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 billionaire Ray Dallio says the US
Speaker 1: is turning into an autocratic state. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today, Think like an economist. Justin
Speaker 1: Wolfer stops by to talk about the latest in Trump's tarafors.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to doctor Abdul l said about his
Speaker 1: run for the Senate in Michigan. But first, here are
Speaker 1: the stories the media is missing.
Speaker 2: Savali.
Speaker 3: There was hundreds of workers over billionaires Labor Day rallies,
Speaker 3: and you know what, that is music to my ears
Speaker 3: because that's what I think the movement should be built on.
Speaker 1: Again another case of massive protests not covered by the
Speaker 1: mainstream media. We keep seeing this again and again, massive protests,
Speaker 1: town halls, filled with angry people, horrible polling for Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and we don't see it in the mainstream media. We
Speaker 1: don't see any of those stories reflect in the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: Now there's a question whether or not there's some anxiety
Speaker 1: about reporting some of this stuff, like maybe it's hard
Speaker 1: to track down, but like people standing in the middle
Speaker 1: of their towns waving signs that should not be so
Speaker 1: hard to cover Labor Day's day about labor or in
Speaker 1: and what better place to focus on during that day
Speaker 1: than Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, who has been really catapulted
Speaker 1: into the national spotlight because of Trump's use of ice
Speaker 1: in the city and now the city again is in
Speaker 1: Trump's crosshairs because he wants to federalize it. He denounced
Speaker 1: Trump's threat to deploy federal troops to the city as
Speaker 1: part of an immigration crepdown. He said, no federal troops
Speaker 1: in the city of Chicago. At the workers over Billionaire's
Speaker 1: demonstration in Chicago's Westloop, Johnson added, We're going to defend
Speaker 1: our democracy. We're going to protect the humanity of every
Speaker 1: single person in the city of Chicago. Go Over the weekend,
Speaker 1: I interviewed kat Abba Guzala, and she's running for a
Speaker 1: seat in Chicago, and she talked about just how aggressive
Speaker 1: ice has gotten in their city. As someone who lives
Speaker 1: in a city New York City, haven't seen that but
Speaker 1: in New York, and so my hope is that he's
Speaker 1: not doing it in New York. But I do have
Speaker 1: a sense that they're trying to do it in all
Speaker 1: of the Blue cities to make us all really scared
Speaker 1: and uncomfortable, and also to her people, and also to
Speaker 1: deport people who've been in this country for years and
Speaker 1: years and years. Look, this is going to be the
Speaker 1: beginning of a lot of protests. People are not happy.
Speaker 1: And these demonstrations took place in New York, Houston, Washington,
Speaker 1: Los Angeles, Cleveland, Ohio, Greensboro. When people are mad, they protest.
Speaker 1: We saw this in Trump's first administration. We're going to
Speaker 1: see this again.
Speaker 3: So by Trump is really really losing a court this week.
Speaker 3: A judge ruled this morning that Trump illegally deployed National
Speaker 3: guardens to Los Angeles.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Posse comma Tatis Act. Look is this was always
Speaker 1: the thing. The law, like with so many things Trump
Speaker 1: is trying to do, the law says you can't do
Speaker 1: this stuff. And here we have a US District Court
Speaker 1: Judge Charles Bryer in San Francisco, fifty two page filing.
Speaker 1: So not lightly. In short, defendants violated the Posse Commatatis Act.
Speaker 1: And by the way, all of the Supreme Court experts
Speaker 1: we talked to said the very same thing. Sending troops
Speaker 1: on the ground is a violation of an act which
Speaker 1: says we don't use troops on our people. This is
Speaker 1: the difference between a free country and a military dictatorship.
Speaker 1: Now again we get to a moment, as with many
Speaker 1: moments in this political moment, where Trump now it's illegal,
Speaker 1: they can't do it. That doesn't mean they won't. And
Speaker 1: that is where we are right now. Again, in a
Speaker 1: world with a Supreme Court that wasn't completely in the tank,
Speaker 1: you would say, well, the Supreme Court is not going
Speaker 1: to allow this. But because they made Donald Trump mango
Speaker 1: god king with the immunity ruling, we really don't know
Speaker 1: what's going to happen. But we do know, and I
Speaker 1: think it's important for us to remember that there is
Speaker 1: the law and this administration pretty much breaks it on
Speaker 1: the regular And maybe that's okay for now, but at
Speaker 1: some point the bill will come to and the American
Speaker 1: people will decide are we a lawless country where we
Speaker 1: allow people to break the law or are we not?
Speaker 1: And I think ultimately, and I don't know when this happens,
Speaker 1: if it's two years or five years, or fifteen years
Speaker 1: or twenty years, but at some point, it's a big country.
Speaker 1: It's been a democracy for a long time, and at
Speaker 1: some point we're going to have to have a reconciliation
Speaker 1: here about what it means to follow the law. I
Speaker 1: don't know when that happens. So this is more legal
Speaker 1: challenges I'm sure the Trump administration, and we'll run it
Speaker 1: up to the Supreme Court. And again, at some point
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court is going to stop rubber stamping things.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they're not, and maybe you know, they just
Speaker 1: like the Republicans in Congress, become completely irrelevant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that sounds right. So Trump also, many people missed this.
Speaker 3: On Friday, right before the holiday weekend, court struck down
Speaker 3: his tariffs and boy they are as the kids say,
Speaker 3: big Matt.
Speaker 1: So the tariffs are allowed to be in place for
Speaker 1: forty five more days. But there's a great Peter Navarro quote, America.
Speaker 1: It's the end of America. So we have the highest
Speaker 1: tariffs of any developed nation. We are alienating China, Russia,
Speaker 1: those would be the ones that you kind of want
Speaker 1: to alienate, but driving into their arms India and Canada
Speaker 1: and Mexico and Europe, and basically we are becoming parias
Speaker 1: in the world. And this may not even be legal.
Speaker 1: In fact, it probably isn't legal. In fact, the Emergency
Speaker 1: Powers Act that Trump is using does not once use
Speaker 1: the word tariffs, which is kind of something to think about.
Speaker 1: So look this again, like with all of these other
Speaker 1: court cases, will likely go to the Supreme Court. I
Speaker 1: just want to specify one thing about this, and I
Speaker 1: think I've talked about it before, but the other side
Speaker 1: of this case, simplify, is the Koch brother I think
Speaker 1: we talked this about this on the last episode. Actually
Speaker 1: the Koch brother and a lot of really evil Republican donors.
Speaker 1: So this is a case where if the Supreme Court
Speaker 1: will have to decide whether or not they're going to
Speaker 1: go against Leonard Leo. I think Leonard Leo is involved
Speaker 1: in this. Are they going to go against their donors
Speaker 1: or their god king. You know, it's a very difficult
Speaker 1: decision for them, and I personally look forward to them
Speaker 1: really struggling with this. But you know, the rich Republican
Speaker 1: donors don't want tariffs and rich insane president does. So
Speaker 1: you know, it's anybody's guess how this goes. By the way,
Speaker 1: I just want to play the tape for a minute.
Speaker 1: Say the Supreme Court is like, no, you have no
Speaker 1: legal powers for tariffs. They have to come off Okay,
Speaker 1: say that happens, which I think is the best case
Speaker 1: scenario for all of us. Even if they do that,
Speaker 1: even if they're like, okay, the Supreme Court, and then
Speaker 1: you have to assume that the Trump administration is going
Speaker 1: to be like, oh guy, the Supreme Court is right,
Speaker 1: let's not do the tariffs, which again we have never
Speaker 1: seen Trump world ever. I mean, they might back down,
Speaker 1: but it's hard for me to imagine they back down
Speaker 1: on this. But even if those two things happened, which
Speaker 1: would be kind of extraordinary, you would still have the
Speaker 1: question of lowering the rates of things. And I'm not convinced,
Speaker 1: like this is the problem with trade wars. Things get
Speaker 1: more and more expensive. I'm not convinced that things get
Speaker 1: cheaper when the trade war is over.
Speaker 3: I've not heard a single person say how that.
Speaker 1: Could happen, And in fact, we've interviewed people who have
Speaker 1: said that it's very hard to get prices down after
Speaker 1: a trade war. So I do see a real world
Speaker 1: in which Trump cooks us up into something real bad,
Speaker 1: changes his mind at the last minute because he sees
Speaker 1: the wreckage that it's caused, and then is unable to reverse.
Speaker 3: It always makes me think of that meme that's like
Speaker 3: the I do something stupid, I convince my followers it's good.
Speaker 2: I reverse my decision.
Speaker 3: I convince my followers that everything is solved, and then
Speaker 3: it just repeats over.
Speaker 2: Yeah and over and over.
Speaker 1: Probably fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that saysn't sound like decline to me.
Speaker 1: No, In case you're wondering, decline is a choice.
Speaker 2: And a woke construct anyway.
Speaker 3: Okay, so, speaking of woke constructs, the Energy Department has
Speaker 3: a climate report and you'll be shocked to hear it
Speaker 3: has nothing but errors. It is totally just done very lazily,
Speaker 3: probably in between jokes about really really stupid things that
Speaker 3: are the Republicans discuss.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're going to be shocked to hear that
Speaker 1: this crew is bad at things pretty much everything. So
Speaker 1: this is not our best and our brightest. This is
Speaker 1: our dumbest and our worst. And they are publishing things
Speaker 1: like they had a climate report and it is filled
Speaker 1: with errors, and you know, look, this is all you know,
Speaker 1: these people don't understand science, and they are making a
Speaker 1: gamble that climate change won't create that it's some kind
Speaker 1: of liberal fallacy, and that's not how it is, and
Speaker 1: there are lots and lots of scientists who know the truth.
Speaker 1: I think it's worth realizing, like, this is a war
Speaker 1: on elites, this is a war on expertise, This is
Speaker 1: a war on science, This is a war on education
Speaker 1: and all of the kind of things that we hold dearest.
Speaker 1: That's why they are against science and against progress and
Speaker 1: against all the things you know that we cherish and
Speaker 1: believe to be true. This is going to all end
Speaker 1: in tears, all right. Justin Wolfers is the host of
Speaker 1: The Thing Like an Economist podcast and a professor at
Speaker 1: the University of Michigan. Justin Wolfers, Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: And Fast Economics malade.
Speaker 1: So I want you to talk us through tariffs. I
Speaker 1: was told that trade wars are good and easy to win.
Speaker 1: We now have the highest tariffs of any developed country
Speaker 1: right in the world.
Speaker 4: And it's not even close. And so, Molly, your question
Speaker 4: actually gets to the foundational mistake at the base of
Speaker 4: all of this. When Trump was growing up, other countries
Speaker 4: had high tariffs. So when Trump was growing up, he
Speaker 4: felt we were being screwed, and in some sense we were.
Speaker 4: When other countries divert their trade away from US, that
Speaker 4: hurts them, but it also hurts American exporters. Subsequently, happened
Speaker 4: was many decades, and during those decades, basically the entire
Speaker 4: industrialized world got rid of tariffs. Now, when I say
Speaker 4: got rid of tariffs, I should say there's politics and everything.
Speaker 4: And so there's an intellectual sense shared by shared never
Speaker 4: industrialized country that openness to trade is a good thing.
Speaker 4: If you can help me and I can help you,
Speaker 4: well you can both be better off. Simple as that.
Speaker 4: So we had a general agreement on trade and tariffs,
Speaker 4: and then we had a World Trade Organization. We had
Speaker 4: Europe become a trading block, we had North America become
Speaker 4: a trading block. We had countries individually just decide that
Speaker 4: charging Americans more to support dying industries is not a
Speaker 4: good idea, and they did that in other countries too,
Speaker 4: And so what happened was we basically had universal agreement
Speaker 4: that tariffs should be low and close to zero. And
Speaker 4: then there was an asterisk, which is what happens is
Speaker 4: when you get in the room with someone with another
Speaker 4: foreign leader and say, hey, I want to cut my
Speaker 4: tariffs that it'll be even better if you do yours too,
Speaker 4: They'll say I agree, but I got a couple of
Speaker 4: politically difficult industries in my home country. So let's like
Speaker 4: eliminate tariffs everywhere we can, but there'll be a small
Speaker 4: number of industries like the Canadian dairy industry, the American farmers,
Speaker 4: the European mountains of butter where the politics are just
Speaker 4: too hard. So let's agree we'll get tariffs down to
Speaker 4: as close to zero as we can everywhere. But I'll
Speaker 4: give you a bunch of political carve outs so you
Speaker 4: can get re elected, and you'll give me a bunch
Speaker 4: so I can get re elected. What that means is,
Speaker 4: on the eve of the Trump trade war, the average
Speaker 4: tariff right for every industrialized nation was between one and
Speaker 4: two percent. And there are a few crazy countries that
Speaker 4: have poorer countries that are small and run by idiosyncratic leaders.
Speaker 4: There's some euphemism there. Autocrats tend to like tariffs, so
Speaker 4: there are a few countries that do have tariffs. But
Speaker 4: even outside of the industrialized countries, tariffs had their day thereover.
Speaker 4: The reason this is central is it the most we
Speaker 4: could ever have won out of the trade will if
Speaker 4: initially tariffs were two percent and the lowest they can
Speaker 4: go as zero percent. The most we could ever win
Speaker 4: is very very little, and in fact, getting that very
Speaker 4: very little, he's going to be hotted in it's worth
Speaker 4: because these the industries where other countries have strong political interests,
Speaker 4: it doesn't really matter we fight a trade. When we lose,
Speaker 4: American consumers are screwed or we win, are not much changes.
Speaker 4: It was asymmetric from the very beginning.
Speaker 1: So that I think is a really good point. And
Speaker 1: let's talk about asymmetric from the really big from the
Speaker 1: very beginning. I would love you to talk about because
Speaker 1: I feel like I haven't seen a ton of reporting.
Speaker 1: I mean, I've seen some reporting on this, but it
Speaker 1: hasn't I feel like it hasn't captured those guys the
Speaker 1: way it needs to, probably, which is what is happening
Speaker 1: with India and tariffs, because it strikes me that what
Speaker 1: happened here is that Trump got mad at India. The
Speaker 1: excuse we heard was that they were buying Russian oil.
Speaker 1: I did know there was a sort of scam going
Speaker 1: where they were buying Russian oil, processing it and then
Speaker 1: selling it so that Russia could get around some of
Speaker 1: the terraffing, etc. But whatever happened now the net net
Speaker 1: is we had pictures of Mody with g and also putin,
Speaker 1: which strikes me as probably not the ideal situation.
Speaker 4: I mean, one thing is men don't hug in public enough.
Speaker 4: And I thought they were showing tremendous leadership, tremendous and
Speaker 4: just a whole new masculinity.
Speaker 1: And if we mention we want our autocrats soft and fuzzy.
Speaker 4: We want all our men to be comfortable cuddling in public.
Speaker 4: What I would like is, if we get a foreign
Speaker 4: policy right, I want our cuddler over there, I would love.
Speaker 4: I think President Trump doesn't cuddle enough in public either.
Speaker 4: He does a whole lot of extraordinarily camp things, right,
Speaker 4: but not Hugen dancing to Ymca. I'm just talking about camp.
Speaker 4: I'm talking about just a modern, comfortable masculinity.
Speaker 1: So our tariffs suppose, here's my question. Our tariff supposed
Speaker 1: to drive business to other countries in a way that
Speaker 1: cuts us out of the international world order? Is that
Speaker 1: how it's supposed.
Speaker 4: To go on? Now, Well, if you were asking me,
Speaker 4: if America disengaged from the rest of the world, would
Speaker 4: other people go looking for friends elsewhere? It seems blindingly
Speaker 4: obvious the answer is yes.
Speaker 1: Does, doesn't it.
Speaker 4: And so as a matter of foreign policy, maybe our
Speaker 4: tariffs on China hurt the Chinese people. But the fact
Speaker 4: that we have punitive tariffs, without direction, without predictability, that
Speaker 4: not only are they punitive, I think people really really
Speaker 4: misunderstand or fail to see the president comedy and he's
Speaker 4: a very funny man, actually has very real consequences. Yeah,
Speaker 4: my brother lives in Canada. They hate us.
Speaker 1: Just talking about my brother, I mean no, no, they
Speaker 1: hate us. They hate us, and we have really really
Speaker 1: alienated Canada and Mexico, like real these shocking and also
Speaker 1: their economy is already suffering. This gets me to this
Speaker 1: next question I have for you, which is, we have
Speaker 1: these tariffs, right, and we have this situation where the
Speaker 1: market seems to not have priced in tariffs because they
Speaker 1: think they're getting a rate cut and the rate cut
Speaker 1: is enough to boost the market, and so who cares
Speaker 1: about tariffs? But it strikes me that all is still
Speaker 1: not fine in the American economy, and that the fact
Speaker 1: that stocks are going up while all these other indicators
Speaker 1: are not and are in fact going in the other direction.
Speaker 1: And then we have this and I'd love you to
Speaker 1: explain to us what is happening with the bond market too,
Speaker 1: because that seems a bit scary and important.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So it's actually, I think, a very complicated story, but
Speaker 4: I think you're right to raise it because at one level, frankly,
Speaker 4: it is embarrassing for liberals. We say the sky is falling,
Speaker 4: this is very bad economic policy, yet people want to
Speaker 4: buy more of American stocks. So I just want to
Speaker 4: sort of slow down and work our way through it
Speaker 4: a little. The first thing is, you know, I'm not
Speaker 4: going to go all the stock markets, not the economy
Speaker 4: on you. I am, but actually what we should read
Speaker 4: from stocks is interesting and subtle. So I'm not going
Speaker 4: to be one of these people that says ignore the market.
Speaker 4: What I'm going to say is listen, but didn't do
Speaker 4: so in a sophisticated way. So the one thing that's
Speaker 4: utterly absolutely true, we are on an unbeaten run that
Speaker 4: every time Trump leans into trump Ism, imposing more tariffs,
Speaker 4: firing the BLS Commission, and putting fed independence at risk.
Speaker 4: Every time he leans into trump Ism, stocks fall. It's
Speaker 4: literally unbeaten. Since January twentieth, there's not a single day
Speaker 4: where it's gone the other way. Every time Trump backs
Speaker 4: off from trump Ism, stocks rise when he suspends tariffs,
Speaker 4: when he tells the Chinese that we don't need to
Speaker 4: cut off all trade, and on and on it goes
Speaker 4: when the courts rule Trump's tariffs to be illegal every
Speaker 4: single time. So what that tells you is the market's
Speaker 4: judgment is the value of American businesses are lower when
Speaker 4: the president's instincts are followed. I think the market's worth
Speaker 4: following on this. Why is that Because we're talking about
Speaker 4: something like tariff's. If there are benefits for the American economy,
Speaker 4: they're all downstream of helping American business, and so if
Speaker 4: they don't even help American business, there's no way we
Speaker 4: get any of the benefits. And that happens before we
Speaker 4: even get to the argument to the benefits to American
Speaker 4: business exceed the cost to American consumers, and so what
Speaker 4: we do it's a very very shortcut argument. Normally in
Speaker 4: economics we have to think about all the benefits and
Speaker 4: all the costs, and here I can just say, hey, look,
Speaker 4: the market seems to think the guys who are meant
Speaker 4: to benefit actually have the opposite effect. That's an unbeaten run. Okay,
Speaker 4: But how do we then sort out. So that's true.
Speaker 4: Yet at the same time stocks have continued to rise.
Speaker 4: What's going on here? A little bit of it is,
Speaker 4: there's two Americas. There's an AI boom, which is seven
Speaker 4: big companies that are worth an enormous share of the
Speaker 4: S and P five hundred, and if you look at
Speaker 4: the rest of the companies, you're seeing less optimism. That
Speaker 4: are you still seeing some The other thing worth noting
Speaker 4: is that Trump passed an enormous corporate tax code. Now
Speaker 4: that corporate tax cup means any money big American businesses
Speaker 4: get make, they get to keep more of it, a
Speaker 4: lot more of it. That should have sent stocks to
Speaker 4: the moon. It didn't. Actually, the amount it should have
Speaker 4: boosted stocks is much larger than the amount of stocks
Speaker 4: have risen. Basically, the federal government's just given them a
Speaker 4: whole bunch more money back. Of course they're worth more.
Speaker 4: We can try and think about in a fairly careful
Speaker 4: way how much more, And it turns out their value
Speaker 4: hasn't even risen that much.
Speaker 1: So talk to us about the bond market. What's happening there.
Speaker 4: I'm going to do one more thing on the stock market,
Speaker 4: partly because I'm not sure what's going on in the
Speaker 4: bond market. I'm not sure what's on your main money.
Speaker 1: Here's because of the difference between the law term and
Speaker 1: the short I understand.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I want to say one more thing on the
Speaker 4: stock market. Okay, stock market is big American companies. So
Speaker 4: it's not small companies. It's not cart ups, it's not
Speaker 4: you and I, it's not the government sector, it's not
Speaker 4: lots of things. As we move to a trumpest form
Speaker 4: of statism or crony capitalism or interventionist, whatever it is
Speaker 4: you want to call it, the folks who can look
Speaker 4: for carveouts, Tim Apple can call the White House and
Speaker 4: say I want tariffs to be different. Now, it turns
Speaker 4: out Apple was founded in the garage by two guys
Speaker 4: in Silicon Valley. Right now, there are two guys in
Speaker 4: a garage in Silicon Valley trying to start the next
Speaker 4: multi trillion dollar business. Those guys can't call the White House.
Speaker 4: So what this is is an enormous preference for existing
Speaker 4: large companies over smaller startups. Now the cost of crony
Speaker 4: capital So the thing is who gains from crony capitalism,
Speaker 4: the cronies, who loses everyone else, particularly entrepreneurs are the cronies.
Speaker 4: They're the big ones who are in Trump's rolyodics. He
Speaker 4: knows how to call and they'll pony up. It's CBS,
Speaker 4: for instance, it's it is Apple, and on and on
Speaker 4: it goes. So as we shift towards this form of capitalism,
Speaker 4: the value of big companies can rise even as the
Speaker 4: value of the rest of the economy falls. The stock
Speaker 4: market only reflects the.
Speaker 1: Former yields yond yields, right, So.
Speaker 4: What's going on with bond yields? So here's the problem.
Speaker 4: When you attack the FED and you say, what I
Speaker 4: want to do is put a lunatic in, and I
Speaker 4: want the lunatic to always and everywhere move interest rates
Speaker 4: to be low. And I want to do that because
Speaker 4: I'm a property developer, or because they want to move
Speaker 4: to what's called fiscal dominance. That's the word for the day,
Speaker 4: fiscal dominance. Fiscal dominance is when monetary policy is set
Speaker 4: not in trying to smooth the ups and down to
Speaker 4: the economy, but instead to keep interest rates low so
Speaker 4: that the government interest payments will be lower. It works,
Speaker 4: we pay less, but if you keep interstrates too low
Speaker 4: for too long, you get high inflation. So if you want,
Speaker 4: if I want.
Speaker 1: To, we already have inflation ticking up.
Speaker 4: We have moderate inflation. It's higher than it should be.
Speaker 4: But that's not the scare story yet, right, right, but.
Speaker 1: Right, I know where this is going.
Speaker 4: Go on. You know how exciting it is to be
Speaker 4: Molly Jong Farce economic advisor. I am economists to the stars,
Speaker 4: economics teacher to the stars, and sometimes my stupid star
Speaker 4: Paul when she's worked through a few financial crises and
Speaker 4: she ads written for that well known financial magazine Vanity Fair.
Speaker 1: And Vogue and known for covering.
Speaker 4: You, are the closest I've going to come to. Vogue
Speaker 4: is talking to you and doing Can we do this together?
Speaker 4: Come on, you can do it all. Go on to.
Speaker 1: Okay, talk about the bond market, girl, bond market market.
Speaker 4: I'm only going to talk bond market while you keep voguing.
Speaker 1: God damn it.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, it was too distracting for me. Thanks
Speaker 4: for stopping mall Okay, So if we go the full
Speaker 4: trumpest future, which is basically what id On did in Turkey,
Speaker 4: we point lunatics who could be interest rates too low
Speaker 4: for too long inflation rises. You'll notice I use the
Speaker 4: word if may not happen good news. Problem is, if
Speaker 4: I were to borrow money, say take a ten year
Speaker 4: loan today, the lender knows there's some chance it will happen.
Speaker 4: So therefore, already today, even without Trump having destroyed the FED,
Speaker 4: the lender is weighing the possibility that Trump destroys the FED.
Speaker 4: If he does, inflation will be really high, in which
Speaker 4: case interest rates will be really high, in which case
Speaker 4: they're only going to be willing to lend me money
Speaker 4: for ten years if they added an extra premium, Which
Speaker 4: is the probability Trump destroys things, multiplied by what will
Speaker 4: happen to interest rates, And realize that when ERDA one
Speaker 4: did this in Turkey, interest rates went up above ninety
Speaker 4: percent at some point, or inflation went to eighty six percent.
Speaker 4: So a small risk of a catastrophic outcome already right
Speaker 4: now will add a lot to the interest rate that
Speaker 4: I get charged. So that's long term interest rates. What
Speaker 4: Trump has managed to do, he's managed to make people
Speaker 4: convinced he's pro what's called it dove, someone who's in
Speaker 4: favor of low interest rates, which has led markets to
Speaker 4: believe interest rates might be a little lower over the
Speaker 4: next year or two. But it's led them to worry
Speaker 4: that on average, across all the possible states of nature,
Speaker 4: they'll be higher in the future. So he's lowered some instrates,
Speaker 4: has raised others. Which ones matter for business, the long ones.
Speaker 4: Your mortgage is a long run interest rate. Your business
Speaker 4: loan is a long run interest rate. If I'm breaking
Speaker 4: ground on the manufactory, it's a long run interestrate. So
Speaker 4: Trump's desire it's a lower interest rates has in fact tustrates.
Speaker 4: He's actually undone the very thing he was trying to do.
Speaker 1: So I think that's a really a good point, and
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could just for a minute, it
Speaker 1: strikes me that there are other ways in which Donald
Speaker 1: Trump has done that, where he has said he wants
Speaker 1: something and caused the opposite to happen.
Speaker 4: Okay, should I talk about tariffs?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean tariffs are a great example, right. I
Speaker 1: mean it just seems like so the tariffs he wants
Speaker 1: to bring back American manufacturing. But the problems we see
Speaker 1: is like, for example, it's cheaper with certain materials to
Speaker 1: actually make things somewhere else and import them. So yeah,
Speaker 1: tuk us through that.
Speaker 4: So there's a huge problem inside the White House. There's
Speaker 4: some beliefs that I don't agree with. Fair Enough, we
Speaker 4: can disagree on beliefs. There's ways of thinking about the
Speaker 4: economy that I disagree with. I could be wrong, and
Speaker 4: there's sharing competence. I'm against that under all conditions. So
Speaker 4: if I were talking in a normal country at a
Speaker 4: normal time about tariffs, I would say, if you put
Speaker 4: tariffs that are designed to help the manufacturing sector, you
Speaker 4: will help the manufacturing sector. And the question is to
Speaker 4: the benefits to manufacturers offset the cost to everyone else.
Speaker 4: But the way we've gone about tariffs breaks every rule
Speaker 4: in the how to help Manufacturer's handbook, even though that's
Speaker 4: what they're trying to do. I'm going to lead with
Speaker 4: the fact this is a Dallas FED survey where they
Speaker 4: surveyed Texan manufacturers and they said, what if tariff's done
Speaker 4: for your business? Three point seven percent of manufacturers, this
Speaker 4: is the group that's meant to help, three point seven
Speaker 4: percent said it had helped. Something like ninety percent said
Speaker 4: it that hurt, and a few other and a few
Speaker 4: others you know, had different effects. You know, were unsure
Speaker 4: what the effect was. So the way they've done it
Speaker 4: actually fails to do what they were hoping to do. Well,
Speaker 4: here's I've got the numbers. They had a seventy two
Speaker 4: percent of text and manufacturing firms set tariffs that had
Speaker 4: a negative impact, seventeen said no impact, seven percent didn't know,
Speaker 4: and three point seven percent set it that helped. It
Speaker 4: would be if you'd said to me justin, I want
Speaker 4: you to be as incompetent as you can. I want
Speaker 4: you to design a set of tariffs that will help
Speaker 4: a mere three point seven percent of manufacturers, it would
Speaker 4: have hurt my head. I would have been, how can
Speaker 4: I implement tariffs that only help a tiny sliver because
Speaker 4: it's reducing the competition from abroad. It does do that,
Speaker 4: it's hard to do. And then I would have remembered
Speaker 4: page one of the tariff handbooks, don't put tariffs on inputs.
Speaker 4: And so then I would have said, well, I know
Speaker 4: what I'll do. If I really want to hurt American manufacturers,
Speaker 4: I will put tariffs on steel and aluminium and aluminum
Speaker 4: as well. I will put tariffs on chips. I'll start
Speaker 4: a trade war. So the input you want to get
Speaker 4: from a broader harder to get. I will make it
Speaker 4: so Canadians hate us and they don't want to buy
Speaker 4: any of the stuff that we produce.
Speaker 1: Right, this is like they would be our most, our
Speaker 1: easiest trading partner, closest, easiest.
Speaker 4: I will get the rest of the world of likeness.
Speaker 4: I will make it so there are a fewer skilled
Speaker 4: workers for precision manufacturing by chasing away foreign students. I
Speaker 4: will take the great engines of innovation and try to
Speaker 4: shop universities, being of course our universities. So it's actually
Speaker 4: a striking accomplishment. But I actually think it's something we
Speaker 4: should talk more about. Not tariffs, not the bond rate,
Speaker 4: but the extraordinary levels of incompetence, tariffs that are on
Speaker 4: on Monday and off on Tuesday. This incompetence is above
Speaker 4: and beyond any ideological divide. It means they're not even
Speaker 4: achieving the right wing goals that they're after.
Speaker 1: Thank God, we're out of Prat.
Speaker 4: God, because it means not even the region, not even
Speaker 4: no one wins from stupidity.
Speaker 1: So thank you. Justin Walfer Hers doctor Abdul l Said
Speaker 1: is running for the Democratic nomination for Senate in the
Speaker 1: state of Michigan and is the former director of the
Speaker 1: Department of Health, Human and Veteran Services for Wayne County, Michigan.
Speaker 1: Welcome too fast politics, doctor abdulahs.
Speaker 5: Yet, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate
Speaker 5: you having here.
Speaker 1: You're a doctor, but you are also running for the
Speaker 1: United States Senate in the great state of Michigan. It's
Speaker 1: a primary. It's a crowded Democratic primary with three candidates.
Speaker 1: And I interviewed you this weekend on the Weekend Show
Speaker 1: when I was filling in, and what I was really
Speaker 1: struck by was that you have a very clear message
Speaker 1: about your lane in the Democratic Party. So would you
Speaker 1: talk us through what that message is.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: I don't know that there's a doctor lane in most
Speaker 6: Democratic primaries, but I think most Democratic primaries would be
Speaker 6: better if there was one. I never grew up thinking
Speaker 6: I'd be great to run for office. I actually grew
Speaker 6: up with a lot of my mentors telling me I
Speaker 6: should and thinking that's crazy.
Speaker 5: Why would I do that.
Speaker 6: I have an eleven letter first name that's got sounds
Speaker 6: that come out of parts of people's throats they.
Speaker 5: Usually don't know they have. And I really wanted to be.
Speaker 6: A doctor in large part because of the contrast of
Speaker 6: my upbringing. I was raised by my father who's an
Speaker 6: Egyptian immigrant, and my stepmom, Jackie, who's a daughter of
Speaker 6: the American Revolution, from like right here in Michigan, literally
Speaker 6: the middle of the state, and I would get sent
Speaker 6: off to Egypt often to spend most of my summer
Speaker 6: with the wisest, most intelligent person I've ever met, who
Speaker 6: was my grandmother, who never got to go to school.
Speaker 5: She was the ninth to fourteen herself.
Speaker 6: She gave birth to eight kids, got to raise six
Speaker 6: because two died before their first birthday. She had this
Speaker 6: incredible moral sense, and she always always would impress upon
Speaker 6: me the fact that I had cousins who are smarter
Speaker 6: and cousins who are harder working than cousins who did
Speaker 6: all the right things. And the thing that I got
Speaker 6: going for me more than any of the other ones
Speaker 6: was that I had to go back to America at
Speaker 6: the end of the summer. And the crazy thing right
Speaker 6: was it would take me fifteen hours to get to
Speaker 6: or from Egypt, and I travel though I didn't have
Speaker 6: the language for it at the time, about ten years
Speaker 6: different from life expectancy, and I didn't have to go
Speaker 6: fifteen hours. I could go fifteen minutes from where I
Speaker 6: grew up, just outside the city Detroit, into any neighborhood
Speaker 6: in the city and travel the same gap. And the
Speaker 6: fact that I got all those opportunities that even my grandmother,
Speaker 6: who'd never been to America at the time, got to understand,
Speaker 6: and then there were kids whose families had been here
Speaker 6: far longer than mine who didn't get them is the
Speaker 6: reason I went into medicine. And when I realized that
Speaker 6: the things that were making my patient sick had more
Speaker 6: to do with there. They had to breathe the water,
Speaker 6: they had to drink, the jobs that they had or
Speaker 6: didn't have, the opportunity to eat healthy food that they
Speaker 6: had or didn't have the faster. I realized that I
Speaker 6: was not long for the world of clinical practice, and
Speaker 6: I went into public health to do something about that,
Speaker 6: and rebuilt Detroit's health department to put glasses on kids,
Speaker 6: to take on corporate polluters, ran Wayne Counties Health Department,
Speaker 6: the largest, most diverse county in the state, to do
Speaker 6: things like eliminate medical debt and put a narcan in
Speaker 6: one hundred locations. And so I see politics to me
Speaker 6: as more of a continuation of an answer to the
Speaker 6: question of why people get sick in the first place.
Speaker 6: And once you run up against the political challenges that
Speaker 6: people face and start asking why do they make decisions
Speaker 6: like that, you start to question, well, you know, maybe
Speaker 6: I should, I should put myself in the position to
Speaker 6: make those same decisions. And I told you, I grew
Speaker 6: up telling people I would never run for office. In fact,
Speaker 6: I graduated Valtctoria in my class at Michigan and the
Speaker 6: main speaker who anybody actually went to listen to was
Speaker 6: Bill Clinton, who after our speeches asked me, you should
Speaker 6: run for office someday?
Speaker 5: Why not? And I told them about my name. We
Speaker 5: Bill chuckled about it.
Speaker 6: But I'm finally at a position now where I've I've
Speaker 6: kind of come to realize that if you're not willing
Speaker 6: to articulate at the level of our politics, which to
Speaker 6: me is a conversation about.
Speaker 5: Who we are and who we want to be, that
Speaker 5: ideal of an America.
Speaker 6: Centered around the well being of all of its kids,
Speaker 6: then I just don't know that we're going to be
Speaker 6: able to take on either Trump or build the kind
Speaker 6: of America where Trump can't exist in the future.
Speaker 1: One of the things that we see a lot and
Speaker 1: by we I mean me in my second job, which
Speaker 1: is yelling at Democratic politicians about all the things they're
Speaker 1: doing wrong.
Speaker 5: Which you do so well, Molly. I really appreciate you
Speaker 5: doing it.
Speaker 1: That's my hobby, by the way. And all those spokespeople
Speaker 1: who think they're working me when I'm like, yes, let's
Speaker 1: have a long conversation about what I feel your boss
Speaker 1: is doing wrong. All of those people really hate me.
Speaker 1: But one of the things that strip by is that
Speaker 1: it's very hard to get good people to run for office.
Speaker 5: This is a terrible way to live your life.
Speaker 6: Like I to be honest with you, like, I've have
Speaker 6: a two year old and a seven year old, and
Speaker 6: I don't get to see them most evenings. And you know,
Speaker 6: sometimes I think about, like, all right, if I win,
Speaker 6: I'm going to be in DC four days a week,
Speaker 6: and when I'm in Michigan, I'm going to be all
Speaker 6: over the state being the senator and making sure that
Speaker 6: I'm listening to the folks I serve. And it doesn't
Speaker 6: leave much room for the things that, like, you know,
Speaker 6: make you a person. And I think there's a lot
Speaker 6: of folks who do this because at some point they
Speaker 6: really like the idea of being like listened to because
Speaker 6: you have a position of power. I think it would
Speaker 6: be better off if more of our politics was about
Speaker 6: the question of what do you want to do with
Speaker 6: your power?
Speaker 5: Rather than do you want to be in power?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I often tried to think of what politician I
Speaker 1: feel the most betrayed by. Is it a Kirsten Cinema.
Speaker 1: Is it a Joe Manchin, is it a you know?
Speaker 1: Is it someone who knew the right thing but couldn't
Speaker 1: get it done. But it strikes me that in the
Speaker 1: moment we're in where public health has been so politicized,
Speaker 1: the really the only solution is to have doctor senators.
Speaker 1: And speaking of which, there is a Republican doctor senator
Speaker 1: who was the designing book for R FK. Junior. And
Speaker 1: I'd love you to talk us through a little little
Speaker 1: bit about that cowardice and also sort of what you
Speaker 1: think watching it and what you're feelings are.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I got to meet Bill Classidy.
Speaker 6: Actually I've testified before the Senate Budget Committee and Health, Education,
Speaker 6: Labor and Pensions or HELP Committee before, and he was
Speaker 6: the ranking member on the HELP Committee when I testified
Speaker 6: on medical debt, and it was fascinating to me. We
Speaker 6: were having this conversation about the possibility of abolishing medical debt,
Speaker 6: which of course nobody comes by because they were making
Speaker 6: bad decisions. You know, you don't get medical debt because
Speaker 6: you've got a Brazilian butt lift.
Speaker 5: You get it because you got cancer.
Speaker 6: He kept trying to make it about the three P
Speaker 6: forty B program, which is this obscure program that reimburses
Speaker 6: for pharmaceuticals and at times gets misused by large hospitals.
Speaker 6: But you know, really is is a key lifeline for
Speaker 6: getting pharmaceuticals to people who need them. I remember watching
Speaker 6: him squirm around this question of the RFK appointment because
Speaker 6: as much as I disagree with his ideals, he and
Speaker 6: I received very different training.
Speaker 5: I'll be in different eras.
Speaker 6: But when you go through medical training, there's a very
Speaker 6: rigorous process by which you are taught to ask and
Speaker 6: apply an analytical lens to every question you ask. And
Speaker 6: it's not just an analytic lens from the position of
Speaker 6: your brain, like does this make sense, it's also like
Speaker 6: an analytic place from the position of your caring for
Speaker 6: the person in front of you. And I could see
Speaker 6: he knew he was running in a bus saw And
Speaker 6: then I also just watched that like flicker of his
Speaker 6: political future in his eyes, and it was actually quite
Speaker 6: illuminating to me, because I'm like, what's it worth? Like,
Speaker 6: you know, you've already lived the whole career as a doc.
Speaker 6: You got elected to the US Senate by the pardnerance
Speaker 6: of your neighbors in the state of Louisiana, And what's
Speaker 6: so good about the job that you can't just do
Speaker 6: or say the thing that is so obviously wrong to you?
Speaker 6: And I get that Donald Trump holds that entire party
Speaker 6: enthrall to him in the most brutal kind of way,
Speaker 6: But part of me says, like, if you're going to
Speaker 6: go out on something, maybe as the doctor who got
Speaker 6: elected to the US Senate, you're going to go out
Speaker 6: on the idea that we shouldn't appoint a guy who
Speaker 6: has no business in any legitimate conversation about the public's
Speaker 6: health overseeing all of the public health infrastructure of this country.
Speaker 6: And at the same time, there was a question for me,
Speaker 6: like I was asking myself, I'm like, how do you
Speaker 6: when you put yourself in a position like this, how
Speaker 6: do you protect yourself from that? Like what is the
Speaker 6: architecture of your morals or even your mind that keeps
Speaker 6: you from putting the obvious wrong ahead of the obvious right.
Speaker 5: Just to save your political skin.
Speaker 6: I just think that maybe part of it is and
Speaker 6: maybe comes down to this. Bernie told me something when
Speaker 6: I ran for office the first time in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 6: He's like, you know, in this business, you're either really
Speaker 6: good at lying or withholding the truth, or you're really
Speaker 6: good at telling the truth. And he's like, you don't
Speaker 6: strike me as a good liar. I was like, no,
Speaker 6: I couldn't do to save my life. So part of
Speaker 6: me says that the thing that you can do best
Speaker 6: in this job is to be a really good teller
Speaker 6: of truth. I think a little bit about my grandmother
Speaker 6: and about her leadership and my family, and about her
Speaker 6: recognition of like the odd moral circumstances in which I
Speaker 6: was growing up, or like I'm the one of my
Speaker 6: cousins who gets to have this incredible life and the
Speaker 6: others who are smarter, more capable than me, you know,
Speaker 6: drive cabs or work working class jobs in Egypt, and
Speaker 6: I hope that I can keep that. But like, there
Speaker 6: is something corrupting about power. We know it.
Speaker 5: I mean, to your point, I'm trying to get to
Speaker 5: really like Plummet. I don't know how we like get.
Speaker 6: More folks to see the like moral core of the thing,
Speaker 6: or to be willing to be really good arbiters of truth,
Speaker 6: because I think if we were really good arbiters of truth,
Speaker 6: I think the Democratic Party would be a very very
Speaker 6: different place. I think our politics would be in a
Speaker 6: different place. It's that we have nobody who's willing to
Speaker 6: courageously or very few who are willing to courageously tell
Speaker 6: the truth who get to positions of power to be
Speaker 6: able to tell it in a real way.
Speaker 1: First of all, I want you to talk about, like
Speaker 1: what the headwinds are you have this primary. You have
Speaker 1: two opponents, both women, both they occupy sort of different
Speaker 1: lanes of the Democratic Party. If you win this primary,
Speaker 1: you will go against the Republican. It's a purple state,
Speaker 1: but there is definitely you have this sort of very
Speaker 1: very scary like Michigan militia. And then it's a state
Speaker 1: with like a lot of different kinds of people, a
Speaker 1: lot of different kinds of voters, and a lot of
Speaker 1: different kinds interests. First of all, I want to know
Speaker 1: how you win in Michigan and then I want to
Speaker 1: know sort of what you envision is a senator, what that.
Speaker 4: Would look like.
Speaker 6: Yeah, the first thing I'll say is this, I think
Speaker 6: we have an outdated political lens through which we try
Speaker 6: to analyze our politics, which tends to be this right
Speaker 6: left to divide. And I think in accordance with that lens,
Speaker 6: you would say, well, Abdul is running further to the
Speaker 6: quote unquote left, and you would say that other candidates
Speaker 6: are running either further to the right or somewhere between
Speaker 6: the two of us. And I think the proper lens
Speaker 6: for our politics today that helps explain why a state
Speaker 6: like Michigan would both support a Bernie Sanders in a
Speaker 6: primary and then vote for Donald Trump in a general
Speaker 6: election is more the separation between people who feel locked
Speaker 6: out of our politics or institutions of power and the
Speaker 6: people locking them out. And I think if you understand
Speaker 6: Michigan that way, I think this race and my entry
Speaker 6: into it makes a lot more sense. I'm somebody who,
Speaker 6: by virtue of just happenstance, got to be in a
Speaker 6: lot of the rooms that most people who look like
Speaker 6: me get locked out of, and in so many ways
Speaker 6: I've sort of looked at what's happening in those rooms
Speaker 6: and felt just this deep guttural disgust to the way
Speaker 6: that people are talked about and parsed and thought through.
Speaker 6: And I have made my career about trying to unlock
Speaker 6: a lot of those rooms.
Speaker 5: So when I travel my state, and.
Speaker 6: I've been to what fifty some cities, I've probably done
Speaker 6: nearly one hundred public events.
Speaker 5: Because when your name's Abdul, you take nothing for granted.
Speaker 6: No matter where I go, people tell me the same stuff,
Speaker 6: like you close your eyes and you could be in
Speaker 6: a town hall in Escanaba in the Upper Peninsula, or
Speaker 6: a church in Redford, and people are literally using the
Speaker 6: same exact words, just that they don't know that they're
Speaker 6: using the same words. And So I think that a
Speaker 6: political movement built around unlocking our system and being one
Speaker 6: hundred percent honest, clear and direct about the ways the
Speaker 6: methods of the locking out that happened, the ways that
Speaker 6: corporations can buy and sell politicians, the ways in which
Speaker 6: it's corrupted Republicans wholeheartedly, but also unfortunately too many Democrats,
Speaker 6: The ways that I've rejected that system. I've never taken
Speaker 6: a dime of corporate money, both when I ran in
Speaker 6: twenty eighteen, and when I'm running now, and I see
Speaker 6: that I'm blocking as being a fundamental core value of
Speaker 6: what I'm trying to do, I think I'm going to
Speaker 6: win a lot of voters who otherwise.
Speaker 5: Folks would code as quote unquote right wing.
Speaker 6: Now, look, are there folks who are going to run
Speaker 6: it who are going to vote against me because my
Speaker 6: name is Abdul. Yes, but let's be clear, they're not
Speaker 6: voting for any Democrat, right, So if like that's your assessment,
Speaker 6: I think you're not really paying attention. But then the
Speaker 6: other part of it is this think about who Democrats
Speaker 6: lost in twenty twenty four. They lost mainly Arabs and
Speaker 6: Muslims over the disastrous handling of Gaza, and they lost
Speaker 6: young men over the notion that young men don't feel
Speaker 6: like they have a place in the party. I happen
Speaker 6: to be a younger I can't credibly call myself young anymore,
Speaker 6: but a younger Arab Muslim man, and I think that
Speaker 6: that allows for a conversation that Democrats too often have
Speaker 6: not had. You couple that with the honesty and the
Speaker 6: integrity of my message and the fact that I've been
Speaker 6: saying and doing the same things now for a decade
Speaker 6: in Michigan politics. And yes, my name might be Abdul,
Speaker 6: but like I'm the Abdul who wants to make sure
Speaker 6: you have healthcare, and the due who wants to make
Speaker 6: sure you can keep your job and form a union
Speaker 6: if they're trying to take it away from you. And
Speaker 6: I'm the Abdul who's fought against the big corporations who
Speaker 6: are polluting your kids air, and the Abdul who put
Speaker 6: a pair of glasses on your kids face, and the
Speaker 6: Abdul who forgave your medical debt. Like I think that
Speaker 6: there's an opportunity here to win both in the primary
Speaker 6: and the general. And so you know, maybe as a
Speaker 6: child of immigrant, like as a hazard of that, like
Speaker 6: we do math, but like the math maths. And my
Speaker 6: job is to have the conversations that other Democrats are
Speaker 6: not willing to have, because too often they're more interested
Speaker 6: in the conversations they're having behind closed doors with the
Speaker 6: corporation that's going to write them a pac check, conversations
Speaker 6: that I've never had and will never have.
Speaker 1: We would love you to talk about the uncommitted movement
Speaker 1: and just sort of what you tried to do there,
Speaker 1: and there clearly was and I think a lot of
Speaker 1: us worried about this failure on the part of elected
Speaker 1: Democrats running for office to address the situation. And I
Speaker 1: wonder if you could talk about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, people see the difference between principles and political position,
Speaker 6: and I think the difference is whether or not your
Speaker 6: principles apply in all places in all times, or if
Speaker 6: they just apply in some places and sometimes, which makes
Speaker 6: them just political positions. And I've tried to be principled
Speaker 6: about the question of where our tax dollars go. And
Speaker 6: I think a lot of us watched the just complete
Speaker 6: dumpster fire of the Biden administration's mishandling of Gaza, and
Speaker 6: I think it said a lot about his or his
Speaker 6: administration's capacity to do the job. And I think the
Speaker 6: question was, how do we make sure that folks understand
Speaker 6: the risk of this ahead of the general election? And
Speaker 6: so when the Uncommitted movement started to organize, I endorsed
Speaker 6: it because I think we saw that Joe Biden was
Speaker 6: not fit for the job in his handling of Gaza.
Speaker 6: I think the whole world saw that after his first
Speaker 6: disastrous debate performance and ultimately who is no longer the nominee.
Speaker 6: And for me, the minute that Kamala Harris was announced
Speaker 6: as the nominee for the party, I endorsed her. I
Speaker 6: was the first Arab and or Muslim leader in Michigan
Speaker 6: to do so. And the reason I did it and
Speaker 6: it was not because I agreed with the administration's handling
Speaker 6: of Gaza, but it was because whether you saw this
Speaker 6: from the eyes of a child in the city of
Speaker 6: Detroit whom I served, or the eyes of a child
Speaker 6: in Gaza, there is no world in which Kamala Harris
Speaker 6: would not have been better every single day than Donald Trump.
Speaker 6: And that to me is again a matter of principle, right,
Speaker 6: And so you know, I endorsed her. But here's the
Speaker 6: hard part. One of the aspects of that was I
Speaker 6: would have thought that that would give me some space
Speaker 6: to have a conversation with the campaign and say, there
Speaker 6: really needs to be some distance on this issue, because
Speaker 6: there are a lot of voters for whom this is
Speaker 6: a non starter and we're seeing the Natan Yahoo administration
Speaker 6: disregard American public perspective or American political values, and you
Speaker 6: need to call that out. And it didn't happen. And
Speaker 6: at the same time, I'm on the phone with Arab
Speaker 6: and Muslim leaders being like, y'ah, this is insane. Donald
Speaker 6: Trump tried to like stop people who look like you
Speaker 6: from coming to this country. This is ridiculous, and he
Speaker 6: is going to come after our community again.
Speaker 5: Okay, this is crazy, crazy, And unfortunately it was.
Speaker 6: You know, you can imagine the frustration of months and
Speaker 6: months on the phone with these different groups of people
Speaker 6: and nobody seems to be listening, and you're like caught
Speaker 6: in the middle, trying to be the arbiter of like
Speaker 6: just basic logic and conventional wisdom and be like y'all,
Speaker 6: like can we all recognize what's about to happen here?
Speaker 6: And in some respects I think, you know, there are
Speaker 6: frustrations obviously with the decisions that Arabin Muslim voters made.
Speaker 5: I have a lot of those same frustrations.
Speaker 6: And at the same time, we were talking about the
Speaker 6: vice president of the United States, right, Like we're talking
Speaker 6: about very very powerful people who who made political decisions,
Speaker 6: and these are political decisions that put them on the
Speaker 6: wrong side of the empathy anybody should have for dead, dying,
Speaker 6: maimed children or orphan children and I just it was
Speaker 6: just a dumpster fire waiting to happen, and it was
Speaker 6: really truly one of the most frustrating four months of
Speaker 6: my life. And so I supported Uncommitted because my principles
Speaker 6: tell me that we owe a responsibility to our size
Speaker 6: and our power not to spend our tax dollars writing
Speaker 6: blank checks to foreign militaries who are dropping bombs on
Speaker 6: other people's children when we have starving children here at home.
Speaker 6: And I endorsed Kamala Harris because I knew that Donald
Speaker 6: Trump would be worse when it came to those same principles.
Speaker 1: Yeah. No, as someone who was on the Jewish side
Speaker 1: of that conversation, the same exact thing. I mean, fancy
Speaker 1: Jews saying, well, he's better on Israel and me saying
Speaker 1: a blank check to Israel to kill Palestinian children is
Speaker 1: good for no One' sound good for Jews, it's not
Speaker 1: good for Israel, It's not good for anyone. And it's
Speaker 1: the same terrible tragedy and now it's just getting one
Speaker 1: hundred times worse.
Speaker 6: So much of this conversation, especially when it comes to
Speaker 6: Michigan in Dearborn, boils down to a certain like tribalism
Speaker 6: about this thing.
Speaker 5: My position on.
Speaker 6: Blank checks to foreign militaries applies to Egypt, where my
Speaker 6: folks immigrated from. It applies to Jordan, applies to Pakistan,
Speaker 6: applies to Saudi Arabia. I just don't think that we
Speaker 6: pay our tax dollars so that somebody can send blank
Speaker 6: checks to another country's million terry. I think we pay
Speaker 6: them to invest in our own kids. Similarly, right, it
Speaker 6: has been really frustrating to watch anybody, right, whether with
Speaker 6: good intention or bad intention, equate the actions of a
Speaker 6: foreign government with the will or the beliefs of Jewish
Speaker 6: people or the Jewish faith. And I find any attempt
Speaker 6: to do that as being essentially anti Semitic. Similarly right, Like,
Speaker 6: it'd be a crazy thing off somebody who was like, well,
Speaker 6: the Egyptian government did this.
Speaker 5: So clearly you believe, like no, like what f is that?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 6: And so when we do it to anybody, it's wrong.
Speaker 6: Similarly right, there are basic principles that all of us
Speaker 6: have to bring to this. I condemned Hamas from day one,
Speaker 6: because anybody who puts children in harm's way is wrong.
Speaker 6: No context needed, right, And so what I've always tried
Speaker 6: to ask is take the same principle and apply them everywhere,
Speaker 6: independent of your own background, independent of who the actor
Speaker 6: involved is, apply the same principles everywhere. And I think
Speaker 6: if we did a lot more of that, and we
Speaker 6: had the courage to say what our principles were and
Speaker 6: apply them evenly, I think that this would be a
Speaker 6: far less challenging situation. And in the end, what the
Speaker 6: issue is is you've got a special interest regime that
Speaker 6: allows maga billionaires to spend a lot of money to
Speaker 6: try and tell people what they can and can't say.
Speaker 6: And like that's the same issue as we have with
Speaker 6: pharmaceutical money that comes in and tries to truck you
Speaker 6: if you talk about Medicare for All or health insurance
Speaker 6: CEOs or utilities who come in when you try to
Speaker 6: regulate them. And we've got to sort of name the
Speaker 6: process and then also name our principles. And the contrast
Speaker 6: between those things, I think is what can actually get
Speaker 6: us back to a party that maybe can win elections again.
Speaker 1: You think the Democratic Party needs new leadership.
Speaker 6: Well, I think the Democratic Party needs to remember what
Speaker 6: its base is about. Like here's the problem. There is
Speaker 6: a fundamental wedge between Democratic Party voters or voters generally,
Speaker 6: and Democratic Party donors. We need leadership that is going
Speaker 6: to pay attention to the voters instead of the donors.
Speaker 6: And you see a playout and it's like, we still
Speaker 6: haven't learned the lesson. You look at this Gaza resolution
Speaker 6: at the DNC meeting, you're like, y'all, your base every
Speaker 6: poll that you have ever seen in the last month
Speaker 6: or two has shown you that your base disagrees with
Speaker 6: you on this. And yet and yet you cannot as
Speaker 6: a party have the courage to proclaim that you agree
Speaker 6: with where the base has moved, which, by the way,
Speaker 6: is a statement of principle about what is happening with
Speaker 6: our money, and you still can't say it.
Speaker 5: And part of me is is like, what are you
Speaker 5: worried about?
Speaker 6: And the hard part to me is this, It's like,
Speaker 6: there is a certain political economy and incentive set that
Speaker 6: when you have the luxury suite on the Titanic, you're
Speaker 6: more interested in keeping the luxury suite on the Titanic
Speaker 6: than you are and making sure that the Titanic doesn't sink.
Speaker 6: And unfortunately, that's kind of how our party feels right now.
Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us.
Speaker 5: It was my privilege. I appreciate you having me a
Speaker 5: moment ou.
Speaker 1: Jesse Canon.
Speaker 3: So Maali, we previously discussed one of the most stupid
Speaker 3: performative moronics I've come across in a minute, which is
Speaker 3: that Oklahoma is going to test teachers from California and
Speaker 3: New York to make sure that they're America first, and
Speaker 3: the test is written by Brager, You who now seemed
Speaker 3: to be the outsource for all things performatively stupid. Yeah,
Speaker 3: what did it shocked you to hear that these questions
Speaker 3: are some of the most ridiculously stupid misinformation I've ever seen.
Speaker 1: Who is coming from New York and California to go
Speaker 1: teach at Oklahoma?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 1: Who is doing that? Who's like I need to go
Speaker 1: to a state where they pay teachers less, where they
Speaker 1: have less state taxes to pay for things. I want
Speaker 1: to go work there because I mean Oklahoma. You guys
Speaker 1: couldn't make yourselves any less appealing if you.
Speaker 3: Tried, agreed the thing, being though, you'd also have to go.
Speaker 3: I want to go here because I want to teach
Speaker 3: kids absolutely not true facts.
Speaker 1: Nobody's doing this. I mean this is like this crew
Speaker 1: is so delusional about being a teacher. It's like their
Speaker 1: war on federal employees. They think federal employees are making
Speaker 1: billions of dollars and they're doing it because they want
Speaker 1: to help people. Like it's the idea that somehow wanting
Speaker 1: to help people is not in the calculate at all.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I almost wish they would go back to the War
Speaker 3: on Christmas because that one at least had no victims.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it did. It had victims of me. I
Speaker 1: was a victim of the War on Christmas.
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm a victim of Christmas music every year
Speaker 3: and it makes me sad.
Speaker 1: Happy Holidays, bitch. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear
Speaker 1: the best minds and politics make sense of all this chaos.
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