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 Bernie Sanders says, these are the
Speaker 1: scariest times of my life.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The New Abnormal co host Andy Levy stops by to
Speaker 1: talk about how great.
Speaker 2: Things are going with American democracy.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Congressman Sujas Subramanyum, who is a
Speaker 1: congressman with the most federal workers' cup I don't but
Speaker 1: first the news, Molly.
Speaker 3: So, one of my things during the Biden administration is
Speaker 3: everybody go, they're going to shut down the government. And
Speaker 3: I'd say, Kevin McCarthy and Mike Johnson are owned by
Speaker 3: the banks.
Speaker 4: There's no way they're going to do that. This time.
Speaker 4: We have a whole new set of rules.
Speaker 3: And Chuck Schumer, he says that setate Democrats will reject
Speaker 3: Geopeace funding bill as the shutdown draws near.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, good for Chuck Schumer. A lot of
Speaker 1: us did not think that he would do this. This
Speaker 1: is like really an impossible situation. Democrats are in because
Speaker 1: they don't want to shut down the whole Republican ethos
Speaker 1: is to shut down the federal government and then kill it, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's what they want to do here. They
Speaker 1: want to cut it and cut and cut it. This
Speaker 1: is the only thing Democrats can do at this moment.
Speaker 1: They do not control the House, they do not control
Speaker 1: the Senate, they do not control the presidency. All they
Speaker 1: can do is put sand in the gears for Republicans.
Speaker 2: And look this bill.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this CR because this CR
Speaker 1: has in it something that makes it so that Congress
Speaker 1: will no longer.
Speaker 2: Have power over tariffs.
Speaker 1: You know, tariffs, the thing that's fucking our economy right now. Well,
Speaker 1: Congress is giving over its tariff power to Donald J. Trump,
Speaker 1: which is insane. Donald Trump has already stolen so much
Speaker 1: power from this Congress. The fact that the Republicans are,
Speaker 1: like you know, Patty Hurst with Stockholm syndrome, ready to
Speaker 1: give them anything else they have left.
Speaker 2: Is just completely crazy.
Speaker 1: And it's and again, I understand that these Republicans are
Speaker 1: scared of Donald Trump. I understand that they have just
Speaker 1: given up on trying to do anything but rubber stamp
Speaker 1: his agenda. But still, this even in itself, is like
Speaker 1: kidnapping yourself and waiting for yourself to bring ransom to yourself.
Speaker 3: It is quite silly, and I really hope that the
Speaker 3: Democrats give them no help here whatsoever. Despite as much
Speaker 3: as I don't want there to be a shutdown, this
Speaker 3: is pathetic.
Speaker 1: You and I both agree and also think that this
Speaker 1: is impossible, right because the thing is shutting down the
Speaker 1: government is what the Republicans want. So if Democrats shut
Speaker 1: down the government, they will be blamed for shutting down
Speaker 1: the government and be deliver what Republicans want, which is
Speaker 1: to hobble these government agencies. Even more, if I were
Speaker 1: Chuck Schumer, which I'm very much not, Thune is not insane, right,
Speaker 1: fun is like a normal guy, and I would try
Speaker 1: to get Thune to take the tearff stuff out and
Speaker 1: then pass the cr. I would be like, no one
Speaker 1: wants a government shut down here, take out the tear
Speaker 1: off stuff. See if there's anything you can do with
Speaker 1: the money that's an impoundment, right, See if there's anything
Speaker 1: you can do to stop Trump from impounding money that
Speaker 1: Congress has allocated. I would make the pitch to Thune
Speaker 1: that we have this opportunity to put a little bit
Speaker 1: of a break on this guy who is just running
Speaker 1: Rockshaw over the federal government, and then see if that works,
Speaker 1: and see if you can get Thune on board with that.
Speaker 2: I do think there.
Speaker 1: Are publican senators who are pretty fed up with how
Speaker 1: this is going.
Speaker 2: So I do think there's an opening there. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm not convinced that Schumor will take it, but that
Speaker 1: would be in my mind what I would do.
Speaker 3: Yes, So I have to give the listeners some education here.
Speaker 3: We as influential people who are on podcasts, sometimes do
Speaker 3: this thing called it we call spon con, which is
Speaker 3: sponsored content, which means that somebody has paid us to
Speaker 3: make content for their product where we sell it. But
Speaker 3: we might just say this is sponsored by very Fast
Speaker 3: and then you just see an ad from us, whereas
Speaker 3: yesterday Donald Trump did sponsored content for Elot Musk, Shitty
Speaker 3: Tesla Cars.
Speaker 2: Good point.
Speaker 1: He got one hundred million dollars for that spat con.
Speaker 1: You know how much money we've gotten for our spont
Speaker 1: Con is not one hundred million dollars.
Speaker 4: What is our aged doing?
Speaker 2: Joey, oh, Joey. No, it's a good point.
Speaker 1: Look, we would like to get more money for spont Con.
Speaker 3: This is real.
Speaker 2: This is really yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no listen.
Speaker 1: So Donald Trump sold Teslas yesterday, by the way, not
Speaker 1: the first time my man was compared to a used
Speaker 1: car salesman, but certainly not.
Speaker 3: The last, right, but the most accurate, but the.
Speaker 2: Most sort of on the nose. He was out there reading.
Speaker 1: We saw the car, you saw the Reuter's picture of
Speaker 1: the car that had you know, this one's thirty five thousand,
Speaker 1: this one's forty five thousand.
Speaker 2: I think this is important.
Speaker 1: This is why I think it's important, besides the fact
Speaker 1: that the Hatch hack to be damned, that these people
Speaker 1: have completely given up on any kind of ethics.
Speaker 4: I mean, what might say that it took a hatchet
Speaker 4: to the Hatch act.
Speaker 1: Yeah, makes Nixon look like Lincoln. But what I think
Speaker 1: when you watch this is like, clearly Elon is worried
Speaker 1: about Tesla. Right, his market share is way down, the
Speaker 1: sales are way down. There's a reason that CEOs of
Speaker 1: public companies don't espouse highly inflammatory political rhetoric.
Speaker 2: And this is why.
Speaker 1: Right because a Tesla is no longer Tesla, Tesla has
Speaker 1: a vote for Elon, and most of the people who
Speaker 1: buy electric cars do not love the straight armed salute.
Speaker 1: Oh that's what we're calling it now. So I think
Speaker 1: it's a really good point that as tacky and distasteful
Speaker 1: and immoral as this is, I think it's really important
Speaker 1: to remember that this is also just desperate.
Speaker 4: My I do want to add some history here.
Speaker 3: I don't know if you remember, all the way back
Speaker 3: to the campaign when Donald Trump was doing all this
Speaker 3: podcasts that a influencer on the right named Aiden Ross
Speaker 3: with very questionable views gave Donald Trump a cyber truck
Speaker 3: with the assassination attempt as a rapper on it. But
Speaker 3: then Donald Trump couldn't accept it because of FEC violations.
Speaker 3: He actually listened to the law for what's there. But
Speaker 3: so that now Donald Trump has bought a ninety thousand
Speaker 3: dollars Tesla with thirty seven recall notices. It gets it cuts,
Speaker 3: that's what you're getting when you're getting the Tesla.
Speaker 4: Baby.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know about that, but that does not
Speaker 2: sound good.
Speaker 3: So as well, since we're not done with all the
Speaker 3: favors Donald Trump is doing for first buddy Elon, if
Speaker 3: you vandalized Tesla property, the White House will prosecute you
Speaker 3: as a domestic terrorist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, of course, does this surprise you at all.
Speaker 4: It does not surprise me at all.
Speaker 1: So President Donald Trump warren protesters targeting eln Musk that
Speaker 1: his administration will treat any attack on a Tesla company
Speaker 1: as an act of domestic terrorism against the United States.
Speaker 2: That makes no sense.
Speaker 1: Standing on White House the White House lawn, next to
Speaker 1: a line of Tesla's and flanked by Musk, nodding in
Speaker 1: agreement and likely wearing a ridiculous hat, Trump vowed to
Speaker 1: bring the full power of his office to bear on
Speaker 1: anyone breaking the law in an effort to interfere with
Speaker 1: his administration's official cost cutter in chief. Those people are
Speaker 1: going through a big problem. When we catch them, they're
Speaker 1: going through a big problem. They're harming a great American company.
Speaker 1: Tesla's become a lightning rod for anti Musk sentiment. We
Speaker 1: already know who some of them are. Trump said, I
Speaker 1: don't know. His quotes are always amazing.
Speaker 3: I think they're gonna go for the people who have
Speaker 3: organized this Tesla takedown protest. But this is coming after
Speaker 3: people for protesting it. I have to say, if you
Speaker 3: go out after people for protesting Tesla, x's next, and
Speaker 3: there's a lot of vulnerabilities.
Speaker 2: There the whole thing is completely insane.
Speaker 4: It's insane.
Speaker 1: Andy Levy is the co host of The Daily Beasts,
Speaker 1: The New of Normal. Hello Andy Levy.
Speaker 5: Hello, Molly john Fast.
Speaker 2: Here we are back again.
Speaker 1: How many years has it been since we've been on
Speaker 1: a podcast together?
Speaker 5: Two years, three years, seventeen?
Speaker 2: I think seventeen years.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I think it was two years ago, two
Speaker 5: and a half. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know, but a lot has gone wrong since then.
Speaker 2: Things have not gone great.
Speaker 5: Are you saying it can be traced to that?
Speaker 1: Yes, obviously the two of us not being podcasting together
Speaker 1: is why by laws and why Harris lost, and why
Speaker 1: Donald Trump has somehow gotten reelected yet again.
Speaker 5: I heard about that. Yeah, is this your fault?
Speaker 2: It's our fault. It's our collective fault.
Speaker 6: Well, I mean, if you want to get technical, I'm
Speaker 6: not the one who left the other. Oh, so it's
Speaker 6: your fault, is what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yes, Okay, So Jesse wants us to talk about what's
Speaker 1: going on right now, or at least I feel him
Speaker 1: getting agitated. We communicate with telepathy. As far as I
Speaker 1: can tell. Trade wars are good and easy to win discuss.
Speaker 6: Yeah, especially when you start and stop them every weeks.
Speaker 1: Well, when they're driven largely by mood, markets love uncertainty.
Speaker 5: We're in a vibe war and I'm not. And the vibes,
Speaker 5: the vibes are bad, and the vibes are bad.
Speaker 6: It is absolutely wild and just every day I have
Speaker 6: to wake up and see if the prices of my
Speaker 6: electronics are going to go up by twenty to twenty
Speaker 6: five percent or not.
Speaker 4: I have no idea.
Speaker 6: And I love that there's all this push to blame
Speaker 6: all of this on Howard Litnik.
Speaker 1: I cannot believe you're defending Howard Lutnik, But go on,
Speaker 1: I want you to defend him so I can debunk you.
Speaker 5: Oh, I would never defend him.
Speaker 6: I just always find it hilarious when one of these
Speaker 6: schmucks gets involved at a high level with.
Speaker 5: Donald Trump and thinks that it's going to end up
Speaker 5: well for them.
Speaker 2: Oh, yes, no, for sure. I mean we are watching
Speaker 2: this man devolve.
Speaker 1: I actually watch this morning a clip on Fox from
Speaker 1: Fox Business. You are a veteran from the cable news Wars.
Speaker 1: I am still fighting myself, you know, with my little pig.
Speaker 6: I'm on disability from the cable news Wars.
Speaker 1: You're at the VA getting your cable news.
Speaker 2: When I'm watching him.
Speaker 1: He did this thing where he was talking to one
Speaker 1: of these anchors that looks like Larry Cudlow, but isn't right, right,
Speaker 1: the guy who's like the British Larry Cudlow.
Speaker 5: You know that guy, Stuart Varney.
Speaker 2: Yes, Stuart Varney. Yeah, you know him really well, right,
Speaker 2: like you did a show with him.
Speaker 5: I was a guest on his show several times.
Speaker 1: Yes, I apologize, I mean, and by I mean apologize,
Speaker 1: I apologize that I made you say that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, other people to hear it.
Speaker 1: So you hear Lutnick talking, you can almost hear like
Speaker 1: normal for a minute, and then he breaks into Donald Trumps,
Speaker 1: the strongest, greatest leader ever and he knows everything, and
Speaker 1: you're like, oh, yes, North Korea, we live here now.
Speaker 6: My favorite thing was so there was a Politico article
Speaker 6: I think got Tuesday talking about how everyone is blaming
Speaker 6: Lutnik now, and one.
Speaker 5: Of the things it said that the people around Trump.
Speaker 6: Are exasperated with Lutnick because his television appearances suggest a
Speaker 6: lack of understanding of even the basics about hows and
Speaker 6: the economy work. And I thought, well, yeah, but I
Speaker 6: think as opposed to Trump. Right, it's just absolutely wild
Speaker 6: that all of these people think that they are the
Speaker 6: chosen ones and that they are in the inner circle,
Speaker 6: and they are every single one of them is literally
Speaker 6: thirty seconds like Trump, if he gets a bad burger
Speaker 6: at McDonald's, your ass could be gone.
Speaker 2: Oh, no question.
Speaker 1: I mean, but I do have to say watching Lutnik,
Speaker 1: it's true, and I think we need to have another
Speaker 1: second to just talk about what you just said, because
Speaker 1: I think it's really important.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: No one remembers twenty sixteen to twenty twenty. Nobody remembers
Speaker 1: those four years. Like we're sitting there going like you
Speaker 1: got Lutnik, you got Elon jumping up and down with
Speaker 1: his shirt riding up.
Speaker 2: Just get him longer T shirts.
Speaker 1: I don't know what wife he's on, but whoever you are,
Speaker 1: just get him longer T shirts.
Speaker 2: This is not is a very solvable problem.
Speaker 5: I think he has nothing but xes now.
Speaker 6: And you know, exes may not be the ones who
Speaker 6: want to tell him to make himself look better. So
Speaker 6: I feel like this might be a little conspiracy among
Speaker 6: his exes. Maybe they maybe they're actually telling him no,
Speaker 6: the short T shirt looks good on you.
Speaker 1: The only bright spot in our current crisis, our current
Speaker 1: whatever this is, our gentle slide into authoritarianism, is that
Speaker 1: the ex wives are having the I mean, they're not
Speaker 1: having the last left, because no one is having the
Speaker 1: last left as far as I can tell. But the
Speaker 1: ex wives are at least like you see all this
Speaker 1: sort of billionaire x wives, or at least like sort
Speaker 1: of doing nice things with their money. You could sort
Speaker 1: of feel the relief that they don't have to be
Speaker 1: married to those people anymore.
Speaker 6: Yeah, except you know, they would like to get child
Speaker 6: support apparently in that.
Speaker 1: Well yeah, well those are Elon's X wives. I'm thinking
Speaker 1: you have more like Bezos's X wives.
Speaker 6: Gotcha, gotcha? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's interesting
Speaker 6: to think about Elon. Is like when we talk about
Speaker 6: the people who get close to Trump and then get
Speaker 6: burned and next her on the outs. I've been thinking
Speaker 6: lately that it might be too late for Trump to
Speaker 6: try to get rid of Musk. Like Musk I think
Speaker 6: may have more power than him at this point.
Speaker 1: Well, that is the real I was gonna say, Sophie's choice, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it feels too close to home. So I'm going
Speaker 1: to say, that's the real problem, right, because the only
Speaker 1: thing that makes me think that maybe Trump could get
Speaker 1: rid of Elon and not vice versa is that Elon
Speaker 1: is just his stock is cratering, right, Like he's losing
Speaker 1: percentages of his net worth every day. And like the
Speaker 1: fact that they had a Tesla, that they've turned the
Speaker 1: White House into a Tesla showroom.
Speaker 2: That is because Elon.
Speaker 1: Is real worried, right, Like, you don't do that if
Speaker 1: things are going great.
Speaker 5: No, of course not.
Speaker 6: But the fact that Trump did that for him, like
Speaker 6: makes me think, I think this is the kind of
Speaker 6: power that Musk has over Trump.
Speaker 5: At this point.
Speaker 6: He can basically say to Trump, you know, hey, you
Speaker 6: need to do a sales pitch for my car. I
Speaker 6: think about all the data that Musk now has access to.
Speaker 5: Through his little doge cribs.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and it just makes me think, you know, he's
Speaker 6: got like like information is power, and he now has
Speaker 6: access to all this information about so many people.
Speaker 5: And it just makes me wonder if like Trump.
Speaker 6: Advisors can get pissed at Elon all they want.
Speaker 5: And I just don't know. He may. He may.
Speaker 6: The scheming vizier may have too much power for the
Speaker 6: emperor to get rid of him.
Speaker 1: I want to go back, though, to the Tesla showroom
Speaker 1: white house thing per second, not just because I think
Speaker 1: it's very pithy, but because if you look at the
Speaker 1: Trump Tesla situation, it was like a very clear quid
Speaker 1: pro quoil. Right by the way, if you guys can
Speaker 1: find the picture that he has written down where he's like,
Speaker 1: that's amazing, it's amazing. This car is the model t
Speaker 1: is thirty three thousand, the model as is. I mean
Speaker 1: literally somebody wrote down for him how much these cars cost.
Speaker 1: But at the exact same time he did that, Elon
Speaker 1: said He's going to do another one hundred million for
Speaker 1: Trump's political organization. So I do think like Donald Trump
Speaker 1: is and this is the electeds who have been able,
Speaker 1: the state heads who have been able to figure out
Speaker 1: how to deal with him, have done this thing where
Speaker 1: they have, you know, you suck up to him and
Speaker 1: then you offer him stuff.
Speaker 2: So like the fact that Trump did.
Speaker 1: This for Elon, in my mind, this is like just
Speaker 1: what he does, like very transactional, so that I don't
Speaker 1: think is necessarily as much of a tell. And remember,
Speaker 1: like Trump knows that he needs Elon to stay solvent right,
Speaker 1: because that's how he runs his organization. And remember, like yesterday,
Speaker 1: all of these Republicans voted for the CR right, they
Speaker 1: voted for a CR. And the way that Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: who is not a vote whipper, who basically cannot do
Speaker 1: as far as I can tell any math who has
Speaker 1: failed and failed and failed again on votes right, like
Speaker 1: even rules votes, the way he got to the number
Speaker 1: he needed with his very razor thin one seat majority
Speaker 1: was that Trump and Elon. Maybe not Elon, but certainly
Speaker 1: Trump and his people have whipped votes for Mike Johnson,
Speaker 1: like we keep seeing this happen, right, And the way
Speaker 1: they whip those votes is by bullying these people and
Speaker 1: saying like, if you don't vote for this, we're going
Speaker 1: to you know who knows, right, But part of it
Speaker 1: is we're going to fund primary challenges. I do think
Speaker 1: that like Trump sees that Elon's money is critical for
Speaker 1: this organization, which I guess makes your point.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, exactly. You know.
Speaker 6: My point is that I wonder, and I'm not saying
Speaker 6: it's true, but I just I have started to wonder
Speaker 6: if Trump needs Elon or is Enthrall to Elon more
Speaker 6: than Elon is enthrall to Trump at this point. And yeah,
Speaker 6: you talked about the threats and everything. I mean, look
Speaker 6: at what's going on with you know, poor Thomas Massey.
Speaker 1: That's a sentence that no sentence has ever been more cursed.
Speaker 2: I mean we should just like you should just wash
Speaker 2: your mouth.
Speaker 4: That was so.
Speaker 5: I'm actually wearing a T shirt that says.
Speaker 2: Poor Thomas math Yes, a cursed T shirt.
Speaker 6: It's like the start of a poem, Yes, a bad poem. Yeah,
Speaker 6: but this is a guy, deranged right winger who has
Speaker 6: been there.
Speaker 2: His wife wrote.
Speaker 1: A mass he died this year, and I think he
Speaker 1: said something to the effect of, like that was sort
Speaker 1: of so incredibly weirdly just so crushingly awful. Yesterday, my
Speaker 1: high school sweetheart, the love of my life for over
Speaker 1: thirty five years, the loving mother of our four children.
Speaker 1: Oh that's too many, the smartest kind of woman I've
Speaker 1: ever known, my beautiful and wise queen forever went to heaven.
Speaker 2: I think he's like not doing great.
Speaker 1: Like I think he's had a very tough I mean,
Speaker 1: we're really feeling bad for Thomas Massey here.
Speaker 6: But I was going to say, so, you're you're saying
Speaker 6: poor Thomas Massey.
Speaker 2: I kind of feel bad for him.
Speaker 1: Also, Thomas Mansey, like you know, he went to Mit,
Speaker 1: he had solar powd.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Let's not go down this rabbit hole anyway,
Speaker 2: go on.
Speaker 6: Yes, continue so well, no, now that apparently we have
Speaker 6: to be nice to Thomas Matthew, I don't even want
Speaker 6: to go on.
Speaker 1: I mean the point is that he's actually being really
Speaker 1: treated terribly as everyone is.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and this again is going back to the Lutnik
Speaker 6: thing that we started off with.
Speaker 5: It's the same playbook. It's like, you know, you could
Speaker 5: be with.
Speaker 6: Them one thousand percent, and the second you deviate from something,
Speaker 6: or the second someone decides that you're upstaging Trump or
Speaker 6: whatever they.
Speaker 2: Do again having your own feelings.
Speaker 5: The Fries didn't have enough salt on them.
Speaker 6: So he's he's angry and they turn on you, and
Speaker 6: you see it online. I mean, I'm not on Twitter anymore,
Speaker 6: but I've been reading about, you know, Maggot just going
Speaker 6: after Thomas Massey. I mean, this is one of their
Speaker 6: greatest champions, and this is what they're doing to him.
Speaker 5: But and Amy Cony Barrett's.
Speaker 2: A great example.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's just wild over and over again, and yet
Speaker 6: all of these people seem to think that, well, that
Speaker 6: won't happen to me.
Speaker 5: I can change him, Molly.
Speaker 2: It's a horrible ending to this. Yes, yes you can. No,
Speaker 2: I mean I think that's right. I once had a job.
Speaker 2: I'm going to tell a story.
Speaker 4: Really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it wasn't the one job I've ever had. It
Speaker 2: was a long time ago and I wasn't there for
Speaker 2: very long.
Speaker 1: But the person was a narcissist, and they would talk
Speaker 1: about an employee before you and talk about how that
Speaker 1: person was bad.
Speaker 2: But you're good, and you're going to be able to
Speaker 2: figure out.
Speaker 1: Do you see what I'm saying. Yeah, And clearly that's
Speaker 1: what happens here. He must sort of lull you into
Speaker 1: thinking that, like those other people are bad, but you're good.
Speaker 5: Let me answer your statement with a question, and.
Speaker 1: It was Donald Trump. Who No, I'm just going I
Speaker 1: haven't told me one until now.
Speaker 6: Marco Rubio is still Secretary of State by the end
Speaker 6: of the year.
Speaker 1: You know, Marco Rubio seems to have a real appetite
Speaker 1: for humiliation.
Speaker 5: It's a kink. It's a kink, right, Like he was.
Speaker 1: Sitting that picture of him sitting on the couch in
Speaker 1: the oval, looking like the smallest person ever. Reminded me
Speaker 1: of that him sitting in the chair, Remember when there
Speaker 1: was that picture of him sitting in big chair looking small.
Speaker 1: I think he has an infinite appetite for this kind
Speaker 1: of humiliation. And the man gave up his Senate seed, right,
Speaker 1: It's not like he gets to go back to a
Speaker 1: Senate seat. I think he stays as unless Trump really
Speaker 1: like does something.
Speaker 2: No, I think he stays. I bet he's there all
Speaker 2: four years.
Speaker 6: Okay, you're looking at this the opposite way that I am.
Speaker 6: I'm looking at this as not that he's going to
Speaker 6: it that he's going to be fired.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean everyone.
Speaker 1: I mean, certainly there will be a lot of being
Speaker 1: fired by tweet kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: For sure.
Speaker 5: I think Marco's high on that list.
Speaker 1: Somebody's gonna get scapegoaded, and my guess is it'll be
Speaker 1: someone like Lutnik. It'll be the loudest person first. I mean,
Speaker 1: what's amazing about Elon? Just to go back to this
Speaker 1: is like what you said before about like how Trump
Speaker 1: can't necessarily get rid of Elon, which is clearly clear
Speaker 1: right that Trump is sort of stuck in this thing,
Speaker 1: and Elon Km's doing these interviews where he's keeps saying like,
Speaker 1: we're going to get rid of Security and Medicare. Right,
Speaker 1: Like the entire Republican Party is based on the idea
Speaker 1: that even though they want to do that, they have
Speaker 1: to pretend not to.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 5: And then you have this one guy who's like, you.
Speaker 2: Know, we're gonna do all this stuff we lie to
Speaker 2: you about doing, We're going to do it.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And look that's the kind of thing.
Speaker 6: You know, you see all these people talking about how
Speaker 6: they're mad at Letnik for getting out in front of Trump,
Speaker 6: but Must keeps doing these interviews and can't nobody stop opera.
Speaker 5: The way you put it is absolutely right.
Speaker 6: It's like Republicans are dying to get rid of Social
Speaker 6: Security and Medicare. They've just had to you know, they've
Speaker 6: had to lie about it for decades now.
Speaker 1: Right because people hate Yeah, it's like the one's the
Speaker 1: one thing they want to do is the one thing the.
Speaker 6: American people don't want. Right, But Musk doesn't care. It
Speaker 6: must Musk doesn't care what the American people want except
Speaker 6: to the extent that he wants them to buy his
Speaker 6: broken ass car. I mean, but Musk is not going
Speaker 6: to stop doing these interviews somebody again. I suspected his
Speaker 6: exes are telling him how great he is in these
Speaker 6: interviews and that, you know, if only he just needs
Speaker 6: to jump higher.
Speaker 5: I think that's what that's what they're telling him.
Speaker 1: No, no more, show more bellybatten. That is the last
Speaker 1: word on this. Andy, Will you please come back and
Speaker 1: visit me in my sad podcast world where I have
Speaker 1: no co host, it's.
Speaker 2: Just me, just me.
Speaker 6: I will take it under advisement. I will meet with
Speaker 6: my team.
Speaker 2: Can you talk to your chief of staff?
Speaker 6: I'm going to talk to my chief of staff, will
Speaker 6: strategize and we'll figure out the optics and the metrics,
Speaker 6: and we'll circle back on this.
Speaker 5: We'll circle back on this.
Speaker 2: Does your chief of staff? I'm an assistant.
Speaker 6: My chief of staff has four assistants and will not
Speaker 6: tell me their names.
Speaker 5: Andy Levy, always a pleasure talking to you.
Speaker 1: Molly love you, Sue has superman Yum represents Virginia's tenth
Speaker 1: congressional district.
Speaker 2: Welcome Representative Supermanion.
Speaker 7: Yeah you got it.
Speaker 2: You are a member of Congress.
Speaker 1: You represent the district with the most government workers.
Speaker 2: So tell us about your district.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you know, we've got Bela Sarapor for about thirty
Speaker 8: or forty minutes outside of DC. I've got one of
Speaker 8: the best commutes in Congress. We've got between contractors and
Speaker 8: federal work and people who serve those people. I mean,
Speaker 8: we're very much entrenched in government, and I like to
Speaker 8: say that, you know, our region serves the rest of
Speaker 8: the country.
Speaker 7: They do really great work.
Speaker 8: They could be making a lot more money in the
Speaker 8: private sector in most cases, but they decided they wanted
Speaker 8: to serve their country and do critical work to keep
Speaker 8: people safe and secure.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: You know, it is interesting, and by interesting I mean
Speaker 1: very annoying that this Republican Party seems to think that
Speaker 1: these government workers that they're sort of getting these easy
Speaker 1: jobs that pay a lot, when in fact, these are
Speaker 1: the sort of jobs you do because you're patriotic, not
Speaker 1: because because you would ultimately make more money in the
Speaker 1: private sector.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 8: I talked to a lot of people who were working
Speaker 8: these jobs. They work quite hard, actually, and they get
Speaker 8: paid a lot more. But most importantly, you know, they
Speaker 8: went from the private sector of the public sector one
Speaker 8: because they cared a lot lot about the work they're doing,
Speaker 8: like keeping people healthy and safe and to you know,
Speaker 8: there was an extent of job security as well in
Speaker 8: the public sector, and you know now we've lost that,
Speaker 8: and so how do we expect now to keep the
Speaker 8: best and brightest talent when there's no job security, there's
Speaker 8: less pay, and they're just being demonized by a lot
Speaker 8: of people, especially on the right. It's a hard sell
Speaker 8: now to attract. And one of my jobs in the
Speaker 8: Obama White House when I worked there was to attract
Speaker 8: the best, rightest tech talent. And you know, those folks
Speaker 8: have all resigned in large DROs if they haven't been fired.
Speaker 8: And now we've got issues with cybersecurity and issues with
Speaker 8: protecting our critical infrastructure because we've let go of we're
Speaker 8: lost a lot of those really important people that did.
Speaker 7: Great work at a discount basically.
Speaker 1: So I'm wondering if you could sort of explain to
Speaker 1: us what you know, what we've seen from the outside
Speaker 1: is that there's been a lot of elan like trying
Speaker 1: people and then lot of you know, fork in the
Speaker 1: road emails, a lot of this stuff did a Twitter,
Speaker 1: and then a lot of rehiring or trying to rehire,
Speaker 1: or maybe rehiring or maybe not rehiring. So tell me
Speaker 1: kind of what the experience is about, you know, with
Speaker 1: the people in your district, and give me sort of
Speaker 1: a broad sense of what the people in your district are,
Speaker 1: sort of what they're like, what parts of the government
Speaker 1: they work in.
Speaker 7: Yeah, I've heard enough stories.
Speaker 8: I've observed this enough to come to touple conclusions. One,
Speaker 8: you know, let's stop the throw clearing about Well, I
Speaker 8: want to make government better, more efficient. This isn't the
Speaker 8: way to do it. This effort, this DOGE effort, is
Speaker 8: not about making government more efficient or more effective or better.
Speaker 8: It's doing the opposite actually, and it's actually hurting taxpayers
Speaker 8: and wasting taxpayer dollars. We had a story someone said
Speaker 8: of DOGE staffers moving into a government office and then
Speaker 8: you know, buying Ikea furniture and even paying twenty five
Speaker 8: thousand dollars per washer dryer that costs two thousand dollars
Speaker 8: if you just go online. And so this is not
Speaker 8: efficient or effective. They're also canceling contracts that for instance,
Speaker 8: maybe it may have cost US ten million dollars. We're
Speaker 8: five million dollars in halfway done with the project. They
Speaker 8: cancel the contract. We're out five million dollars plus the
Speaker 8: project doesn't get done. I mean, this is the least
Speaker 8: efficient way of trying to make government more efficient, and
Speaker 8: it's going to hurt every American And then those are
Speaker 8: That's just one part of it. The second part is
Speaker 8: there's a brain drain in our government because of this.
Speaker 8: So again we're losing the technologists. We're losing the scientists,
Speaker 8: We're losing the highly skilled workers who were taking less
Speaker 8: money to serve our country. It's going to hurt us
Speaker 8: in so many ways that it's hard to put a
Speaker 8: value on how difficult this is going to make things
Speaker 8: for our country and for government. And I think that
Speaker 8: doge people realizing this and realizing their own incompetence, and
Speaker 8: so they're trying to walk back some of these things
Speaker 8: and call them mistakes. And you say you can't bat
Speaker 8: a thousand, Well, in government, you got to bat as
Speaker 8: close to a thousand as possible because people's lives are
Speaker 8: on the line, people's benefits won't get delivered, things won't
Speaker 8: get done, or country won't stay safe if you don't
Speaker 8: bat as close to a thousand as possible. And it's
Speaker 8: pretty clear from the stories I've heard that they are
Speaker 8: doing a terrible job. If their goal is to make
Speaker 8: government more efficient and get rid of waste, road and abuse, do.
Speaker 1: We know are they rehiring people in some places the
Speaker 1: state or hiring people?
Speaker 2: Are you seeing that in Virginia are now?
Speaker 7: Yeah?
Speaker 8: You know, we have a governor that's sort of on
Speaker 8: board with this whole effort. I think he has feature
Speaker 8: national ambitions, Glenn Youngkin. So the state hasn't done a lot.
Speaker 8: The legislature here has, but I would say, you know,
Speaker 8: bigger picture, they're rehiring people when there's pressure. And this
Speaker 8: is what I've told people is when you speak out,
Speaker 8: don't be afraid. This is the time to seek out
Speaker 8: a lot of civil servants, a lot of government workers
Speaker 8: have been trained to not be partisan. Doesn't matter who's president,
Speaker 8: you just serve your country. Well, this is a different
Speaker 8: time right now, and there's a lot on the line.
Speaker 8: Now is the time to tell your story, talk about
Speaker 8: the incompetence, talk about how this is going to hurt
Speaker 8: the American people. And when I've seen people do that,
Speaker 8: when I've shared their story myself, you start to see
Speaker 8: the doge folks in the administration walk things back. And
Speaker 8: that's why that people have a lot of power. We're
Speaker 8: not helpless in this fight. We're not helpless in this
Speaker 8: effort if you just speak up and use your voice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Congress has basically been stripped of its power by
Speaker 1: don't right. What can you do? You're in the minority,
Speaker 1: but you do. They have a very small majority. Is
Speaker 1: there anything that Democrats can do in Congress to gum
Speaker 1: up the works? To express I mean, obviously Democratic voters
Speaker 1: are furious. Is there anything you guys can do to
Speaker 1: express this, to get publicans to have some interest in
Speaker 1: their own power of the person responsibility.
Speaker 7: I'm new here. I'm two months in.
Speaker 8: I came from the state legislature where very few people
Speaker 8: paid attention to what I did. But now I'm in Congress,
Speaker 8: and what I found is, you know, yes, I've introduced bills,
Speaker 8: i have a build called the Leash Dough Jact, and
Speaker 8: I've got other you know, letters that I've done. There's
Speaker 8: things you can do, but that stuff's not going to
Speaker 8: get hearings, right, We're not going to move it. What
Speaker 8: I think is different about my job now is I've got,
Speaker 8: you know, a way to amplify people's voices. I've got
Speaker 8: the House floor, I can go to every day if
Speaker 8: I want and just speak about what's going on. And
Speaker 8: so I've used sort of my office to share stories,
Speaker 8: to allow people to be almost like people's tip line, right,
Speaker 8: to share their stories about what's going on, how's affecting them.
Speaker 8: I see my job as a member of Congress and
Speaker 8: the you know, the opposition party right now and the
Speaker 8: wrong side of a try effect to connect what the
Speaker 8: administration is doing to how it's affecting everyday people. And
Speaker 8: I think the more we do that, one, the more
Speaker 8: the administration backtracks and Doge back tracks, but two people
Speaker 8: start to understand that this is a problem, that some
Speaker 8: of these issues, some of these moves are going to
Speaker 8: hurt every American. And it's not just about federal workers.
Speaker 8: It's about the work the federal workers did and how
Speaker 8: it's going to affect people. It's not just about the
Speaker 8: people who are on Medicaid. It's going to raise premiums
Speaker 8: for every person, regardless if you're on Medicaid. Like I
Speaker 8: can keep going, right, The point is that I see
Speaker 8: it as my job to amplify the voices of people
Speaker 8: and connect the bad policies with their impact on everyday people.
Speaker 1: One of the things we're seeing is that a lot
Speaker 1: of Republicans are not holding town halls because they're getting
Speaker 1: a lot of negative pushback, because they're doing a lot
Speaker 1: of unpopular stuff.
Speaker 2: Do you think Democrats should be holding town halls?
Speaker 7: Absolutely?
Speaker 8: I mean I'm going to be holding more town halls,
Speaker 8: at least two next week. I've had a couple of
Speaker 8: really big ones already, and it's good. I want people
Speaker 8: who disagree with me to come too. I don't mind it. Right,
Speaker 8: we should be learning from our constituents, hearing what they
Speaker 8: have to say, regardless of whether they agree with us.
Speaker 8: That's democracy, that's how it should work, right, And so
Speaker 8: we shouldn't be dodging our constituents and the people we serve.
Speaker 8: And so I think it's obvious that they should. And
Speaker 8: you know, I remember when the Tea Party was rising.
Speaker 8: I was working for a Member of Congress back then,
Speaker 8: and she did town halls, even with Tea Party people
Speaker 8: yelling at her, to her credit. And so I think
Speaker 8: that it's incumbent upon us to listen to our constituents
Speaker 8: and look them in the eye. If that's what they want,
Speaker 8: give them an opportunity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they have a very slim majority.
Speaker 1: Is there any sense in which maybe some of these
Speaker 1: special elections could move the majority or is it just
Speaker 1: they're just unwinnable.
Speaker 8: I remember after Trump first got elected, John Ossoff ran
Speaker 8: for the first time in a House seat, and he lost,
Speaker 8: but it was a close race and Republicans had to
Speaker 8: spend a ton of money and a race very similar
Speaker 8: to these special elections. I think a lot of good
Speaker 8: came out of that race. It was a signal to
Speaker 8: everyone that things were shifting, and it was also signaled
Speaker 8: to vulnerable Republicans at the time that this isn't business
Speaker 8: as usual and that the president didn't have a mandate.
Speaker 8: So if we have a great performance and these special elections,
Speaker 8: and we send a signal to vulnerable Republicans that they
Speaker 8: shouldn't just be towing the Trump line, then we can
Speaker 8: pick off three votes for different agenda items, right, We
Speaker 8: can actually chip away at some of this agenda. And
Speaker 8: so I say that we do everything we can to
Speaker 8: make these a close race. Even if we don't win them,
Speaker 8: there may be a moral victory in sending a message
Speaker 8: to the country.
Speaker 1: Right exactly. And I think that's a real thing. I
Speaker 1: often think of, like how we got here, right, Trump
Speaker 1: has won for a second time.
Speaker 2: He had all these indictments, so many spots in which
Speaker 2: it seemed impossible for him to win, and then he
Speaker 2: won anyone the popular vote. What do you think, like
Speaker 2: if you were to look at sort of the Democrats.
Speaker 2: This is for my own edification as much as anything.
Speaker 2: What went wrong.
Speaker 8: Yeah, there's a anti incumbent movement across the world right now, right,
Speaker 8: and we had to own a very difficult recovery from COVID,
Speaker 8: and so I think the economy was a big part
Speaker 8: of what went wrong. And then it was easy to
Speaker 8: blame Biden for all the problems in the world, even
Speaker 8: if Trump's solution would make that problem worse, Right, we'd
Speaker 8: think of like foreign policy and what's happening now he's
Speaker 8: made things worse and every part of the planet. But
Speaker 8: at the time, you know, Biden was the fall guy
Speaker 8: all the problems, all the wars, right, So you know,
Speaker 8: I think that was the combination of what went wrong,
Speaker 8: and I think it's important not to blame everything.
Speaker 7: Certainly there was a little bit.
Speaker 8: There's more we can do as a democratic party on
Speaker 8: all sorts of things like messaging on you know, relating
Speaker 8: to American people being everywhere. But I don't want to
Speaker 8: overthink that, oh, well, all our policies are bad, then
Speaker 8: we needed to go back to the drawing board on
Speaker 8: all our values. Right, That's not what we should be doing.
Speaker 1: But do you think it was a policy problem or
Speaker 1: do you think it was a politics problem.
Speaker 8: It was a politics problem. It was a very difficult
Speaker 8: cycle to run as an incumbent, and then we had
Speaker 8: our incumbent drop out basically one hundred days before the election,
Speaker 8: and we had the vice president having to introduce herself
Speaker 8: in a very short period of time and be easily
Speaker 8: defined by the other side. So there's a lot that
Speaker 8: went into it. I would say we are where we
Speaker 8: are now and learn the lessons. I think one lesson
Speaker 8: to me is that we need to have a positive
Speaker 8: vision as well, and not just be anti Trump, but
Speaker 8: too we need to connect Trump's agenda to how it's
Speaker 8: hurting the American people, because it is, and not just
Speaker 8: let him blame Democrats for anything that goes wrong anymore
Speaker 8: because he owns it now. So I think there's things
Speaker 8: we've learned, and people have different ways of expressing themselves. Right,
Speaker 8: Al Green stood up on the floor, right when Trump spoke,
Speaker 8: and then you know, we've got Senator Fetterman going out
Speaker 8: there with a different message. All that is okay. As
Speaker 8: long as we're speaking up right, and as long as
Speaker 8: we're pointing out the problems and the policy failures of
Speaker 8: this administration, then people should speak in the way that
Speaker 8: their constituents like and that they think will break through.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 7: Yeah, thank you, This is great.
Speaker 4: Jesse Cannon Molly jumped fast.
Speaker 3: We were going to get a lot of wackiness with
Speaker 3: RFK Junior cavid to HHS's office. I didn't really know
Speaker 3: that he'd be sitting there eating at a steak in
Speaker 3: Shake with Sean Hannity and talking about Trump's diet these days.
Speaker 3: But he also said it would be better if everyone
Speaker 3: got measles.
Speaker 1: So I want to just point out earlier, Jesse and
Speaker 1: I had an argument about seed oils.
Speaker 2: Which this.
Speaker 4: Argument is strong.
Speaker 1: We need to know about our disagreement on seed oils,
Speaker 1: which ended would neither of us really knowing what we
Speaker 1: were talking about or also.
Speaker 4: Caring that's correct.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But anyway, the point is RFK Junior said that,
Speaker 1: I mean, by the way, this is so insane that
Speaker 1: this person is. It's like it's funny, but it's also
Speaker 1: just a fucking nightmare. Right. We have a perfectly saved
Speaker 1: vaccine for measles. It's been going forever now. Because Republicans
Speaker 1: don't understand math or science, they would like us to
Speaker 1: get measles. Here is RFK Junior, my favorite.
Speaker 2: Here we go.
Speaker 1: It used to be when I were a kid that
Speaker 1: everybody got measles. Yes, that's because you didn't have a
Speaker 1: vaccine for it, and the measles gave you lifetime protection
Speaker 1: against measles infections, except if you died.
Speaker 2: The vaccine doesn't do that.
Speaker 1: The vaccine is effective for some people for life, but
Speaker 1: for others it WANs Okay, I mean you could also
Speaker 1: die of the vaccine. I mean of the not of
Speaker 1: the vaccine. You could die of measles. Right, You could
Speaker 1: die of measles, or you could get vaccinated. The measles
Speaker 1: MOUMPS and rubella vaccine offers a ninety three percent protection
Speaker 1: against measles if the recipient has one dose and ninety
Speaker 1: seven percent after two dose. Or you could just get
Speaker 1: the measles, which obviously is way better because what anyway,
Speaker 1: I don't even want to say anything else except that
Speaker 1: there's no reason for you to ever get measles, Like
Speaker 1: there is a perfectly safe vaccine and you should take
Speaker 1: it and also eat seed oils.
Speaker 3: I have one last thing to say, which is the
Speaker 3: listeners haven't watched this clip. The best part is when
Speaker 3: the restaurant sends over a giant milkshaked RFK and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 3: it's not for me, it's not for me.
Speaker 2: Wait, why can't he drink milkshakes.
Speaker 4: He's making America healthy again, Molly, you but.
Speaker 2: He's eat he choose chewing tobacco.
Speaker 3: I think he does a lot of things that aren't healthy,
Speaker 3: much less healthy than that, like eating roadkill and.
Speaker 2: Yes, well there's a roadkill.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
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Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.