Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics
Speaker 1: where we discuss the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and it costs Steve Bannon more than
Speaker 1: six hundred thousand dollars to ignore the January sixth Committee.
Speaker 1: Welcome to our one hundredth episode. Today we have an
Speaker 1: incredible show with the House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. He
Speaker 1: stops byded talk to us about the debt ceiling and
Speaker 1: banning congressional stock trading and a plethora of other issues.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to squat Box's own Dan Nathan about
Speaker 1: what's going on with our economy and the markets. But
Speaker 1: first we have the host of the time of Monsters
Speaker 1: the Nations. Get here. Welcome too, Fast Politics, your friend
Speaker 1: and mine get here.
Speaker 2: Good to be on.
Speaker 1: I'm such a fan of yours. I want to ask
Speaker 1: you about the most recent So Me Too movement, which
Speaker 1: was I think supercharged by the election of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: Has now got this Adult Survivor Act which was extremely important,
Speaker 1: which just begot the first ever Trump being held responsible
Speaker 1: by a jury for sexual assault to the tune of
Speaker 1: five million dollars for his favorite activity, defamation. Well, it
Speaker 1: turns out Trump may not be the only one.
Speaker 3: Well, I would want Trump not to the only one.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of men act like the way
Speaker 3: Trump does. And if there's one good thing what he
Speaker 3: can say about Trump, he's discredited the idea of male supremacy.
Speaker 3: Hopefully there'll be many more targets.
Speaker 1: Well, we've stumbled upon one target. You may remember him
Speaker 1: from the bar At movie one. Rudolph Giuliani, America's mayor.
Speaker 3: Wait are you saying that Rudy Giuliani did something bad?
Speaker 3: Let me compose myself here. Second, Okay, I just he's
Speaker 3: America's mayor. He's like Time magazines Man of the Year
Speaker 3: two thousand and one.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus Christ. I mean you read that filing. There
Speaker 1: is not a single thing in that filing that, in
Speaker 1: my mind seems basically I read it and thought, oh,
Speaker 1: that sounds about right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, absolutely, And the accuser in this case also
Speaker 3: has apparently tapes.
Speaker 1: Because I think there's a huge quantity of tapes, a huge.
Speaker 2: Quanity of tapes.
Speaker 3: But also, like I mean, this is like in keeping
Speaker 3: with a lot of stuff that we already know about Juliani.
Speaker 3: As for my comment, you know, of pretending to be shocked,
Speaker 3: including the movie. It's not like Giuliani. I mean again,
Speaker 3: to give this guy a little bit of credit, he
Speaker 3: hasn't quite hidden who he is.
Speaker 2: So yeah, none of this is surprising.
Speaker 3: I think the one thing that made made me raise
Speaker 3: my eyebrow a little bit was not, like, you know,
Speaker 3: his claim that he was like selling pardons and splitting
Speaker 3: the loot with Trump.
Speaker 1: For two million dollars a pardon, yes, continue.
Speaker 3: That's a yeah, that's totally full acceptable. The racism and
Speaker 3: anti semitism doesn't really surprise me. The sexual harassment doesn't
Speaker 3: surprise me. The one thing is that he said like
Speaker 3: about Passover, you know, like why can't the Jews get
Speaker 3: over it? It wasn't even the first time the Red
Speaker 3: Sea was parted, and that actually took me by surprise
Speaker 3: because it makes those sense.
Speaker 2: Can you explain this?
Speaker 1: Yes, as a Jew, I'm happy to tell you that.
Speaker 4: No.
Speaker 1: I mean, the man is like drunk eighty percent of
Speaker 1: the time. I mean, it's just all sort of baffling
Speaker 1: to me that you know, he's gotten this far. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it all of it is impressive.
Speaker 2: Can we nail this down?
Speaker 3: Because I'm pretty sure I'm going a little bit by
Speaker 3: my memories of the Ten Commandments, but I have also
Speaker 3: read the Book of Exodus. I just remember one party, like, like,
Speaker 3: am I missing out on something? Is Juliani in on
Speaker 3: information that I don't know about? Like how many times
Speaker 3: did the Red Sea part?
Speaker 1: I think it's fair to say that Juliani is never,
Speaker 1: never in possession of information that you do not have.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, good.
Speaker 1: Okay, it's a fair assessment.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm glad to be clarified on that.
Speaker 1: But I do think it's pretty interesting. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: interesting in the fact that, like the fact that Rudy
Speaker 1: Giuliani continues to make news and it's bad news for Trump.
Speaker 3: It's bad news for Trump. Although I also have to
Speaker 3: say it also raises to me, like the perennial question,
Speaker 3: which is what is Merrik Garland doing? Because we have, like,
Speaker 3: you know, this close associate of Trump who apparently has
Speaker 3: been doing all sorts of crimes and there's like apparently
Speaker 3: tapes all this. Why has there been such a slow
Speaker 3: walk of the criminal investigation and why is it being
Speaker 3: left up to private citizens and also to local DA's
Speaker 3: to be the ones that are going after this?
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean like they're real questions because some of this
Speaker 3: stuff is not just Giuliani stuff, it's also implicates Trump, right,
Speaker 3: and I just have to wonder, like, I honestly think
Speaker 3: Merrick Garland is like the weakest link of the binding admistery.
Speaker 1: These things are rape. I'm sorry, but forced sexual conduct
Speaker 1: is rape. There's not some like lesser rape for people
Speaker 1: who are famous, right, I mean, of course, unlike you know,
Speaker 1: Trump does say fortunately or unfortunately, no millions of years.
Speaker 2: Millions of years, yeah.
Speaker 1: Right, fortunately or unfortunately, but that is still actually sexual assault.
Speaker 1: Fortunately or unfortunately. Look the pardon selling. I mean think
Speaker 1: about like normal people go to jail for things like
Speaker 1: floating this idea, you know, I mean the fact that
Speaker 1: Trump sort of definitely gets a whole other level of
Speaker 1: justice is kind of amazing.
Speaker 3: No, it is amazing. And I think there's two sides
Speaker 3: of this, which again, on the one hand, the people
Speaker 3: who should be doing this the deferment of justice, see
Speaker 3: to be slow walking everything. On the other hand, I
Speaker 3: think that there's like a lot of your ordinary people
Speaker 3: women who've been assaulted by Trump and Juliani, and also
Speaker 3: like local prosecutors that are actually like taking the mantle
Speaker 3: and are actually trying to bring kind of justice to this,
Speaker 3: which is the more heightening fact, But.
Speaker 1: It falls to the women again, just like with Egene Carrol, Right,
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, so far the only accountability we've seen, right,
Speaker 1: the only time twenty five Trump accusers and only one
Speaker 1: has ever been ordered a payment from a jury.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm hoping that there is a kind of
Speaker 3: Overton window effect as people see that Trump is actually
Speaker 3: vulnerable on these things, and hopefully Giuliani is also vulnerable
Speaker 3: on these things, that more women will go forward. But
Speaker 3: I think your point is exactly like, like, why is
Speaker 3: this falling on the women to clean up this vest.
Speaker 1: Right when you have these powerful departments in the United
Speaker 1: States government that really could Another sort of interesting data
Speaker 1: point that I want to talk about is the fact
Speaker 1: that Juliani I was watching Lawrence's show last night. He's
Speaker 1: a good friend of the podcast, and Lawrence had on
Speaker 1: it a clip of Sacha Baron Cohen talking to Ben
Speaker 1: Affleck about the Borat movie where famously Rudy went into
Speaker 1: the room with the girl who he thought was sixteen, right,
Speaker 1: and put his hands down his pants. Haha, hilarious, but
Speaker 1: what I thought was really interesting about this was Sasha
Speaker 1: bart Cohen said, actually I wanted to go in there
Speaker 1: because I was really worried about this actress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I know.
Speaker 3: That's uh boy, that's really something. It's a legitimate worry.
Speaker 3: I mean, I think at the time people said Cohen
Speaker 3: kind of set this up, but it was a very
Speaker 3: disturbing scene of the movie. But in keeping with like,
Speaker 3: you know, a lot of behavior that we've seen when Giuliani,
Speaker 3: what's striking about the current filing is just how similar
Speaker 3: it is to everything that we already know, including from Borat.
Speaker 1: Right, No, I know, but it's it is weird to
Speaker 1: use Borat as a news source and puts this in
Speaker 1: a very trumpy kind of you know, as much as
Speaker 1: I love Sasha Baron Cohen, it feels like Borat should
Speaker 1: not be a news but it clearly is here.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, But I mean it maybe raises again
Speaker 3: these larger questions of who's holding accountability, because I got
Speaker 3: to say, like, if you just followed Giuliani around and
Speaker 3: look at his statements, and as you noted, took note
Speaker 3: of the fact that eighty percent of the time he seemed,
Speaker 3: you know, his brain was pickled out of its mind.
Speaker 3: You could have had like a little bit more reporting,
Speaker 3: like not just this comedy movie that did it. There
Speaker 3: could have been more scrutiny of Giuliani all along from
Speaker 3: the media. And I just see a lot of this,
Speaker 3: as you know, there's a wider institutional failure that allowed
Speaker 3: these guys to have impunity for so long. And I
Speaker 3: mean that's why I mentioned the Time magazine Man of
Speaker 3: the Year two thousand and one, because I got to say,
Speaker 3: like I understood after nine to eleven, you know, there's
Speaker 3: a desire for heroes.
Speaker 2: He was Mayor of New York at the time.
Speaker 3: But you know, like anyone who had followed Giuliani knew
Speaker 3: that he was not the guy he was claiming to be,
Speaker 3: and he was not the guy that the mainstream media.
Speaker 3: We're not talking about Fox News, We're talking about Time
Speaker 3: magazine and the New York Times we're building him out
Speaker 3: to be. And a lot of his problems, the fact
Speaker 3: that he associated himself with, you know, like criminal elements,
Speaker 3: skirted the law, and often like made very racist statements.
Speaker 3: A lot of that was known from the nineteen eighties
Speaker 3: and nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: Known for years. Yeah, and his dubious connections with organized crime,
Speaker 1: which the needle was never able to be threaded. But
Speaker 1: it certainly seemed like this man would be a poor choice.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point. What I want to
Speaker 1: ask you is, here we have a situation. Last week
Speaker 1: the Republicans in Congress, known for their reasonableness and good
Speaker 1: common sense, found that basically exonerated Biden from the fake
Speaker 1: controversy of his son's possible laptop. And then we had
Speaker 1: the Durham Report, which showed.
Speaker 2: Well, what does it actacy show the weird thing because.
Speaker 1: This is nothing he weighed at six and a half
Speaker 1: million dollars in taxpayer Monday.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and and like it actually took much longer than
Speaker 3: Themueller report to come out. And with Mueller, I mean,
Speaker 3: one could argue that the results were disappointing, that he
Speaker 3: didn't go deep enough. But actually, I mean, Mueller, to
Speaker 3: his credit, you know, got a lot of indictments and
Speaker 3: you know, did like actually document a pattern of obstruction
Speaker 3: of justice which should have supported like an impeachment. I
Speaker 3: got to say, yeah, with the Durham Report, this guy
Speaker 3: was obviously on a fishing expedition.
Speaker 2: He found like very little.
Speaker 3: I mean, there was some FBI misconduct, which I don't
Speaker 3: think should surprise anyone. But here's the my bottom line,
Speaker 3: and this is like what I find like really puzzling here,
Speaker 3: which is that the major FBI intervention in American politics
Speaker 3: in our lifetime was the way that they helped Donald
Speaker 3: Trump win the twenty sixteen election. Right of course, of course, Firstly,
Speaker 3: since then, we've had the Republicans like treating the FBI
Speaker 3: is an illegitimate organization because they would be the ones
Speaker 3: charge with investigating Trump, and conversely the Democrats kind of
Speaker 3: defending them, which I understand, you want to defend the
Speaker 3: organization that's under unfair attack, but I mean it's still
Speaker 3: such a propose outcome. I mean, I saw Josh Howley,
Speaker 3: Senator from Missouri on Fox the other day saying, you know,
Speaker 3: the FBI is a threat to American democracy, you know
Speaker 3: needs to be reined in, which like I kind of
Speaker 3: agree with, but I agree with with.
Speaker 2: Because of what they did in twenty sixteen, but.
Speaker 1: Not for the same reasons that stuff is incredible. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do think they're very good at messaging. We all
Speaker 1: know that there was a real problem there and that
Speaker 1: the FBI during the Hillary I mean, you know that
Speaker 1: comy letter, we know what it did, and yet somehow
Speaker 1: the Republicans are mad at the FBI. I mean, it's
Speaker 1: just incredible.
Speaker 2: It's with unwrapping.
Speaker 3: Why that is because their idea is AFV should always
Speaker 3: be on their side, yes, right, and that should it
Speaker 3: should be their tack dog. And like, historically, I think,
Speaker 3: you know, there's really good reason to think that that's
Speaker 3: what the FBI has been. Historically, that's been a very
Speaker 3: conservative organization, certainly under j Edgar Hoover, but every single
Speaker 3: FBI director has always been a Republican, even those nominated
Speaker 3: by Democrats, and has often been used as a weapon
Speaker 3: against the left, you know, including the civil rights movement,
Speaker 3: the anti war movement. So the fact that underwent the
Speaker 3: Durham Report and with Trump in general, that they're going
Speaker 3: after the FBI is just because they cannotstand the idea
Speaker 3: that this wonderful attack dog that they've used against liberals
Speaker 3: and the left for like fifty years is now now
Speaker 3: sometimes going to be used against them.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely incredible stuff, and you know we live to
Speaker 1: see it. So I want to ask you, the Republicans
Speaker 1: in the House seem more unhinged than ever, I don't
Speaker 1: know if you saw Marjorie Taylor Green has started impeachment
Speaker 1: proceedings again, this time on whoever. Basically every hearing she
Speaker 1: just starts impeachment proceedings.
Speaker 3: That's right, Yeah, well, I mean the thing is like
Speaker 3: she's the real kingmaker because their majority is so small,
Speaker 3: and it's actually getting smaller. I mean, I think now
Speaker 3: that Santos is illegal jeopardy. I don't know if they
Speaker 3: could rely on him, which means that like the smaller
Speaker 3: they get, as long as they have some bare majority,
Speaker 3: the more power Marjorie Taylor Greenhouse like, that's just the dynamic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it is truly incredible stuff that that
Speaker 1: crew has taken over. I mean, let's just like game
Speaker 1: this out for two minutes. So we're gonna see a
Speaker 1: lot of horror. I mean, my guess is we're going
Speaker 1: to see a summer of horse race journalism about Desanti's v. Trump, right,
Speaker 1: even though we know Trump is going to be the nominee.
Speaker 1: But they'll be like, I mean, I don't know if
Speaker 1: you saw this weekend, there were there was bad weather,
Speaker 1: so Trump decided not to hop on his plane to
Speaker 1: go to Iowa, and so there were a couple stories
Speaker 1: about how DeSantis took this as a win. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just like these are machinations because everyone's a
Speaker 1: little bored, right, Yeah, no.
Speaker 3: No, absolutely. I mean the thing is Trump doesn't need
Speaker 3: to go to Iowa. I mean, he gets all this
Speaker 3: free media from CNN and other outlets. And we've constantly
Speaker 3: seen DeSantis even before he's announced, he's like sinking in
Speaker 3: the polls, and he's like the most recent ones I
Speaker 3: saw in Kentucky where like Trump at seventy, DeSantis at
Speaker 3: like fourteen or fifteen, and then like you know, people
Speaker 3: like Pence at like four or five. So like DeSantis
Speaker 3: is actually much closer to like the sort of you know,
Speaker 3: people who are barely in the race than he is
Speaker 3: to Trump. And yeah, I mean we've talked about this before,
Speaker 3: but it's just the simple structural fact is that you
Speaker 3: can't run as a trumpest candidate against Trump. It's like
Speaker 3: if you have the choice between going to see Elvis
Speaker 3: and going to see an Elvis cover band, Like, what
Speaker 3: are you gonna pick?
Speaker 1: I mean, come on, I also feel like it's like
Speaker 1: you have a choice between seeing Elvis and see a
Speaker 1: guy who pretends to be Elvis fights with Elvis and
Speaker 1: hates Elvis.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right, And it's totally lacking in charisma
Speaker 3: and has a weird laugh and can't sing.
Speaker 1: Right the tone deaf Elvis. Yeah, and you're like, which
Speaker 1: would you rather?
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's not just see Elvis versus a cover Elvis.
Speaker 3: It's like Elvis versus a bad cover Elvis.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, now, it is incredible stuff. And I
Speaker 1: just am a little bit curious as to how you
Speaker 1: think this goes. You think it's a summer of fake
Speaker 1: horse racing and then Trump gets the nomination and he
Speaker 1: runs against Biden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 3: I think the only X factor, which I think is
Speaker 3: what the Santa is actually working on, is that something
Speaker 3: happens to Trump and he has to withdraw, like right,
Speaker 3: you know, like the guy is getting up there, as
Speaker 3: are many other American politicians and so like, you know,
Speaker 3: I think Desantra's only plausible strategy is you know, like
Speaker 3: that Trump keels over and dies, which is not actually
Speaker 3: like I plausible, right.
Speaker 1: Right, But it's not a great strategy.
Speaker 3: No, no, no, it's basically you know, like being the
Speaker 3: second Prince, right, like you know, like it's like being
Speaker 3: Harry or whatever.
Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, exactly, it's like being Harry but without
Speaker 1: I mean, the thing I love is when Trump like
Speaker 1: tries to appeal to DeSantis and he does things where
Speaker 1: he's like, well, he's very young. And then my other
Speaker 1: favorite thing is that there are a couple of people
Speaker 1: who have decided that they're going to run again, and
Speaker 1: they are like the only people less exciting than Mike Penance. Right,
Speaker 1: So we have Chris Christy, the guy who got COVID
Speaker 1: from Trump or from helping Trump prepare for the debates.
Speaker 1: He's going to run as the anti Trump, right, because
Speaker 1: nothing matters. And then you have his energy secretary, right,
Speaker 1: who's also going to run.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, no, I mean, like there's nobody running that has,
Speaker 3: as far as I can see, any traction. And I
Speaker 3: mean the sad thing is for them that Dessentis is
Speaker 3: actually their best hope and he's kind of plailing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I just don't see any alternative, you know, like unless
Speaker 3: Trump steps on a banana peel, you know, I don't know.
Speaker 3: I mean, I mean this just validates the sort of
Speaker 3: success of Trump in taking over the party, but also
Speaker 3: that no one else has quite Trump's magic and We
Speaker 3: actually saw that in twenty twenty two, where a lot
Speaker 3: of like, actually, you know, the people who tried to
Speaker 3: be most like Trump did actually poorly. And I think
Speaker 3: that's a's the you know, a sort of optimistic note
Speaker 3: that we might want to make note of it. I mean,
Speaker 3: it is very troubling that a figure like Trump can
Speaker 3: leverage his celebrity to take over a political party. It's
Speaker 3: also the case that like that doesn't seem like a
Speaker 3: model that can be copied.
Speaker 1: So true, Jeed here, I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 3: You can't keep me away from you, Molly, you are
Speaker 3: the best.
Speaker 1: Hakeem Jeffreys is the House Minority Leader and represents New
Speaker 1: York's eighth district. Welcome to Fast Politics and our one
Speaker 1: hundredth episode we get to have you. Welcome, Congressman King Jeffries.
Speaker 5: Well, great to be on Monley, particularly for your one
Speaker 5: hundredth episode, and congratulations on that wonderful accomplishment.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. It's very exciting. So I want
Speaker 1: to start by asking you about the dead ceiling. I'm sorry, Okay,
Speaker 1: where are we? What's happening?
Speaker 5: Well, our position continues to be clear, which is that
Speaker 5: America should always pay its bills. The dead ceiling relates
Speaker 5: to ensuring that debt's and expenses and bills that have
Speaker 5: already been signed off on by the Congress should be
Speaker 5: paid and paid on time, and any effort to try
Speaker 5: to extract a ransom for doing what has been done
Speaker 5: consistently for decades under Democratic presidents and Republican presidents is irresponsible.
Speaker 5: But of course, in a given year, we always have
Speaker 5: a conversation about what the budget should look like into
Speaker 5: the future, what are the appropriate revenues and expenditures and
Speaker 5: investments that should be made to protect and benefit the health,
Speaker 5: the safety, and the economic wellbeing of the American people,
Speaker 5: And we continue to insist that that should be the
Speaker 5: appropriate process moving forward. The good news at the moment
Speaker 5: is that President has clearly indicated default is off the table.
Speaker 5: Senate Democrats, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans have said it clearly,
Speaker 5: the fault is off the table. House Democrats have of
Speaker 5: course made that position clear. And so that's four out
Speaker 5: of the five people who are sitting down to have
Speaker 5: a discussion about resolving this issue. We now need the
Speaker 5: extreme MAGA Republicans to recognize that they will be unable
Speaker 5: to use the possibility of a default in this hostage
Speaker 5: taking situation to extract the type of extreme cuts that
Speaker 5: they know they otherwise can't achieve. And once they understand
Speaker 5: that it is not happening, we can find a way
Speaker 5: forward to get through this default crisis.
Speaker 1: McCarthy has such a tiny, tiny sliver of the House
Speaker 1: that he rules by a four or five vote majority.
Speaker 1: I'm curious. It seems like a sort of more deft
Speaker 1: leader might be better able to control the party. It
Speaker 1: feels like they are controlling him.
Speaker 5: I mean, that is the challenge. He's got a super
Speaker 5: small majority with an exploding number of extremists, right wing
Speaker 5: members of his conference who are intent on holding House Republicans,
Speaker 5: the House of Representatives, the Congress, the President, and the
Speaker 5: American people hostage. McCarthy is going to have to find
Speaker 5: a way to partner with us in the effort to
Speaker 5: achieve common ground and do the right thing by the
Speaker 5: American people. And that will be a point that we
Speaker 5: continue to make because the fault would be catastrophic. It
Speaker 5: will result in a job chilling recession that will cost
Speaker 5: us millions of good paying jobs all across the country
Speaker 5: in blue states, in Purple states and in red states.
Speaker 5: It will crash the stock market in a way where
Speaker 5: millions of retirees are going to confront retirement and security
Speaker 5: issues that will be devastating for people who are entering
Speaker 5: into their golden years. That is going to impact people
Speaker 5: in blue states, Purple states, and red states. This is
Speaker 5: not a Democratic issue or Republican issue. It's an American problem,
Speaker 5: and so I think we're going to have to continue
Speaker 5: to make that clear to the American people, and that
Speaker 5: public sentiment ultimately will help get this issue resolved in
Speaker 5: a constructive fashion.
Speaker 1: I just was doing an interview with someone who is
Speaker 1: on the finance side, and he would say, you know,
Speaker 1: works with markets, and he was saying, the Democrats have
Speaker 1: not done enough messaging on just how insane it is
Speaker 1: to default on the DAD.
Speaker 5: I think when we will need to continue to make
Speaker 5: that point. The American people, I think are just now
Speaker 5: tuning in to the realities of what could potentially happen
Speaker 5: and why we are in this situation, which is that
Speaker 5: the extreme magna Republicans passed the default on the America Act,
Speaker 5: which wasn't a budget. Joe Biden put a budget into
Speaker 5: the public domain in March, he asked Republicans to produce
Speaker 5: their budget so we could compare and contrast our priorities
Speaker 5: with the American people. President Biden's budget will strengthen and
Speaker 5: protect social security, continue to work to build an economy
Speaker 5: from the middle out and the ground up. And it
Speaker 5: also reduces the deficit by three trillion dollars over the
Speaker 5: ten year budget window. And instead of the extreme magna
Speaker 5: Republicans producing a budget, they produced a ransom note that
Speaker 5: would effectively dramatically cut medicaid, particularly for children with disabilities
Speaker 5: and older Americans. It would cut food and nutritional assistance
Speaker 5: to people who are food insecure millions of people across
Speaker 5: the country, cut education, cut public safety funding, cut veterans benefits,
Speaker 5: cut housing, cut health care. And we have to raise
Speaker 5: the stakes of awareness for the American people in terms
Speaker 5: of the two choices that Republicans have given us here
Speaker 5: in Washington, because both are inherently unreasonable. The Default on
Speaker 5: America Act is unreasonable and default would be unreasonable.
Speaker 1: And it basically cuts all quote unquote discretionary spending, which
Speaker 1: is like food for poor kids, by about twenty percent.
Speaker 5: Right, that's correct. What they've said is we want a
Speaker 5: twenty two percent across the board cut and that's veterans
Speaker 5: and everything that's right, veterans, medicaid, food and nutritional assistance
Speaker 5: for children. Snap, it would cut things like meal on wheels.
Speaker 5: Who does this? What kind of people you know would
Speaker 5: undermine the health, the safety, and the economic well being
Speaker 5: a vulnerable American in such a way unless cruelty at
Speaker 5: the end of the day is.
Speaker 1: The point, yes, which we know it is. I want
Speaker 1: to ask you, Biden gave a really good presser the
Speaker 1: day that the Egene Carrol verdict came out about this default,
Speaker 1: and I don't know if you saw it. There was
Speaker 1: a journalist who was press who would say, well, you
Speaker 1: know what about their budget? And he said, well, what's
Speaker 1: in their budget? And she couldn't answer it.
Speaker 5: It's correct because they haven't produced a budget. They produced
Speaker 5: a Default on America Act was basically said, top line,
Speaker 5: we just want to slash and burn everything twenty two
Speaker 5: percent across the board in ways that they cannot justify publicly.
Speaker 5: And so you know, we'll have our continuing discussions with
Speaker 5: the other side of the aisle. And I think the
Speaker 5: closer we get to June first and we do have
Speaker 5: to resolve this issue, and I believe June first is
Speaker 5: a real date. The more the American people will pay
Speaker 5: attention to what is actually happening in Washington and what
Speaker 5: is being demanded by the extreme maga Republicans, and as
Speaker 5: that awareness increases in terms of the dramatic, draconian, devastating
Speaker 5: nature of the cuts that Republicans are proposing in exchange
Speaker 5: for avoiding a default and doing their constitutional responsibility to
Speaker 5: protect the full faith and credit of the United States
Speaker 5: of America. And the American people understand that that is
Speaker 5: the prisoner's dilemma, that is the hostage taking situation, I
Speaker 5: believe they will swiftly and decisively reject the Republican position.
Speaker 1: McCarthy has a pretty interesting leadership and he has a
Speaker 1: bunch of members of Congress. I would like to talk
Speaker 1: to you about George Santos, the gift that keeps giving
Speaker 1: for Democrats. He's out on bail. He has maybe settled
Speaker 1: the criminal dryes in Brazil. If the situation were reversed
Speaker 1: and you had a Democrat who was behaving this flagrant lay,
Speaker 1: would you kick them out?
Speaker 5: I think Democrats have a long track record of accountability
Speaker 5: and making sure that members are held to a baseline
Speaker 5: standard of decent behavior that should be applicable whether you're
Speaker 5: a Democrat or a Republican in the House of Representatives.
Speaker 5: George Santos is a serial fraudster. He was elected under
Speaker 5: false pretenses. His whole length story was a lie as
Speaker 5: presented to the people of the third Congressional District in
Speaker 5: New York State. And the Republicans have refused to deal
Speaker 5: with the Santos issue in part, perhaps because his very
Speaker 5: presence is necessary for them to be able to govern
Speaker 5: in an extreme way. In fact, it was George Santos
Speaker 5: who provided the deciding vote for the Default on America
Speaker 5: to carry in the House of Representatives. He literally is
Speaker 5: necessary for them to govern, and that probably explains why
Speaker 5: they're not acting right now.
Speaker 1: I want to ask you. You have a situation here
Speaker 1: where you have a bunch of Republicans who have won
Speaker 1: in Biden districts, right. I mean, certainly that's true with Santos,
Speaker 1: but that's true with other less extreme perhaps Republicans. Though
Speaker 1: if they vote for the extreme policies, how much less
Speaker 1: extreme are they? I want to ask you, do you
Speaker 1: see a world where any of those people have a
Speaker 1: kind of come to Jesus moment and say like, we're
Speaker 1: gonna caucus with Democrats, because at least that could prevent
Speaker 1: a default.
Speaker 5: I think that will be an important moment in determining
Speaker 5: whether these you know, so called more traditional Republicans who
Speaker 5: often go on TV and talk like moderates, yeah, or
Speaker 5: go back home in their districts throughout New York, California
Speaker 5: and talk like moderates, but then consistently come to Washington,
Speaker 5: DC and vote with the extremists. And that's a level
Speaker 5: of hypocrisy that has gone on for a long period
Speaker 5: of time amongst the so called traditional Republican members of
Speaker 5: the House, eighteen of whom, as you pointed out, Molly,
Speaker 5: are now in districts that President Biden won in twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: And one would think that for reasons of self preservation,
Speaker 5: even going beyond just doing the right thing for the
Speaker 5: American people, that for reasons of self preservation, they would
Speaker 5: understand they cannot allow us to default and detonate the economy,
Speaker 5: which will hurt everyday Americans all across the country. And
Speaker 5: we are certainly involved in a significant effort to make
Speaker 5: sure that those Republicans are publicly held accountable for the
Speaker 5: position that they've taken up until this moment, which is
Speaker 5: to support the default on the mat as opposed to
Speaker 5: supporting avoiding of default paying our bills in the manner
Speaker 5: consistent that has been done on the Democratic presidents and
Speaker 5: Republican president including three times under the Trump administration, three
Speaker 5: times by Democrats without showmanship, gamesmanship, or partisanship.
Speaker 1: One of the ethics anxieties and one of the few
Speaker 1: sort of bipartisan moments we saw a little bit in
Speaker 1: this House is this case against members trading stocks. I mean,
Speaker 1: do you support that legislation and do you see a
Speaker 1: world where it could get passed?
Speaker 5: That's I absolutely support the legislation, the effort, it is
Speaker 5: bipartisan in nature. I think I've had conversations with Speaker
Speaker 5: McCarthy about finding a pathway to make sure that this
Speaker 5: legislation is brought to the floor. It's the right thing
Speaker 5: to do in terms of marching toward a fuller restoration
Speaker 5: of public confidence that legislators and policy makers are making
Speaker 5: decisions solely based on the merits of the facts and
Speaker 5: the issues that are in front of the Congress, as
Speaker 5: opposed to perhaps having other financial opportuniary interests. At the
Speaker 5: same time, I also think it is perhaps even more
Speaker 5: important that the Supreme Court be held to account and
Speaker 5: actually have some type of ethics code that currently doesn't exist,
Speaker 5: unlike the Congress, unlike the executive branch, where we do
Speaker 5: have codes of conduct and statutes that apply to our behavior,
Speaker 5: and we can enhance that consistent with what you've asked about, Molly,
Speaker 5: in terms of prohibiting individual stock trades, that's the right
Speaker 5: thing to do, But the Supreme Court is a runaway
Speaker 5: trade right now. It's extreme, it's reckless, as out of control,
Speaker 5: and at a certain point, you know, the American people
Speaker 5: will say, are you willfully engaging in supporting the efforts
Speaker 5: of a justice like Clarence Thomas to conduct himself above
Speaker 5: the law?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I want to ask you about that, because it
Speaker 1: does seem out of control, and they're quite emboldened. They've
Speaker 1: become a sort of huge legislative change agent in a
Speaker 1: way they were never intended to be. I feel like
Speaker 1: there's not appetite for a bipartisan but there might be
Speaker 1: some way to get the numbers. Do you agree? And
Speaker 1: can you talk about that?
Speaker 5: At least in the Senate? What we have seen is
Speaker 5: some interest in seeking clarity by Senate Republicans even on
Speaker 5: the current Supreme Court posture as it relates to a
Speaker 5: code of conduct and its potential applicability moving forward. Democrats,
Speaker 5: of course, have been far more aggressive, and we should
Speaker 5: be in that regard, but given the divided government that
Speaker 5: is in front of us right now, in order to
Speaker 5: achieve something it would have to be bipartisan in nature. However,
Speaker 5: I don't believe that we should do something cosmetic just
Speaker 5: for the sake of claiming that bipartisan action has been taken.
Speaker 5: If we do something relative to the Supreme Court, it
Speaker 5: should be meaningful, because, as you've pointed out, Molly, this
Speaker 5: is a Supreme Court that has engaged in huge overreach
Speaker 5: undermining democracy and the freedom and justice. Of course, in
Speaker 5: the context of reproductive freedom, we believe in a woman's
Speaker 5: freedom to make our own reproductive healthcare decisions that should
Speaker 5: be the law of the land, and they've undermined that
Speaker 5: and imposed their own radical right wing ideology on the
Speaker 5: American people. And so at a certain point, their credibility
Speaker 5: as an entity, as a separate and coequal branch of
Speaker 5: government is going to be eroded to the point where
Speaker 5: their decisions are not going to have the way that
Speaker 5: a Supreme Court decision otherwise should have. And that's part
Speaker 5: of the case that we continue to make publicly to
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court and to a Chief Justice Roberts, that
Speaker 5: you need to take some action to protect the legitimacy
Speaker 5: and the credibility of the independent judiciary.
Speaker 1: There's been a lot made of this idea that you
Speaker 1: don't get along as well with the life flank of
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party. I mean, is there anything to that,
Speaker 1: and can you just walk us through that a little bit.
Speaker 5: Now, I've been proud throughout the duration of my time
Speaker 5: in Congress up until this point to be a member
Speaker 5: of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. I joined the CPC the
Speaker 5: moment that I arrived in Congress. Have historically had one
Speaker 5: of the more progressive voting records in the House of
Speaker 5: Representatives and in the Democratic Caucus, you know, during my
Speaker 5: previous five terms. But of course I have expressed support
Speaker 5: for members of the House who I believe are doing
Speaker 5: a good job, who from time to time have based
Speaker 5: primary challenges from the left, and I just haven't been
Speaker 5: bashful in that regard. Now, I did believe that as
Speaker 5: chair the House Democratic Caucus. Part of my responsibility was
Speaker 5: to be there for everyone, and I respect everyone tremendously,
Speaker 5: you know, from Representative Occasio Cortes to Representative johns Gottheimer
Speaker 5: in all points in between. I do believe that we
Speaker 5: have to continue to govern in the way that is
Speaker 5: center left, that is enlightened, that is progressive, that makes
Speaker 5: changes that advance the cause of social justice, economic justice,
Speaker 5: and racial justice in America. That's been the journey that
Speaker 5: I've been on. But we are a big tent, and
Speaker 5: that means progressive, that means New Dems, that means Blue Dogs,
Speaker 5: and of course you know the Congression on Black Caucus,
Speaker 5: Hispanic Caucus, Asian and Pacific Island of Caucus, Equality Caucus,
Speaker 5: Women's Caucus. That's who we are as House Democrats, where
Speaker 5: everyone we do reflect the gorgeous mosaic the American people,
Speaker 5: and I think we should embrace that and always try
Speaker 5: to find the highest common denominator in order to make
Speaker 5: progress for everyday Americans.
Speaker 1: Last question, what keeps you up at night?
Speaker 5: Although that ceiling showdown is what keeps me up at night,
Speaker 5: largely because you know, this is the one area where
Speaker 5: Republicans or at least a handful of them have to
Speaker 5: do something affirmative for the right thing to happen. In
Speaker 5: every other instance, House Democrats gay to stop bad things
Speaker 5: from happening legislatively in the House or slow it down
Speaker 5: if something leaves the House. Largely it'll be done on
Speaker 5: arrival and the Senate and Senate Democrats can kill it.
Speaker 5: If for some reason something gets out of the House
Speaker 5: and the Senate President Biden using his veto pen can
Speaker 5: stop bad things from happening. This debt ceiling situation is
Speaker 5: the one area where either the House Republican leadership or
Speaker 5: a handful of more traditional House Republicans have to do
Speaker 5: the right thing to stop a devastating default from recurring.
Speaker 5: And that's why it's so critical that we remain unified,
Speaker 5: strong together principle, get through this moment and then march
Speaker 5: toward twenty twenty four when brighter days are ahead.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much, Congressman, Thank.
Speaker 2: You so much.
Speaker 5: Molly really appreciates you.
Speaker 2: In again.
Speaker 5: Congratulations on one hundreds episode.
Speaker 1: Hi, it's Molly, and I am wildly excited that for
Speaker 1: the first time, Fast Politics, the show you're listening to
Speaker 1: right now, is going to have merch for sale over
Speaker 1: at shop dot Fastpoliticspod dot com. You can now buy shirts, hats, hoodies,
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Speaker 1: Dan Nathan is a Squawkbox contributor and the host of
Speaker 1: Okay Computer. Welcome to Fast Politics, Dan Nathan Molly.
Speaker 6: It's great to be back on your one hundredth episode.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's very exciting. We had to have you back
Speaker 1: on our one hundredth episode because it's one hundred and
Speaker 1: that is a lot. Though. I think we've actually done
Speaker 1: like ten million episodes Jesse and I because we've been
Speaker 1: doing this forever. But every day is a new adventure,
Speaker 1: or at least every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about this economy. I'm confused. Just give us like
Speaker 1: the top line here.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so through the lens that I look at it
Speaker 6: the way we pod about it on the Tapeway, I
Speaker 6: talk about it on CBC's Fast Money. I mean I
Speaker 6: look at it through the lens of the stock market.
Speaker 6: I'm not an economist, right, and so I think about
Speaker 6: what's happened over the last year, and you and I
Speaker 6: have been talking a bit about this. I mean, we
Speaker 6: had these kind of push and pull of this rising
Speaker 6: inflation that we had, you know, after all of this stimulus,
Speaker 6: both monetary and fiscal, during the pandemic to keep our
Speaker 6: economy afloat, and then all of a sudden, at some
Speaker 6: point in twenty twenty one, the powers that be decided
Speaker 6: that all of that stimulus and the inflation that it
Speaker 6: caused has the potential to really do damage to the economy, right,
Speaker 6: and so the Federal Reserve started raising interest rates very
Speaker 6: aggressively in March of twenty twenty two. And so what
Speaker 6: we had was the stock market reacting to that after
Speaker 6: we had this gangbuster's economy because.
Speaker 4: Of all the stimulus. And so here we are right now.
Speaker 6: You know, we're on the precipice of this debt ceiling debate.
Speaker 6: I know that you've been covering this a bit or
Speaker 6: we're actually having the debate right now whether we trip the.
Speaker 4: Debt ceiling or not.
Speaker 6: This has tremendous economic implications, right, so through the lens
Speaker 6: of the stock market, it's not bothered at all. The
Speaker 6: stock market has just flatlined over the last month and
Speaker 6: a half as we've had a lot of rhetoric back
Speaker 6: and forth between the White House and the Republican.
Speaker 1: Because it's worried we should be worried about it.
Speaker 6: And we have a recent example back in twenty eleven
Speaker 6: where the Ratings Agency cut the US debt okay, and
Speaker 6: so in the fear that we would default. And so
Speaker 6: one of the reasons why we fear this default it
Speaker 6: has the potential to of just push our economy into
Speaker 6: a recession if the US government can't pay its bills
Speaker 6: and the cost of capital goes higher.
Speaker 4: The people.
Speaker 6: There's plenty of individuals who work for the government who
Speaker 6: won't get paid. There's companies that will hold back on
Speaker 6: spending right and hiring, and you know Capex and all
Speaker 6: the like. So there's huge implications for the economy. But
Speaker 6: I guess through the lens that I look at it,
Speaker 6: it's really weird right now because the stock market doesn't
Speaker 6: seem to care.
Speaker 1: So that is really weird. So let's just talk about
Speaker 1: those unemployment numbers. Because the unemployment numbers have been impressive.
Speaker 1: They've sort of gone and changed the numbers after they happened.
Speaker 1: Can you explain that phenomenon to us?
Speaker 6: Yes, So we have these revisions, right. So, when you
Speaker 6: think about the way that the government agencies, you know,
Speaker 6: tabulate a lot of this data, there's lots of fits
Speaker 6: and starts with it, right, and there's there's definitely some
Speaker 6: smoothing out that needs to be done when the data
Speaker 6: comes in after the fact, right, So they do these revisions.
Speaker 6: So here we are, we have an unemployment rate at
Speaker 6: three point four percent. That is a seventy year low.
Speaker 6: You know, when we were heading into the pandemic, and
Speaker 6: obviously no one saw that coming, we had unemployment at
Speaker 6: three and a half percent. Right now we're at three
Speaker 6: point four percent. And we saw this massive hiring binge
Speaker 6: right from all of these huge tech platform companies in
Speaker 6: the back half of twenty twenty into twenty twenty one.
Speaker 6: So even though they're starting to shed a lot of
Speaker 6: those jobs, you know, because of a whole host of
Speaker 6: different weird things as it relates to you know, immigration
Speaker 6: and such, they're still demand for lots of jobs right here.
Speaker 6: So when you think about inflation, you know, a lot
Speaker 6: of us have been focused on the price of eggs
Speaker 6: or the price of gasoline at the pump, but wage
Speaker 6: inflation is a huge and sticky part of the equation here.
Speaker 6: So the fact that we have unemployment at these levels
Speaker 6: is one of the reasons why the Federal Reserve just
Speaker 6: raised interest rates again at their meeting just a couple weeks.
Speaker 1: Ago, but by lass, right, which sort of shows that
Speaker 1: they may be slowing down right.
Speaker 4: They're getting close to an end.
Speaker 6: I think if you look at Fed fund futures, and
Speaker 6: that's just this mechanism that prices how much the Fed
Speaker 6: is going to raise or lower interest rates. They're basically
Speaker 6: suggesting at this June meeting that they're not going to
Speaker 6: raise But the biggest point mollly in since March of
Speaker 6: twenty twenty two, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates
Speaker 6: five percent. And that doesn't maybe five percent doesn't sound
Speaker 6: like a big number in historical terms. It's the space
Speaker 6: in which they have ever done that amount of raises.
Speaker 6: And then the issue is what is the lag on
Speaker 6: the economy, because usually I think there's lots of economists
Speaker 6: will say that the lag is like nine to twelve
Speaker 6: months where really starting to affect the economy, and that's
Speaker 6: what we're starting to see in a bunch of the
Speaker 6: economic data that most economists, strategists, and investors track right now.
Speaker 1: So the sweet spot is to crush inflation but not
Speaker 1: get into a recession correct.
Speaker 6: And again, so what does that mean? We had inflation
Speaker 6: readings above nine percent, you know, in twenty twenty one
Speaker 6: they've come down to just below five percent. So the
Speaker 6: Fed feels pretty decent, The White House feels pretty decent
Speaker 6: that the job that they set out to do they
Speaker 6: are doing. But we don't know what the lag effect
Speaker 6: is on the economy. And you keep hearing about the
Speaker 6: fear of recession. Sometimes the fear of recession, whether it
Speaker 6: be by households or businesses, is actually enough to pull
Speaker 6: back on spending, and then it becomes this kind of
Speaker 6: self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 1: But also, you don't know if you're in recession until
Speaker 1: you're already in it.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so the recession really means to con sect quarters
Speaker 6: of negative growth right now. And you know, if we
Speaker 6: look at some of the readings for Q one, we
Speaker 6: were barely up. Q two doesn't feel particularly great. You
Speaker 6: won't really know until after the fact. And that's why
Speaker 6: you know, CNBC and on our pods, we track this
Speaker 6: data week to week, month to month because we feel
Speaker 6: like maybe it gives us an edge, to give us
Speaker 6: a sense of whether or not we're going to be
Speaker 6: in recession. But again, going back to the stock market,
Speaker 6: which a lot of your listeners are really focused on,
Speaker 6: that's kind of how they view the economy. You know,
Speaker 6: the stock market is hanging in there. The S and
Speaker 6: P five hundred, which is the major gauge of the
Speaker 6: stock market, is up seven and a half percent. The
Speaker 6: nasdac's up, you know, eighteen percent. People feel better about
Speaker 6: their four to one ks because last year was just
Speaker 6: really bad. The SMP was down twenty percent. So sometimes,
Speaker 6: you know, the stock market has this way of just
Speaker 6: basically I don't know, tricking. I guess individuals who are
Speaker 6: most focused on it without really looking at what's going
Speaker 6: on under the hood.
Speaker 1: Of the economy, right I mean, but ultimately, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter if the stock bump isn't real if
Speaker 1: you can still make money on it, right, I mean,
Speaker 1: just to speak in a completely vulgar term, I mean,
Speaker 1: the fundamentals of the economy won't necessarily get to the
Speaker 1: stock market in time to affect your trad you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, Like, well.
Speaker 6: Here's the thing, Molly, they are getting to the stock market.
Speaker 6: So right now, I would tell you that the S
Speaker 6: and P five hundred and then Nasdaq are.
Speaker 4: A total illusion.
Speaker 6: If you look at the small caps, there's the Rustle
Speaker 6: two thousand, It's made up of two thousand small cap stocks.
Speaker 4: It is down on the year. And let me just
Speaker 4: tell you something.
Speaker 6: Apple, Okay, Apple Computer, which everybody owns in their four
Speaker 6: to one k because it's in almost every ETF and
Speaker 6: every mutual fund you know, is up already three percent
Speaker 6: of the year. It has a market cap of two
Speaker 6: and a half trillion dollars. It is greater than that
Speaker 6: of the Russell two thousand, which I said is down.
Speaker 4: So if you think about the effects of what.
Speaker 6: Just went on where this regional banking crisis in March
Speaker 6: where we had five banks go under, two of the
Speaker 6: largest regional banks out there, the cost of credit, the
Speaker 6: access to credit is much harder, it's much more expensive.
Speaker 6: That is first felt on small businesses in America, and
Speaker 6: small businesses make up I think over fifty percent of
Speaker 6: the hiring in America. So right now, we have, like
Speaker 6: I said, this illusion in the stock market where there's
Speaker 6: five or six major stocks and you know what they are.
Speaker 6: They're Apple, They're Amazon, They're Google. They're all riding this
Speaker 6: wave of AI, artificial intelligence. There's all this excitement around this.
Speaker 6: I'm sure this is something that our main man, Matt Greenfeld,
Speaker 6: is talking about at the dinner table almost every night.
Speaker 6: But it's consuming the private tech world and the public
Speaker 6: tech world. And that is why, in my opinion, the
Speaker 6: major stock market averages are up because.
Speaker 1: Because of these big tech stocks.
Speaker 4: Yes, exactly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So let me ask you about this the regional
Speaker 1: banking crisis, because it's not as dramatic as it started
Speaker 1: out being with Silicon Valley Bank, but it seems like
Speaker 1: it's continued on. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, so Silicon Valley Bank and First Republic Bank, these
Speaker 6: were two very recognizable banks.
Speaker 1: In the regional banks.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but they were considered regional and you know, these
Speaker 6: are two of the largest bank failures since Bear Stearns
Speaker 6: went under in March of two thousand and eight. And
Speaker 6: obviously we had many other banks fail in two thousand
Speaker 6: and eight and two thousand and nine, so a lot
Speaker 6: of us who tracked the markets or have been in
Speaker 6: the markets. You know, we have a little PTSD from
Speaker 6: the Great Financial Crisis, of the global financial crisis, whatever
Speaker 6: you want to call it, going.
Speaker 4: Back, you know, fifteen years or so.
Speaker 6: And so when you see banks fail like this, it
Speaker 6: doesn't give confidence right to the sort of businesses or
Speaker 6: individuals who rely on banks, right, So we had to
Speaker 6: run on the bank deposits, and until the government took
Speaker 6: extraordinary measures to backstop those deposits, this would have kept
Speaker 6: on going. And so the fact of the matter is,
Speaker 6: since we had Silicon Valley Bank go under in mid March,
Speaker 6: we had First Republic. There's a handful of other banks
Speaker 6: that seem to be sort of teetering here. And so
Speaker 6: I kind of feel like we're in the second or
Speaker 6: third inning of this. I think that there's going to
Speaker 6: be different phases. But you could have said the same
Speaker 6: thing in two thousand and eight, once JP Morgan was
Speaker 6: forced to buy bear Stearns, that things were over. The
Speaker 6: stock market rallied significantly in the two months after bear
Speaker 6: Stearns was sold basically for two dollars and then ultimately
Speaker 6: was ratchet up to ten dollars to JP Morgan it
Speaker 6: rallied fifteen percent, but then obviously ended up going down
Speaker 6: precipitously over the next year or so. So to me,
Speaker 6: you know, like history is not a great lesson that
Speaker 6: we're one and done with these failures here. So to me,
Speaker 6: I think we really want to keep an eye on
Speaker 6: this and then really what does it mean for you know,
Speaker 6: local businesses, regional businesses that rely on the lending from
Speaker 6: these sorts of institutions because big banks like JP Morgan
Speaker 6: don't want to really deal with small banks. They just
Speaker 6: are not set up to do that, which is one
Speaker 6: of the reasons why they did not swoop in and
Speaker 6: by Silicon Valley back.
Speaker 1: But these are all regulatory failures, right, I mean, these
Speaker 1: regional banks are not regulated in the same way that
Speaker 1: the larger banks are, so they've had loopholes and they've
Speaker 1: been able to invest their balance sheet in more risky stuff,
Speaker 1: stuff like crypto, and they've gotten you know, margin calls.
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm not saying this is all related to crypto.
Speaker 6: There was one bank that had a lot of exposure
Speaker 6: to crypto. They weren't even investing in risky assets, Molly.
Speaker 6: They were invested in treasuries and the sorts of bonds
Speaker 6: that should be money good, right when the way we
Speaker 6: say in our business, the problem is is that some
Speaker 6: of these banks made very bad decisions. Okay, so they
Speaker 6: basically were investing in long duration securities that we're having
Speaker 6: marked to market losses, and they were not believing the
Speaker 6: FED that they were going to be as aggressive in
Speaker 6: their rate hikes. Right, so when the rates go up,
Speaker 6: the price of the bond goes down, and they own
Speaker 6: the bonds, and then when there was a run on
Speaker 6: their assets, they actually had to match up right those
Speaker 6: and the liabilities, and they suffered big losses. And if
Speaker 6: you have money at a bank, whether you're an individual,
Speaker 6: whether you're a business, and you fear that that bank
Speaker 6: is going to go under, you're going to take it out.
Speaker 6: And they had to run on the bank and they
Speaker 6: suffered big losses. And therefore these banks were pretty much
Speaker 6: deemed to be insolvent, which is one of the reasons
Speaker 6: why the FDIIC, the Treasury, and the White House had
Speaker 6: to take these extraordinary measures to make sure that they
Speaker 6: didn't fail and there wasn't going to be systemic ricks
Speaker 6: to the larger banking system because that would have most
Speaker 6: certainly put the economy in a recession.
Speaker 1: We know the Republicans in the House would like to
Speaker 1: see this economy go into recession in the hopes that
Speaker 1: they could win in twenty four Right, you could see
Speaker 1: that as attention here, we're about to hit this dead ceiling.
Speaker 1: This worked well for them in the previous negotiations, like
Speaker 1: they were able to really hurt Obama. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you think that's the plan here?
Speaker 6: Well, I don't think all Republicans would like to see
Speaker 6: the economy tank, right. I think they're the small you know,
Speaker 6: you know, the burn it all down faction that really
Speaker 6: has McCarthy's balls and advice right now.
Speaker 1: Right, And by the way, those people McCarthy needs in
Speaker 1: order to get the numbers.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you're right, there's a one no confidence voter is
Speaker 6: he's out of the speakership. So I think he's in
Speaker 6: a really tight spot. I think is a very different
Speaker 6: situation than we had in twenty eleven.
Speaker 4: But I think at the end of the day, you know, even.
Speaker 6: If Biden has to come up with some concessions on spending,
Speaker 6: and you know, I think they're going to do it.
Speaker 6: You know, there's an argument to be made that the
Speaker 6: Biden administration, it might be the best thing for them
Speaker 6: to actually have a recession now and come out of
Speaker 6: it in a couple of quarters and have a whole
Speaker 6: heck of a lot of strength heading into the election
Speaker 6: year is twenty twenty four. The last thing that I
Speaker 6: would want to do if I was a policy advisor
Speaker 6: is have this thing kind of dribble into twenty twenty four,
Speaker 6: the election year, and then it's front and the center.
Speaker 6: And the other thing I'll just say is that the
Speaker 6: Biden administration, in my opinion, and I am a supporter,
Speaker 6: and I think they've done on a lot of things
Speaker 6: a very good job. I think they've done a very
Speaker 6: poor job on messaging on the economy. We just talked
Speaker 6: about unemployment at seventy year lows at a time where
Speaker 6: you know, this administration has enacted fiscal stimulus to keep
Speaker 6: the economy afloat, to push into some initiatives that they
Speaker 6: think are very important as it relates to climate change, which,
Speaker 6: by the way, the IRA is going to massively benefit
Speaker 6: many red states. That's where a lot of this funding
Speaker 6: is going. And I think they need to start dictating
Speaker 6: the terms on the economy that they want to speak
Speaker 6: about rather than letting the Republicans do that. They have
Speaker 6: done that, and you know, they need to have better
Speaker 6: ambassadors for the economy out there talking about what they're
Speaker 6: doing and why their initiatives are important and really kind
Speaker 6: of set the tone.
Speaker 4: I don't think they've.
Speaker 6: Done a good job setting the tone with this debt
Speaker 6: ceiling negotiation, because again they just said, we're not going
Speaker 6: to negotiate with terrorists.
Speaker 4: By the end of the day.
Speaker 6: There needs to be some you know, I guess messaging
Speaker 6: that makes the American people feel like if there is
Speaker 6: that low probability outcome that we do trip the debt
Speaker 6: ceiling and we do default and the economy does take
Speaker 6: a dive, that is not on the shoulders.
Speaker 4: Of the president alone.
Speaker 6: And let's say the current administration will be blamed, but
Speaker 6: they need to share the blame and they need to
Speaker 6: better set the stage for that if that is going
Speaker 6: to happen.
Speaker 1: They need to explain to their constituents why these people
Speaker 1: are terrorists, right, I mean the fundamental explanation of the
Speaker 1: debt ceiling. This is money that was already decided to
Speaker 1: be spent, and that you know, there's no place for
Speaker 1: negotiating now, because it's like negotiating a ten thousand dollars
Speaker 1: bill with Amex right like you did it. It's not
Speaker 1: the moment to be like, how about I pay you
Speaker 1: seven thousand and then we just call it a day.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't do that unless you're in bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: And I think that is really the thing that the
Speaker 1: Biden administration has not explained. But I do want to
Speaker 1: continue on this road. It does seem to me, I mean,
Speaker 1: from what we've read in reporting that the Biden administration
Speaker 1: is much more tapped into Congress than the Obama administration was.
Speaker 4: Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 6: I mean like I feel like Biden because he's going
Speaker 6: to likely face a candidate again, you know, Donald Trump,
Speaker 6: that it seems like Donald Trump, you know, he'd just
Speaker 6: run over right, all of these kind of anti Trump
Speaker 6: you know folks from twenty twenty and you know, post
Speaker 6: a twenty sixteen election, and it really feels like once
Speaker 6: again it is firmly his party. And so I think
Speaker 6: that at that CNN town hall meeting, my partner Guya
Speaker 6: Dommi mentioned this on our pod on Friday, is like
Speaker 6: by Trump going out there and saying basically giving a
Speaker 6: permission structure for many Republicans in Congress to allow.
Speaker 4: For this debt ceiling, you know, to to basically.
Speaker 6: You know that that changed the dynamic here, and it
Speaker 6: really changed the dynamic I think for the Biden administration.
Speaker 6: So to me, I think that while the market right
Speaker 6: now is not pricing a great likelihood of default, I
Speaker 6: think that that is going to be something that if
Speaker 6: this meeting, you know, by the time folks are listening
Speaker 6: to this, you know, McCarthy will have already met with
Speaker 6: Biden again, I would not expect any substantive progress whatsoever.
Speaker 6: This thing's going to go down to the wire, and
Speaker 6: the Treasury Secretary Yellen keeps reiterating this date of June
Speaker 6: first here, and so all of a sudden, we're going
Speaker 6: to see probably some fireworks in the stock market. And
Speaker 6: to me, that's the sort of thing that might cause
Speaker 6: some people to kind of raise their antennas who have
Speaker 6: not been really focused on this, who think the outcome
Speaker 6: is going to be okay.
Speaker 1: They might freak out and turn the stock market. I mean,
Speaker 1: I do I think it is. It's worth remembering that
Speaker 1: the twenty twenty four election is still many, many months away,
Speaker 1: though at least Jesse and I's heads are now firmly
Speaker 1: planted in November twenty four. But I do it is
Speaker 1: worth remembering that we literally just had the midterms.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean and again, and it wasn't a great
Speaker 6: result obviously for Republicans.
Speaker 4: So like I mean, to.
Speaker 6: Me, I just think it goes back to like, if
Speaker 6: they really this is where the White House has to
Speaker 6: do a really good job. Okay, so what is it
Speaker 6: exactly that mccar arthy. What what spending do they want
Speaker 6: to cut? Where will it come from? Are they defunding
Speaker 6: the police? Are they cutting these energy initiative?
Speaker 1: Right? And we know they are. I mean, anyone who's
Speaker 1: read I mean their Times had really good reporting on
Speaker 1: this that in fact, it's cutting non discretionary spending, which is,
Speaker 1: you know, food for veterans by large numbers. I mean
Speaker 1: shockingly large numbers.
Speaker 4: I Mean.
Speaker 1: The whole idea that you're going to come up with
Speaker 1: budget about money you've already spent is just very Republican.
Speaker 4: But here's an idea.
Speaker 6: Okay, so for a couple of years, and you have
Speaker 6: all these people in your pods. Okay, Katie Porter in
Speaker 6: her whiteboard, let's start whiteboarding it out. Let's start making
Speaker 6: the case to the American people. I mean, you know
Speaker 6: Dan Goldman surgically, you know the way he operated right
Speaker 6: on the impeachment. You know, Representative shift was amazing and
Speaker 6: all of these outcomes. Let's get these people out there,
Speaker 6: Let's get them on the Sunday shows, Let's start them
Speaker 6: doing small short videos. Let's do national campaigns about this.
Speaker 6: Where are these spending cuts we can turn I think
Speaker 6: public opinion in the favor of not negotiating with these terrorists,
Speaker 6: because there's so many other scenarios. Once if you kind
Speaker 6: of start doing this with McCarthy here, where does it end?
Speaker 4: You know what I mean?
Speaker 6: Like that, That's the one point I would make. So
Speaker 6: I think the Dems have to do a much better
Speaker 6: job in the messaging here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really interesting, Thank you, Dan Nathan.
Speaker 6: All Right, Molly, my pleasure. Congrats on one hundred.
Speaker 7: No moment full Jesse Cannon, Molly jung Fast. I was
Speaker 7: watching some seaspence day and I saw the Karen of Congress.
Speaker 7: She's got to talk to the manager about something.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things about Marjorie Taylor Green is
Speaker 1: that she has won everything. You know, how they say
Speaker 1: when you have a hammer. Everything is a nail. Well,
Speaker 1: when you're Marjorie Taylor Green, everything is impeachment. And today
Speaker 1: she has decided she wants She has introduced articles of
Speaker 1: impeachment yet again, not for my Orcas, not for the
Speaker 1: Vice president or the president or the president, but instead
Speaker 1: for the very famous Matthew Graves. You wonder who Matthew
Speaker 1: Graves is. While he was appointed to be US Attorney
Speaker 1: for the District of Columbia on July twenty six, twenty
Speaker 1: twenty one, and assumed office on November fifth, twenty twenty one,
Speaker 1: she's very mad at Graves. I'm going to just read
Speaker 1: from the press release because honestly, I find it hilarious.
Speaker 1: Graves is systematically criminalizing political dissent at the behest of
Speaker 1: his handlers in the White House. So a lot of words,
Speaker 1: but by focusing so much effort on the persecution of
Speaker 1: political prisoners, I think she's talking about the January sixth riders,
Speaker 1: Graves has diminished the manpower needed to fight crime, not
Speaker 1: just in DC but all over the country. How that
Speaker 1: would work, I don't know. DOJ attorneys have been transferred
Speaker 1: to DC just to help Graves wage his war against
Speaker 1: political opponents. And now, in a typical trumpy fashion, he
Speaker 1: calls out his wife, because God forbid anyone is not
Speaker 1: harassed with an interest of their lives his wife. And
Speaker 1: then she lifts her name and talks about her career
Speaker 1: and makes a lot of false statements. And for that,
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green, is our moment of fuckery. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: And again, thanks for listening.