've had to
Speaker 6: do something like take away their driver's license to their
Speaker 6: car keys. Everyone's hand went up in the room and
Speaker 6: Stuart said, you know, yeah, what happened with me with
Speaker 6: my nana. My nana was in her nineties and we
Speaker 6: had to take away a driver's license and it was
Speaker 6: the hardest thing we'd ever done. It with the last
Speaker 6: shred of her independence. She just like, look, was clinging
Speaker 6: to this one thing. She was kind of like, don't
Speaker 6: take my driver's license. That's basically like putting me in
Speaker 6: the grave. But my family rallied, We did the hard thing,
Speaker 6: We had the hard conversations, and we finally got her
Speaker 6: to give up her driver's license. It was really painful,
Speaker 6: but it was the right thing to do, but it
Speaker 6: was really painful, and you know, and then he said, now,
Speaker 6: just imagine we were trying to do that with twenty
Speaker 6: million people going. Let the bitch drive, Like that's how
Speaker 6: it s felt with me and Joe Biden. Let the
Speaker 6: bitch drive. That made me laugh and will make me
Speaker 6: laugh forever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Let the bitch drive. Thank you, thank.
Speaker 6: You, bye, mollie Ie.
Speaker 1: Tammy Baldwin is the junior Senator from Wisconson. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Tammy Paldwin. It's great to be There's a
Speaker 1: big beautiful bill. Is it called one big beautiful bill?
Speaker 1: Is that what it's called?
Speaker 8: You know, if you're a billionaire, you might think so,
Speaker 8: But this is good for the wealthy and bad for you.
Speaker 5: And that's kind of what we're dealing with, right.
Speaker 1: I would love you to explain to us where it is,
Speaker 1: where it's going, and a little bit about sort of
Speaker 1: how it's being put together right now.
Speaker 5: Absolutely.
Speaker 8: So, the way they start the reconciliation process is they
Speaker 8: tell all these committees in the House of Representatives, you
Speaker 8: got to find some cuts here, or in some cases
Speaker 8: they're saying you even have more money to spend here,
Speaker 8: like for the tax breaks for the billionaires, right, And
Speaker 8: so they instruct all these committees to do this, and
Speaker 8: this week all the major committees that deal with big
Speaker 8: pieces of this are doing their work. So they are
Speaker 8: looking at the medicaid budget, they are looking at the
Speaker 8: agriculture budget and nutrition programs. They are looking at more
Speaker 8: tax breaks they can get to corporations, and billionaires in
Speaker 8: the various different.
Speaker 5: Committees in the House, and that's happening this week.
Speaker 1: And the nutrition benefits that you're talking about, that's SNAP,
Speaker 1: that's supplemental nutritional assistance. So there's an eight hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty billion dollar cut to Medicaid and medicare right, talk
Speaker 1: me through. That was like the top line number they
Speaker 1: needed to pay for the tax cuts that are already
Speaker 1: in place.
Speaker 5: Yeah, so let me tell you a little bit about that.
Speaker 8: That was the instruction, the goal set for the Energy
Speaker 8: and Commerce Committee in the House. I used to sit
Speaker 8: on it, so I know a little is something about this,
Speaker 8: and so they have met their goal, or that's what
Speaker 8: they are in the process of doing this week, by
Speaker 8: cutting Medicaid about seven hundred and fifty billion dollars and
Speaker 8: then making some other cuts, particularly some of the energy
Speaker 8: things like clean energy tax credits. They've taken some pieces
Speaker 8: out of other areas too. But let's talk about the
Speaker 8: big one, Medicaid. We predict that somewhere close to fourteen
Speaker 8: million people will lose their healthcare because of the cuts
Speaker 8: that are being proposed this week. Some of those people
Speaker 8: will lose their healthcare because of the work reporting requirements
Speaker 8: that they are putting forward, which by the way, is
Speaker 8: just a scheme and I'll be happy to tell you
Speaker 8: more about that later.
Speaker 5: And the other big group.
Speaker 8: Of people will lose their health insurance because Republicans have
Speaker 8: turned away from a tax credit that helps people afford
Speaker 8: their healthcare in the Affordable Care Act. This is a
Speaker 8: really important premium tax credit that really makes healthcare super
Speaker 8: affordable for those who otherwise would probably choose to go
Speaker 8: without because they just couldn't afford the monthly premium.
Speaker 1: And then there's also sort of reason more money for
Speaker 1: the military. More money, give me the kind of breakdown
Speaker 1: of where it is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, So the places where you will see more spending
Speaker 8: according to Trump, priorities are the military, homeland security, and
Speaker 8: of course they will allow the committees that deal with
Speaker 8: tax policy to spend more in order to both continue
Speaker 8: some of the Trump one point zero era tax cuts
Speaker 8: for corporations and the wealthy, but also they are looking
Speaker 8: seriously at adding some more tax cuts that benefit the
Speaker 8: wealthy in America. And so those are sort of the
Speaker 8: three major areas where you're seeing the committees freed up
Speaker 8: to spend more money. In fact, they predict next year
Speaker 8: that for the first time ever, the Defense Department will
Speaker 8: spend over a trillion dollars. That is like unfathomable in
Speaker 8: so many different ways. But in any event, they're cutting
Speaker 8: everything else. But when you put everything else together, it
Speaker 8: is much smaller. In order to achieve the type of
Speaker 8: savings that they're talking about to pay for their tax
Speaker 8: breaks for the wealthy, it would be.
Speaker 5: Crippling to so many programs.
Speaker 8: We talked about nutrition programs, snap in particular, Medicaid, et cetera.
Speaker 5: And what I would say is that a lot of.
Speaker 8: Republicans that I'm hearing from say quietly at this point,
Speaker 8: but are uncomfortable with the deep cuts that are being
Speaker 8: proposed for Medicaid. And I think if people keep doing
Speaker 8: what they've been doing and speaking out and sharing their
Speaker 8: stories and writing their particularly their Republican representatives, but write
Speaker 8: all of us. But I think we can make some
Speaker 8: headway in getting them to back off some of the
Speaker 8: worst of their proposals.
Speaker 1: So you've been in the Senate a while, you know
Speaker 1: all of these people. Clearly there has to be some
Speaker 1: regret for letting these cabinet picks slide through. And you
Speaker 1: don't even have to tell me who. But I'm sure
Speaker 1: you know there are some good Republican senators right. They
Speaker 1: may not agree with us, but they're good people, largely
Speaker 1: who have gone into government service to serve and not
Speaker 1: to profit with the RFK stuff. I mean, are you
Speaker 1: seeing a little buyer's remorse here from some of these
Speaker 1: Republican senators.
Speaker 8: Mollie, I want to answer this in a couple of
Speaker 8: different ways. You're saying, I've served in the Senate a while,
Speaker 8: I've served with some of these people. I want to
Speaker 8: tell you that a whole bunch of new Republican senators
Speaker 8: that have been elected in the past couple of cycles,
Speaker 8: and many of them are supercharged LAGA people, so you know,
Speaker 8: I'm getting to know them, but they're not the ones
Speaker 8: we're talking about. Absolutely, there are senators who are having
Speaker 8: buyers remorse with regard to some of the confirmation votes
Speaker 8: they've cast, also for the amount of cruelty and harm
Speaker 8: this budget reconciliation process is teeing up. But I also
Speaker 8: want to just mention one other thing that I that
Speaker 8: I'm keeping in the back of my mind because you know,
Speaker 8: every so often I have to be reminded of this
Speaker 8: both in the House as they're trying to figure out
Speaker 8: how to put together a majority to advance this reconciliation bill.
Speaker 8: You have some who have said, and I'm not going
Speaker 8: to call them moderates, these are just maybe more traditional
Speaker 8: Republicans who have said, oh, some of these cuts go
Speaker 8: a little too far, and then have this right flank
Speaker 8: that says, we are not voting for any bill unless
Speaker 8: you cut five trillion dollars out of domestic spending, because
Speaker 8: we're not going to vote for a bill where the
Speaker 8: tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations aren't completely paid for.
Speaker 8: Now in the Senate, interestingly, my counterpart in the United
Speaker 8: States Senate run Johnson has recently said the same thing.
Speaker 5: He says he will.
Speaker 8: Not vote for a measure where the tax breaks for
Speaker 8: the wealthy and corporations are not fully paid for. And
Speaker 8: so it makes for strange bedfellows, if you will that
Speaker 8: there are folks who say, I'm not going to support
Speaker 8: it because the cuts are too deep and it hurts
Speaker 8: my constituents too badly. And you know, at the end
Speaker 8: of the day, if it ends up being some super
Speaker 8: right wingers who join with a couple of more traditional Republicans,
Speaker 8: and then all the Democrats in opposing this.
Speaker 5: Who knows what's going to happen, But we.
Speaker 8: Have a lot of hard work to do between now
Speaker 8: as we're speaking and the houses marking up all their
Speaker 8: bills and the final votes in each House of Congress.
Speaker 8: So got a lot of work on all of our
Speaker 8: shoulders to make sure that we put a stop to
Speaker 8: the cruelest and most harmful of these proposers.
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's a really good and I
Speaker 1: mean we saw this with the tariffs, too, right. I
Speaker 1: mean Rand Paul, who is hardly anyone's idea of a liberal,
Speaker 1: is staunchly against the tariffs, and he turned out to
Speaker 1: be a sort of ally there. I feel like what
Speaker 1: we've seen with Trump is that if you push back
Speaker 1: in a big, loud way, right, you get the attention
Speaker 1: of a Laura Luhmer or someone like that, right, one
Speaker 1: of his people, for example, cutting these social safety net stuff.
Speaker 1: This is the kind of thing that there are populas
Speaker 1: in Trump's camp who don't like this kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And so I'm wondering, do you think that that's sort
Speaker 1: of the play. And then also I want to add,
Speaker 1: if this doesn't pass, what does that look like?
Speaker 5: Boy? A lot of great questions there.
Speaker 8: So I do think our most powerful tool is elevating
Speaker 8: the stories of the people who would be harmed by
Speaker 8: the worst provisions. And for the last months we've been
Speaker 8: trying to organize folks and uplift their stories, not knowing
Speaker 8: exactly what shape or form the final cuts would take.
Speaker 8: And this week is really the first week where we've
Speaker 8: seen them put things into writing and now can assess
Speaker 8: with much greater specificity, assuming they pass what's before them,
Speaker 8: how it's going to harm people. And you know, when
Speaker 8: you're talking about fourteen fifteen million people losing their healthcare,
Speaker 8: that's something that as soon as that knowledge gets out,
Speaker 8: we have a way of fighting back through the population.
Speaker 8: So first question is what happens in the House. We've
Speaker 8: seen this before where the more traditional Republicans are at
Speaker 8: a breakpoint with the right wing flank that is insisting
Speaker 8: on massive cuts to government spending, as they say, so
Speaker 8: they're going to have to work through that first, and
Speaker 8: we'll see it in real time as it happens over
Speaker 8: the next week or two, and that will be predictive obviously,
Speaker 8: if they can't get their act together and can't do
Speaker 8: it by Memorial Day, which is their goal. Then they'll
Speaker 8: take another stab at it when we get back after
Speaker 8: the Memorial Day recess if they are able to come
Speaker 8: to some fragile agreement and send it over to the Senate. Again,
Speaker 8: this is budget reconciliation, so they get around the filibuster.
Speaker 8: It only takes a simple majority vote, and there we're
Speaker 8: going to be working really hard to persuade both flanks
Speaker 8: of that Republican caucus, the ones who won't vote for
Speaker 8: it unless it's fully paid for, and the ones who
Speaker 8: think that the proposals that are out there right now
Speaker 8: are too cool and too harmful for our neighbors and
Speaker 8: are willing to help us fight.
Speaker 1: When you cut these programs like Medicare Medicaid, they will
Speaker 1: be larger things like closing of nursing homes and rural hospitals,
Speaker 1: largely in red states where there's less state tax. There
Speaker 1: are certainly Republican senators who understand this and what is
Speaker 1: their feeling on this? So can you use this to
Speaker 1: prevent it?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 8: So I think the answer is yes. Really, until we
Speaker 8: saw the specifics about the cuts they were intending, we
Speaker 8: were organizing folks who rely on Medicaid in their families
Speaker 8: because you know, they have a relative who's a senior
Speaker 8: in a nursing home, and the majority of seniors in
Speaker 8: nursing homes rely on Medicaid, or people who have, say
Speaker 8: an adult child with significant disabilities, and they rely on
Speaker 8: Medicaid for both services and healthcare. A third of all
Speaker 8: children are on Medicaid. So we were elevating those stories.
Speaker 8: But one of the points I was also trying to
Speaker 8: draw out is there's a lot of people whose employment
Speaker 8: is paid for it by Medicaid. The people who work
Speaker 8: in nursing homes, the people who work in rural critical
Speaker 8: access hospitals, the people who work in nonprofits that serve
Speaker 8: adults and children with severe disabilities.
Speaker 5: All of those people their jobs.
Speaker 8: Are there and part of their salaries come from the
Speaker 8: Medicaid program. And so I think because of the nature
Speaker 8: of some of the specifics they're now proposing, we are
Speaker 8: going to be able to get a whole new group
Speaker 8: of people speaking out. Hospital administrators and nursing home administrators,
Speaker 8: but also the frontline nurses and nurses assistants who provide
Speaker 8: care every single day under very tough circumstances, you know,
Speaker 8: because they're dedicated to the health and well being of
Speaker 8: their Naghbin.
Speaker 1: It would be malpractice if they did not ask you
Speaker 1: about the plane. Donald Trump wants to take a four
Speaker 1: hundred million dollar plane from the royal family of Qatar
Speaker 1: and use it as Air Force One. Cynthia Lumis was
Speaker 1: asked about this. She's quite a trumpy Republican and she
Speaker 1: burst out laughing, Yes, that's my question. Is me just
Speaker 1: without speech?
Speaker 8: I know? And there's so many different ways you can
Speaker 8: respond to this. You know, this is corruption at its highest.
Speaker 1: Is it a violation of the emoluments cause?
Speaker 8: Absolutely, But let me give you the anecdote that I
Speaker 8: just heard from a colleague.
Speaker 5: I'm gonna I'm not gonna give you attributes.
Speaker 8: To who it was, but it's like, would you let
Speaker 8: the Katari royal family rebuild the White House situation room,
Speaker 8: rebuild the press conference room, rebuild the Oval office, because
Speaker 8: that is what Air Force one is. It has all
Speaker 8: of those things in it. This is so ridiculous. And
Speaker 8: then the amount of money that it's going to take
Speaker 8: to take out what the Kataris have installed in terms
Speaker 8: of communications and security, et cetera, and replace it with
Speaker 8: stuff that we know is secure and impenetrable. Is probably
Speaker 8: going to cost more than just waiting two more years
Speaker 8: for the new air Force.
Speaker 1: Like the conversations I had with people who's taught me
Speaker 1: in this stream, how grid are you about securing the
Speaker 1: midterms and having free and fair elections for the midterms,
Speaker 1: because this is the thing that a lot of people
Speaker 1: I know are word about.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 8: So I'm looking at a whole bunch of things that
Speaker 8: I think we've seen throughout history in the demise of
Speaker 8: other democracies, are signs that something really bad is happening.
Speaker 8: And part of it is election denial, trying to disenfranchise
Speaker 8: parts of the electorate, trying to make it harder to
Speaker 8: vote in various ways. Part of it is corruption and
Speaker 8: the mass movement of taxpayer dollars to the very wealthy,
Speaker 8: the oligarchs of a society, other types of corruption. There's
Speaker 8: hallmarks of what happens when a democracy is in trouble.
Speaker 5: And boy, I can tell you I see.
Speaker 8: Action after action in this administration that overreach, that cross
Speaker 8: those lines that make me very concerned, and we've got
Speaker 8: to be vigilant about it.
Speaker 5: At the same.
Speaker 8: Time that we're fighting to make sure that our constituents
Speaker 8: have access to healthcare and have access to nutrition programs.
Speaker 5: We have to do it all, but we.
Speaker 8: Have the courts, we have the Congress when it acts,
Speaker 8: we have our constituents who we are fighting alongside on
Speaker 8: all of these fronts, and that's how we are going
Speaker 8: to push it.
Speaker 1: Things really get like a situation where you start to
Speaker 1: really panic. Do you think that there are enough Republican votes?
Speaker 1: Because I think there are, but I'm not in there
Speaker 1: enough for Publican votes to run a check on Trump
Speaker 1: if he starts doing really out of the box staff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I do.
Speaker 8: I have heard a number of my Republican colleagues ask
Speaker 8: a question that almost all of my Democratic colleagues have
Speaker 8: been asking, and that is, when faced with a law
Speaker 8: that Congress has passed or a ruling of a court,
Speaker 8: would you follow that law or follow that ruling over
Speaker 8: an order from the Trump administration to the contrary? And
Speaker 8: I heard that question asked by a Republican colleague at
Speaker 8: a Commerce Committee hearing earlier this week, And I'm hearing
Speaker 8: increasingly Republicans saying to Trump nominees, there's only one right
Speaker 8: answer to this question. It's crossing a line too far.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 8: Is that many of my Republican colleagues. No, but if
Speaker 8: it's a simple majority vote, we only need four to
Speaker 8: stand strong. If it's something that can be decided, you
Speaker 8: know that has a subject to a filibuster, we need
Speaker 8: a few more.
Speaker 1: Tammy Baldwin, I am so delighted to get to have
Speaker 1: you on this podcast. I hope you will come back
Speaker 1: because it's just you know, you are answering these questions.
Speaker 1: I ask these very nerdy questions because I'm like, so
Speaker 1: interested in the procedural, where I feel like most people
Speaker 1: are not so interested in. I'd well, you're making them
Speaker 1: as this is crying, So please come back, senitor, Thank you.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 1: No moment fu Jesse Cannon smile.
Speaker 2: Let's say your Health and Human Services director has just
Speaker 2: gotten back from a nice swim and some sewage.
Speaker 1: In Rock Creek Park.
Speaker 2: Yes, what would you like the quote for them to
Speaker 2: be at their next press conference? Because if I was
Speaker 2: in the Trump administration, I don't think i'd want that
Speaker 2: quote to be. I don't think people should be taking
Speaker 2: medical advice for me when you're in charge of medical policy.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things about RFK Junior is that
Speaker 1: he really does seem like he doesn't know what is
Speaker 1: going on, You know what I mean, Like he really unhinged.
Speaker 1: Like he also said earlier this week that it's because
Speaker 1: Trump gets money.
Speaker 2: Remember that, Yes, yes, yes, we discussed that on the
Speaker 2: last episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, I honestly think he's like still kind of
Speaker 1: a Democrat secret weapon, despite the fact that he is
Speaker 1: disassembling much of the federal government. Yeah no, I mean
Speaker 1: RFK Junior, this guy, you know, he is the guy
Speaker 1: who goes to the bathroom without wearing shoes on an xplane.
Speaker 6: You're welcome.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.