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 seniors will be hit with a
Speaker 1: ten percent cost increase with Medicare Part B in twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six. We have such a great show for you today,
Speaker 1: Ziteo's own Mehdi Hassan stops by to talk about Trump's
Speaker 1: maneuvers to get around the release of the Epstein files.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk to Vanessa Williamson about her new book,
Speaker 1: The Price of Democracy, The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in
Speaker 1: American History. But first the news, Smali.
Speaker 2: We are hot on the heels of the vote to
Speaker 2: release the Epstein files in the House. One person voted
Speaker 2: to not release it. One principled demand Clay Higgins.
Speaker 1: Clay Higgins, you may remember him from you won't remember him,
Speaker 1: but he does exist.
Speaker 3: He's got a very memorable accent.
Speaker 1: Molly, who's just in Congress. There are so many members
Speaker 1: of Congress, you eat is too many memors of Congress
Speaker 1: four hundred and thirty five, But only one voted no
Speaker 1: to release on the Epstein transparency list, which is I think,
Speaker 1: I mean, I think it's certainly worth thinking about this
Speaker 1: because it is kind of nuts. Right, here's an opportunity
Speaker 1: to do something that is wildly popular. Everyone wants the
Speaker 1: Ebstein files released. I don't know. Clay Higgins voted no.
Speaker 1: I was at the press conference. I heard Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 3: Tell us about your new best friend. Woke Marjorie Tailer Green.
Speaker 1: Woke Marjorie Taylor Green. Okay, So again, I am very
Speaker 1: much of the belief that politicians do what is expedient
Speaker 1: for them. I think that Marjorie Taylor Green is doing
Speaker 1: the right thing, and I am glad that she is
Speaker 1: doing the right thing. I also think that it's important
Speaker 1: to remember these people are in fact politicians and not philanthropists,
Speaker 1: or they are in fact political actors serving political political
Speaker 1: passions and political ambitions.
Speaker 2: I can't believe you just cast aspersions on her asparagus
Speaker 2: like this.
Speaker 1: Right, So, during the press conference, you had first Rocanna,
Speaker 1: then Thomas Massey, then Marjorie Taylor Green, and these survivors
Speaker 1: got up and talked, and you could see that these
Speaker 1: survivors really did feel And again, I'm not saying Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green is not responsible for doing a lot of
Speaker 1: bad stuff. I'm just saying you could tell that they
Speaker 1: felt that she was fighting for them. They felt that
Speaker 1: she cared about them, because you could tell because they
Speaker 1: looked at her and they were crying. And so again,
Speaker 1: I am in no way vouching for the character of
Speaker 1: Marjorie Taylor Green, but I am telling you that these
Speaker 1: women clearly felt that she was fighting for them. What
Speaker 1: else I thought was very interesting was that there was
Speaker 1: a sense in which Marjorie Taylor Green, like you could
Speaker 1: tell she was very upset that Donald Trump had called
Speaker 1: her a trader, like she was truly emotional in a way,
Speaker 1: AOC said, And AOC is probably right that Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 1: Green is doing this because Trump didn't back her senate run.
Speaker 1: She wanted to run for senate, and certainly that is
Speaker 1: absolutely possible. But I did get the sense that Marjorie
Speaker 1: Taylor Green felt being called a trader was somehow next level,
Speaker 1: was some kind of demarcation, had crossed some kind of
Speaker 1: demarcation line, and she's pretty upset. I want to say
Speaker 1: two things about this. One is that these are politicians,
Speaker 1: and you do yourself no favors when you ascribed to
Speaker 1: them anything other than political motives. That said, these political
Speaker 1: motives dovetail to enact the same thing, which is the
Speaker 1: release of the Epstein files, which all of us want.
Speaker 1: So now these files they passed the House, now there's
Speaker 1: a lot of pressure on the Senate to pass them.
Speaker 1: Rocanna and Massy both said that they want to avoid
Speaker 1: Foon adding something that would make it harder to get
Speaker 1: the information goes through the Senate, it will then go
Speaker 1: to Donald Trump's desk, where I think you will sign this.
Speaker 1: I don't think he will reject it. I think he'll
Speaker 1: sign it. And then I think what will happen next.
Speaker 1: I think this DOJ will try to obfuscate and fight,
Speaker 1: but I think eventually some some of this will get out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they'll just be about Bill Clinton and Larry Summers
Speaker 3: and that is it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, So while this vote was happening, we did
Speaker 2: have a pretty disturbing press conference where Donald Trump was
Speaker 2: in the White House with MBS. And sometimes Trump says
Speaker 2: dumb things. Sometimes Trump's haysn't distracted. Sometimes Trump is reckless
Speaker 2: with his words. But I would say what happened with
Speaker 2: him at ABC was really not good. That he did
Speaker 2: not like a wne of questioning and he really lost
Speaker 2: his shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So the reporter asked Mary Bruce asked a question,
Speaker 1: and he said it was fake news. And then he said,
Speaker 1: it's not your question, I mind, it's your attitude. I
Speaker 1: think you're a terrible reporter. You're a terrible person in
Speaker 1: a terror reporter. And then he's theorized that the leaders
Speaker 1: at ABC News were psyching boosts up to ask Trump
Speaker 1: a leading question about Epstein. You know, Epstein is the
Speaker 1: only case going on right now, so I mean it's
Speaker 1: basically the only story. I mean, it's the biggest story
Speaker 1: right now. And if you had a White House reporter
Speaker 1: who gets a question, why would you not ask that question?
Speaker 1: Like it would be malpractice. You know, she doesn't work
Speaker 1: for MAGA News one two three. She works for a
Speaker 1: real newspaper, and when you work for a real newspaper,
Speaker 1: you have to ask real questions. I think Trump has
Speaker 1: gotten a little too comfortable with his sycophantic group of
Speaker 1: fake reporters, and so he doesn't like real reporting.
Speaker 2: I mean, the fact that he's been asked so infrequently
Speaker 2: about his relationship with the MBS and what MBS did
Speaker 2: to Jamal Kashogi really is a bad indictment of the
Speaker 2: media and seeing this today was a great sign of
Speaker 2: great work. But getting their broadcast twice and is threatened
Speaker 2: not good.
Speaker 1: Not good. And I think it's worth remembering that this
Speaker 1: is the first time MBS has been back since Koshogi
Speaker 1: has been murdered in twenty eighteen, so like, this is
Speaker 1: actually quite relevant and important, and so asking questions about
Speaker 1: that is not so unreasonable. In fact, it's really, you know,
Speaker 1: the only thing in town. So yes, it just is
Speaker 1: mind boggling. Is stupid, this whole fucking thing.
Speaker 3: So my, we saw a funny thing.
Speaker 2: And if this was the way everything got left to
Speaker 2: stand that a judge's blocked the new Texas congressional maps
Speaker 2: favoring the GOP at the jerrymandering that they're trying to
Speaker 2: use to get ahead of the midterms.
Speaker 3: If for some reason this.
Speaker 1: Stood, it would be amazing.
Speaker 3: It really would be basic.
Speaker 1: Remember Texas gave Trump five seats because Trump said he
Speaker 1: wanted five seats and Abbott was like, you got it.
Speaker 1: So now we have this bipartist. So now we have
Speaker 1: and that kicked off California doing this vote to give
Speaker 1: five seats to Democrats, So here we are. This was
Speaker 1: a three judge panel, and one of the judges was
Speaker 1: a Trump appoint and they have thrown it back. Now again,
Speaker 1: you'll remember that the highest court in the land works
Speaker 1: for Donald Trump, right, So we don't know ultimately how
Speaker 1: this ends, but I do think it's worth noting this
Speaker 1: will be very ironic if this is what happens, very
Speaker 1: very ironic.
Speaker 2: So in the opposite way, I don't think this is
Speaker 2: the best precedent, but Metas won a landmark antitrust case
Speaker 2: over Instagram and WhatsApps acquisitions that a lot of people
Speaker 2: say leaves a lot of room for the bigger tech
Speaker 2: companies to trample smaller ones with acquisitions and really really
Speaker 2: fucked up market manipulations. Because I'll shock you here, no
Speaker 2: one is at the head of the FTC that cares
Speaker 2: if you're a friend of mister Trump's.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, we have a special coming up with Lena
Speaker 1: Khan and the Biden administration really tried to push back
Speaker 1: against this kind of antitrust stuff because it's bad for
Speaker 1: everyone involved. You know, these companies Meta, they were donors
Speaker 1: to Trump in the inauguration. You had Mark Zuckerberg sitting
Speaker 1: there with Trump while they were swearing him in. They've
Speaker 1: donated to the Trump Ballroom. This is how this administration works.
Speaker 1: You make donations, you do the things that they want,
Speaker 1: and then you get regulatory approval. That's not how any
Speaker 1: of this is supposed to work, right, not how any
Speaker 1: of this is supposed to be working. So this is
Speaker 1: just not business as usual, and it's really bad and
Speaker 1: it's really just Meddi Hassan is the founder of zteo
Speaker 1: and the host of Meddi Unfiltered. Welcome to Fast Politics, Maddie.
Speaker 4: Great to be back, Mommy.
Speaker 5: How are you?
Speaker 1: Oh, I'm good. It's just amazing. I think this is
Speaker 1: the end of MAGA. What comes next could be worse.
Speaker 1: What could be next could be worse. It could be
Speaker 1: MAGA but with real hardcore anti Semitism, which is what
Speaker 1: I think is percolating. But the mega coalition that we
Speaker 1: once knew, the Marjorie Taylor Greens and the Lauren Boberts
Speaker 1: discuss discuss.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it's very First of all, all these
Speaker 4: people are slightly deranged, so it's always hard to impose
Speaker 4: rational thinking on all of them. You know, when it
Speaker 4: comes to Marjorie Taylor Green, is it being driven by principle?
Speaker 4: Is it being driven by self interest and self aggrandizement.
Speaker 1: Do we think anything that any of these people do
Speaker 1: is being driven by principle?
Speaker 4: No, but I'm just getting the options of what it
Speaker 4: could because she would say it's because I'm I want
Speaker 4: transparents in Epstein and that's why I've gone against Trump
Speaker 4: on this. Yes, Others like Alexandria Cossi Corteza suggested is
Speaker 4: because Donald Trump spiked to Senate run by her. And
Speaker 4: this is her, you know, this is a scorned woman
Speaker 4: pissed off. Now she might run for president against JD. Vance.
Speaker 4: So who knows what's driving these people? Clearly something's going on,
Speaker 4: And what's so fascinating always is Trump always makes things
Speaker 4: worse for himself, right, and he could easily win these
Speaker 4: people back, they're part of her cult. Instead what does
Speaker 4: he do. He goes and calls her a traitor. He
Speaker 4: basically incites violence against her. We had a whole month
Speaker 4: of Republican handringing after Charlie court Wisher. We need to
Speaker 4: tone down the rhetoric. Meanwhile, Donald Trump is getting members
Speaker 4: of his own party, not just MTG, but I believe
Speaker 4: a state lawmaker in Indiana swatted at their homes after
Speaker 4: he attacks him online. So I think if Maga is
Speaker 4: breaking down, it's Trump doing the breaking of it. But
Speaker 4: I would say, Molly, it is too soon to tell.
Speaker 4: I've heard too many forecasts about the death of Maga,
Speaker 4: and it is a cult. So at the end of
Speaker 4: the day, the vast Marya people still do blindly stick
Speaker 4: with Trump through right and wrong. And I don't think
Speaker 4: Donald Trump's going anywhere anytime soon. I think it's too
Speaker 4: early to say stuff like, oh, he's now a lane
Speaker 4: duck president. He's got violent armed rogue police raiding churches
Speaker 4: in Charlotte, like he is not weep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that is he does have a He's the first
Speaker 1: president of modern American political life to have his own militia. Yes,
Speaker 1: so it's important not to underestimate that. And and I
Speaker 1: do think like the one lesson that any of us
Speaker 1: may have learned and I'm not. And again you'll notice
Speaker 1: how I've coached, couched the language and may have Remember
Speaker 1: the anonymous senator who said, no one expects Donald Trump
Speaker 1: to overthrow the government. Yep, He's going to go play
Speaker 1: some golf. I think about that guy.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there's many of them. He symbolic of many of them.
Speaker 4: But that's the problem.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: There's always been this, basically on the Republican right, Molly,
Speaker 4: there's been a complacency about guys calm down, take him seriously,
Speaker 4: not literally or literally, ill serious or whatever the.
Speaker 1: Day of the week is, basically not mentally.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And then on the kind of liberal I want
Speaker 4: to call it MSNBC wing, the Hashtage resistance side, it's
Speaker 4: always the walls are closing in. Trump is nearly done for.
Speaker 4: And I think both extremes are a mistake. I think
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is a great survivor. He's definitely done things
Speaker 4: that many of us thought he wouldn't do. I didn't
Speaker 4: think he would be back for you know, a second
Speaker 4: term on January the seventh, twenty twenty one, like many others,
Speaker 4: but he did come back. I didn't think he would
Speaker 4: win the first time in twenty sixteen, and he did.
Speaker 4: So I am loath to write him off as he's
Speaker 4: done for. Maga's gone. It's lame duck presidency. I think
Speaker 4: they've got their plans. Obviously they're having some problems with
Speaker 4: members of their party. But let's see how many other
Speaker 4: people do an MTG. Yes, but don't you think some
Speaker 4: of this is like a cloak. For like Donald Trump
Speaker 4: said he was going to make things cheaper, he got
Speaker 4: in office and immediately made everything more expensive. Yes, you know,
Speaker 4: he told Latino voters he was going to do you know,
Speaker 4: he was going to crack down on the worst of
Speaker 4: the worst.
Speaker 1: What he meant was anyone who looked Latino. You know,
Speaker 1: he made a lot of promises to a lot of
Speaker 1: different people, was unable to keep any of them. And
Speaker 1: now we're ten months in and people are starting to
Speaker 1: get mad at him, as they do when you make
Speaker 1: out to promises you can't keep. So like, is Epstein
Speaker 1: just a smoke screen for the underlying fractures that have
Speaker 1: nothing to do with it one hundred percent?
Speaker 4: And you saw that with Marjorie Taylor Green. In fact,
Speaker 4: she didn't just turn on him over Epstein. She turned
Speaker 4: him over Gaza, which is another festering wound, but also
Speaker 4: turned them over affordability. She went on CNN of all places,
Speaker 4: and talked about how Mike Johnson was wrong about the
Speaker 4: shutdown and how Donald Trump was wrong about prices going
Speaker 4: down when they're going up now again, are there others
Speaker 4: who have the gut to do what MTG did? She
Speaker 4: has an independent platform. She's very popular, she raises small donors. Yeah,
Speaker 4: she's wealthy and independently. Like, she's able to kind of
Speaker 4: stave off, at least in the short term attacks from Trump.
Speaker 4: The average Republican backbench House member can't and won't, So
Speaker 4: I'm not sure that we'll follow. You're right, the underlying
Speaker 4: issues are the big thing here. Donald Trump made everything
Speaker 4: worse at home and abroad, even though he goes around
Speaker 4: claiming he solved eight wars, which he didn't obviously, and
Speaker 4: on the inflation side, Molly, if you've seen all these
Speaker 4: mega influences praising Trump for taking tariffs off of things,
Speaker 4: now he's like, he put them on there. You told
Speaker 4: us they were fine, they wouldn't raise priss, and now
Speaker 4: you want us to praise him for taking things off.
Speaker 4: Donald Trump is this classic thing where he often you
Speaker 4: often find yourself and a Trump defender defending Trump after
Speaker 4: Trump has thrown you under the bus. So yeah, a
Speaker 4: classic example is Troy Nil's the congress menage spent all
Speaker 4: weekend saying we're not going to release the Epstein files
Speaker 4: for no reason to and then Trump on Sunday said,
Speaker 4: release the Epstein files. And you're like, oh, the memo
Speaker 4: didn't go out in time. And he does that often.
Speaker 4: People go out and defend Trump and then he would
Speaker 4: do the exact opposite of what they just said. So
Speaker 4: that's going to be a running saw for them as well.
Speaker 4: The problem we have, Molly is I was talking to
Speaker 4: a friend the other day and I see, no, we've
Speaker 4: had I think it was last month, and I said,
Speaker 4: we've had nine ten months of Trump. They went, what
Speaker 4: what do you mean? I thought, it's been more than
Speaker 4: a year, and no, it's only none or ten months.
Speaker 4: And there is his sense, and I think people quite
Speaker 4: get that this guy is not even a year in.
Speaker 4: We're all the chaos and harm and incompetence and authoritarianism
Speaker 4: and wars are broad when now maybe going to war
Speaker 4: with Venezuela. All of that's happened in his first ten months.
Speaker 4: We still have more than three years left min minimum
Speaker 4: of this guy.
Speaker 3: Minimum.
Speaker 1: Don't say that it's not nice. I'm already so stressed out. No,
Speaker 1: I'm just kidding, But I do think that's right. And
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about when Donald Trump said that he had
Speaker 1: an MRI.
Speaker 4: Oh but no, he's not sure what four right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is his he was second yearly doctor's visit
Speaker 1: had advanced imaging, and everyone was like, oh, advanced imaging,
Speaker 1: Well that's odd. Also a doctor's visit once a year,
Speaker 1: except twice this year because it's And then he said, yeah,
Speaker 1: I had an MRI and they said, dude, was it
Speaker 1: your brain? And he said, I don't know.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 4: They're like they're like, they're like pushing him into that
Speaker 4: circular what is it a little tube they put you? Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he's like, what's just for? I don't know, don't
Speaker 4: worry about it that again. I know we played this horrific
Speaker 4: game far too much, but can you imagine if Joe
Speaker 4: Biden was asked about an MRI that he had hidden
Speaker 4: from the public and then he said about the MRI,
Speaker 4: I had the best MRI ever?
Speaker 3: What was it for?
Speaker 4: I don't know? Yeah, I mean some insane insane that
Speaker 4: this guy can have two medical tests, two annual checks
Speaker 4: as a president. He can have weird bruising on his
Speaker 4: hands that he doesn't need to tell us about. He
Speaker 4: can the ankles, he can disappear from public view or
Speaker 4: not do any interviews for about five six days, or
Speaker 4: allow him say why he can have an MRI and
Speaker 4: we're not told why he gets shot in the ear,
Speaker 4: and we've never actually had any official medical records about it,
Speaker 4: nor been able to speak to the doctors who treated him.
Speaker 4: And miraculously is ear heeled faster than my shaving cuts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, now it is. It would make a
Speaker 1: person a conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 4: I wrote. I write a Monday morning newsletter for Zeteo
Speaker 4: called first Draft, and this morning, Monday Morning's email newsletter
Speaker 4: is about how we're all Epstein conspiracy theorists. Now, how
Speaker 4: I spent my life resisting conspiracy theories on the left,
Speaker 4: in Muslim communities, anti Semitic, nine to eleven, all of those.
Speaker 4: I've spent years fighting back against those, and yet now
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty five, Donald Trump has made me into
Speaker 4: a conspiracy theorist.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because there is no way to process this information.
Speaker 1: It just doesn't make sense, right, Like all of this stuff,
Speaker 1: it's just huh.
Speaker 4: Oh, there's just too many smoking guns. Jeffrey Epstein sends
Speaker 4: an email to an unknown person in December twenty eighteen,
Speaker 4: saying I'm the only one who can bring him down.
Speaker 4: Seven months later, he's arrested and detained by Trump's doj
Speaker 4: A month after that, he dies in prison where the
Speaker 4: cameras aren't working. Well, sorry, what a Netflix writer's room
Speaker 4: would throw that out as being unrealistic and a little
Speaker 4: bit too on the nose.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's not good. It's not good.
Speaker 4: It's nothing about our current predicament is good.
Speaker 1: I want to talk for a minute about this pivot.
Speaker 1: So Trump World, he knew the discharged petition, Mike Johnson
Speaker 1: shuts down the entire House of Representatives, sends everyone up
Speaker 1: there if he uses a seat an elected Democrat from Arizona. Right,
Speaker 1: do you remember what the numbers are it was? I
Speaker 1: think it was a third forty day shutdown. The House
Speaker 1: was in session for four days.
Speaker 4: Yeah, something in saying not double digits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he sent them home because he did not want
Speaker 1: them to sign the discharge petition or do any business
Speaker 1: or get together and talk about Epstein. So now they
Speaker 1: know they're going to lose this discharge vote. And we
Speaker 1: heard that it may be as many we had heard
Speaker 1: that it might have been as many as one hundred Republicans.
Speaker 1: We're going to vote on them vote against him. So
Speaker 1: he decides on Sunday night. You reference this, but I
Speaker 1: think we have to talk about a little more, decides
Speaker 1: on Sunday night that he is going to just have
Speaker 1: them release the files, yeah, or have a vote. I'm
Speaker 1: releasing the file yes.
Speaker 4: So to be clear, it's interesting how you phrased that,
Speaker 4: because let's be clear, the files are with the Department
Speaker 4: of Justice. Pam Bundy famously went on Fox in February
Speaker 4: and said they're on my desk ready to go, right,
Speaker 4: So when we talk about releasing the files, it doesn't
Speaker 4: require a vote in Congress. Now Donald Trump wants to
Speaker 4: rease the files, he can rease the files tomorrow money.
Speaker 4: It's not as if his DOJ is some independent entity.
Speaker 4: We know that Pam Bundy is basically just to kind of,
Speaker 4: you know, like a restaurant server at this point for
Speaker 4: Donald Trump. She moves as soon as he tells her
Speaker 4: to move. So if he wants, he can just put
Speaker 4: out a truth social post. Think Pam put out all
Speaker 4: the files tonight on a website. This whole vote for
Speaker 4: it is just him trying to cover himself from an
Speaker 4: embarrassing loss, as you said, or a defection of many
Speaker 4: members of his party. Thomas Massey, who's gone to war
Speaker 4: with aside from MTG, the Republican congressman who's been leading
Speaker 4: the charge with Rocannor on the Epstein discharge. He's said
Speaker 4: very eloquently that you know, Donald Trump will be gone.
Speaker 4: I'm not sure he will be gone. It may be
Speaker 4: gone in four years, but you'll still be around and
Speaker 4: people remember you as defenders of pedophiles. He said to
Speaker 4: his colleagues, that's obviously had some traction that reminds Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then he went after Massey for getting remarried too quickly.
Speaker 4: With Mary Massey, a widows wife died raight, he went
Speaker 4: after him for getting married again. And Laura Luma, his
Speaker 4: media ally questioned how Massey's wife died. I mean, there
Speaker 4: is no bottom for this Republican party.
Speaker 1: And it is also important to remember this is like
Speaker 1: Donald Trump, who's three wives in and has numerous allegations
Speaker 1: of infidelity.
Speaker 4: Allegedly she did on his third wife just after she
Speaker 4: gave birth.
Speaker 1: Was a porn star.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Anyway, so there, so there will be a vote. Now,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this protocol for a minute. There'll be
Speaker 1: a vote now, and then it we'll go to the Senate.
Speaker 4: And do they even have the votes in the Senate
Speaker 4: because Republican Senators there in a very different vote. They
Speaker 4: were never on the whole Epstein train, right. It was
Speaker 4: very much an MTG. Bobert, you know, a massy kind
Speaker 4: of unhinged folks in the House.
Speaker 5: I mean.
Speaker 4: The great irony, as I point out in my newsletter
Speaker 4: this morning, is these guys spent four years banging the
Speaker 4: druma about Epstein, jumping on QAnon bandwagons about it being
Speaker 4: a secret crazy the politicians covering up a child sex
Speaker 4: trafficking ring. Turns out they may have been right, but
Speaker 4: the ring and the cover up was on their side
Speaker 4: of the aisle, right, correct. That's that's the problem they
Speaker 4: have now is all of these people, not just the
Speaker 4: members of Congress, but the Bune and the Cashpatel, the FBI,
Speaker 4: Derek to Devis, they all pushed this Epstein stuff and
Speaker 4: now they're in a position to really make sure that
Speaker 4: they're unable to go through with it. And we know
Speaker 4: the timeline Molly on the reporting. It's when they went
Speaker 4: through the files. They devoted hundreds of members of the government,
Speaker 4: hundreds of members of the bureaucracy were diverted onto the
Speaker 4: task of going through the files and just doing control.
Speaker 4: F Trump control f. Trump all the way through and
Speaker 4: when you saw how many times his name appears, and
Speaker 4: Detail has put a searchable archive of all of the
Speaker 4: twenty thousand documents that were released by the House Oversight Committee.
Speaker 4: You can look at zataio dot com. You can search
Speaker 4: them for yourselves. You will see Donald Trump's name appears
Speaker 4: more than anybody else is apart from Jeffrey Epstein. That's
Speaker 4: when they decided we can't release this stuff. We have
Speaker 4: to pretend all is fine, there's nothing to see here,
Speaker 4: Move along, move along.
Speaker 1: Yes, I just wonder where it goes, right, because so
Speaker 1: we know that Pambondi supposedly had in our desk. Again,
Speaker 1: we don't really know because everybody's lying. I think it's
Speaker 1: fair was to agree that pretty much everybody's lying here.
Speaker 4: My position on this administration is you assume it's alioned.
Speaker 4: Let's proved to be the true too.
Speaker 1: But either way, we know there's a ton of information
Speaker 1: that did go to the DJ and it was videos
Speaker 1: and emails and depositions. I mean, that's the other thing
Speaker 1: that's worth's remembering is right now, all we've seen are
Speaker 1: the emails that they flooded us with from the Republicans
Speaker 1: the Oversight Committee emails, and then we've seen the emails
Speaker 1: from Bloomberg from Jason Leopold that he got from Floyd's.
Speaker 1: That is it. We haven't seen like I mean, I
Speaker 1: guess that the House released some stuff like the Michael
Speaker 1: Wolf that long Michael Wolf article. Can we talk? Can
Speaker 1: we do two seconds on Michael Wolf here? Because so
Speaker 1: this is a guy who was like advising, writing, doing
Speaker 1: pr for Friendly.
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Epstein one of the most famous journalists of our time.
Speaker 4: He's super famous. A lot of people in this you
Speaker 4: don't like it for good reason. I think these emails
Speaker 4: show everything that's wrong with journalism in this country, the
Speaker 4: worst parts of our kind of established journalism. And his
Speaker 4: argument just to play devil's advocate. He's arguing that I
Speaker 4: have to suck up to these people to get access.
Speaker 4: That's how I got an interview with Donald Trump. And
Speaker 4: we know that's how it works with Trump. You suck
Speaker 4: up to Trump. He invites you in, he gives you
Speaker 4: an interview, then he doesn't like what you've written and
Speaker 4: he attacks you. We know that that's what happened to Wolf.
Speaker 4: He wrote these best selling books Fire and Fury, and
Speaker 4: I think hold three or four books, I've lost track,
Speaker 4: and he did that by sucking up clearly with Epstein.
Speaker 4: I think it's harder for him to make that case
Speaker 4: because it's very clear from the emails that we've seen
Speaker 4: that they were friends, that he was advising him, that
Speaker 4: he was trying to spin on his behalf and giving
Speaker 4: him pr and media advice. It's kind of disgusting because
Speaker 4: let's not forget Molly important point for the context for
Speaker 4: all these emails. Whether it's Larry Summers, who's also in
Speaker 4: the emails on how to how to move on a
Speaker 4: allegedly on a Chinese academic whose father was a Communist
Speaker 4: Party official, whether it's Summers, whether it's Wolf, whether it's
Speaker 4: God Helpers, Non Chomsky, whoever's in those emails. They all
Speaker 4: knew at that point that this guy was convicted in
Speaker 4: two thousand and eight for child sex crimes or so listening.
Speaker 4: At that point that the plea Dearly got was for
Speaker 4: listening an under eighteen. But the point is they all
Speaker 4: knew who he was, they all knew what was guilty.
Speaker 1: It was set he was a registered sexis predator.
Speaker 4: At that point, he had been in prison, even if
Speaker 4: it was a kind of soft prison that he got
Speaker 4: to you every day, and so there's no excuse for
Speaker 4: any of these people to have been friendly with him,
Speaker 4: hanging out with him, giving him advice. It's truly disgusting
Speaker 4: and de prayed. There's a real reflection of what goes
Speaker 4: on on fortune, and some of it really confirms for
Speaker 4: a lot of people go back to conspiracy theory stuff
Speaker 4: about just how intertwined kind of the most deprayed elements
Speaker 4: of our media and political establishments are.
Speaker 1: I also think that it speaks to a kind of world.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is a world that doesn't necessarily exist anymore, right,
Speaker 1: some of it? And thank God for that ready, Like
Speaker 1: I mean, would you?
Speaker 4: But unfortunately some of these emails are from like twenty
Speaker 4: eighteen and twenty nineteen, like this time right now, it's stuff,
Speaker 4: and these connections are still happening, pretty dark, and people
Speaker 4: give it, oh well, Bill Clinton, I'm like, yeah, nobody
Speaker 4: cares right about freaking about.
Speaker 1: A nonpartisan exercise. You know, if and I know he's not,
Speaker 1: but if Barack Obama, who is like as close to
Speaker 1: sort of a democratic deity as one could have if
Speaker 1: he were in there, we want him out too. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is not a partisan activity.
Speaker 4: I mean, his name is mentioned at different times in
Speaker 4: the emails. But yeah, there's no evidence that Obama of
Speaker 4: a partied with Epstein or went on his jet in
Speaker 4: the way that Clinton and Trump did. Right, and again
Speaker 4: no accusations of wrongdo we have to add in this
Speaker 4: very ligitious climate, but it looks bad. And the fact
Speaker 4: that he's tried to cover it up until Sunday night
Speaker 4: when he said release it all. The fact that he
Speaker 4: was willing to go to what would Marjorie Taylor Green,
Speaker 4: The fact that he announced that criminal investigation into only
Speaker 4: democrats mentioned in the documents, how was I amazing? The fact,
Speaker 4: I mean again with Trump, each and every one of
Speaker 4: these things that we're talking about, for any other president
Speaker 4: would be a multi week, multi month scandal. The fact
Speaker 4: that dog Drum just casually on Sunday told his Aney general,
Speaker 4: I want you to investigate these democrats who are in
Speaker 4: the far and she said sure, I'm an appointed attorney
Speaker 4: right now, that in itself, Molly, you and I were
Speaker 4: saying this last year. If we said this last thing,
Speaker 4: we were told it was Trump drangement syndrome, suggests that
Speaker 4: Trump would do stuff as brazenly as he's doing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it's so true. Thank you for making the
Speaker 1: time for me. I always really enjoyed talking to you,
Speaker 1: despite the shit.
Speaker 4: I feel like when I told you and I told Earlie,
Speaker 4: whether it's on my podcast, it's like a therapy session.
Speaker 1: Vanessa Williamson is a Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at
Speaker 1: the Brookings Institute and the author of the Price of Democracy,
Speaker 1: The Revolutionary Power of Taxation in American History. Welcome to
Speaker 1: Fast Politics, Vanessa.
Speaker 5: Oh, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: You are a scholar. You have written this book. It's
Speaker 1: a little counterintuitive, so talk us through this idea.
Speaker 5: So I think for far too long. You know, it's
Speaker 5: a real conservative trope frankly that, oh, taxation is tyranny,
Speaker 5: But the reality is almost literally diametrically the opposite. That
Speaker 5: is to say that taxes are things that free countries
Speaker 5: do really well. Elected official are really good at raising
Speaker 5: tax money, and tyrants hate taxes. They always have. So
Speaker 5: the story in my book is the story of American democracy,
Speaker 5: focusing on how fights over taxation are actually the fights
Speaker 5: ober democracy. That's true now, and it's always been true.
Speaker 1: Explain how it was true then, because this is like
Speaker 1: a pretty bold statement.
Speaker 5: Well, let me start with just a story. You've probably
Speaker 5: heard of the Boston Tea Party. You may recall this event, right,
Speaker 5: So these mechanics and artisans in Boston seventeen seventy three,
Speaker 5: it's the middle of winter and they go down to
Speaker 5: Boston Harbor and they throw all this tea in the harbor.
Speaker 4: What was that about?
Speaker 5: Almost anyone would tell you about taxes. People hate taxes.
Speaker 5: They were high taxes. They were complaining about taxes. Well,
Speaker 5: they were complaining about taxes. They were complaining about a
Speaker 5: tax cut. The British government had decided to give an
Speaker 5: enormous tax break to the East India Company, a corporation
Speaker 5: that was deemed too big to fail. And this was
Speaker 5: going to be, as Sam Adams put it, introductive of monopolies. Right.
Speaker 5: It was too big of a tax break for a corporation,
Speaker 5: and that is what motivated the Sons of Liberty to
Speaker 5: throw that tea in the harbor. Now, if the basic
Speaker 5: American understanding of the Boston Tea Party is wrong, it
Speaker 5: might be worth reconsidering more generally the role taxes have
Speaker 5: played in our history. And it's important to remember that
Speaker 5: taxes are two things. Right, They're the portion of our
Speaker 5: labor that we contribute to the public good. That is
Speaker 5: why people are so proud to be taxpayers. Right, We'll
Speaker 5: always say that, oh, I'm a taxpayer, and why because
Speaker 5: they're proud to have contributed. And if you think about
Speaker 5: what the taxes go to, they are the revenue that
Speaker 5: empowers our democratic government. So if you're asking yourself, you know,
Speaker 5: if taxation is tyranny, why is Donald Trump destroying the irs?
Speaker 5: The reason is because he wants private donations to pay
Speaker 5: for things. He wants to extort things from particular companies.
Speaker 5: He doesn't want a real tax system because taxation is
Speaker 5: something that comes in democratic societies. The freest countries on
Speaker 5: Earth are high tax countries. How do tariffs sort of
Speaker 5: feature into this? Yeah, so it's important to know tariffs.
Speaker 5: When you relied on tariffs for decades and decades and
Speaker 5: decades most of American history, tariffs are what funded the
Speaker 5: federal government. But the tariffs that we have today are
Speaker 5: not like those tariffs because they are not legislated. Right,
Speaker 5: the Congress is not choosing the tariff rates. You know,
Speaker 5: you might think tariffs are bad policy. In fact, you
Speaker 5: should think tariffs are bad policy. It's bad for the economy.
Speaker 5: But it would only be bad policy, It would not
Speaker 5: be anti democratic, except that, actually our tariffrates are decided
Speaker 5: by one guy, apparently through tweets, right, And that is
Speaker 5: fundamentally anti democratic. And it has the effect of sort
Speaker 5: of bringing corporations into line, right, And the point of
Speaker 5: the tariffs and countries into line. The point is not
Speaker 5: to raise revenue. It is to consolidate power. And that's
Speaker 5: how you should be thinking about the terriff frights right now,
Speaker 5: because on the one hand, we have the capacity of
Speaker 5: our own legislature right to raise revenue. That is what
Speaker 5: the founders fought for, right, the idea that the only
Speaker 5: people who can tax are elected legislators. They want state
Speaker 5: governments to or colonial governments at the time. But what
Speaker 5: became our state governments to be the ones in charge
Speaker 5: of raising money? And they didn't think a king could
Speaker 5: do that. And now we're asking that question again. So
Speaker 5: the important thing about tariffs is not whether they're good
Speaker 5: policy or bad policies. When it comes to democracy, you
Speaker 5: know they're bad policy. Sure, lots of popular things are
Speaker 5: bad policy. Loads of unpopular things are bad policy. But
Speaker 5: the thing that's dangerous for our democracy is putting the
Speaker 5: power of taxation in the hands of a single person,
Speaker 5: and we thought a revolution against that.
Speaker 1: This all makes a lot of sense, but I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could give us, like your fantasy of what
Speaker 1: progressive taxation would look like America. I feel like it's
Speaker 1: been at war withood itself about like, what are the
Speaker 1: tax structure that would look like, you know, more of
Speaker 1: a sort of fair country.
Speaker 5: That's a great question. I have part of an answer
Speaker 5: that I think most of your viewers will probably be
Speaker 5: nodding right along with, and part of an answer that
Speaker 5: might come as a surprise.
Speaker 1: Good, especially with things like this when it can be counterintuitive.
Speaker 1: I'm always happy to be surprised.
Speaker 5: So the first part you might expect, a high progressive
Speaker 5: taxation of wealth is really important for democracy at this point, Right,
Speaker 5: we can't have some people have this amount of money
Speaker 5: because money is power and it leads into our politics.
Speaker 5: It has for many decades, and it is now just
Speaker 5: beyond anything that can be managed within the democratic society. Right.
Speaker 5: You might not know Thomas Pain, the guy who wrote
Speaker 5: Common Sense. Right, this is the guy who wrote the
Speaker 5: pamphlet that convinced Americans not just to fight for independence,
Speaker 5: but to fight to not have a monarchy. Thomas Pain
Speaker 5: common sense. He also a few years later, in the
Speaker 5: Rights of Man, proposed a progressive income tax, a very
Speaker 5: very novel idea at the time. It was a tax
Speaker 5: on the income from wealth. Progressivity was basically he had
Speaker 5: to like do the math and a table in the
Speaker 5: Rights of Man to explain this to people because it
Speaker 5: was new. The top rate was one hundred percent. Now
Speaker 5: it was really high brackets.
Speaker 1: All right, seems like too high.
Speaker 5: Well, so it's a marginal rate, remember, So it means
Speaker 5: that it applies to all your money over a particular point,
Speaker 5: you know. And he wrote his pounds and in seven
Speaker 5: you know, in seventeen ninety. So the amount he chose
Speaker 5: is not what's important. If you update that to modern statistics,
Speaker 5: it's about a billion dollars. So what Thomas Pain was
Speaker 5: saying was that beyond a certain level of wealth, all
Speaker 5: the additional income you're receiving, you shouldn't be allowed to
Speaker 5: keep it, because what he said was it caused corruption
Speaker 5: to elections.
Speaker 1: Right, which turns out to be he is a genius.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, he knew it was up there, guy, So
Speaker 5: I think on the one side, there's what Thomas Pain said,
Speaker 5: which is that there's a certain level of concentration of
Speaker 5: wealth that's dangerous to a republic, and taxation is one
Speaker 5: of the mechanisms. There are many mechanisms that you need.
Speaker 5: One of the mechanisms help restrain that. Right, it should
Speaker 5: not be the only tool in the toolkit. Right. There
Speaker 5: are all kinds of things about monopolies and all other
Speaker 5: things you need to be doing, But one of the
Speaker 5: mechanisms that's really important is limiting the consolidation of wealth.
Speaker 5: The other half of what I'm going to say is
Speaker 5: maybe a little more surprising. I think it's really important
Speaker 5: to have broad based taxation because it's broad based taxation
Speaker 5: that in the long term, can fund a social safety
Speaker 5: net that allows people to act as citizens. Right, you
Speaker 5: have to not be afraid that you're going to lose
Speaker 5: your apartment at the end of the month. If you
Speaker 5: want to be able to take the time to read
Speaker 5: the paper and go to the meetings and do all
Speaker 5: the things that citizens are supposed to do, you can't
Speaker 5: be worrying about where your next paycheck is coming from.
Speaker 5: You know, it's not just important that we limit the top.
Speaker 5: We have to keep the bottom up too, and the
Speaker 5: only way you're going to be able to do that
Speaker 5: is with broad based taxation. I'll give you an example,
Speaker 5: Social Security. That's not a particularly progressive tax. It's actually
Speaker 5: a regressive tax. Fund social Security because it falls on
Speaker 5: the money you earned by working, not the wealth you
Speaker 5: learned by having it sit around and garner interest. Medicare too,
Speaker 5: funded by the same payroll taxes. These are regressive taxes.
Speaker 5: Americans love them. They are the favorite tax of the
Speaker 5: American people, right there with sales tax tax. People don't
Speaker 5: mind paying their share if they think it's worthwhile. So
Speaker 5: to me, you need both of these things. You need
Speaker 5: both high progressive taxation. But you also need to recognize
Speaker 5: that that's not where all the money is going to come from.
Speaker 5: Because even when people are extremely rich like they are now,
Speaker 5: there are very few of them. You can't be balancing
Speaker 5: your whole tax system on that. You've got to have
Speaker 5: everyone chipping in. And that's part of a democracy too, right.
Speaker 5: It's part of a democracy to have people paying their
Speaker 5: share and having their say yes.
Speaker 1: Tariffs are obviously a tax, and there's a lot of
Speaker 1: authoritarian stuff mixed in with trump ism mostly authoritarianism. So
Speaker 1: like that you're not seeing any of the sort of
Speaker 1: good that one might get from tariffs. Now, Ueen Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero and Trump two point zero. Biden world
Speaker 1: did keep some of those tariffs on Biden World the
Speaker 1: complicated legacy, but some of the tariffing I think was smart.
Speaker 1: This is like a question that's like goes to a
Speaker 1: particular hobbyhorse of mind, which is, for whatever reason, Republicans
Speaker 1: hate corporate taxes and loove tariffs. Corporate taxes and tariffs
Speaker 1: are the same thing. So I mean they're played by
Speaker 1: the consumer, but ultimately they're paid by the corporation. So
Speaker 1: is there a sort of way in here to tax
Speaker 1: corporations through tariffs to confuse Republicans into raising the corporate tax? Right?
Speaker 5: I love this sort of like indimentional chess aspect of it.
Speaker 5: I may tell you a little bit about tariffs. Right, So,
Speaker 5: first of all, the kind of tariff that we're dealing
Speaker 5: with now, which is where one random I guess not
Speaker 5: very random, but one guy decides them. That is a
Speaker 5: non starter for democracy. You cannot have it work that
Speaker 5: way because it just consolidates power too much. But if
Speaker 5: you're going to talk about a legislated system of tariffs,
Speaker 5: then okay. Economists will have a lot to say about
Speaker 5: whether it's good for the economy as a whole, right,
Speaker 5: whether it produces growthably, It depends very much on what
Speaker 5: the tariffs are. When we had very high teriff rates
Speaker 5: in the United States in the late nineteenth century, those
Speaker 5: tariffs were set upon intentionally to support monopolistic corporations. Right.
Speaker 5: They were preventing consumers and farmers in particular in the
Speaker 5: United States from being able to afford raw materials and
Speaker 5: machinery and things like this that were produced overseas. It
Speaker 5: was a huge gift for US steel. So tariffs can
Speaker 5: be set up in a way that are extremely monopolistic.
Speaker 5: But what's interesting, I think about that story is not
Speaker 5: that we're having those kinds of teriff systems. Now we
Speaker 5: have these very arbitrary, very limited revenue tariffs that are
Speaker 5: dangerous for totally different reasons. But what's interesting to me
Speaker 5: about the old tariff system is that consumers knew they
Speaker 5: were paying, and they rallied for an income tax in
Speaker 5: part because they believed in the income tax. It's very popular, right.
Speaker 5: Remember the Supreme Court bans the income tax. They say
Speaker 5: that income tax is unconstitutional, even though we'd had one
Speaker 5: during the Civil War. In eighteen ninety four, eight to
Speaker 5: ninety five, the Supreme Court declares the income tax unconstitutional.
Speaker 5: So then we have to have a twenty year state
Speaker 5: by state campaign to get our income tax back, and
Speaker 5: they get it done. And part of the reason for
Speaker 5: that is because people thought that wealthy people should be paying.
Speaker 5: But part of the reason is because they knew that
Speaker 5: the tariffs that we had then were really raising prices
Speaker 5: for consumers. And so I think that one of the
Speaker 5: really interesting things to me is whether the costs of
Speaker 5: the tariffs we have now are going to be something
Speaker 5: that people come to recognize as expensive as a part
Speaker 5: of the larger story about inflation and the other ways
Speaker 5: that the cost of living is just going up. Hm.
Speaker 1: So interesting. So you wrote a book with a friend
Speaker 1: of the show. You know, you're on a nerdy podcast
Speaker 1: when the friend of the show is Theedra Scotch Paul,
Speaker 1: who I love so much and think is the genius.
Speaker 1: But she is like the person who saw all of
Speaker 1: this coming from a mile away, and so did you.
Speaker 1: So cannot talk about this moment in American politics without
Speaker 1: talking about the Tea Party and that we are like
Speaker 1: living there fever dream anything you can glean from that
Speaker 1: that you think is useful for now. A good example
Speaker 1: is I was on a panel yesterday with some very
Speaker 1: crazy right wingers and they were asking the normal people
Speaker 1: what the cutoff for abortion should be, right, which is
Speaker 1: like a bullshit question you ask when you want to
Speaker 1: get people going, when you want to have afa on them.
Speaker 1: And so I said, well, let's ask the conservatives when
Speaker 1: they believe life begins. And you know what they all said, right, conception,
Speaker 1: what sort of lessons do you see from the Tea
Speaker 1: Party or what kind of progress negative progress probably have
Speaker 1: you seen, and like what is surprising or whatever else
Speaker 1: you want to talk about.
Speaker 5: Sure, so yeah, theta is one of my very very
Speaker 5: favorite people and it was great fun to write a
Speaker 5: book with her, and we traveled around and visited Tea
Speaker 5: Party groups around the country and there were a couple
Speaker 5: of things that were informative at the time. One of
Speaker 5: them is that the primary issue motive bating Tea Party
Speaker 5: activists was not taxes and spending, which is what sort
Speaker 5: of elite conservative and Republican groups were saying. They were
Speaker 5: motivated about immigration. And I will say it was at
Speaker 5: a Tea Party event that I first heard this will
Speaker 5: have a two thousand and nine or twenty ten that
Speaker 5: I first heard Donald Trump floated as a potential presidential candidate.
Speaker 5: And you know, it was quite a surprise at the
Speaker 5: time because this is a man who had a reality
Speaker 5: TV show. But yeah, it was in many ways getting
Speaker 5: to see into the future of the Republican Party. I
Speaker 5: think there are some valuable lessons. I mean, first of all,
Speaker 5: it's important to understand what was motivating the conservative base
Speaker 5: in the Obama era, because it is critical to understanding
Speaker 5: why Donald Trump was successful. But I think the lessons now,
Speaker 5: right now that I think we've all had time to
Speaker 5: digest what exactly was happening within the Republican Party. The
Speaker 5: really important lesson I think looking forward is the way
Speaker 5: that the Tea Party in opposition. Right we're going about
Speaker 5: the first years of the Obama administration. Obama comes in
Speaker 5: with this huge approval and hope and change. He had
Speaker 5: control of Congress for a moment, you know, not very
Speaker 5: long and not very big margin, but he did and
Speaker 5: people thought, you know, I remember him being on the cover.
Speaker 5: I think it was Time magazine a picture looking like
Speaker 5: FDR right, like this was going to be a monumental
Speaker 5: change in our politics of the style of the new Deal,
Speaker 5: and clearly it was not. But the thing that the
Speaker 5: Tea Party did in opposition to the Obama administration was
Speaker 5: unite three important forces in active grassroots. Now, Tea Party
Speaker 5: activists were mostly older people, right, It was not just
Speaker 5: a random swath of Americans by any stretch of the imagination,
Speaker 5: older middle class, upper middle class people, so they had
Speaker 5: time to protest and to go to their local meetings
Speaker 5: and so forth. But it brought together those grassroots activists
Speaker 5: and allowed them to channel their cultural and racial concerns
Speaker 5: into a very effective opposition to a popular president with
Speaker 5: control of Congress because they were united with a active,
Speaker 5: powerful right wing media infrastructure, and elites followed their lead.
Speaker 5: M Right. It was base driven, yes, sang well, the
Speaker 5: elites drove the base enthusiasm straight into their own priorities, right,
Speaker 5: They drove them that they drove that energy into sort
Speaker 5: of traditional right wing stuff.
Speaker 1: So they were able to capture the enthusiasm of the
Speaker 1: base and then channel it into stuff they wanted.
Speaker 5: Yeah, but what they did not do was distance themselves.
Speaker 5: You know, rank and file Republican legislators certainly did not
Speaker 5: distance themselves from the Tea Party, even when you know,
Speaker 5: I mean the Tea Party activists were often wearing you know,
Speaker 5: kind of wild costumes and some of them were saying
Speaker 5: pretty explicitly racist stuff. Oh yeah, But the Republican Party
Speaker 5: did not walk away from that energy and channeled that energy,
Speaker 5: right And I think that that's a lesson that could
Speaker 5: be really valuable for the Democratic Party today to figure
Speaker 5: out how to take an extremely enthused base, enthused in
Speaker 5: opposition to the presidency, and channel that into wins. Now.
Speaker 5: I think, you know, November the elections looked like a
Speaker 5: little bit of that being underway. But what you'd want
Speaker 5: to see, I think, is something that drives it into policy,
Speaker 5: into an agenda. And also you'd want to see elected
Speaker 5: officials celebrating the activity of their base and not trying
Speaker 5: to walk away from it.
Speaker 1: I feel like that's pointed in humor now I'm just gidding,
Speaker 1: but yeah, so important. What you're saying, if you have
Speaker 1: the space energy, the only possible way to win with
Speaker 1: it is to channel it into the things you want, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that it's really important to find
Speaker 5: a way to mobilize people, not just to show up
Speaker 5: for a particular rally, because the Tea Party, you know,
Speaker 5: they had huge rallies, but there were at least reasonably
Speaker 5: large rallies. But they had regular meetings, They attended local
Speaker 5: city council meetings, they ran for local office, right And
Speaker 5: it was the combination of those things that built a
Speaker 5: moment that created a wave election the following the following year.
Speaker 5: So those are the aspects of the Tea Party. I
Speaker 5: think that are forward looking if we're thinking about what
Speaker 5: opposition to a presidency looks like. And I think also,
Speaker 5: you know, just recognizing the seeds of the moment that
Speaker 5: we're in today, the sort of ice and the anti
Speaker 5: immigration you know how recently that was added to the
Speaker 5: Republican Party. There's always been conservative opposition to immigration, sure,
Speaker 5: but the Republican Party had before Donald Trump, you know
Speaker 5: a few people who would sign on to some version
Speaker 5: of some sort of immigration reform. And that ended with Trump,
Speaker 5: and that really marks, I think the moment where the
Speaker 5: sort of Tea Party ethos, that anti immigration ethos came
Speaker 5: to dominate in a way that has had atrocious horrifying
Speaker 5: consequences for the country.
Speaker 1: So interesting. Thank you is thank you for joining us, Vanessa.
Speaker 5: Oh, thank you for having me.
Speaker 4: This was fun.
Speaker 3: A moment.
Speaker 2: Jesse Cannon MARII Project twenty twenty five. It foretold many things.
Speaker 2: I looked at one of my favorite websites today, the
Speaker 2: Project twenty twenty five tracker, and it seems we are
Speaker 2: forty eight percent through the plans now. And here's a
Speaker 2: big one. They've figured out how they're going to take
Speaker 2: apart the Department of Education and split it into a
Speaker 2: whole bunch of other departments.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I didn't see that coming, just kidding. We totally
Speaker 1: saw that coming. And Trump even said he was going
Speaker 1: to do it. I mean that's the best part I mean,
Speaker 1: and by best part, I mean worst part of this
Speaker 1: whole story is that Trump even said he was going
Speaker 1: to do it. Like none of this should be a surprise,
Speaker 1: Like this is what Trump wanted to do. This is
Speaker 1: what he said he was going to do with these
Speaker 1: guys had like dismantle the Department of Education sweatshirts. I mean,
Speaker 1: this is like this was always the plan. So when
Speaker 1: you see stuff like this happening, when you see like
Speaker 1: Trump World doing things like this. This is what it is.
Speaker 1: This was always the plan. Will they be able to
Speaker 1: sue in court? Will Trump maybe lose? Maybe? But no
Speaker 1: one should be blindsided by any of this.
Speaker 2: Can I take us back to a time when I'm
Speaker 2: on the debate stage? Rick Perry was asked which departments
Speaker 2: he dismantled. He couldn't remember all of the ones he
Speaker 2: wanted to dismantle. Well, now some of those departments are
Speaker 2: getting the Department of Education.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Rick Perry.
Speaker 2: Everyone really thought that was going to be a thing
Speaker 2: that happened, but it was just fetch.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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