Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and a new Gallup poll shows that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump's approval ratings have fallen ten points since his
Speaker 1: second term began six months ago. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. MSNBC's own Ali Batali stops
Speaker 1: by to talk about how Trump is trying to maneuver
Speaker 1: his way out of the Epstein mess. Spoiler, it's not working.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to director Ari Astor about his new
Speaker 1: movie Eddington and the politics surrounding it. But first the news.
Speaker 2: Bally yesterday we got one of those demonstrations of just
Speaker 2: how pathetic most of the GOP is as we watched
Speaker 2: Jerome Powell not have any of Donald Trump's bullshit. What
Speaker 2: did you see there?
Speaker 1: This is such an incredibly stupid moment because it shows
Speaker 1: why it's stupid? Is this? It's because it shows how
Speaker 1: everyone else in the Republican party and leadership has just
Speaker 1: given up trying to be real people around our hand autocrat.
Speaker 1: So here's what happened. Trump is trying to blame Powell
Speaker 1: for the renovation of the FED, which Trump was the
Speaker 1: person who initiated his first administration. And the reason he's
Speaker 1: doing this is because he wants to fire Powell this way,
Speaker 1: and in this stupid, stupid, stupid plan, he's trying to
Speaker 1: make it sound worse, to make it so that Powell
Speaker 1: will resign in disgrace or whatever he can do. So
Speaker 1: he is up there with Powell and he says, we're
Speaker 1: taking a look. It looks like about three point one billion.
Speaker 1: Trump says, and then Powell and like, by the way,
Speaker 1: this is how you should do it when you're interviewing Trump.
Speaker 1: This is like a masterclass on how not to get
Speaker 1: run over by the guy. Instead of saying, oh okay,
Speaker 1: he says, Pal shakes his head. He goes, it went
Speaker 1: up a little bit or a lot, so the two
Speaker 1: point seven is now three point one. Trump continues, and
Speaker 1: Pale shakes his head, and then he says this is
Speaker 1: not true. And he says, you just added a third building,
Speaker 1: Pal says, and Trump says, it's a building that's being
Speaker 1: built and Pali says, no, that was built five years ago,
Speaker 1: and it's just like this is. And then Trump said
Speaker 1: it's part of the overall work, right, So it's like
Speaker 1: you can be on Earth one, or you can be
Speaker 1: on Earth too. But if you stay on Earth one,
Speaker 1: when Trump says Earth too stuff, you just say, that's
Speaker 1: not true. This is what actually happened. And I know
Speaker 1: it's not polite, but he's the only way that American
Speaker 1: democracy is going to survive. So when Trump says we
Speaker 1: didn't cut food stamps, you say, well, why are all
Speaker 1: these kids in May not able to get you know,
Speaker 1: snap benefits anymore. That's how this has to go, is
Speaker 1: you have to just say what really happened. And a
Speaker 1: good example is that the other day I was on
Speaker 1: a panel and somebody said that it made a false equivalency.
Speaker 1: They put two people together who were definitely not the same,
Speaker 1: and it was a little bit the equivalency really made
Speaker 1: the woman in the combination seem much less accomplished than
Speaker 1: she was. It was ultimately a bit sexist, and I said,
Speaker 1: you know, these two people are not the same. And we,
Speaker 1: unfortunately were in a moment in American life where we
Speaker 1: just constantly have to say that, and even though it's
Speaker 1: not polite, and even though we were raised to not
Speaker 1: be like that, because you know, especially women of my generation,
Speaker 1: we really weren't supposed to push back like that, but
Speaker 1: unfortunately it's the only choice because we are just down
Speaker 1: a fucking rabbit hole that there's no way out of here.
Speaker 2: Agreed. I don't know about your family, but my family
Speaker 2: took a lot of pictures were young, and yet somehow
Speaker 2: there seems to be more pictures of Donald Trump with
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Epstein that I have of most people in my
Speaker 2: family and I together. And then we also find out
Speaker 2: there's lots of pictures of RFK with Jeffrey Epstein, there's
Speaker 2: signed birthday books. It really just feels like, at breakneck speed.
Speaker 2: Now we are finding out that when Jeffrey Epstein described
Speaker 2: Donald Trump as his best friend for a decade, there's
Speaker 2: a lot of photographic and other proof.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is why this was so stupid for
Speaker 1: Trump to play into at the beginning, right because he
Speaker 1: knew he had been friends with him for a long time.
Speaker 1: He knew, I mean, we just we knew this to
Speaker 1: be true. So the fact that they're just keep coming
Speaker 1: up more and more photos of Trump and jeff app
Speaker 1: I mean, he clearly was worried about that. That's why
Speaker 1: he keeps bringing her off art.
Speaker 2: So Donald's been doing a really great thing where he
Speaker 2: compares his different behaviors on subjects, and the behavior on
Speaker 2: this subject is so clearly different than other subjects.
Speaker 1: Right, It's a really good example. I just don't get
Speaker 1: why he would. I mean, I guess, you know, the
Speaker 1: guy's very visceral and just does stuff just as the
Speaker 1: next thing in front of him. But it is a
Speaker 1: little bit chocking to me that this is the way
Speaker 1: he is doing it and that this is just going
Speaker 1: to keep going like this. But clearly something's going on.
Speaker 2: You know. The TURNI phrase I said yet the other
Speaker 2: day was you know, you don't usually suspect that the
Speaker 2: Achilles heel is going to be whichever thing it is
Speaker 2: on the body when it gets to somebody. But we've
Speaker 2: clearly found it. So this is an interesting turning of
Speaker 2: events from Talking Points to Momo that La Grand jury's
Speaker 2: are refusing to indict Ice protesters.
Speaker 1: Because the mainstream media is so small now and because
Speaker 1: there's so little reporting out there. I don't think people
Speaker 1: understand how mad just normal people are. This is not
Speaker 1: an endorsement in any way, shape or form, because I
Speaker 1: actually think it's really we're heading down really slippery slope.
Speaker 1: But clearly Ice is behaving in an illegal way. And
Speaker 1: then the eye idea is that somehow you're supposed to
Speaker 1: prosecute people who are behaving illegally towards ICE. And I
Speaker 1: just think you can see where this is going, right.
Speaker 1: People don't want to work in a legal framework if
Speaker 1: the other party isn't. That sort of part of the
Speaker 1: problem with trump Ism, too, right, is that these ICE
Speaker 1: people being illegally in this country was a civil violation
Speaker 1: until like six months ago. So the idea that now
Speaker 1: these people are being shipped to like death camps, I
Speaker 1: mean Sea cott is, you know, or Alligator Alcatraz disappearing
Speaker 1: in the middle of the night. This is not legal.
Speaker 1: So then the idea is that you have to somehow
Speaker 1: punish the people who have cooked this all up. You
Speaker 1: have to punish the people who are protesting them. It
Speaker 1: doesn't seem in my mind that this is going to
Speaker 1: work for them. Agreed, You're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to get this to keep going like this.
Speaker 2: So the White House put out this really ridiculous order
Speaker 2: the other day called ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets,
Speaker 2: and it basically says that the cities and states need
Speaker 2: to remove homeless people from the streets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean this is this push and there's actually
Speaker 1: I mean, this is all of this stuff where Trump
Speaker 1: isn't pushes everyone to the right. So they say, we
Speaker 1: see it with Newsome also signed something. You know, you
Speaker 1: have a Supreme Court that clearly is so in the
Speaker 1: tank for Trump and Republicans. They don't care about civil
Speaker 1: liberties for people who are poor right homeless, as clearly
Speaker 1: that's where this is going. I do think it's interesting
Speaker 1: that Trump is clearly trying to distract and trying to
Speaker 1: ratchet things up. He wants to now send these people,
Speaker 1: to send them to substance abuse programs. Sure. I mean,
Speaker 1: as someone who's sober and who really does very much
Speaker 1: believe that you have to get people sober, and I
Speaker 1: don't believe in harm reduction. I actually think harm reduction
Speaker 1: can be really bad. It just seems to me that
Speaker 1: this is like not really what he wants to do,
Speaker 1: like that he doesn't really want to get people in
Speaker 1: rehab that he doesn't want to. You know, it's hard
Speaker 1: enough to do these things when you actually want to
Speaker 1: do them. It's harder when you don't really want to
Speaker 1: do them. Ali Vittally is the host of MSNBC is
Speaker 1: way too early. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Ali Vitale.
Speaker 3: World to be back here in Alijelfast.
Speaker 1: It's so fun to have you on my podcast because
Speaker 1: I feel like world's collide, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when MJ becomes the podcast, it's great.
Speaker 1: It's all it's all one mushy banana Republic. Can you
Speaker 1: explain to us what where we are? The House has
Speaker 1: gone home like about a week early, because why wouldn't they?
Speaker 1: And I mean really, it's because Mike Johnson has no
Speaker 1: idea how his members are going to vote.
Speaker 3: Right, It's because the Epstein bus that they drove and
Speaker 3: created is about to now run them over. And it
Speaker 3: manifested in Congress I think in a really fascinating way
Speaker 3: because it ground the entire house to a halt. Now,
Speaker 3: the dirty little secret here is that as much as
Speaker 3: they got out of town early, it's not like they
Speaker 3: had this massive list of two dues that they didn't
Speaker 3: get done. But really what happened is more of a
Speaker 3: commentary on the balancing act that the Speaker has to
Speaker 3: do here between his members who know that they've talked
Speaker 3: to their constituents for years about Epstein and the White House,
Speaker 3: who also talked to their constituents about Epstein for years
Speaker 3: now do not want to get held to release these documents,
Speaker 3: and that was the balancing act on display for the
Speaker 3: speaker and ultimately why he had to send his versus
Speaker 3: home early.
Speaker 1: That's right, and I would love to get into something
Speaker 1: a little bit nerdy as opposed to what we do,
Speaker 1: which is get into stuff which is very nerdy. So
Speaker 1: there's we are sort of barreling towards a government shutdown,
Speaker 1: which is the kind of backdrop of all of this.
Speaker 1: Republicans have passed this BBB, then they passed a recision
Speaker 1: package where they took they did funding for pep far
Speaker 1: but also took money away from PBS because it's important
Speaker 1: if you're going to do one good thing to do
Speaker 1: lots of other bad stuff while you're in there. And
Speaker 1: a lot of the PBS that's being punished, which I
Speaker 1: feel like is such a Trump thing, is like the
Speaker 1: PBS that's being punished is not the big PBS, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're going to lose little funding, but they'll survive.
Speaker 1: It's more going to be the tribal radio stations in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about how I just want because
Speaker 1: I'm setting it up for what I want to talk
Speaker 1: about next. Can you explain to us why this recision
Speaker 1: package was asked and a little bit about how unusual
Speaker 1: it is. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So I actually did an explainer video of this on
Speaker 3: Instagram of like what it means to do recisions because
Speaker 3: it's one of those Washington words that's a buzzword that
Speaker 3: I think people's eyes glaze over, and it's like meant
Speaker 3: to exclude people from understanding the process. And so basically
Speaker 3: what they did here through a recisions package is, yes,
Speaker 3: they have done these before. It usually happens at the
Speaker 3: end of a fiscal year when you're about to redo
Speaker 3: the budget or do a continuing resolution that just kind
Speaker 3: of keeps funding levels the same. Typically people look and
Speaker 3: they say, oh, well, there's eighty million dollars left over
Speaker 3: that this one agency didn't use, so we'll claw that back.
Speaker 3: That'll go back into the pot. What was weird about
Speaker 3: this recisions package and why it matters so much going
Speaker 3: forward is because recisions is a partisan mechanism. You can
Speaker 3: do it with just one party, as Republicans did to
Speaker 3: take back funds that both parties agreed to fund and
Speaker 3: appropriate in the first place. And so the reason that
Speaker 3: Recisions at this juncture is so important is because they
Speaker 3: did it in parts and fashion. Republicans for the first
Speaker 3: time ever midstream of a fiscal year clawed back funds
Speaker 3: that Congress had already appropriated. But they did it during
Speaker 3: budget season, mere weeks before both parties are supposed to
Speaker 3: come back together and bipartisanly negotiate another fiscal year package.
Speaker 3: So Democrats are now left in the position of saying,
Speaker 3: all right, we negotiated in bipartisan fashion, as we always do,
Speaker 3: in good faith, to keep the government open, to fund
Speaker 3: various government programs, and then y'all did an end run
Speaker 3: that took out everything that we wanted and negotiated for
Speaker 3: in that process to begin with. So what is the
Speaker 3: incentive then for Democrats to come back to the table
Speaker 3: in September and say, okay, we're going to negotiate in
Speaker 3: good faith, like everything's fine. And oh, by the way,
Speaker 3: the omb chief for US Vote, who was one of
Speaker 3: the key people pushing that first recisions package in the
Speaker 3: interim period, has said, I actually think that Congress's bipartisan
Speaker 3: funding processes should be way less by partisan and so
Speaker 3: that just gives Democrats even more of a reason to,
Speaker 3: if not question, then outright completely doubt that they should
Speaker 3: be at the negotiating table for this, which just meant
Speaker 3: that the odds of a government shutdown went way up.
Speaker 1: And Russvought, architect of Project twenty twenty five, wrote a
Speaker 1: bunch of it, and also is this sort of in
Speaker 1: Trump one point zero experimented with impoundment. Impoundment is the
Speaker 1: thing that the Nixon White House did. It's very sketchy.
Speaker 1: It's basically Congress puts money towards something and the president says, no,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do it.
Speaker 3: So the way that I explained this too, again like
Speaker 3: in my little Instagram explainer, is like, imagine you, me,
Speaker 3: and ten of our friends go on vacation. We all
Speaker 3: put money, We decide to put money in the pot
Speaker 3: to go to dinner every night, and then one person
Speaker 3: of us convinces all of us that that money that
Speaker 3: we said should go to dinner every night actually is
Speaker 3: just going to get clawed right on back. And some
Speaker 3: of us are mad and some of us are happy,
Speaker 3: but it's getting clawed back regardless. And so you're in
Speaker 3: this position then where everyone is still on the vacation,
Speaker 3: but that money back in the pot is now living
Speaker 3: somewhere else that doesn't go to dinner, but all of
Speaker 3: us still have to eat. So where does that then
Speaker 3: leave you? And the mechanism is based in law. This
Speaker 3: is not something that the administration is just doing, but
Speaker 3: it's a law that is not often used and not
Speaker 3: in this way. And that's what turns this on its head.
Speaker 1: And I think we see a lot of times in
Speaker 1: the Trump administration them using zombie laws to do crazy stuff.
Speaker 1: Like I've written about this a lot, like the commstock
Speaker 1: at had wasn't meant for methapristone, or it was in
Speaker 1: the eighteen hundreds, right, the Passikoma taitus was that alien
Speaker 1: enemies wasn't meant for that. Like just a lot of
Speaker 1: times these laws that were never repealed because no one
Speaker 1: ever thought they'd use them. Now you had this sort
Speaker 1: of the better Society crew put together a new way
Speaker 1: of using these laws.
Speaker 3: But this also strikes me. I remember when states like
Speaker 3: Arizona or Michigan in the aftermath of Dobbs repealed laws
Speaker 3: from their books that are from the eighteen hundreds that
Speaker 3: limited abortion. And I remember some casual political viewers saying
Speaker 3: to me, well, what's the point. We're not there anymore.
Speaker 3: It's not like they're going to use them. Here we
Speaker 3: are now, and you realize why Democratic groups did the
Speaker 3: work of making sure that they were closing loopholes that
Speaker 3: could otherwise be exploited, because I think you're right. And
Speaker 3: you know, when you start talking about procedures for doing
Speaker 3: things that are literally Latin, you know they're old, but
Speaker 3: then that must become a tatis act about like how
Speaker 3: federal troops can be moved into states. I mean, lawmakers
Speaker 3: were then immediately coming on my show and saying, but
Speaker 3: this is even more reason for us to have to
Speaker 3: reform the process. And so what we've seen with Trump
Speaker 3: time and again, and I think about the Electoral count Act,
Speaker 3: the reform Act that they did about three years ago
Speaker 3: between the Senate and the House in bipartisan fashions they.
Speaker 1: Had to do because yeah, because it was a loophole.
Speaker 3: Yes, exploit the process of what a vice president can
Speaker 3: and can't do, as well as some other things at
Speaker 3: the state level, like we've seen Trump continuously try to
Speaker 3: press through these loopholes and force the other institutions of
Speaker 3: government to legislate around them to patch them up. And
Speaker 3: this is the problem with a Congress that has been
Speaker 3: completely remade in Trump's image and is held as a
Speaker 3: majority just by one party, is that there is no
Speaker 3: impetus then or motivation to close the loopholes.
Speaker 1: Right, if anything, they want to open loopholes. I want
Speaker 1: to pull this to something else, which is that after
Speaker 1: nine to eleven, we put in place all of these
Speaker 1: emergency powers the Bush administration, and look, everyone was very
Speaker 1: freaked out, and there was a feeling it was very
Speaker 1: These emergency powers were actually quite popular. That's how he
Speaker 1: was able to put them in place. And they and
Speaker 1: as someone who lived in New York during nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: I know why because people are really scared and they
Speaker 1: were willing to give up their civil liberties because they
Speaker 1: were scared and they wanted to be safe, and they
Speaker 1: felt that was the only way to make the government safe.
Speaker 1: But what happened is a lot of those emergency powers
Speaker 1: are still in the box. So it's twenty years later
Speaker 1: and the government has way more power than it did
Speaker 1: in two thousand and one August of two thousand and one,
Speaker 1: So it does strike me that there really is if
Speaker 1: American democracy continues, on which we hope it will, and
Speaker 1: we have midterms that there will really be a kind
Speaker 1: of there's going to have to eventually be some kind
Speaker 1: of reckoning here or were completely screwed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but those are the stakes, right right. I think
Speaker 3: about Congress and the ways that this building was I think,
Speaker 3: in many ways just built on the etiquette of governing
Speaker 3: in small d democratic fashion, which meant bipartisan compromise and
Speaker 3: the common idea that if everyone was walking away from
Speaker 3: the table unhappy, but with something that was normal. And
Speaker 3: Trump's Washington and other Washington's have exploited this too. That's
Speaker 3: not to say that Republicans are the first people to
Speaker 3: take advantage of having both houses of power in Congress
Speaker 3: and the White House. Certainly that's how we got the
Speaker 3: Affordable Care Act and other mass pieces of legislation. It's
Speaker 3: just the motivation points are different, and Trump's is the
Speaker 3: first administration willing to not just exploit the loopholes, go
Speaker 3: full force on having majorities in the places that you
Speaker 3: need them, but then also bowl over all of the
Speaker 3: cultural and etiquette norms that typically govern Washington. And that's
Speaker 3: why it feels like it's so out of control. And
Speaker 3: without checks because that's no longer part of the permission
Speaker 3: structure here. If anything, no, it's knocked down. And if
Speaker 3: you were to embrace by partisanship, you know someone like
Speaker 3: Tom Tillis, for example, who's like, hey, I just got
Speaker 3: some questions, whether it's about the accept nomination or about
Speaker 3: the recisions package or whatever. Like you're ostracized from the
Speaker 3: party and ultimately have to make the choice not to
Speaker 3: run for reelection. Right, So like, yeah, it's a full
Speaker 3: party apparatus that now just supports administration. That is a feature,
Speaker 3: not a bug of it is to test all of
Speaker 3: the limits in culture, in media in Washington, and policymaking
Speaker 3: and funding in all of these different arenas.
Speaker 1: It does feel like all the guardrails that we had
Speaker 1: in the first Trump administration have been systematically just focused
Speaker 1: on and attacked and decimated. So, for example, while we
Speaker 1: have the CBS stuff, which I think is really important,
Speaker 1: So people listen to this podcasts on Saturday morning, thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, Love, And on Thursday we saw that
Speaker 1: the Trump FCC approved this guy dance murder that is
Speaker 1: conveniently right after the cancelation of Colbert.
Speaker 3: It was an interesting week of timing. I mean, that's
Speaker 3: fnal approval on that big merger. Right that has long
Speaker 3: been talked about as the motivation for CBS settling a
Speaker 3: lawsuit with Trump that hadn't gone to trial. I mean,
Speaker 3: the First Amendment right to edit an interview where the
Speaker 3: meaning wasn't fundamentally changed anyway, is so central, and every
Speaker 3: news organization does this in print or on television, and
Speaker 3: so again, like the dubious nature of that lawsuit to
Speaker 3: begin with is central here. But the fact that this
Speaker 3: merger went through a week after Colbert, I do think
Speaker 3: the part of this sort of runs counter is the
Speaker 3: way that we've seen Colbert, but also The Daily Show
Speaker 3: and now south Park be unflinching in their criticism not
Speaker 3: just of the President but of this deal that their
Speaker 3: parent company has done. Is a bright spot, I think.
Speaker 3: And as someone who sort of came into a love
Speaker 3: of news through a love of satirical news, I so
Speaker 3: appreciate what this little bastion of our industry is doing
Speaker 3: here because it's reminding people that there is a moral code.
Speaker 3: And for someone like South Park, for Matt Start and
Speaker 3: Trey Parker, who just got a one point five billion
Speaker 3: dollar deal for more episodes and to come in with
Speaker 3: the season premiere that they came in with, My jaw
Speaker 3: was on the floor the entire time. The way that
Speaker 3: as a longtime tilth Park watcher, they are now depicting
Speaker 3: the president of the United States in the way that
Speaker 3: they depicted the former president of the Rok Saddam Hussein
Speaker 3: laying in bed with is the jarring and so flooring
Speaker 3: and such a commentary on the times. But they are
Speaker 3: equal opportunity critics.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, there are.
Speaker 3: He's special because they're going after him, is not. They're
Speaker 3: missing the point.
Speaker 1: No, yeah, no, they hated Bush too. I mean what's
Speaker 1: so interesting, though, is you have so much of trump Ism.
Speaker 1: Is this very kind of one dimensional protect the leader.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like to be made fun of. He really
Speaker 1: doesn't like it, right he remember there was I think
Speaker 1: when they start off with the with the portrait in
Speaker 1: the Capitol of Colorado. He hated a portrait and he
Speaker 1: made them change it because he didn't like it, because
Speaker 1: he didn't like the way he was depicted. So there's
Speaker 1: so many of these like very kind of kitchy, almost
Speaker 1: Mussolini esque kind of tropes that are from other times.
Speaker 1: And to watch this be exploited. I mean, I was
Speaker 1: watching it and I was like, oh my god, Trump's
Speaker 1: going to send them to Seacott.
Speaker 3: I don't think I went quite that far, but I
Speaker 3: knew but it was going to be some kind of
Speaker 3: a conniption. And I'm frankly surprised you haven't seen more
Speaker 3: of a reaction. But if they've got fifty forty nine
Speaker 3: more of those public service announcements like they aired at
Speaker 3: the end of that program, I'm like, yeah, I don't.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't even know what we could be
Speaker 3: in for.
Speaker 1: It's interesting to me because so much of what happened
Speaker 1: in this twenty four election and even in the twenty
Speaker 1: sixteen election that worked for Trump was he got in
Speaker 1: the culture, and the culture was downstream into politics, right,
Speaker 1: So we got in that. You got the Milk Boys
Speaker 1: and the you know, Joe Rogan and people who were
Speaker 1: leading the culture. And his obsession with cable news was
Speaker 1: always his obsession with like, you get in the culture,
Speaker 1: you can get the zepstream, you can win office. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been so central. And so I actually to
Speaker 3: bring this conversation into straight connection with the story that
Speaker 3: we have only been talking about here in Washington, which
Speaker 3: is Jeffrey Epstein. Like I would put the Epstein story
Speaker 3: if I were to put it in a column under
Speaker 3: like the entertainment culture aspect. Right, it's a legal story,
Speaker 3: but like it's not a politics story. It has political tangents,
Speaker 3: but like it is a culture story. It is a
Speaker 3: story about a country that mistrusts institutions. And my first
Speaker 3: assignment in politics was covering the first Trump campaign. Right,
Speaker 3: his central grievance was as an outsider who wanted to
Speaker 3: bring transparency and wipe out the swamp. And he was
Speaker 3: that crusader for the everyman. And I think that the
Speaker 3: awareness that the Epstein saga has brought to the larger
Speaker 3: political population is like the guy who was masquerading as
Speaker 3: an everyman is not. And also he's protecting all of
Speaker 3: the other non everyman who are part of this Epstein episode.
Speaker 3: And so I think that's why this has stuck around
Speaker 3: for so long, because it was like the central current
Speaker 3: that Trump ran on from the very beginning was grievance
Speaker 3: against the machine, the establishment, the institutions. And now it's
Speaker 3: always been clear, but like it's extra clear. I think
Speaker 3: even to Maga that you cannot be an outsider still
Speaker 3: and be president of the United States. You probably weren't
Speaker 3: even an outsider when you were just a very wealthy
Speaker 3: reality TV real estate guy, but like now it's much
Speaker 3: more out in the open.
Speaker 1: And I wonder if the cardinal sin of Epstein is
Speaker 1: obviously the many many victims. And I thought Lawrence did
Speaker 1: a really great episode on where they read about that,
Speaker 1: where you just heard it and you're like, oh my god,
Speaker 1: because this sort of fundamentals of these fourteen year old
Speaker 1: girls aging out at eighteen like that is just horrific.
Speaker 1: But I wondered if the thing that his basis so
Speaker 1: stuck on is the idea that this really shows without
Speaker 1: a doubt that he was in a world with Bill Clinton,
Speaker 1: with Jeffrey you know, with all of these academics, with
Speaker 1: all these people who he said he was not in
Speaker 1: the world with, you know, like it's not just the
Speaker 1: exposure of possible stuff with children, which is horrendous, but
Speaker 1: it's really this idea. There's so many pictures of them
Speaker 1: at parties at clubs that you know, it's like here
Speaker 1: I am, I'm going to bring it down, and also
Speaker 1: here I am in a photo.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and proximity is not criminal right, right, no question,
Speaker 3: and Bill Clinton has put out a statement about it.
Speaker 3: I mean we've seen multiple iterations, right, and that's true
Speaker 3: for Trump too, writ right, it is embarrassing and it
Speaker 3: does come at a societal and cost of respect. And
Speaker 3: for Trump that respect is such a central currency. It
Speaker 3: was a large the motivation that he had for running
Speaker 3: for office and then bringing the Republican Party to heal
Speaker 3: and then trying to bend culture to his will.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: So like it's always been a very central thought process
Speaker 3: and lends. But I think you're right that we're not
Speaker 3: talking about the embarrassment cost. And it ties back to
Speaker 3: what you were talking about when we were discussing that
Speaker 3: South Park, Right. If he doesn't like the portrayal, portrait
Speaker 3: or figurative otherwise, that's a problem for him. And so
Speaker 3: I think that's the bow that ties all of these
Speaker 3: seemingly disparate threads together, and it connects back to the
Speaker 3: Maga base that you know, we were talking this morning
Speaker 3: on Morning Joe about the idea that this is a
Speaker 3: base that has stayed together under the banner of Trump.
Speaker 3: It has really been a cult of personality for nine years,
Speaker 3: and he himself has been the unifier, but it's about
Speaker 3: to splinter because it's no longer going to be on ballots,
Speaker 3: and MAGA is going to have to find a new
Speaker 3: standard bearer. And already there's a dozen people who are
Speaker 3: vying for that, quietly, privately and out of the line light.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Ali, vitally so smart. I feel smarter after this conversation.
Speaker 1: I know you're always talking to you. Ari Astor is
Speaker 1: the director of bo Is Afraid, Midsummer and the new
Speaker 1: movie Eddington. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: All right, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: You have like kind of the dream career. I think
Speaker 1: so much about how culture influences politics, how much movies matter,
Speaker 1: and why the rights has been for so long so
Speaker 1: obsessed with movies and the culture and getting a handle
Speaker 1: on them. You have this incredible career, and I want
Speaker 1: you to explain how you got it.
Speaker 4: I would say I tend to follow my impulses and
Speaker 4: do what I feel is interesting to me. And I've
Speaker 4: sort of made a point of not being strategic, which
Speaker 4: I might need to be that's quite soon. But I
Speaker 4: have found that when I do think strategically right, like, well,
Speaker 4: you know, when I start thinking about, you know, whatever,
Speaker 4: what the market wants what people want, I just lose
Speaker 4: all energy. I can't summon the energy to even get going.
Speaker 4: So ultimately, I just need to be kind of possessed
Speaker 4: by something and I need to have like a problem
Speaker 4: I need to kind of solve for myself. And sometimes
Speaker 4: that's just like an image that I can't banish from
Speaker 4: my mind or and sometimes it's an idea that I
Speaker 4: need to kind of work through, find my way, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of move through the guts of something and come
Speaker 4: out of it.
Speaker 1: Eddington is this movie that is political and artistic and
Speaker 1: all of the things. How did you get involved in this?
Speaker 1: Like was it COVID just sort of get us to
Speaker 1: how you got involved in this? You had this idea, Well.
Speaker 4: It came out of living in the world and feeling
Speaker 4: that I was in hell and wanting to try to
Speaker 4: get my hand around it. And so you know, it's
Speaker 4: it's a movie about what this moment feels like to me,
Speaker 4: what America feels like. I'm trying to pull back as
Speaker 4: far as I can and describe the structure of reality
Speaker 4: at the moment, which seems to be that you know,
Speaker 4: nobody can agree on anything or on what is happening,
Speaker 4: and where you know, everybody is more or less kind
Speaker 4: of unreachable to each other, even if you share the
Speaker 4: same like politics, we're all kind of fortressed off. And
Speaker 4: I wrote the movie in a state of fear and
Speaker 4: anxiety and dread, and that dread has only increased since
Speaker 4: writing it and since making it. And then at the
Speaker 4: same time, I, you know, I'm a genre filmmaker, and
Speaker 4: I wanted to make something fun and exciting and surprising.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, which I feel like is a
Speaker 1: the media was, and it's a theme I deal with
Speaker 1: not so much in my art but in my life.
Speaker 1: Feeling Dad is a particularly dark moment in American life.
Speaker 1: COVID was also a dark moment in American life. It
Speaker 1: was dark, but it was I don't know for me.
Speaker 1: I'd had a grandfather who had lived through the nineteen
Speaker 1: eighteen flu pandemic. I sort of felt that there was
Speaker 1: even if it was something I had not ever lived through.
Speaker 1: You know, I find a lot of comfort to history
Speaker 1: through the fact that, like, none of this is unprecedented,
Speaker 1: but this is harder, this moment now.
Speaker 4: Well, because this is in many ways unprecedented. We've never
Speaker 4: been here in this country. A lot of things are
Speaker 4: coalescing right now that are new, and it feels like
Speaker 4: we are living through the collapse of something and I'm
Speaker 4: not seeing any real countervailing force against that. So it's
Speaker 4: just kind of happening at the moment, and I feel
Speaker 4: that something else is coming, and you know, big tech
Speaker 4: and finance are ushering these things in, and they also
Speaker 4: seem to be the ones who are warning us, and
Speaker 4: I think they think that that abdicates them from like,
Speaker 4: you know, responsibility, where they're saying like, look, we're telling
Speaker 4: you this could be disastrous, like you know, so just
Speaker 4: sty and it's like, well, so we should do it.
Speaker 1: But we're gonna do it anyway. It could be disastrous,
Speaker 1: but you understand we're gonna do whatever corrupt thing it
Speaker 1: is anyway because vibes.
Speaker 4: Which is human nature, you know, which is like, you know,
Speaker 4: if we can, we will, And we've been telling stories
Speaker 4: about this for I was gonna say decades, but really centuries,
Speaker 4: you know, I mean the Genie model. If we can,
Speaker 4: we will, and here we are and we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's amazing and so dark. Do you think because
Speaker 1: I think this, that COVID got us to this moment?
Speaker 4: No, I think COVID was an inflection point. I think
Speaker 4: we were already on this path because we were already
Speaker 4: living in the Internet, we were living on our phones,
Speaker 4: we were all kind of like in our algorithms. You know,
Speaker 4: we're already siloed off. It feels like the moment at
Speaker 4: which we became kind of stranded there, you know, because
Speaker 4: our public lives became on hold, and suddenly feels like
Speaker 4: whatever link we were like holding on to that, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of tethered us to that old world before all
Speaker 4: of this, it feels like that was severed during COVID,
Speaker 4: Like lockdown is over, but we're still living in the
Speaker 4: process of whatever began there. And I think that's why
Speaker 4: it's hard to talk about it is because we haven't
Speaker 4: metabolized it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So in this movie you explore a lot of
Speaker 1: the ideas of what like politics look like during COVID, right,
Speaker 1: the politics of lockdowns, the politics of all of that.
Speaker 1: Did it give you more clarity about sort of COVID?
Speaker 1: Did you feel you got like, I just wrote this
Speaker 1: book about my childhood and my parents and all sorts
Speaker 1: of shit like that, and in it, for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: I did actually feel I sort of understood things better
Speaker 1: when I was finished with it, which I kind of
Speaker 1: bristle it because I always feel like if it's art,
Speaker 1: it shouldn't work for you emotionally, like things shouldn't be
Speaker 1: two things, they should only be one thing, and that
Speaker 1: you shouldn't But for whatever reason, for me, it gave
Speaker 1: me a lot of clarity. Did you find you got
Speaker 1: clarity from writing this making this movie and also did
Speaker 1: it change the way you think of that period?
Speaker 4: Well? I think part of why I began the project
Speaker 4: was because I did want to grapple with it, and
Speaker 4: I did want to understand it, and I think, you know,
Speaker 4: and because I was really afraid. I am really afraid
Speaker 4: of what is happening, and I think best way to
Speaker 4: deal with that fear is to try to understand it.
Speaker 4: But no, if you know, I mean, but also the
Speaker 4: movie is also just trying to describe what that at
Speaker 4: the sphere is and what it feels like, and so
Speaker 4: in some ways, you know, the film is there's something
Speaker 4: maybe like bordering on the diagnostic, but there's no like,
Speaker 4: I don't know what the remedy is, right. If anything,
Speaker 4: I wanted to dramatize this cacophony that we're in and
Speaker 4: we're all yelling over each other at each other, and
Speaker 4: we're trying to make we have points to make, but
Speaker 4: at the same time we're being kind of pummeled twenty
Speaker 4: four to seven by messaging, and we're being filled with stuff.
Speaker 4: It sometimes becomes hard to see anything that's become ambient.
Speaker 4: And if anything, I wanted to, you know, kind of
Speaker 4: dramatize that kind of incoherent miasma and then give a
Speaker 4: sense of something that is maybe you know, hovering above it,
Speaker 4: that is operating independently of all these stories, and that
Speaker 4: is ultimately changing all of these people without them quite
Speaker 4: being able to gauge the magnitude of that change that's
Speaker 4: happening right now.
Speaker 1: Everyone is very scared to talk about politics, like there
Speaker 1: are very few people who are brave right now for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. Why are you one of them? And why
Speaker 1: am I one of them?
Speaker 4: Look, I don't know if I'm brave. I just know
Speaker 4: that huge things are happening right now. It's a very
Speaker 4: scary time. I don't understand where we are. I don't
Speaker 4: know where we're going, but I have a feeling about
Speaker 4: where we're headed. And I didn't know how I could
Speaker 4: make any other movie at this moment, and look, it
Speaker 4: is a period piece, it's looking back. But I started
Speaker 4: writing it in twenty twenty. When I first started writing it,
Speaker 4: it was right up to the minute, and then I realized, like,
Speaker 4: we're living in a time where everything moves way too fast,
Speaker 4: nothing lasts, everything is replaced immediately by something new. And
Speaker 4: I knew that if I tried to like get my
Speaker 4: hands around anything contemporary, I would kind of need to
Speaker 4: just like lock in, especially if I'm trying to something
Speaker 4: that it's not like invented, and a lot of this
Speaker 4: movie invented. The stories are, but I knew that I
Speaker 4: was just gonna have to choose like a week, and
Speaker 4: it felt like it felt like that particular week where
Speaker 4: I started writing, something was in the air that I
Speaker 4: that was very distinct. I hadn't felt it before. It
Speaker 4: was familiar, but everything was fraught in a new way.
Speaker 4: It felt like things had reached like a boiling point
Speaker 4: and the only thing that could happen next if things
Speaker 4: were allowed to kind of stay at this like fever pitch,
Speaker 4: and if people were going to continue to be agitated
Speaker 4: in this way, was things were going to lead to violence.
Speaker 4: And I didn't know if it was going to happen tomorrow.
Speaker 4: I didn't know if it was going to happen, you know,
Speaker 4: within years. But it just felt like, okay, this is
Speaker 4: if nobody like decelerates this like we're in real danger here.
Speaker 4: And so that's when I started writing it. And it
Speaker 4: was helpful to be able to say, Okay, it's this week,
Speaker 4: it's it's late May early June twenty twenty. And for
Speaker 4: that week, I started a bunch of burner accounts on Twitter,
Speaker 4: and I got myself into a bunch of different algorithms,
Speaker 4: and I found that I could not get myself out
Speaker 4: of any of them, which was scary.
Speaker 1: What does that mean? Exactly? Like, once you started getting
Speaker 1: a certain kind of information, you couldn't try to get
Speaker 1: different information.
Speaker 4: I could maybe get some different information, I couldn't stop
Speaker 4: perceiving a certain kind of information, you know. And I
Speaker 4: would get myself into several different you know, one that
Speaker 4: would be you know, very kind of very left. Then
Speaker 4: I would go down like a more kind of traditional
Speaker 4: conservative rabbit hole. Then I'd go down like a Nazi
Speaker 4: rabbit hole, and I couldn't get myself out of any
Speaker 4: of them. And another really important part of making this was,
Speaker 4: I guess writing it was going out to New Mexico,
Speaker 4: which is where I'm from, which is where the film
Speaker 4: film is set, driving around the state and meeting a
Speaker 4: lot of people, going to different counties, talking to sheriffs,
Speaker 4: going to different small towns and talking to mayors, police chiefs,
Speaker 4: public officials, going to pueblos, and just getting a really
Speaker 4: broad but also human picture of the state, which the
Speaker 4: state is an interesting microcosm for America because it's a
Speaker 4: blue state, but all of it, but most of its
Speaker 4: small towns, are red. And it was just important to
Speaker 4: get away from myself in that sense. I wasn't just
Speaker 4: playing with army men, and so I wasn't just dealing
Speaker 4: with the algorithms, but I was also dealing with the
Speaker 4: effects that those algorithms were having on all these people,
Speaker 4: because all these people are really living on the internet,
Speaker 4: especially in the small towns.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you about New Mexico because
Speaker 1: I also have a real relationship with the state, and
Speaker 1: we had we actually had someone on from the government
Speaker 1: the New Mexican elected there who right before the election,
Speaker 1: and he said he thought, for shir Harris was going
Speaker 1: to lose that he saw a lot of New Mexicans
Speaker 1: who just were going for Trump, and Jesse and I
Speaker 1: both were like old shit. Really, I wondered if you
Speaker 1: could talk about, like, New Mexico is such an interesting
Speaker 1: state because it's a blue state. It has a lot
Speaker 1: of guns, right, a lot of guns, like a lot
Speaker 1: of guns, a lot of murder. It has a lot
Speaker 1: of red stuff. It has also a lot of weirdness,
Speaker 1: Like it's just a genuinely weird, you know, I think
Speaker 1: in a wonderful, spiritual, strange way. You know, it's got
Speaker 1: the lightning, it's got the aliens, it's got it all.
Speaker 1: But it's also very small. And the fact that you're
Speaker 1: saying people are so online in these small towns is
Speaker 1: kind of I mean, I guess it makes sense, but
Speaker 1: it just is surprising to me because there's just not
Speaker 1: a ton of infrastructure to get online.
Speaker 4: Well, we're all very online. It's very difficult to extricate
Speaker 4: yourself from the system. I also found that it was
Speaker 4: very useful to meet a lot of these people because
Speaker 4: at the time of writing the film and directing it
Speaker 4: and shooting it, you know, Biden was president. The governor
Speaker 4: of New Mexico is a Democrat and is a figure
Speaker 4: of controversy. Yeah, And I found that I was talking
Speaker 4: to a lot of people on the right who you know,
Speaker 4: did not hold the same convictions as me, but they
Speaker 4: were passionate, and they were really upset, and they felt
Speaker 4: ignored and they felt condescended to and I found them
Speaker 4: just on a human level. I found them, you know,
Speaker 4: quite compelling and interesting, and I liked a lot of them.
Speaker 4: And then a lot of the people I was meeting
Speaker 4: who were on the left were very satisfied with the
Speaker 4: status quo, were very dismissive sometimes like kind of smugly
Speaker 4: dismissive of any concerns that contradicted their talking points. And
Speaker 4: I found that they were giving me a lot of
Speaker 4: talking points as opposed talking to me as a person.
Speaker 4: And that was really useful too, to see, like, you know,
Speaker 4: what if I make a film that is like that
Speaker 4: does not reflect this experience as well, Like I'm failing
Speaker 4: in a very serious way, because there is a reason
Speaker 4: that things are moving in this direction. And I felt
Speaker 4: the same you did. At the end of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 4: I was like, I see where this is going, and
Speaker 4: I think there are a lot of reasons for that.
Speaker 4: One of The biggest was Biden taking so long to
Speaker 4: step down. But we've been stuck in the same system,
Speaker 4: with the same basic people for a long time, and
Speaker 4: Trump was always a response to that system, and to
Speaker 4: not respond to Trump with something new was always going
Speaker 4: to be a very big mistake. There's going to be
Speaker 4: a long post mortem on this one, but I.
Speaker 1: Think you're right, and I mean again, it's the left's
Speaker 1: rejection of economic populism, right, I mean, left hand opportunity
Speaker 1: with Sanders in twenty sixteen to go along with with populism,
Speaker 1: and it decided it was too scary, and so that's
Speaker 1: how we got here. And Biden was a candidate that
Speaker 1: people thought people wouldn't vote against. That that was the
Speaker 1: thinking I think. I mean, to watch a party struggle
Speaker 1: with wanting to have it both ways, to wanting to
Speaker 1: be for working people but also protect very wealthy people.
Speaker 1: I don't know that you can thread that needle. And
Speaker 1: in fact, what we see with trump Ism is Trump
Speaker 1: pretends to be for working people, but ultimately, I mean,
Speaker 1: the two fractions want totally different things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and so there's a futility there that I wanted
Speaker 4: to be in the movie, to be felt in the.
Speaker 1: Movie What are you going to do next?
Speaker 4: I'm trying to figure that out. But there are a
Speaker 4: lot of old projects that I've had in my back
Speaker 4: pocket that just feel less pertinent right now. It just
Speaker 4: feels like I feel like there's a tendency to retreat
Speaker 4: into the past when the present is like really unpleasant
Speaker 4: and when the future is something that's hard to even
Speaker 4: look at or fathom. That manifests in like two big ways,
Speaker 4: which is either nostalgia for the past or an obsession
Speaker 4: with trauma to explain the present like, well, this happens,
Speaker 4: That's why I'm here, and then getting stuck in that loop.
Speaker 4: And I want to see if there's a way to
Speaker 4: not do that in my own work. And I think
Speaker 4: this was an attempt at that, and that's what I
Speaker 4: want to do, because I think the moment is I've
Speaker 4: never lived through anything like this. I've never had this
Speaker 4: relationship to the future that I have now, which is
Speaker 4: that I don't really believe in it.
Speaker 1: You don't believe it's going to happen, or you don't
Speaker 1: believe it's going to be good.
Speaker 4: I don't believe it's going to be good.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that too, And a big part of it.
Speaker 4: Is because there are no countervailing ideas, Like there are
Speaker 4: no ideas for the future that feel like possibilities in
Speaker 4: contrast to the track we're on, the trajectory that we're on.
Speaker 4: And I think it's also because we're so like the
Speaker 4: system is so fixed, even as in some ways it's
Speaker 4: being you know, dismantled. Where there is power, it's too big.
Speaker 4: It's like it's just we're completely dwarfed and we're stuck
Speaker 4: in a system that that you know, was given to
Speaker 4: us by that big power. I mean, even this right now,
Speaker 4: this conversation we're having, it's going to be on Spotify
Speaker 4: and it's going to be on It's going to be
Speaker 4: on a rhythm. And I think a big part of
Speaker 4: this is that the idea of collective action is like
Speaker 4: beyond reaching. It's not even a possibility. But how, you know,
Speaker 4: how could that change? I don't know.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm sorry to get into asking you questions that
Speaker 1: were not answerable, but I'm really glad you tried to
Speaker 1: answer them.
Speaker 4: Thanks thanks for having me and.
Speaker 1: No full Jesse Cannon, my.
Speaker 2: Junk fast, Tulsa Gabbert, a person who I can't believe
Speaker 2: anyone ever had faith in doing the right thing. Is
Speaker 2: pushing the debunked Russian propaganda that Obama came after. Glorious,
Speaker 2: mister Trump, I'm going to shock you here. It's really
Speaker 2: easy to show that what she's citing is objectively false.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this has been debunked already. I actually think
Speaker 1: it's like a weird democratic conspiracy theory to make the
Speaker 1: lamest case possible so that it's clearly not anything. Tulsea
Speaker 1: Gabbert says that Hillary Clinton was taking a daily regime
Speaker 1: of heavy tranquilizers while she was Secretary of State. I
Speaker 1: keep having conversations with people about whether or not the
Speaker 1: stupidness of this will unravel it before they end American democracy,
Speaker 1: and it's like fifty to fifty right now. But there
Speaker 1: really is a lot of stupid crap going on here,
Speaker 1: and this is really a good example of it. My
Speaker 1: favorite part is that Gabber keeps quoting from different sources.
Speaker 1: She's not that organized. She has a lot of conspiracies
Speaker 1: about Clinton and tranquoisers also, and then Barack Obama doing treason.
Speaker 1: I want to say one last thing about Hillary Clinton.
Speaker 1: She is not president. She is not running for president
Speaker 1: at this point. I think it's really fair to say
Speaker 1: she will never be president, and I don't think Obama
Speaker 1: is going to be president again either, So talk about
Speaker 1: fighting the last battle. That's it. That's all I have
Speaker 1: to say. And now let me bang my head on
Speaker 1: my desk.
Speaker 2: You don't believe in harm reduction? Huh.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this post, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. Thanks for listening.