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 one hundred and twenty eight Democrats
Speaker 1: across the aisle to help Republicans block Al Green's bid
Speaker 1: to impeach Trump. We have such a great show for
Speaker 1: you today, the Think Like an Economists podcast. Justin Wolfers
Speaker 1: joins us to talk about trade. Then we'll talk to
Speaker 1: Fair Votes David Daily about why rank choice voting is
Speaker 1: actually amazing and should be everywhere.
Speaker 2: But first the news, Molly, I have to say, in
Speaker 2: our years of dealing with politics, I don't think I've
Speaker 2: ever seen New York City's elites with their bed like
Speaker 2: they have today over zor on Mom Donnie getting the
Speaker 2: Democratic nomination era. It seems the business world and the
Speaker 2: Democratic establishment are well, really really overdoing the drama about
Speaker 2: what this means.
Speaker 1: It is unbelievably crazy how angry things people are.
Speaker 3: Here's what's happening. A lot of people.
Speaker 1: Are worried that he's going to raise taxes, and that
Speaker 1: is really what's happening. I think there are some people
Speaker 1: who are worried he's not sufficiently pro Israel enough, but
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the mayor of New York has
Speaker 1: to do with Israel particularly, but a well known investor
Speaker 1: deleted an ex post suggesting mon Donnie's win was a
Speaker 1: nightmare for billionaire investors, name checking Bloomberg, Ackman, and Low.
Speaker 1: It wasn't me who did that, but it could have been. Look,
Speaker 1: a lot of very rich people are already saying they're
Speaker 1: going to move to Florida.
Speaker 3: If I had a dollar for every.
Speaker 1: Time wealthy people got mad and said they were going
Speaker 1: to move, I would have a lot of dollars.
Speaker 2: You'd have a lot because there was actually a study
Speaker 2: on this one. The last time they said it when
Speaker 2: Bill de Bungler got elected and guess what, we got
Speaker 2: even more of them here.
Speaker 1: Yes, Now, I want to caution because you and I
Speaker 1: both are Mom and Donnie curious.
Speaker 2: I'm a little more than curious.
Speaker 1: You're maybe a little less curious, but I'm very curious
Speaker 1: about him, and I have a lot of optimism about this.
Speaker 3: That's all I say.
Speaker 1: But we do want to note that being mayor is
Speaker 1: really fucking hard.
Speaker 3: And you know, it's a lot of shit that you.
Speaker 1: Have to do, and sometimes we get excited and then
Speaker 1: people can't do it now. I don't think that's going
Speaker 1: to be the case here. But no one has ever
Speaker 1: been mayor who has ever gone on to anything.
Speaker 3: It's just a fact.
Speaker 2: As you and I have discussed many times, it's not
Speaker 2: a job you leave being popular as New York City mayor.
Speaker 2: It's just doesn't go so well for your approval.
Speaker 1: And in my mind, that's the scariest part about this win.
Speaker 1: But he obviously wants it, and he's quite a gifted politician.
Speaker 1: So we're just gonna all keep our fingers and toes crossed.
Speaker 1: But Fox News, I just want everyone to be aware,
Speaker 1: is now going to go full core press on New
Speaker 1: York City being a houscape and anything they did to
Speaker 1: Eric Adams is going to be one hundred times worse
Speaker 1: to Zoran.
Speaker 2: That's funny because Eric Adams was just on news Max
Speaker 2: because he knows which folks he's running for. So yes,
Speaker 2: it's going to be a very wild ride from here
Speaker 2: to November.
Speaker 3: It's going to be a terrible general election. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I would really encourage a lot of people to, instead
Speaker 2: of reading propaganda from campaigns, actually read some quotes that
Speaker 2: some people say, because boy, have I never seen misinformation
Speaker 2: fly like the last two days on Twitter.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And I would also suggest not reading the New York
Speaker 1: Post as much as we love page six. You know,
Speaker 1: we have one local paper, it's a New York Post.
Speaker 2: We have two, we have two. Come only news does exist?
Speaker 1: Okay, we have one local paper, it's the New York Post.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: Look, I like the Daily News much more ideologically aligned
Speaker 1: with that. But you know, don't read it. Okay, just
Speaker 1: read page six and throw the rest of the thing out.
Speaker 2: Okay, I'm going to get us onto another subject.
Speaker 3: You're not going to cut that out.
Speaker 2: Man.
Speaker 3: If one thing put.
Speaker 2: On, the listeners will be we be hearing that. Bali
Speaker 2: jug Fast endorses page.
Speaker 1: Six, indorses page six, but tells you to throw the
Speaker 1: rest of the newspaper, and then you're opposed to out.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay. So Trump is going to limit sharing classified
Speaker 2: info with Congress after the week on I Red's bombing
Speaker 2: damage because he's very upset that everybody found out that
Speaker 2: he bungled this.
Speaker 1: If you can't read the headline without laughing, then it's
Speaker 1: a Donald Trump headline. So I just want to point
Speaker 1: out I know that there have been other things going on,
Speaker 1: but let's just go through this again. Trump on Saturday decides, unprovoked,
Speaker 1: that he is going to bomb a Rand's nuclear site.
Speaker 1: Maybe he does it because he was watching Fox News.
Speaker 1: Maybe he does it because Net and Yahoo makes him
Speaker 1: want to do it.
Speaker 3: Who even what lurks in the mind of Donald Trump.
Speaker 1: But whatever he does, he decides to bomb the nuclear
Speaker 1: sites in Iran.
Speaker 3: He tweets about it a lot.
Speaker 1: He decide they have numerous planes going over there, they
Speaker 1: have decoys. Now we don't know. Trump said he destroyed
Speaker 1: all of the nukes and that he's the greatest president ever.
Speaker 1: He also said that he's six four and has a
Speaker 1: full head of natural hair, and that gets that color
Speaker 1: from the sun. Okay, so I'm gonna say a lot
Speaker 1: of the reporting I've read shows that maybe they're back
Speaker 1: a few months.
Speaker 3: Maybe they're not.
Speaker 1: Maybe some of the nukes are in other places. Maybe
Speaker 1: Aran doesn't know where they are. I mean, this has
Speaker 1: not solved anyone's problems. It's made life a little more dangerous.
Speaker 1: Then a Monday, Trump declared a ceasefire. Again, not entirely
Speaker 1: clear if there is a ceasefire, because when you have
Speaker 1: a white house like this, you can't believe anything they say.
Speaker 1: But the point of all of this is Iran probably
Speaker 1: not very you know, probably would have been better just
Speaker 1: to have kept them in the nuclear deal like Obama did.
Speaker 1: This doesn't make any sense. And also Trump now embarrassed
Speaker 1: and trying to cover for himself, and so he's trying
Speaker 1: to leak the information that's given to Congress in the
Speaker 1: hopes that he will look better in the press. Again,
Speaker 1: I just want to point out, this is so fucked Okay,
Speaker 1: this is not how any of this is supposed to work.
Speaker 1: This is just a completely bad, bad, very dysfunctional way
Speaker 1: to run a country.
Speaker 2: Strongly, so we now have seen Nancy Pelosi backing a
Speaker 2: Democratic effort to limit Trump on Oran and going to war.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting to hear this bipartisan support for this,
Speaker 2: but don't know where it's going. What are you seeing?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, it's very scary to think that someone
Speaker 1: as autocratic, curious Trump is very aggressive and very angry
Speaker 1: and hard to reason with. And this seems like a
Speaker 1: very worrying turn of events. And bombing the nukes is
Speaker 1: you know, this was an unprovoked assault on another country
Speaker 1: that was not run through Congress the way it's supposed
Speaker 1: to be. So Congress has so given up everything to
Speaker 1: have this presidency. They have really just refused to hold
Speaker 1: Trump accountable. They did not do due diligence with his
Speaker 1: cabinet members. They did not, you know, at every point,
Speaker 1: they just gave away their power. So anything that Congress
Speaker 1: does to take back a little bit of power I
Speaker 1: think is very good. Congress should grow a spine. And
Speaker 1: by the way, the fact that there's only one person
Speaker 1: who's really standing up to Trump on the Republican side,
Speaker 1: Thomas Massey and Rand Paul. You know, you may not
Speaker 1: like them, you may not agree with them, but those
Speaker 1: guys have done way more than Susan Collins.
Speaker 2: Yes, sounds right. So Molly, you're going to be shocked
Speaker 2: to hear that there's some corrupt dealing inside the House
Speaker 2: of the White House. This time it's Stephen Miller, who
Speaker 2: turns out owns a quarter of a million dollars of
Speaker 2: Pollunteer stock. That's the high end estiment, I should say.
Speaker 2: And Pollunteer, of course, is being contracted to do work
Speaker 2: with Ice.
Speaker 1: No, no, it cannot be. Pollenteer is getting a lot
Speaker 1: of government contracts. We've had so many guests on this podcast,
Speaker 1: who have told us about the many, many, many government
Speaker 1: contracts that volunteer has gotten. Look the idea that you
Speaker 1: could profit while serving your country. This is what Trump
Speaker 1: wanted in from one point zero and has perfected in
Speaker 1: Trump two point zero, which is this kind of low
Speaker 1: level cryptocracy. Now that said Miller doesn't have a ton
Speaker 1: of palateer stock. He has somewhere between one hundred and
Speaker 1: two one hundred and fifty thousand dollars worth of pounder stock.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is like the Elon musk Lesson.
Speaker 1: We know pollunteer data intelligence mining software. They're not the
Speaker 1: good guys, okay, And just like with Elon, we're setting
Speaker 1: ourselves up so that the government is going to be
Speaker 1: dependent on a company that is at best nefarious. Justin
Speaker 1: Wolfers is the host of the Think Like an Economist
Speaker 1: podcast and a professor at the University of Michigan.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Fast Politics, Justin Wolfers.
Speaker 4: He Molly, I thought we're going to rename it fast Economics.
Speaker 3: That's right.
Speaker 1: We're in this such a fucked up moment in American life.
Speaker 1: You came on a lot to talk about the trade wars.
Speaker 1: We've now won the trade wars, So that's over.
Speaker 5: That was the war the wolf, the trade fl is
Speaker 5: who I'm going for those of us.
Speaker 1: Who have not been living and breathing Donald Trump ruining
Speaker 1: our economy. Talk to us about where we are right now?
Speaker 4: Great question, because actually it's very, very hard to read.
Speaker 4: So what I want to do is draw a distinction
Speaker 4: between what economists call hard data. These are the numbers
Speaker 4: that come out of the government, and it's things like
Speaker 4: how much we produce, how many people are employed, what
Speaker 4: are they paid, what's rolling off the production line, versus
Speaker 4: soft data when you go and ask people how they feel,
Speaker 4: and it could be as simple as like are you
Speaker 4: optimistic about the future of the economy, But it could
Speaker 4: also be asking a business like do you plan to
Speaker 4: invest a lot? So soft data and hard data, it's
Speaker 4: not a strong distinction, but it's it's important. It turns
Speaker 4: out right now the soft data are incredibly weak, unbelievably weak.
Speaker 4: In a recession week, you ask people about their own finances,
Speaker 4: their families, finances, their expectations for their business, they're miserable.
Speaker 4: You'll sometimes see some headlines which is business confidence rose,
Speaker 4: but that's because it rose from like horrific to terrible.
Speaker 4: So remember, don't think about rise and fall, think about
Speaker 4: where we are. So the soft data there is miserable.
Speaker 4: The hard data is not. Now it's it's not ecstatic,
Speaker 4: but it's basically saying we're in a pretty good economy
Speaker 4: where we were in a great position when Trump came
Speaker 4: to power, and things have kept going. The unemployment rate
Speaker 4: was low, it's still low. The number of people who
Speaker 4: have jobs is still growing. The economy had a bit
Speaker 4: of a blip, maybe not so much. Now here's the problem.
Speaker 4: It's a really deep problem. Tariffs screw everything up. And
Speaker 4: I'm not saying they're bad for the economy. I'm saying
Speaker 4: they make the economy hard to read.
Speaker 3: Here's why.
Speaker 4: In the first quarter of this year, everyone knew tariffs
Speaker 4: were coming, so businesses all of a sudden started importing
Speaker 4: all the inventory they could get from China, and as
Speaker 4: a result, the trade balance blew out. But there was
Speaker 4: a lot of spending. But what they're doing is they're
Speaker 4: trying to get ahead of the tariffs. So that made
Speaker 4: business spending and in fact, a lot of consumers that
Speaker 4: you might have friends who bought a dishwasher or a
Speaker 4: washing machine or a laptop in advance, So a lot
Speaker 4: of spending occurred. Now that spending is not because the
Speaker 4: economy is strong, it's because they're trying to get ahead. Now,
Speaker 4: a lot of what they were buying is stuff they
Speaker 4: would have bought in the second quarter, and so there's
Speaker 4: an echo effect. Don't believe the first quarter numbers. They're
Speaker 4: too strong. The second quarter is sort of going to
Speaker 4: be too weak. Right, So that means we don't actually
Speaker 4: know where the economy is going in the hard data.
Speaker 4: But it's actually even worse than that, because in the
Speaker 4: middle of all of this, Trump kept messing around with
Speaker 4: tariff some more. You might remember that lovely weekend where
Speaker 4: on a Friday tariffs on the European Union were fifty
Speaker 4: percent and by Monday they were back down to ten percent.
Speaker 4: I've also got to lie nine coming up, which is
Speaker 4: the end of ninety and ninety days.
Speaker 1: Right, And by the way, do we have ninety deals
Speaker 1: and ninety days?
Speaker 4: I am not going to follow your add brain now.
Speaker 4: I am going to finish my store, but you do.
Speaker 1: But we don't have ninety days and ninety deals and
Speaker 1: ninety days. I just want to point.
Speaker 4: Still going to finish my story, all right, right? An
Speaker 4: you tell me I'm getting boring.
Speaker 1: No, I'm telling you I am completely completely tuned in
Speaker 1: on what you're saying. Go on, really going, I can
Speaker 1: test you now, just keep going, God damn.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 4: The thing is the present keeps currying around with tariffs.
Speaker 4: So what could happen is people front run again, right,
Speaker 4: and that'll screw up our economic data through this year.
Speaker 4: So we're here from Molly. I don't know.
Speaker 1: We're not getting a clear picture of what the data
Speaker 1: of what is happening.
Speaker 4: So when someone says to you, oh, the hard data
Speaker 4: is all good, you're like, it's distorted by tariff nonsense.
Speaker 4: So normally what we do in a moment like that
Speaker 4: is we turn to the soft data. Right with the
Speaker 4: soft data is it's so bad. It turns out some
Speaker 4: people don't like Trump. It turns out that he's been
Speaker 4: a polarizing figure. And so for the previous fifty years
Speaker 4: in American life, when you ask someone what do you
Speaker 4: think about the state of the economy, they would answer
Speaker 4: that question by thinking about the state of the economy.
Speaker 4: Now what they do is they think about who's present,
Speaker 4: whether they like that guy, and they answered that way.
Speaker 4: So the soft data have become unreliable, which means we're
Speaker 4: sailing through very, very thick fog. Anyone who tells you
Speaker 4: they're certain it's good or bad is wrong.
Speaker 3: Can we trust the data we get from our government?
Speaker 4: Yes, I love that question, Thank you, MOLLI. I want
Speaker 4: to put in astix. Okay, here's the asterisks. The official
Speaker 4: data coming from the government, anything that comes from the
Speaker 4: Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Bureau of Economic Analysis, the
Speaker 4: Census Bureau, stuff produced by nerds is totally reliable. I'm
Speaker 4: not saying it's perfect. I'm saying it's the best statistical
Speaker 4: guess of things that are very hard to guess. Anything
Speaker 4: coming out of the White House, which has a history
Speaker 4: of stretching the truth, lying at best, bullshit and so on,
Speaker 4: and also in competence, so sometimes they put out falsehoods
Speaker 4: because they don't know truths, is utterly unreliable. Now, often
Speaker 4: the White House will be reporting on their understanding of
Speaker 4: the official data. But I do think it's important. I
Speaker 4: don't believe a word coming out of the Treasury Secretary,
Speaker 4: the Commerce Secretary, the President, the White House Press secretary,
Speaker 4: or in fact, anyone who's spent more than fourteen minutes
Speaker 4: contaminated on the White House grounds, but official government data
Speaker 4: is okay. Second ASTERIXX. There is a little bit of
Speaker 4: defunding of the government statistical nerds going on right now.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's why I am ask that question because that's
Speaker 1: what I had been told.
Speaker 4: Right. It's really a bad idea, because it's really good
Speaker 4: to know where the economy is.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: Remember I just told you we're galling through fog. Wouldn't
Speaker 4: it be good if the world were a little clearer.
Speaker 4: But the thing about that is that makes the statistics
Speaker 4: less reliable, but it doesn't make them more trumpy. Right,
Speaker 4: So if you're worried all this telling stories, this is nonsense,
Speaker 4: This is bullshit. No, And here's the thing I want
Speaker 4: your listeners to understand. I'm not just a talking head
Speaker 4: who's just saying a thing. I have so many friends
Speaker 4: in these statistical agencies. They're PhD economists, they're super nerds,
Speaker 4: and I love them, and they're super committed to their
Speaker 4: work and their craft. And I promise you if they
Speaker 4: were being asked to distort for political reasons, there will
Speaker 4: suddenly lots of anonymous Gmail messages appearing in my inbox,
Speaker 4: and I will then call you, Molly and say, I
Speaker 4: got to talk to your people. This has got to
Speaker 4: get out there.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, because you are an academic, right I mean a nerd?
Speaker 1: And well I don't I as someone who's married to
Speaker 1: an academic, I don't think of it as being a nerd.
Speaker 1: So we can trust the data out of the government
Speaker 1: for now and tell us about the ninety deals in
Speaker 1: ninety days. Also, it's amazing to me, you know who
Speaker 1: has completely disappeared from the conversation.
Speaker 4: You're going to have to tell me because I must
Speaker 4: have forgotten who they are. Ron Vera, Well that is
Speaker 4: that is why don't you explain to the listeners?
Speaker 3: Because really deep, I'll let you explain to the listeners.
Speaker 4: So can I go back to the beginning of that story?
Speaker 4: Is quite lovely, which is, of course, we know the
Speaker 4: President Trump hates trade, so he asked Jared Kushner very
Speaker 4: early on. He said, find me a trade advisor who's
Speaker 4: also against trade. The problem is that nearly every economist
Speaker 4: thinks that when you find ways to enrich the life
Speaker 4: of others and they find ways to enrich your life,
Speaker 4: that's a good thing. So you have to go shopping
Speaker 4: to find someone who's on the other side of that.
Speaker 4: So Jared Kushner went to Amazon and found a fellow
Speaker 4: who written a book that said how much he hated China.
Speaker 4: So that's great, you get racism for free with your
Speaker 4: anti trade theories. That book was written by a fellow
Speaker 4: by the name of Pete Navarro, who is now a
Speaker 4: convicted felon, but at the time was a professor of Economa.
Speaker 3: Just had bad ideas. Right.
Speaker 4: Look, life is hard to some people. And some people
Speaker 4: grow up thinking that they're going to be the smartest
Speaker 4: kid in the room, and they are all the way
Speaker 4: through high school, and then at a certain point they
Speaker 4: top out and they become bitter, and they come to
Speaker 4: believe that they and they alone hold the keys to
Speaker 4: all truth. So this book that Jared Kushner bought. The
Speaker 4: author of the book was written by Peter Navarro, who
Speaker 4: throughout this book keeps writing about how an expert ron
Speaker 4: Vara authenticates everything that he says. Now you'll notice if
Speaker 4: you play a lot of scrabble, that ron Vara is
Speaker 4: just a rearrangement of the letters of Peter Navarro. So
Speaker 4: it is true. There are two economists in the world
Speaker 4: who support what the president is doing. They just both
Speaker 4: happen to be the same person. How did you get
Speaker 4: me to start? I'm not bitch or can I'm a person.
Speaker 4: I like people.
Speaker 3: Sure, don't do that to me again, Molly baby? And
Speaker 3: ninety days ago?
Speaker 4: How many times we're going to say something nice about someone?
Speaker 4: Can we have a nice break?
Speaker 1: Okay, say something nice about someone? Vasa Trump is very tall?
Speaker 4: You know what? Okay, I'm going to say two nice things,
Speaker 4: and I'm going to challenge your So the first one's easy,
Speaker 4: which is I admire J. Powell, who's getting called all
Speaker 4: sorts of names.
Speaker 3: And then that guy that is a remarkable job. He
Speaker 3: is having a tough, tough job. Yeah.
Speaker 4: And when I want to upset my liberal students, and
Speaker 4: I sometimes want to julp them a little bit, I
Speaker 4: tell them that the most important economic policy prehaps of
Speaker 4: my lifetime happened under and was caused by President Trump,
Speaker 4: and that was the invention of the vaccine. Without the vaccine,
Speaker 4: we would not be out doing business, enjoying our lives
Speaker 4: and so on. And so I want to tip my
Speaker 4: hat to President Trump and Operation warp Speed.
Speaker 3: My eighty D is getting bored. Okay, you still.
Speaker 4: Didn't say anything nice.
Speaker 3: I said of uncle Trump is very tall.
Speaker 4: That is mostly true. Okay, deals very very tall.
Speaker 3: Yep, that's not nothing.
Speaker 4: Go and she and I share a and you share
Speaker 4: a hair color.
Speaker 3: That is sort of go on, continue ninety.
Speaker 4: Deals in ninety days, We'll promise by Pinavara and the
Speaker 4: President and the Treasury Secretary and the Commerce secretary, ninety
Speaker 4: deals in ninety days. We're about seventy days in right now.
Speaker 4: We sort of kind of have a deal with the UK.
Speaker 4: Last time I spoke with your audience. The deal we
Speaker 4: had was a pre deal. It was a deal to
Speaker 4: make a deal outline of a deal that subsequently became
Speaker 4: a deal. Although in that deal the most important part
Speaker 4: of it for the British was letting British steal in
Speaker 4: and that is still being negotiated, so even the deal
Speaker 4: is still mid deal. So that means we've got eighty
Speaker 4: nine other deals to go, and that ignores the other
Speaker 4: one hundred and two countries in the world. And then
Speaker 4: today we had President Trump over at NATO where he's
Speaker 4: upset at the Spanish threatening to put extra double tariffs
Speaker 4: on Spain. So to be clear, he's upset about American
Speaker 4: military spending, Sorry about Spanish military spending. So he's decided
Speaker 4: to impose taxes on Americans. Yes, it's not the most
Speaker 4: direct way of doing foreign poves.
Speaker 3: No, it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 4: So look, the deals aren't happening. It's clear they're not
Speaker 4: going to happen. I think that if people were betting
Speaker 4: on zero at the end, the White House will pull
Speaker 4: something out. So it's basically not going to happen. But
Speaker 4: there is this problem, which is on July ninth, if
Speaker 4: you don't have a deal, something's going to happen. And
Speaker 4: we don't. And remember July ninth is going back to
Speaker 4: Liberation Day, which we all knew was a disaster. So
Speaker 4: the problem with governing in ninety day pauses is time
Speaker 4: keeps ticking and you actually still have to make a decision,
Speaker 4: and we have no indication so far of a coherent
Speaker 4: decision being made.
Speaker 1: Right now, there are still tariffs in place, and they're
Speaker 1: like weird. So for example, I wonder if you could
Speaker 1: just run us through where we are. We have tariffs
Speaker 1: on Mexico and Canada, but just ten percent right.
Speaker 4: Even better than that, which is those guys actually ended
Speaker 4: up our lowest tariff partners having started the trade war
Speaker 4: by fighting them, they're actually now my best friends again,
Speaker 4: which is anything that meets the conditions of the old NAFTA,
Speaker 4: which is now called USMCA.
Speaker 3: Right, because like, oh but okay.
Speaker 4: So there's two ways in which tariffs work, and I
Speaker 4: apologize to your audience for the confusion, but let me
Speaker 4: just say I didn't design them. There's tariffs that are
Speaker 4: going on countries, right, and then there are so think
Speaker 4: about that as horizontal and their verticals, which is tariff's
Speaker 4: on industries, okay, And so Canada still, I believe Canada
Speaker 4: and Mexico, I believe is still getting steel and aluminum,
Speaker 4: order certain auto parts these industries. So in the words,
Speaker 4: we've got pharmaceuticals coming and so on and so forth.
Speaker 4: Those ones, by the way, rest on them much stronger
Speaker 4: legal basis. Right then, country by country, We've got China
Speaker 4: right now at thirty percent. We are charging Americans thirty
Speaker 4: percent for everything they buy from China, and we've got
Speaker 4: the rest of the world at ten percent. And unless
Speaker 4: anyone thinks that any of this is a low tariff raid,
Speaker 4: I just want to remind you that this would put
Speaker 4: tariffs at the highest rate in at least fifty years.
Speaker 3: It would put us in greater depression.
Speaker 4: Right, it depends what day, because they literally are changing
Speaker 4: the tariff's day by day. Right, would put us four
Speaker 4: or five times higher than any other industrialized country. So
Speaker 4: this is not what grown ups do, Mollie. I have
Speaker 4: a fun thing I want to bring to the conversation.
Speaker 1: Mat plase, yes, and then I have another question about
Speaker 1: I won't have a question about steel tariffs.
Speaker 4: Go on, Okay, this is better than steel tariffs. This
Speaker 4: is Jdevans. So remember, way back when I think it
Speaker 4: was two days ago, we ate a lot about Iran
Speaker 4: in the Strait of Homors, which is this very little
Speaker 4: narrow part where a lot of the oil tankers go through.
Speaker 4: So jd Vance said, this is a quote, and I
Speaker 4: just want to get the quote out for people there.
Speaker 4: He's talking about Iran. Their entire economy runs through the
Speaker 4: Strait of Homos. If they want to destroy their own
Speaker 4: economy and cause disruptions in the world, I think that
Speaker 4: would be their decision. But why would they do that.
Speaker 4: I don't think it makes any sense right now. He
Speaker 4: was talking about Iran. But now just let's think about
Speaker 4: how this speaks to the United States. So for us,
Speaker 4: much of our economy runs through our ports, just as
Speaker 4: much of the Iranian economy runs through the Strait of Homos,
Speaker 4: And just as Iran can use its military to prevent
Speaker 4: ships passing through the Strait of Homos, Trump has been
Speaker 4: using tariffs to prevent ships coming into the LA ports
Speaker 4: and retaliatory tariffs to prevent them from leaving. And so
Speaker 4: much as those shipping restrictions would hurt the Iranian economy,
Speaker 4: this is hurting our own economy much as Vance said,
Speaker 4: This is again is a quote. If they want to
Speaker 4: destroy their own economy and cause disruptions in the world,
Speaker 4: I think that would be their decision. That's literally what
Speaker 4: Trump is doing with tariffs. And remember Vans and but
Speaker 4: why would they do that? I don't think it makes
Speaker 4: any sense. And I think that Evans has done a
Speaker 4: terrific job in pointing out the aut incoherence of this
Speaker 4: trade policy.
Speaker 1: Yes, correct and also hilarious. Now talk to me about
Speaker 1: the steel tariffs, because there are steel tariffs that Trump
Speaker 1: is putting on and they actually are, weirdly one of
Speaker 1: the few things that Democrats agree with.
Speaker 3: So talk to us about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, then Democrats about make me a very very big mistake.
Speaker 3: I'm just telling you, and that's my job here.
Speaker 4: No, and I appreciate you. Molly. I was like, steel
Speaker 4: sounds boring, but now I understand why it's important.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And also the steel is paid with tariffs on
Speaker 4: another metal. What is it, Molly, aluminum? Aluminium?
Speaker 3: Yes? Go on, go on, go on, go on, yest.
Speaker 4: Little Australian American humanity.
Speaker 3: Hilarious.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's why steal tariffs are a terrible, terrible, terrible idea.
Speaker 1: But first explain why liberals, why some Democrats also support them.
Speaker 1: You might do a better job on that than me, But.
Speaker 3: Anyway, tell why they're bad, Say why they're bad.
Speaker 4: Okay, what I can say is, you know, back in
Speaker 4: the eighties, the particularly pro union parts of the labor
Speaker 4: movement were quite protectionists. So Trump has taken a position
Speaker 4: that was historically a very liberal position. When I began
Speaker 4: my teaching career, my left wing students hated it when
Speaker 4: I talked about trade. Now it's my right wing.
Speaker 3: Students, right.
Speaker 1: Really important point that Democrats used to be protectionist before Clinton,
Speaker 1: and then they shifted right.
Speaker 4: During was fighting Democrats to get it done right. So
Speaker 4: I want to let me actually start with a bigger
Speaker 4: picture point, which is when many people think about trade,
Speaker 4: they think about like France sends us bottles of wine
Speaker 4: and we send them cars, that we create the whole
Speaker 4: damn car and send it over there, and they create
Speaker 4: the whole damn bottle of wine and send it over here.
Speaker 4: That's not how it works in reality. We don't have
Speaker 4: any rubber trees in America, so we don't make the
Speaker 4: whole damn car. We got to get the rubber from
Speaker 4: abroad to make the tires. And it's not just rubber
Speaker 4: and rubber trees. It turns out that all the different
Speaker 4: components of the car come from all computer chips might
Speaker 4: come from Taiwan, and the seats might come from Canada,
Speaker 4: and blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. The moment
Speaker 4: you realize that, you realize that when you put tariffs
Speaker 4: on something, you're not just putting tariffs on consumers. You're
Speaker 4: putting tariffs on American businesses. So there's two things that
Speaker 4: are really important about steel and aluminium. First of all,
Speaker 4: stick they are very very important inputs into other parts
Speaker 4: of manufacturing. So what that means is every factory around
Speaker 4: the world can get access to steel without paying a
Speaker 4: special up charge, except those in America. So what you're
Speaker 4: doing is you are making American factories that you steal
Speaker 4: less competitive than any other countries.
Speaker 3: They have to pay more because of the tariffs.
Speaker 4: Oh that reminds me. Let me make a second point
Speaker 4: that is obvious to economists but needs to be Some
Speaker 4: people say, oh, just buy American steel.
Speaker 3: There is no American steel.
Speaker 4: There is American steel.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 4: But the problem is if you're an American steel manufacturer
Speaker 4: and your customer calls and says, I'd like to buy
Speaker 4: some steel, you can say, well, you could either buy
Speaker 4: from me or buy from those foreign guys. And if
Speaker 4: you buy from those foreign guys, you have to pay
Speaker 4: a twenty percent tariff. Right, all of a sudden, now
Speaker 4: I realize I can jack up my price and you
Speaker 4: don't have a better choiceh So when you say, oh,
Speaker 4: just buy American, sure you can buy American, but I
Speaker 4: guarantee you because steel is traded internationally, it's all the
Speaker 4: price is going to get equalized. And so as a result,
Speaker 4: the price of American steel goes up almost one for
Speaker 4: one with a tariff. So it's not just imports that
Speaker 4: become more expensive. It's also American steel, it becomes more expensive.
Speaker 3: Oh, that makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 4: It's called in economics, by the way, the lore of
Speaker 4: one price. When something is traded internationally, we at one
Speaker 4: price around the world. Okay, now I want to tell
Speaker 4: you why steel is a really really bad place for
Speaker 4: what tariffs.
Speaker 1: No, because we're almost out a time, and I want
Speaker 1: you to talk to us about how the Middle East
Speaker 1: is going to affect the economy.
Speaker 4: Ryan has been fascinating and we all became experts on
Speaker 4: the Iranian economy and it's been a terrific couple of
Speaker 4: days learning about it. And a lot of people have said, oh,
Speaker 4: that Trump is it's a master stroke in the Middle East,
Speaker 4: and in some sense it is. It hasn't turned into bushes.
Speaker 4: I raq nonsense.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's been like four days, but yes, And.
Speaker 4: I just want to remind you that as of today's Tuesday, Wednesday,
Speaker 4: whatever day it is, I.
Speaker 3: Think it's Wednesday, we are now back.
Speaker 4: To exactly where we were seven days ago. The great
Speaker 4: triumph is that he restored relations to where they had been.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: If that stays, then basically nothing changes right right?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 4: If that doesn't and Iran's oil production goes down. That's
Speaker 4: not a big deal, right, because Iran is only two
Speaker 4: or three percent of global production. The reason we've all
Speaker 4: learned how to pronounce the Strait of Homus is because
Speaker 4: that's this tiny little alley where all of the oil,
Speaker 4: particular from Saudi Arabia goes through, but also the Emirates,
Speaker 4: and so twenty percent of global oil goes through that.
Speaker 4: So if Iran were to close that, that would be
Speaker 4: a massive decline in the amount of oil available. Now,
Speaker 4: realize the United States is basically is in fact energy independent,
Speaker 4: So it's not that we're going to lose a lot
Speaker 4: of money. But remember what I said a moment ago
Speaker 4: about the law of one price. It's going to become
Speaker 4: more expensive for oil, including American oil, right, And so Americans,
Speaker 4: even though we're mostly buying American oil, are going to
Speaker 4: be paying more if the straight up Homewars closes. So
Speaker 4: that's the real problem is if there's a shock to
Speaker 4: global oil supply, it's not going to be a big
Speaker 4: shock to our income because again, remember we actually produce
Speaker 4: more than we use. But it would be a shock
Speaker 4: to prices, and so it could potentially have further effects
Speaker 4: on inflation. But right now I am hopeful that our
Speaker 4: steady and stable foreign policy will continue to reap incredible rewards.
Speaker 1: Thank you, thank you, thank you, Justin for adding a
Speaker 1: bit of levity.
Speaker 3: That wasn't liberty, that was the stable foreign policy. Jesus
Speaker 3: fucking Christ, Thank you.
Speaker 1: David Daly is a senior fellow at Fair Vote and
Speaker 1: the author of rat Fucked, Why Your Vote Doesn't Count.
Speaker 3: Welcome back to Fast Politics, David, Oh, it's good to
Speaker 3: be here, Molly.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about rank choice voting. I still don't understand
Speaker 1: how it works.
Speaker 3: That's the truth.
Speaker 1: Like I saw the election of Mary Paroda in Alaska
Speaker 1: congresswoman for Alaska's one congressional seat Democrat one through ranked
Speaker 1: choice voting. I saw we got Eric Adams. Nobody wanted
Speaker 1: that through rank choice voting. But now we have mon Dannie,
Speaker 1: who actually was leading in the polls and is reflective
Speaker 1: of I think the voting. And this was after the
Speaker 1: first round. So talk us through how rank choice voting
Speaker 1: works place.
Speaker 5: Sure, Absolutely, rank choice voting really is an effective tool
Speaker 5: to give voters more power anytime there's a race with
Speaker 5: more than two candidates, whenever there's two candidates, it's all
Speaker 5: pretty easy, right, you pick one or the other. Somebody
Speaker 5: usually wins more than fifty percent of the vote, unless
Speaker 5: there's a right end or you know, something silly. But
Speaker 5: whenever you have more than two candidates, you have the
Speaker 5: possibility of a spoiler, You have the possibility of a
Speaker 5: split field, you have the possibility of a non majority winner.
Speaker 5: And that is, you know, not a great thing. What
Speaker 5: it does is it takes choice that voters want right.
Speaker 5: Voters want to have lots of candidates in a race.
Speaker 5: They want to be able to choose. But when you
Speaker 5: can only pick one, it makes your life as a
Speaker 5: voter exceptionally complicated. Look at New York City yesterday, where
Speaker 5: you had a field of eleven mayoral candidates. If you
Speaker 5: want to vote for somebody who your favorite candidate might
Speaker 5: be fourth or fifth in the polls, So then you
Speaker 5: have to decide, well, is it okay for me to
Speaker 5: vote for this person who's fourth or fifth? By doing so,
Speaker 5: am I really electing the person I like the least.
Speaker 5: It's an impossible situation to be in, and you run
Speaker 5: the risk of somebody winning with thirty five percent of
Speaker 5: the vote or even less who everyone does not want.
Speaker 5: So with rank choice voting, what you get to do
Speaker 5: is put your choices in order. Every race is a
Speaker 5: little bit different. In New York yesterday, you were able
Speaker 5: to select your top five and you're able to say, well,
Speaker 5: I want this person first, this person second, this person third.
Speaker 5: It's a pretty common intuitive thing for most of us.
Speaker 5: We can look at a race with lots of people
Speaker 5: and you know, imagine how it would play out. Who
Speaker 5: we like, who we don't like. And it works as
Speaker 5: simple as this. If somebody wins more than fifty percent
Speaker 5: in the round, they win, just like any other election.
Speaker 5: But if nobody wins fifty percent in the first round,
Speaker 5: the bottom candidates are eliminated. And what happens then is
Speaker 5: if your candidate is still alive, your vote stays with them.
Speaker 5: If your candidate is knocked out, it moves to your second,
Speaker 5: third choice, and so on. The runoff process continues until
Speaker 5: there is a majority winner. Really, what OURCV does is
Speaker 5: it creates a majority winner from a huge field and
Speaker 5: empowers voters to turn choice into something positive.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I want you to explain this rank choice
Speaker 1: voting is supposed to And I say this because I
Speaker 1: have really scrupulously avoided getting involved in the Democratic mayoral
Speaker 1: primary for any number of reasons. But I'm curious ranked
Speaker 1: choice voting it is advertised as electing the most centralized candidate.
Speaker 1: Does that bear out from yesterday?
Speaker 5: No, I don't think that's right. I don't think RCV
Speaker 5: does elect the most centrist candidate. I think it elects
Speaker 5: the candidate with the broadest and widest support. And sometimes
Speaker 5: that might be a centrist. But sometimes what we saw
Speaker 5: in New York yesterday is it's a thirty three year
Speaker 5: old Democratic socialist who has majority support. I mean, OURCV
Speaker 5: has been used in Virginia to elect Glenn Youngkin. It
Speaker 5: has been used in Alaska to elect everyone from Mary
Speaker 5: Peltola to Nick Beggish to Lisa Murkowski. What RCV does
Speaker 5: is it creates a majority winner, and it encourages candidates
Speaker 5: to run more unifying campaigns. I would say that instead
Speaker 5: of electing a centrist, really, what RCV does is it
Speaker 5: elects somebody who goes out and talks to everyone. It
Speaker 5: sets up different campaign incentives. If you can win a
Speaker 5: race with thirty out of the vote, like you could
Speaker 5: have in New York City prior to our CV, then
Speaker 5: the kind of race that Andrew Cuomo ran makes a
Speaker 5: lot more sense.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: He avoided the press, he avoided the public, He didn't
Speaker 5: show up at a lot of panels to talk to people,
Speaker 5: and he thought that his name recognition and money would
Speaker 5: muscle him through to thirty eight or forty percent in
Speaker 5: a divided field, and then you would have had a
Speaker 5: mayoral nominee that sixty percent of people voted against, but
Speaker 5: you would be the choice. Nevertheless, Mom Donnie campaigned in
Speaker 5: a very different way right. He built bridges amongst the
Speaker 5: entire left in liberal universe. He camp in with the
Speaker 5: other candidates. You saw candidates campaigning together. You saw Mom
Speaker 5: Donnie asking his supporters to help raise money for Adrian Adams.
Speaker 5: You saw the alliances and the cross endorsements. When Mom
Speaker 5: Donnie was at one percent in the polls back in March,
Speaker 5: the Working Families Party, instead of endorsing one candidate and
Speaker 5: coorinating somebody right, they endorsed a slate of four and
Speaker 5: they allowed the campaign to play out. If there had
Speaker 5: not been ranked choice voting, what you probably see in
Speaker 5: New York City is that there would have been pressure
Speaker 5: amongst the left liberal candidates to drop out of the
Speaker 5: race to coalesce around one person, so that nobody spoiled
Speaker 5: it or produced a winner with thirty five percent. Instead,
Speaker 5: we got an actual campaign about actual issues. Nobody was
Speaker 5: telling anyone to drop out of the race, and when
Speaker 5: the actual issues were discussed and debated, you saw the
Speaker 5: candidate at one percent catch fire. And the result is,
Speaker 5: you know, a fairly seismic upset.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, that's a really good point, and I
Speaker 1: don't think I put that together. So what you're saying
Speaker 1: is that rank choice voting means that it's not the
Speaker 1: same kind of high stakes situation. So, for example, one
Speaker 1: of the big problems we have in Congress, among other things,
Speaker 1: and we have a lot of problems in Congress, and
Speaker 1: I am here to tell you about them, but one
Speaker 1: of the big problems we have in Congress is that
Speaker 1: the name recognition does in fact muscle people through.
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of Tom Taylis.
Speaker 1: That you can sort of go for your forty one
Speaker 1: percent or you're thirty nine percent, thirty nine and a
Speaker 1: half percent, and with Democrats because they're polite and they
Speaker 1: you know, if you're if you have seniority, you kind
Speaker 1: of win because people you know. I mean, that's one
Speaker 1: of the things that I've really been critical about in
Speaker 1: for Democrats. So the thinking here is basically that because
Speaker 1: you are ranking, you can keep a bigger field.
Speaker 5: You can keep a bigger field, you give voters more choice.
Speaker 5: There's less pressure on candidates not to jump into a primary, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, in a race like New York yesterday, people
Speaker 5: would have been telling a candidate like Mom Dannie to
Speaker 5: wait his turn. Instead, he's able to run without any
Speaker 5: fear of being a spoil, spoiler tracting from other progressives
Speaker 5: or liberals.
Speaker 3: In the race.
Speaker 5: There's a lot of really good uses for this, and
Speaker 5: I think what you've identified in Congress is really right
Speaker 5: on right. What we've seen in Congress is because so
Speaker 5: many districts, as we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 5: have been gerrymandered so that one side or the other
Speaker 5: wins in a lopsided fashion. The only competition for these
Speaker 5: seats is in partisan primaries, and so what you often
Speaker 5: get is a low turnout summer election that effectively determines
Speaker 5: the race for everybody, because the winner of the primary
Speaker 5: goes on guaranteed to November, and that is how you
Speaker 5: end up with some of the most polarizing figures in Congress.
Speaker 3: Right a Marcherie Taylor Grand They.
Speaker 5: Won primaries with thirty five thirty six percent of the vote,
Speaker 5: and then, because the district was so wired one way
Speaker 5: or the other, they are effectively locked into a race.
Speaker 5: And then because of the power of incumbency and name recognition,
Speaker 5: they can hold on to it forever. Ranked voice voting
Speaker 5: is an especially useful tool in party primaries, you know,
Speaker 5: as it is in general elections, but really truly in
Speaker 5: party primaries where eleven or twelve people are seeking the
Speaker 5: same seat and somebody can win with a tiny plurality
Speaker 5: of the vote, it's better for parties and it's better
Speaker 5: for voters to use our CV.
Speaker 3: So where is our CV in getting adapted? Too different?
Speaker 1: I mean, what, first of all, the pushback on it? It's interesting,
Speaker 1: So Virginia has our CV.
Speaker 5: Virginia Republicans have used our CV in their primaries. Wow,
Speaker 5: that's wild, isn't it?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: First of all, why have Virginia Republicans used it in
Speaker 1: their primaries? Because I don't think of Republicans as and
Speaker 1: May also has it, and Alaska, So explain to us
Speaker 1: sort of how this gets adapted, and how this doesn't
Speaker 1: get adapted, and what this looks like now, and why
Speaker 1: did Republicans pick it in Virginia.
Speaker 5: Republic in Virginia picked it because they were looking at
Speaker 5: a primary for governor in twenty twenty one that was
Speaker 5: going to have four or five candidates in it, and
Speaker 5: everybody was from a different ideological lane. Everybody was at
Speaker 5: each other's throats, and they realized that OURCV would create
Speaker 5: a different kind of race, that it would create a
Speaker 5: race in which the candidate with the broadest and deepest
Speaker 5: support one and it would be more unifying.
Speaker 4: You saw this in New York City yesterday.
Speaker 5: As well, right that Andrew Cuomo conceded that race, you know,
Speaker 5: on day one, and we will see if he runs
Speaker 5: as an independent or not. But it doesn't look off
Speaker 5: of his statements yesterday that he's inclined to do so.
Speaker 5: So you end up without the kind of nastiness and
Speaker 5: bitterness that you have in a typical intra party primary.
Speaker 5: What you would have had in Virginia in twenty twenty one,
Speaker 5: what you would have had in New York over the
Speaker 5: last couple of months, would have been candidates at each
Speaker 5: other's throats, going deeply negative, essentially the other side talking
Speaker 5: points or the fault to use against them, and just
Speaker 5: you know, in general bitterness and anger inside the party.
Speaker 5: Oh well, that that person took a nomination for right, but.
Speaker 1: That doesn't happen because you want to be ranked even
Speaker 1: if you're not the first choice.
Speaker 3: Oh that's really interesting.
Speaker 5: You're less likely to go nuclear on the other folks, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, if New York City was using a traditional
Speaker 5: old school runoff, what you would have seen is all
Speaker 5: of the Liberals fighting to be the second person going
Speaker 5: up against Cuomo. Instead of campaigning together and finding common
Speaker 5: ground with each other and showing up after Brad Lander
Speaker 5: is arrested, they would have been at each other's throats,
Speaker 5: and the Left in New York City would not have
Speaker 5: been unified at all heading into this campaign. Instead, it's
Speaker 5: a completely different race. Virginia Republicans say the exact same thing,
Speaker 5: that they were able to produce a nominee. Nobody could
Speaker 5: argue it because there was much more than fifty percent,
Speaker 5: and they headed into the fall and they beat Terry mccauliffe, right,
Speaker 5: they pulled off an upset nobody imagine you can compare
Speaker 5: that to what happened in New Jersey's governor primary a
Speaker 5: couple of weeks ago, right in which you had Mickey
Speaker 5: Cheryl win that race, but with about thirty three thirty
Speaker 5: four percent from a highly contested primary. Everybody went deeply
Speaker 5: negative on each other for a weeks and weeks handed
Speaker 5: Republicans talking points for the fall. New Jersey to be
Speaker 5: a pretty safe state for Democrats, but Republicans set some
Speaker 5: blood in the water. There's a lot of money in there.
Speaker 5: Wouldn't it be better if for the Democrats if they
Speaker 5: had come together around a nominee and they were using
Speaker 5: these months to go after the other side rather than
Speaker 5: try to heal those wounds internally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, why don't we do that?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 5: I think we should, And I think what we're seeing
Speaker 5: is more and more states and localities understand and the
Speaker 5: benefits of this as more and more voters use it
Speaker 5: and like it. There was a Common Cause pull back
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty one in New York that shows something
Speaker 5: like ninety one percent of voters found it easy to
Speaker 5: use and liked it. I think that voters are going
Speaker 5: to say, why don't we get to use this as well?
Speaker 5: And why can't we use it? In every campaign. We're
Speaker 5: going to be heading towards right a twenty twenty eight
Speaker 5: presidential primary season sooner than anybody realizes, right, and there
Speaker 5: could be huge fields on both sides. You had twenty
Speaker 5: five Democrats back in twenty twenty four, seventeen Republicans back
Speaker 5: in twenty sixteen. Imagine what an open race on both
Speaker 5: sides brings out. And we could again see you know,
Speaker 5: non majority nominees coming out, the kinds of choices Americans
Speaker 5: get end up being being weakened. And you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: all you have to do is look back at twenty
Speaker 5: twenty in the Democratic primary, right, all those candidates, all
Speaker 5: of them fighting with each other, elbowing each other out.
Speaker 3: Of providing for child that he is still using.
Speaker 5: Right, right, when Harris goes after Biden on bussing in
Speaker 5: the twenty twenty Democratic debates, that's still a moment that
Speaker 5: Republicans were using against her in the twenty for election.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, a very good and salient point. Right now,
Speaker 1: where is rank choice voting?
Speaker 5: Rank choice voting is being used right now in Maine,
Speaker 5: It's being used in Alaska, it is being used in
Speaker 5: a number of cities nationwide. Whether it's New York, big
Speaker 5: cities in Minnesota, big cities in California, Oakland, San Francisco.
Speaker 5: But it is also being really widely used across Utah.
Speaker 5: So it is happening in red states, it's happening in
Speaker 5: blue states, it's happening in purple states. There is an
Speaker 5: awful lot of momentum around this because voters recognize it
Speaker 5: as a tool that delivers them something they really want,
Speaker 5: more choice, but also ensures that that choice doesn't become complicated,
Speaker 5: and it guarantees a majority winner. So it encourages bigger, broader,
Speaker 5: more issue based campaigns. And what we see is everywhere
Speaker 5: it's being used, voters like it, want to expand it,
Speaker 5: and I think we're going to continue to see even
Speaker 5: more of them.
Speaker 3: Thank you, thank you, thank you, David, thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3: A moment.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon Bally, a whistleblower, is alleging that Trump's DOJ
Speaker 2: told lawyers to disobey court orders. And you'll be really
Speaker 2: shocked to hear this about who was leading that charge,
Speaker 2: amulbo Yes, well, Bali, could you catch the listeners up
Speaker 2: For those who forget this fellow's name, war per ops
Speaker 2: confuse him with like a guy with a creole restaurant
Speaker 2: in New Orleans or something.
Speaker 3: Thing Bove is bad, Bov is real bad.
Speaker 1: So, by the way, so Bob is up for a judgeship.
Speaker 1: And that's why some of this is coming out. This
Speaker 1: whistleblower who was fired by both for refusing to do
Speaker 1: some of this stuff he wanted. So the guy who
Speaker 1: was fired was a career a justice partman lawyer who
Speaker 1: was fired fired after truthfully staying in court that the
Speaker 1: administration had wrongfully removed Kilmar Albrego Garcia. You'll remember him
Speaker 1: from earlier this season when he was deported to Seacott
Speaker 1: and then the Trump administration said they couldn't find him,
Speaker 1: and then they said they wouldn't bring him back, and
Speaker 1: then they said, by the way, I just want to
Speaker 1: point out they're spending so much money and time on
Speaker 1: one person, like even just besides the moral and ethical
Speaker 1: implications of just deporting people because they have they look
Speaker 1: like a race you're mad at. Even despite the moracle
Speaker 1: and ethical issues here, it's just a stupid fucking waste
Speaker 1: of time, right, I mean, this guy, it would it's
Speaker 1: just I mean, it's you know, millions of dollars being
Speaker 1: spent on this guy, and it's just insane anyway. So
Speaker 1: Bob Trump has nominated him for a seat on the
Speaker 1: US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. And now
Speaker 1: we have this whistleblower who's coming out and saying that
Speaker 1: Bob said things like we might need to consider telling
Speaker 1: the courts to fuck you and ignore any court order.
Speaker 1: I mean, look, we know this was going on behind
Speaker 1: the scenes, but it's certainly nice to have someone report it.
Speaker 1: Todd Blanche, She'll remember Todd Blanche. He's the deputy Attorney
Speaker 1: general and he was also Donald Trump's criminal lawyer, because
Speaker 1: Donald Trump only knows four people. The New York Times
Speaker 1: article describes falsehoods purportedly made by a disgruntled former employee
Speaker 1: and elite to the press in a violation of ethical obligations.
Speaker 1: Says Blanche, he actually wrote that on Twitter. Again. Obviously
Speaker 1: both did this. Obviously Todd Blanche is lying. Has anyone
Speaker 1: seen this White House? You know? If it's anything like
Speaker 1: one point, Oh, they're going to be a bazillion memoirs
Speaker 1: of people who tried to work in the White House
Speaker 1: and got traumatized by Trump. I mean, I can't believe
Speaker 1: we're still fucking covering this. That's it for this episode
Speaker 1: of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and
Speaker 1: Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make sense
Speaker 1: of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast, please
Speaker 1: send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.