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 Chuck Schumer said Senate Democrats will
Speaker 1: not provide the votes to fund another year of ice madness.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project Zone Rick Wilson joins us to talk about
Speaker 1: ICE's second murder of an American citizen.
Speaker 2: Then we'll talk to the Brennan Center.
Speaker 1: Zone Michael Waldman about how we can stop this corruption
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 2: But first the.
Speaker 3: News, Smiley, the Democrats are threatening a government shutdown over
Speaker 3: ice funding. We were talking about earlier this week, how
Speaker 3: bad the it's going to age the Democrats who voted
Speaker 3: to fund ice in the House, and it seems that
Speaker 3: it's aging very bad, very very fast.
Speaker 1: Okay, So last week Congress passed this cr which included
Speaker 1: another year funding for Ice. There were seven Democrats who
Speaker 1: voted to fund ICE last week, including people like Gared
Speaker 1: Golden who aren't running for reelection. The worst offender I
Speaker 1: think was Tom Swazi, who occupies the seat now that
Speaker 1: used to belong to everyone's favorite scary criminal, George Santos.
Speaker 3: My personal favorite is Henry Quailar Trump curiously pardoned.
Speaker 1: So seven Democrats voted with the Republicans to fund ICE. Well,
Speaker 1: that appropriation process continues. The ICE money dr is in
Speaker 1: the Senate this weekend after border patrol murdered a thirty
Speaker 1: seven year old nurse with a legally registered firearm that
Speaker 1: was not being drawn. The Senate has finally gotten the balls,
Speaker 1: so they are not going to rubber stamps Donald Trump's
Speaker 1: private Militia Cortes Mastow Jackie Rosen say they'll oppose DHS funding.
Speaker 1: Important to realize Nevada is a state with a high
Speaker 1: Hispanic population, right, so they're probably getting a lot of
Speaker 1: phone calls from a lot of people who do not
Speaker 1: want to end up in these terrifying facilities, because remember,
Speaker 1: if you just look Hispanic, you can get swept up.
Speaker 1: And we've seen reporting from Florida that Cuban voters who
Speaker 1: thought that the Republican Party didn't mean them, well, they're
Speaker 1: getting deported.
Speaker 2: At a rapid clip, just like everyone else.
Speaker 1: Because this administration it's just if you don't look white,
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter where you voted, how you voted. A
Speaker 1: small group of Democratic Senators, led by probably the person
Speaker 1: who should be the minority leader at this moment. Chris
Speaker 1: Murphy and Alex Padilla spent the last two days making
Speaker 1: calls to colleagues whipping against the dah test funding bill,
Speaker 1: according to a source familiar, So the job of whip
Speaker 1: is supposed to be Chuck Schumer's, but it's really important
Speaker 1: to see that when there's a power vacuum, Chris Murphy
Speaker 1: and Alex Badilla are in fact filling that power vacuum.
Speaker 1: And so keep that in mind when Tuck Schumer says,
Speaker 1: you know, whatever wants to keep the job, we're really
Speaker 1: seeing whipping going from people who are not in leadership,
Speaker 1: and that I think is important. I says, money to
Speaker 1: continue its operations. You know, they have still a year
Speaker 1: left of money because of the BBB, the big beautiful
Speaker 1: bullshit bill. But I think that this may lead to
Speaker 1: a shutdown. But I think that's a good thing. By
Speaker 1: the way, Trump advisor says, there's no way any Democrat
Speaker 1: can vote for the Homeland Security funding as it is,
Speaker 1: says one Trump advisor. It's a problem, by the way,
Speaker 1: if you're a fucking Republican and you're voting for this,
Speaker 1: and all of them will because they're cowards history. Maybe
Speaker 1: not all of them, Collins Murkowski, but history will judge
Speaker 1: you really badly. History will judge you really, really badly.
Speaker 1: I mean, this is like our country has done this before.
Speaker 1: We did slavery. Where the country of slavery, where the
Speaker 1: country of Jim Crow or the country of Operation Wetback,
Speaker 1: Like we are a country that has done this to
Speaker 1: people of color before. But it is a year twenty
Speaker 1: twenty six and you are doing this and so ultimately
Speaker 1: you will have to look at your grandchildren and your
Speaker 1: children and you will have to say, yes, I was
Speaker 1: involved in this second coming of authoritarianism in the country,
Speaker 1: maybe the third, and I was a part of it.
Speaker 2: I was a willing participant.
Speaker 4: Yeah. And the families of people like Renee Good and
Speaker 4: Alex pretty yeah.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Alex Pritty's parents are not going
Speaker 1: quietly like they released a statement. They are furious and
Speaker 1: they know their son did nothing wrong, just like Renee Good.
Speaker 1: By the way, Renee Goods autopsy released this week showed
Speaker 1: in fact the shot that killed her was as she
Speaker 1: was driving away, turning the car through the side.
Speaker 3: So continuing with that thought, Greg Bovino, a man who
Speaker 3: likes to coseplay in Fashions Circle of nineteen forty three.
Speaker 3: He has bragged their experts in detaining small children, and
Speaker 3: he praised the agent who killed Alex pretty.
Speaker 2: Yeah for Veno.
Speaker 1: He is just appalling. And this is the thing this
Speaker 1: administration does. We see this again and again and again.
Speaker 1: They brag about doing horrible things because they don't know
Speaker 1: right from wrong. I think what's important about this story
Speaker 1: is reports emerged Thursday that ICE had also detained at
Speaker 1: least four Minnesota children. One of them was a five
Speaker 1: year old preschooler, Liam Ramos, who was abducted by massed
Speaker 1: agents in his driveway shortly after his father arrived home.
Speaker 1: ICE detained a two year old at a traffic stop
Speaker 1: in Minnesota just hours after, but Vino recounted his dystopian
Speaker 1: rather than feel good story about detaining children. Another report
Speaker 1: emerged that immigration agents grabbed a child. They also detained
Speaker 1: a family, including a seven year old girl, outside a Portland,
Speaker 1: Oregon hospital. The girl's parents had been rushing her to
Speaker 1: an emergency room. It's just appalling. These people are appalling.
Speaker 1: There is absolutely no words to describe how appalling this is.
Speaker 3: Another aspect of the Trump administration is they really love
Speaker 3: starving people out. We have an estimated half a million
Speaker 3: dead from USAID, and now we're seeing Venezuela, which we
Speaker 3: just captured the leader of starving out and Cuba starving
Speaker 3: because of the capture of oil.
Speaker 4: In the region.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, they went in. They kidnapped the president
Speaker 1: of Venezuela and his wife. They are now in jail.
Speaker 2: The Maduro regime is very much still in power, as
Speaker 2: one would expect.
Speaker 1: They're locking up people who are protesting or who have
Speaker 1: any connection to the United States. I mean, it's just
Speaker 1: madness and people are starving. I think you will absolutely
Speaker 1: not hear about this anymore. Right, I do not think
Speaker 1: you will hear any more about Venezuela because this administration
Speaker 1: has moved on.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: I don't think they're coming back for Venezuela.
Speaker 1: I think they have so many problems that they've just
Speaker 1: moved on, and so I think it's very likely that
Speaker 1: the carnage, the removing the president and then not really
Speaker 1: caring about what happens next.
Speaker 2: I don't think we'll see any more of this.
Speaker 3: Wouldn't be shocked Trump is pushing AI data centers. But
Speaker 3: it's very interesting. This is becoming one of the biggest
Speaker 3: divides and losing issues in American elections. We saw the
Speaker 3: Virginia New Jersey elections for governor make this a huge issue,
Speaker 3: and we're now even seeing an Alabama. This is starting
Speaker 3: to get very, very unpopular.
Speaker 1: I think it's important just for a minute to put
Speaker 1: back and talk about this scale of these AI data centers.
Speaker 1: This one would be the size of eighteen Walmart. So
Speaker 1: it's this pristine inland outside of Bessemer, Alabama. The mayor,
Speaker 1: of course, probably a Republican, does not understand why people
Speaker 1: in this community would be opposed to the construction of
Speaker 1: a fourteen point five billion dollar artificial intelligence data center
Speaker 1: in the woodlands just outside of town.
Speaker 4: Is this Kristen Cinema dressed up as the mayor?
Speaker 2: It sounds like it, right.
Speaker 1: A data center is probably the most unintrusive thing, and
Speaker 1: you'll enjoy paying more for your electricity. You know, it's
Speaker 1: just a big computer sitting in your backyard.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 1: Several residents whose backyards may soon adjoin a digital facility
Speaker 1: the size of eighteen Walmarts freely acknowledge their displeasure. This
Speaker 1: is as pristina forest as you'll find in the foothouse
Speaker 1: of the Appalachian Mountains.
Speaker 2: Not for long.
Speaker 1: You got a diesel mechanist and retired military veteran is
Speaker 1: trying to get them not to build a giant data
Speaker 1: center so that we can all have AI slob for days.
Speaker 2: We'll see what happens.
Speaker 1: Luckily, Alabama has Katie Brett, who is a real class
Speaker 1: act and often pretends to cry on television. I remain
Speaker 1: motivated to ensure that ratepayers are not fooding the bill
Speaker 1: for data centers.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure, Jan.
Speaker 4: Sure, Yeah. I love the trade off.
Speaker 3: Everybody gets slop artwork in exchange for a dry to
Speaker 3: aquifer where they can't tap their will anymore.
Speaker 1: Listen, man, everybody loves it.
Speaker 3: Speaking of things, everybody just loves the Malania movie.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I heard there's a screening at the White House last
Speaker 3: night that You're really sad you weren't there for Yeah,
Speaker 3: I want.
Speaker 1: To talk about optics because we talk so much about
Speaker 1: how disgusting this administration is, but this really feels like
Speaker 1: even for.
Speaker 2: Them, really bad call.
Speaker 1: So Saturday night we have the murder of thirty seven
Speaker 1: year old VA nurse. That night we have the premiere
Speaker 1: or a screening. I'm sorry a screening of the Milania movie. Now,
Speaker 1: I just want to point out they couldn't have it
Speaker 1: in the regular White House screening room.
Speaker 4: You know why was it torn down in the ballroom Because.
Speaker 1: Donald Trump tore down the East Wing because he doesn't
Speaker 1: think that Eleanor Roosevelt is hot. No, I'm just kidding,
Speaker 1: but if he knew who elevanor Roosevelt were, he wouldn't
Speaker 1: like her. So the people who came to the screening,
Speaker 1: Andy Jase, Amazon CEO, Tim Cook, Apple CEO, Eric eun
Speaker 1: Zoom CEO, Lisa Sue Amd CEO, the CEO of ge
Speaker 1: the CEO of the New York Stock Exchange, Mike Tyson.
Speaker 4: Tony Robbins is my personal wild.
Speaker 1: Card, Tony Robbins, I mean the heartiest fuck that guy
Speaker 1: for Tony Robbins. Brett Ratner, who is an occupant of
Speaker 1: the Epstein Files and also a director Suir who was
Speaker 1: canceled because of.
Speaker 2: Me too, because he's a creepy, creepy guy.
Speaker 1: And photographer Ellen or With who took the photos. You
Speaker 1: should probably just protest all of them. There is no
Speaker 1: East Wing theater, so they had to set something up.
Speaker 1: Amazon paid forty million dollars to bribe the Trump administration.
Speaker 1: According to Matt Belanie, the studio has spent thirty five
Speaker 1: million dollars trying to get people to see a movie
Speaker 1: no one will see. But the good news is no,
Speaker 1: there is no good news. Protest them all. Rick Wilson
Speaker 1: is the founder of the Lincoln Project and the host
Speaker 1: of the Enemy's List. Rick Wilson Molly John Fast, I
Speaker 1: am without words about what has happened. So we have
Speaker 1: a second murder in.
Speaker 2: Minnesota, Minneapolis.
Speaker 1: This one thirty seven year old VA nurse. He was
Speaker 1: helping a woman across the street, yep, and they took
Speaker 1: his gun.
Speaker 5: And just Molly, look, the anger, the anger of people
Speaker 5: are feeling is legitimate. Yeah, and I'm going to say this,
Speaker 5: I think there was no excuse for shooting Reney Good whatsoever.
Speaker 2: And the autopsy shows right.
Speaker 5: However, this murder is even more egregious in some ways
Speaker 5: because there were eight DHS agents mobbing, chemically sprang the
Speaker 5: guy in the face. They took his legally carried firearm,
Speaker 5: a firearm with a permit actually in Florida. I don't
Speaker 5: need the permit anymore, but you know I legally carried
Speaker 5: it when it was conceal carry. I had the conceal
Speaker 5: carry license is now no longer required in Florida, but
Speaker 5: there it was required. He was legally carrying his firearm
Speaker 5: in a holster. It was not out, It was not
Speaker 5: pointed at the officers. It was not brandished at any point.
Speaker 5: They never saw it until they took it off of
Speaker 5: his body while they were beating him. While they were
Speaker 5: striking him in the head pistol, whipping him in the
Speaker 5: head over and over again. I don't know if it
Speaker 5: was a gun or a can of tear gas, but
Speaker 5: they were beating him in the head with it. He
Speaker 5: was down, he was restrained, both of his hands were free.
Speaker 5: You saw there was no gun in his hands. They
Speaker 5: took his firearm away, walked away with it, and shot
Speaker 5: him over and over at least five times, some accounts
Speaker 5: say up to ten times.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about the the witness test Stemony
Speaker 1: Yep where she said that they were not doing CPR.
Speaker 2: They were instead counting.
Speaker 5: They were counting the bullet holes. These people are fucking
Speaker 5: monsters and they are murderers, and they need to be arrested.
Speaker 5: And I'm sorry. Keith Ellison, as the attorney general of
Speaker 5: that state. You need to bring charges today. Yeah, you
Speaker 5: need to do it. I'm sorry, folks. And a guy
Speaker 5: broke out a tooth.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah. Keith Elsey needs.
Speaker 2: To bring charges today today. Yeah.
Speaker 5: They need to be charged with murder. There is no
Speaker 5: qualified immunity because they were not acting in the proper
Speaker 5: execution of their duties. They were murdering a man in
Speaker 5: the street. They are violent thugs, they are murderers, and
Speaker 5: they were and then they tried to cover it up.
Speaker 5: Then they tried to seize the scene and cover it up,
Speaker 5: just as they tried to cover up Renee Good. And
Speaker 5: to their credit, MPD said on not this time, pal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I want to pull back for a minute
Speaker 1: and ask the question of why are they in Minnesota
Speaker 1: in the first place, because I think it really is
Speaker 1: important to sort of beg this question. I had long
Speaker 1: thought that they were in Minnesota because of the Nick
Speaker 1: Suurly YouTube video.
Speaker 5: They said that for a long time.
Speaker 2: Odd in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: It was a video that was just a two second reminder.
Speaker 1: It was about fraud that had happened basically post pandemic
Speaker 1: or during the pandemic. These people were all charged by
Speaker 1: the Biden DOJ. Many of them went to jail. These
Speaker 1: people rediscovered this scandal because of the Nick Shirley YouTube
Speaker 1: video were furious that it wasn't covered to the mainstream media.
Speaker 1: Of course, it had been yet another sort of echo
Speaker 1: chamber situation from.
Speaker 5: The definitional fake news. But they every one's faking the news.
Speaker 1: Yes, there's a sort of new rip ball in this
Speaker 1: because of Pam Bondy.
Speaker 2: Talk us through it.
Speaker 5: Pam Bondy sents a letter to Minnesota basically saying, we
Speaker 5: hate you, you're terrorists, you love terrorists, you love illegal criminals,
Speaker 5: you love all this. But by the way, we'll leave
Speaker 5: if you'll just turn over your voter files to us.
Speaker 5: This gets to the nut of this thing. ICE is
Speaker 5: not a law enforcement agency. ICE is not an immigration agency.
Speaker 5: They are an arm of the political will of the
Speaker 5: Trump administration, and Pam Bondy at the head of a
Speaker 5: DOJ is equally a part of Trump's political operation. They
Speaker 5: gave away the game. This is partly because Pam Bondy,
Speaker 5: I don't know if you guys know this yet, is stupid.
Speaker 2: Yeah, then disciplined.
Speaker 1: The one bit of good news here is these people
Speaker 1: are fugging more on but this is still a nightmare
Speaker 1: scenario if Trump's private police force occupying a stage until
Speaker 1: they give up voter rolls. Because Donald Trump is and
Speaker 1: well he should be, and we'll get to this in
Speaker 1: a minute, very nervous about the midterms.
Speaker 2: He ought to be what's the play?
Speaker 1: Just on the voter roll stuff. So you get the
Speaker 1: voter rolls, and then what happens.
Speaker 5: Then they turn it over to a bunch of data
Speaker 5: analysis guys.
Speaker 2: Right, who pretend palenteer types exactly.
Speaker 5: Who pretend, oh my god, we found so much fraud.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 5: And just like they've done in other states where they
Speaker 5: claim there's massive voter fraud, they make a lot of
Speaker 5: noise for their people, and no massive voter fraud ever appears.
Speaker 5: It's not a scale problem. Voter fraud is not a
Speaker 5: big problem in this country. It's not a problem at scale.
Speaker 5: And they want to invalidate elections. They want to be
Speaker 5: able to say, well, we looked at this voter file.
Speaker 5: It was fraudulent. Everybody in there is, every Democrat has
Speaker 5: registered twelve times, and they're all in egalaliens, they're all criminals,
Speaker 5: they're all blah blah blah blah blah, they want to
Speaker 5: do that because they know they're about to get their
Speaker 5: asses handed to them.
Speaker 4: The professional races. Again.
Speaker 5: I'm not a guy who like eats out ahead of
Speaker 5: time on the news of the Senate, but the Senate
Speaker 5: is looking very or increasingly less hospitable for the Republicans.
Speaker 1: And you know you see it, right. I think a
Speaker 1: really good example is Ted Cruz. So Axios had a
Speaker 1: bit of reporting. You're so excited, a bit of reporting
Speaker 1: about my man, and quite frankly, he's none of our man, Raphael,
Speaker 1: And I think that I would love you to just
Speaker 1: talk for a minute as someone who knows the dark
Speaker 1: arts of how this reporting gets leaked to Axios, and
Speaker 1: then we'll talk more.
Speaker 5: Look, somebody in that donor meeting either has decided that
Speaker 5: it's a really smart idea to preposition Cruise is a
Speaker 5: post Trump.
Speaker 2: Conservative, That's what I think, which is.
Speaker 5: My belief, or somebody got sour on Ted, And I
Speaker 5: will tell you the former is a much higher likelihood
Speaker 5: thing than the latter. This smells like a little bit
Speaker 5: too packaged to me to be some disgruntled staffer or
Speaker 5: disgruntled donor. And the messages Cruise delivered in that leak
Speaker 5: were a little too on the nose for twenty twenty eight.
Speaker 2: So you think Cruz leaked this to Axios himself.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's or or a consultant or staffer or somebody.
Speaker 5: But yeah, I think this is a play. I don't
Speaker 5: think it's an accident. I think it's a play.
Speaker 1: And I think what's important about it is that in
Speaker 1: it Ted Cruz or is reported by whoever in Ted
Speaker 1: Cruz's camp leaked it that Donald Trump said fuck you
Speaker 1: when Ted said you're now.
Speaker 5: Honestly, who among us hasn't said.
Speaker 4: Fuck you Ted?
Speaker 2: Amazingly some of us to his face.
Speaker 5: I'll never forget. In twenty sixteen, I remember being in
Speaker 5: this green room with Ted Cruz at the Texas trip
Speaker 5: Fest and he was just like, oh, you know, I
Speaker 5: Trump's gonna just I hate him so much.
Speaker 4: I'm like, okay, we'll stand the fuck up.
Speaker 2: Yeah we do.
Speaker 5: What are you gonna do? And I have a photograph
Speaker 5: of that. Somebody took a picture of me and it's
Speaker 5: like Rick with his finger up and you know, giving
Speaker 5: it to Ted Cruz. But there are two types of
Speaker 5: people in the world, Ted Cruz and everybody who hates
Speaker 5: Ted Cruse, which is everybody else in the world.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read the secret recording just for
Speaker 1: a minute.
Speaker 2: So we have it.
Speaker 4: Matt A.
Speaker 1: Cruise, You're going to lose the House, You're going to
Speaker 1: lose the Senate. You're going to spend the next two
Speaker 1: years being impeached every single week. Absolutely could not be
Speaker 1: more true. Trump's response, according to Cruz, fuck you, Ted.
Speaker 5: Look, Cruise, god knows, I'm gonna probably get struck by
Speaker 5: lightning for this. The Cruise's analysis of why that was
Speaker 5: going to happen was correct, because he said, these tariffs
Speaker 5: are going to destroy the country, and they destroy the economy,
Speaker 5: and they have Remember this, this stuff was recorded last
Speaker 5: spring and summer, and so Cruise was correct. And Molly,
Speaker 5: this is one of those things where where you you
Speaker 5: see that hidden nature of the Republican Party of today.
Speaker 5: These guys privately say to themselves, oh my god, he's
Speaker 5: fucking us. We're getting destroyed. He's gonna blow us up,
Speaker 5: We're gonna lose everything. They say it to themselves all
Speaker 5: the time, and their right to do so, because he
Speaker 5: is and they they don't seem to ever quite have
Speaker 5: that moment where they go okay, now the next step
Speaker 5: of this procedure is to break with the president. Yes,
Speaker 5: they know it's coming, they can't break the spell. Ted
Speaker 5: Cruz will still go out right now and try to
Speaker 5: kiss Trump's ass.
Speaker 1: Now, let's talk about this because Republicans are seeing the
Speaker 1: writing on the wall and they are worried about losing
Speaker 1: in the midterms. But they all are cowards and traders.
Speaker 5: So profiles and chicken shit, as I like to say.
Speaker 1: Right, but this is an interesting piece and I want
Speaker 1: to talk about it. Significant step in the oversight front
Speaker 1: from the House majority that has done little Okay, Chairman Rep. Gambarino,
Speaker 1: who is a New York Republican, So that says all
Speaker 1: you need to know. Right, he knows he's going to
Speaker 1: lose his seat. I think it's important, has formally requested
Speaker 1: testimony from ICE, CPB, and USCIS in a full committee hearing.
Speaker 1: Congress is an important responsibility to ensure the safety of
Speaker 1: law enforcement and the people they serve and protect. Talk
Speaker 1: us through why he's doing this.
Speaker 5: This little crease, this little crevice in the wall of
Speaker 5: MAGA discipline, I think is extraordinarily dangerous. Here's the story
Speaker 5: that we have to understand. When Trump came in in
Speaker 5: February a year ago, his approval rating on his immigration
Speaker 5: policies was basically fifty nine to thirty. It's really good.
Speaker 5: People saw the rubber hit the road, however, and now
Speaker 5: it's about thirty to fifty nine people now hate his
Speaker 5: immigration policy.
Speaker 2: And that was one before they killed that great.
Speaker 5: That was, and that poll was taken this last week.
Speaker 5: It was yah, post Renee good but pre Alex pretty okay.
Speaker 5: It is not going to get any better that the
Speaker 5: dead fish doesn't stop stinking. It's gonna smell worse. It's
Speaker 5: gonna be worse. It's gonna be tougher for them to justify.
Speaker 5: So you're going to see them pull carry uh carry
Speaker 5: like Christinome and little little Greg Bavino and the rest
Speaker 5: of these weirdos. Yeah, they're going to pull them in
Speaker 5: and they're going to have a hearing and they're going
Speaker 5: to say, I favor the president's immigration policies, and I
Speaker 5: want you to be able to do the best job ever,
Speaker 5: so so let's talk about how you're going to do better.
Speaker 5: They're not going to burn it down. They're not going
Speaker 5: to go against Trump. They're not going to say we
Speaker 5: got to get rid of ice.
Speaker 2: But one of the things, it's a it's a crack
Speaker 2: in the wall.
Speaker 5: And I will tell you this. My chats and emails
Speaker 5: were burning up last night from a lot of my
Speaker 5: pro gun pro two A friends, like like, I'm not
Speaker 5: going to go against Trump yet, but man, this is
Speaker 5: a really bad look a legal concealed carry permit holder
Speaker 5: not engaged in violence. And Baveno goes out and says,
Speaker 5: if you carry a gun around us, not pointing it
Speaker 5: at us, but if you carry it around us exercising
Speaker 5: your Secondmendment of rights, you're gonna get killed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fault.
Speaker 5: Line inside of MAGA right now that I don't think
Speaker 5: people have weighed in yet.
Speaker 1: Enough on I want to point out something else though
Speaker 1: about this and why hearings are good and why getting
Speaker 1: these people to talk as much as possible is important. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because they're constantly lying, so they're constantly getting caught in lies.
Speaker 1: And already on Twitter, I've seen like four different videos
Speaker 1: that have you know, Bovino says something, the video says
Speaker 1: something different, Christy Noam says something, the video says something different.
Speaker 1: Jd Vance says something, the video says something different, and
Speaker 1: even worse, I mean, Jadvans has spent so much time
Speaker 1: just defending everything indefensible that you literally have Jady Van's
Speaker 1: defending Kyle written, you know, and then trashing Alex Petrie.
Speaker 2: So explain this.
Speaker 5: Everything out of JD Vance's mouth. You should process it with.
Speaker 5: This is his twenty twenty eight campaign. He's going to
Speaker 5: be the biggest asshole possible to the victims of ice.
Speaker 5: He has to win in a race. They're going to
Speaker 5: be fifteen Republicans in that race. He's going to go
Speaker 5: into it on paper as the presumptive. But in reality,
Speaker 5: you know what MAGA wants. They want more blood, more ugly,
Speaker 5: more anger, more hatred, more screaming, more chaos. Vance is
Speaker 5: all he's doing is setting up twenty twenty eight. He
Speaker 5: probably is laying awake at night going, oh my god,
Speaker 5: I'm going to get struck down by lightning.
Speaker 4: Good Catholic there, JD.
Speaker 2: But it's important.
Speaker 1: I think it's really important to realize, like that is
Speaker 1: what's happening here. Jadie Vance is just defending the indefensible.
Speaker 5: He has no principles, correct, Mary, That's exactly your point
Speaker 5: is exactly right. JD. Vance has no principles whatsoever. You know,
Speaker 5: he's a guy who's had four names. If he can
Speaker 5: change his name four times, he can change his principles
Speaker 5: even even more easily. And he's done so.
Speaker 1: So the other thing that happened that I think is
Speaker 1: a big deal is that well they were I mean,
Speaker 1: this is why these guys are such fugging morons, is
Speaker 1: they're shooting a nurse while their funding appropriation is in
Speaker 1: the Senate. It had passed the House, yep, and last
Speaker 1: my Democrats had voted for it.
Speaker 5: Go on Saturday night, you finally saw Mount Schumer erupt.
Speaker 5: You finally saw them say we're not going to vote
Speaker 5: for this. And look, the rubber's got to meet the road.
Speaker 5: He's got to whip his caucus against it. That's the test. Okay,
Speaker 5: not a humor can do it.
Speaker 4: He could do it if.
Speaker 5: You wanted to, and I hope you want to now,
Speaker 5: because if the Democrats vote for this CR that funds ICE, they.
Speaker 2: Are now completely fucked.
Speaker 5: They're complicit, and their base is going to go fuck you,
Speaker 5: stay home.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think their base is going to primary everyone.
Speaker 2: I think it's going to be like.
Speaker 5: If you if you don't, if you don't vote to
Speaker 5: kill this c R. There's blood on your hands if
Speaker 5: you're a Democrat. And I and I mean, you know what,
Speaker 5: And and while John Fetterman is now functionally a Republican, yeah,
Speaker 5: the rest of those soft Democrats, y'all best get your
Speaker 5: act in gear because this ship does not work.
Speaker 1: And also they're all going to get primaried. I mean
Speaker 1: like they're all going to get.
Speaker 5: You're going to catch a primary. The ads are going
Speaker 5: to be brutal. It's going to be Senators John Smith says,
Speaker 5: says he believes in human rights and human dignity and
Speaker 5: the rule of law, but he voted to give Greg
Speaker 5: Bavino and Christy no more money to kill more Americans.
Speaker 5: I could write that ad in my sleep. I could
Speaker 5: write that ad in my sleep, and you'd watch it
Speaker 5: and you'd cry like a baby because it's so tragic
Speaker 5: and rightly so. But these people if Chuck Schumer and
Speaker 5: I've been very hard on Chuck Schumer, which he deserves,
Speaker 5: which he's deserved, But if he does this, this will
Speaker 5: be a legacy moment for him where he will walk
Speaker 5: out of the Senate with his head held high, that
Speaker 5: fought the good fight at the end on something that
Speaker 5: was a gigantic civil rights issue, because that's what this
Speaker 5: bill really has become. It is a question of American
Speaker 5: civil rights or the power of ice to kill us.
Speaker 1: And if Democrats do the right thing, the morally correct thing,
Speaker 1: and they vote against this cr which gives billions of
Speaker 1: dollars to Trump's pride and militia, then Republicans will be
Speaker 1: forced to shut down the government. And they should because
Speaker 1: this government is hurting its people.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 5: And there's already a little like buzz around some sort
Speaker 5: of compromise from Thune where he's telling people like, well,
Speaker 5: we'll do an ice reform bill that'll kick in in
Speaker 5: two years and da da da no uh uh, no deals,
Speaker 5: no negotiation.
Speaker 4: That's it.
Speaker 5: These people are violating our first, second, fourth, fifth, sixth,
Speaker 5: and tenth Amendment rights every single leek, steenth at fourteenth, Yes,
Speaker 5: ma'am correct, every single day. And as I was joking yesterday,
Speaker 5: at this point, I'm shocked they haven't did the third
Speaker 5: and forced people to quarter ice troops in their homes. Yes,
Speaker 5: this is madness to let this thing go even an
Speaker 5: inch further. And look, I think the Democrats need to
Speaker 5: also think about this as what the Republicans think about everything.
Speaker 5: How do you engineer the spectacle. I want Preddy's family
Speaker 5: in those hearings. Yeah, I want Rachel Good's wife in
Speaker 5: those hearings.
Speaker 1: And by the way, Pretty's family does not hear about
Speaker 1: his murder until the Associated Press calls the family.
Speaker 5: Right horrifying and Pretty was by every account. And I
Speaker 5: don't know, folks, you've probably seen the YouTube video now
Speaker 5: of him saying last words over a veteran's coffin or
Speaker 5: a hospital bed with a flag draped veterans passing.
Speaker 4: This was a good guy.
Speaker 2: Are you crying?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I'm upset, Molly, I'm fucking upset. I'm upset that
Speaker 5: a good person who was trying to do a good
Speaker 5: thing is now being vilified by scumbag worms like Steven Miller.
Speaker 5: Steven Miller is not fit to lick the shit off
Speaker 5: his shoes and immediately pops out domestic terrorists. I hope
Speaker 5: the family sues the ever loving fuck out of Steve
Speaker 5: Miller and Christy Nome and Greg Bavino and Donald Trump
Speaker 5: for defamation. This is a black and white defamation case.
Speaker 5: You call someone a domestic terrorist with no evidence, with zero,
Speaker 5: zero evidence, and of course when they did it before
Speaker 5: there were any facts established in the case. They were
Speaker 5: domestic terrorists attack the police. Sorry, and they really should,
Speaker 5: because there is a civil legal exposure for these people
Speaker 5: that that's been underestimated so far. And I hope and
Speaker 5: I pray that there are some junkyard dog lawyers out
Speaker 5: there on this side of the issue that are willing
Speaker 5: to go and burn this administration's leadership, that are saying
Speaker 5: these things to the fucking ground.
Speaker 4: I drunk fast.
Speaker 1: Michael Waldman is the President and CEO of the Brendon
Speaker 1: Center for Justice at NYU's School of Law.
Speaker 2: Michael Waldman, Hi, Molly, Happy New Year. Too late. It's
Speaker 2: too late. You can't do that.
Speaker 1: As we both know, you are out of the statute
Speaker 1: of limitations of New Year's according to Larry David. So
Speaker 1: you are the head of the Brandon Center. You guys
Speaker 1: have this really important new project which is nine Solutions
Speaker 1: for Political Corruption. I don't know why you're so focused
Speaker 1: on political corruption because everything is going great. First, I
Speaker 1: want you to explain how do you get to a
Speaker 1: place where the political corruption is so everywhere that you
Speaker 1: have to sort of narrow it down.
Speaker 6: One of the amazing things to me, right now is
Speaker 6: lots of polls show that voters citizens name corruption is
Speaker 6: one of their top issues have for months and months.
Speaker 6: And given the fact that the traditional news media, which
Speaker 6: used to be the thing that told us when there
Speaker 6: was a scandal, you know, barely exists in some respects,
Speaker 6: my reaction is, how do voters even know that they
Speaker 6: basically are way ahead of the political system and seeing
Speaker 6: that the rot that is pervasive right now in government
Speaker 6: and politics in Washington. You know, look, corruption is not
Speaker 6: exactly a new phenomenon in human history, fair enough to say.
Speaker 6: And for a long time in our country there was
Speaker 6: personal corruption in public office if we think about Tammany
Speaker 6: hall boss tweet, people taking money, graft, that kind of thing,
Speaker 6: and then later on in the late twentieth century that
Speaker 6: was really supplanted in a lot of ways by the
Speaker 6: institutional corruption of something like the campaign finance system when money,
Speaker 6: big money became especially really important in how elections got run.
Speaker 6: Now you see both of those things roaring back and combined,
Speaker 6: and we see a fusion of public power and private
Speaker 6: wealth in a way we just have not seen since
Speaker 6: the Gilded Age of the late eighteen hundreds, if that,
Speaker 6: you know, back then the robber barons had a big impact,
Speaker 6: but they did not have a situation where the world's
Speaker 6: wealthiest man, Elan Musk, paid for basically the winning presidential campaign,
Speaker 6: then moved into the White House, literally slept on a cot,
Speaker 6: and was given prime ministerial authority for a few months
Speaker 6: to wreck as many agents ands as he could get
Speaker 6: his hands on.
Speaker 4: You didn't back then have this thing.
Speaker 6: You and I have talked about the unitary executive theory,
Speaker 6: which was is this notion that the president has the
Speaker 6: power of a king, that the rule of law doesn't apply.
Speaker 6: All of these things make the corruption really really significant.
Speaker 6: And if you want to understand why government doesn't work,
Speaker 6: if you want to understand why people feel the economic
Speaker 6: system is rigged, there's an affordability crisis, all these other things,
Speaker 6: they are rightly blaming this.
Speaker 4: As one of the reasons.
Speaker 6: So we thought it was important to start this Solution's
Speaker 6: series by looking at corruption. And you know, so it's
Speaker 6: a little presumptuous in a way to be thinking, well,
Speaker 6: what are the solutions, how can we fix things in
Speaker 6: the future When the wreckage is being cleaned up, aren't
Speaker 6: the barbarians at the gates of the city is this
Speaker 6: really the time to be doing, you know, urban planning.
Speaker 6: We think emphatically yes, that we have to be thinking
Speaker 6: right now, talking right now about what would be the
Speaker 6: big changes that would actually make a difference to undo
Speaker 6: some of the damage but also do things better.
Speaker 1: Right, And that's a really good point, because there's like
Speaker 1: digging out from the trumpest corruption, and then there's trying
Speaker 1: to have reforms like post NIX and like post civil war,
Speaker 1: the kind of things you must have in order to survive.
Speaker 1: So first let's talk about the campaign finance because that
Speaker 1: seems to be certainly the most obvious when you talk
Speaker 1: about Elon Musk.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and we we do begin with the campaign finance
Speaker 6: solutions because that is so big, so pervasive, and has
Speaker 6: such an obviously such a huge impact on so much
Speaker 6: of what government doesn't have.
Speaker 4: Billions of dollars being.
Speaker 6: Contributed in American elections in a way that no other
Speaker 6: democracy does, and a lot of this is secret money.
Speaker 4: In other words, it's called dark money.
Speaker 6: It's undisclosed who gives the money, but billions of dollars
Speaker 6: coming in and very often from very very wealthy individuals
Speaker 6: or from people who have a big interest in how
Speaker 6: government contracts work and that sort of thing.
Speaker 4: So the steps that need to be.
Speaker 6: Taken, we think range from looking at the constitution itself,
Speaker 6: a constitutional amendment to undo Citizens United which is now
Speaker 6: fifteen sixteen years old, just as of a few days ago,
Speaker 6: and actually other really bad Supreme Court decisions that wrecked
Speaker 6: the campaign finance laws and gave us.
Speaker 4: This toxic politics that we have right now.
Speaker 6: There's also a need for legislation to end dark money,
Speaker 6: to require disclosure of all this spending and contributions. And
Speaker 6: I think something that really makes a big difference that
Speaker 6: I've been fighting for for years and years, which is
Speaker 6: public financing of campaigns, the system that New York State
Speaker 6: has now and New York City too, where small contributions
Speaker 6: get a match. It boosts the power of small contributions
Speaker 6: and it makes it possible to run without just being
Speaker 6: beholden to the big money.
Speaker 4: Those are some of the ideas. I'll mention one other
Speaker 4: that is a newer one.
Speaker 6: I think there is not really right now an effective
Speaker 6: ban on campaign contributions from government to contractors in the government,
Speaker 6: and think of how much money is at stake.
Speaker 1: Give us an example of what that means, because I
Speaker 1: think people might not understand exactly.
Speaker 6: Government contractors make billions and billions and billions of dollars,
Speaker 6: and it's not like they're just skimming it off the top.
Speaker 6: They're providing services very often. But there's tremendous potential for
Speaker 6: waste and overcharging and all the things we're familiar with.
Speaker 6: And you don't want those billions of dollars of contracts
Speaker 6: going just because somebody contributed to someone's campaign or as
Speaker 6: a political backer. There are laws on the books, federal
Speaker 6: laws that supposedly stopped up this kind of campaign contributions,
Speaker 6: but it's very narrow and so the executives of a
Speaker 6: company or the subsidiaries of a company aren't really covered.
Speaker 6: So you need to make the law real and tight
Speaker 6: and effective. And I think a lot of people on
Speaker 6: all sides of those transactions would be very happy because
Speaker 6: they don't really want to have to be doing this.
Speaker 6: And if you look at how Trump is running the
Speaker 6: federal government, it's so clear that giving campaign contributions or
Speaker 6: to his library or to his ballroom is how you
Speaker 6: get stuff done. Is inaugural fund is very transactional, and
Speaker 6: it's just gets yeah. And for the pardons, all these
Speaker 6: kinds of things. Again that the Supreme Court has made
Speaker 6: the corruption easy. So we do start with the campaign
Speaker 6: finance system. It's very, very broadly popular with the public,
Speaker 6: with Democrats and Republicans. The challenge is that the politicians
Speaker 6: in Washington and everywhere else, they tend usually to think
Speaker 6: of themselves.
Speaker 4: As incumbents more than anything else. They don't really want
Speaker 4: to change this that much. But it's the big one,
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 1: And government contractors. That's things like Boeing Right.
Speaker 6: Boeing Defense contractors, the Pentagon spends in contracts trillions.
Speaker 4: Of dollars over a decade.
Speaker 6: Things are really expensive, and you want them to work,
Speaker 6: and you want them not to be based on favoritism
Speaker 6: or graft. You want them to be based as much
Speaker 6: as you can on it actually being the best value
Speaker 6: for taxpayers.
Speaker 1: So publicly funded campaigns really annoys me, but I understand
Speaker 1: why they exist. But it makes me mad every time
Speaker 1: we talk about it. So let's talk about it. Very annoying,
Speaker 1: but let's talk about it.
Speaker 6: You are now a loan you know, it's very often
Speaker 6: the people who are most upset about the current system
Speaker 6: who have the hardest time of this because it's like,
Speaker 6: why are we giving money to these politicians.
Speaker 2: So they can spend it on?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: But yes, go on explain why, Well, it's.
Speaker 6: Better that the money come from taxpayers or some other
Speaker 6: fund like that than from somebody who wants a contract
Speaker 6: or something.
Speaker 4: And the way to do it.
Speaker 6: I think it doesn't get all private money out of politics,
Speaker 6: but it makes it possible to run a campaign going
Speaker 6: to voters, going to small dollar contributors. And you're seeing
Speaker 6: that in New York State, and it's been very successful
Speaker 6: in New York City over the years and really changing
Speaker 6: who gives money to campaigns. You're totally not alone in
Speaker 6: getting the hebgb's over the idea of spending the money
Speaker 6: this way.
Speaker 1: You sort of have to raise a certain amount of
Speaker 1: money in order to get the matching fund.
Speaker 2: We're not just giving money out to people, right.
Speaker 6: You have to have supporters support you, and then their
Speaker 6: contributions are enhanced basically, and as you know, in New
Speaker 6: York City or New York State, it's a multiple match,
Speaker 6: like if I give ten dollars, then it might be
Speaker 6: worth eighty dollars to the campaign. And it does encourage
Speaker 6: the candidates to actually talk to people. It means that
Speaker 6: having a coffee clutch in someone's living room gets them
Speaker 6: as much money as having a private meeting in a
Speaker 6: real estate office. But it's new right now, but it's
Speaker 6: actually not a brand new idea. We had a public
Speaker 6: financing system in the United States after Watergate, as you
Speaker 6: correctly said, when we have big scandals, when we have
Speaker 6: moments like this, that's when you get change.
Speaker 4: Afterwards. It's not always what happens, but that's when it happens.
Speaker 6: After Nixon resigned, Congress passed a public financing system for
Speaker 6: the presidential campaigns that actually worked really well, and it
Speaker 6: actually meant that Ronald Reagan when he ran for reelection,
Speaker 6: didn't do any fundraisers in the general election.
Speaker 4: Think of that. It really was effective.
Speaker 6: It just the money wasn't enough and it never got
Speaker 6: updated by Congress and it sort of faded away. That's
Speaker 6: why it's this dollar checkof on your taxes that no
Speaker 6: one really knew why it's there.
Speaker 4: But the idea was originally from Teddy Roosevelt.
Speaker 1: I want to talk about a monuments feels very apropos
Speaker 1: right now.
Speaker 6: Well, that's the other side of this, right which is
Speaker 6: that if you think about personal corruption, the personal milking
Speaker 6: of the system that you might have thought about being
Speaker 6: in an earlier era. Of course, as we know from
Speaker 6: Donald Trump outward, it is very much happening in the
Speaker 6: federal government. And then what this publication is all about.
Speaker 6: The federal governments obviously not the only place that needs improvement.
Speaker 6: The emoluments Clause is part of the Constitution. The founders
Speaker 6: when they wrote the Constitution really cared about all this
Speaker 6: corruption stuff, and it says that whoever's the president cannot
Speaker 6: take gifts from foreign governments or from domestic people basically
Speaker 6: without Congress's approval. They knew that there would be a
Speaker 6: chance that you would have corrupt presidents and that foreign
Speaker 6: entities would try to influence them with an airplane or
Speaker 6: buying their crypto or coins. They might have thought of
Speaker 6: that or the airplane, but they were very aware of
Speaker 6: the potential for corruption, and the Constitution already bans it,
Speaker 6: but there's no statute, there's no penalties attached to that.
Speaker 4: So one of the things we say that should.
Speaker 6: Happen is there needs to be a statute, a law
Speaker 6: that actually enforces the constitutions and monuments clause.
Speaker 4: There's other ways.
Speaker 6: The president right now has a big set of loopholes
Speaker 6: in the federal ethics laws that really make it easy
Speaker 6: for a grifting president to grift. The ethics laws apply
Speaker 6: to everybody in the government except the president and the
Speaker 6: vice president in the Supreme Court.
Speaker 4: That's a loophole that should be plugged.
Speaker 6: We think, as we describe here, that there are to
Speaker 6: be a new ethics agency that has the ability to
Speaker 6: enforce these things all across the government. We shouldn't let
Speaker 6: Congress off the hook either. You know, Capitol Hill has
Speaker 6: always been a place where money talks in a variety
Speaker 6: of ways, and right now one of the things people
Speaker 6: are really upset about is the incredible amount of stock
Speaker 6: trading that seems to happen.
Speaker 1: This is like my favorite topic, Congressional stock trading. I
Speaker 1: saw it on the list. I was delighted. So let's
Speaker 1: talk about this stock trading bill.
Speaker 6: So members of Congress have a suspiciously high rate of
Speaker 6: success in the stock market. They are privy to all
Speaker 6: kinds of insider information, non public information. The way that
Speaker 6: insider trading laws are written, they don't really stop them
Speaker 6: from doing this kind of stock trading.
Speaker 4: And you see their returns just way.
Speaker 6: Above you know, standard and pores or something like that way,
Speaker 6: and again, it's just quite a coincidence. And so it's
Speaker 6: something where I think the public is really outraged about this,
Speaker 6: and Congress just should pass the law right away to
Speaker 6: stop it. The Democrats have been increasingly energetic about this.
Speaker 6: The Republicans, seeing that people care about it, they actually
Speaker 6: put forward a bill a couple of weeks ago. It
Speaker 6: was very weak, but that sort of started to get
Speaker 6: the bidding going on it. I think there's a chance
Speaker 6: that this could happen even before twenty twenty eight, because
Speaker 6: it's so smelly and so there's a lot of things
Speaker 6: of that nature. And I think there's some things that
Speaker 6: go even deeper because one of the ways, as we
Speaker 6: now know, that this kind of personal corruption is happening,
Speaker 6: has to do with one of the powers the president
Speaker 6: is given in the Constitution, the pardon power.
Speaker 1: Talk about this, there's an idea that pardons need to
Speaker 1: be taken away from the president, and that is because
Speaker 1: Trump is pretty amazing in the way he has used it,
Speaker 1: but that there really is no good use of a
Speaker 1: president with a pardon power.
Speaker 6: Discuss I think presidents shouldn't have the power all on
Speaker 6: their own to do it. I think there's a roll
Speaker 6: for presidents in this. The Constitution is very clear the
Speaker 6: president has the power to issue pardons. It's one of
Speaker 6: the clearest grants of power in the whole Constitution to
Speaker 6: a president. It comes from King George the Third was
Speaker 6: one of the things you got to do as a
Speaker 6: king back in the seventeen hundreds, and that was one
Speaker 6: of the things they kind of took cut and pasted
Speaker 6: into the US Constitution because the didn't really know what
Speaker 6: a president was going to be like, and the thing
Speaker 6: they understood was a king. And it didn't really bother
Speaker 6: them because George Washington was going to be the president.
Speaker 6: He was ault so, you know, well respected that they
Speaker 6: just didn't think it all through quite as much. And
Speaker 6: it is really important that there be a place in
Speaker 6: the criminal justice system for mercy, for correcting mistakes.
Speaker 4: You know, it's an unfair system.
Speaker 6: It's very punitive, it's racially discriminatory, all of those things
Speaker 6: that we all know about. But in recent years, and
Speaker 6: especially under Trump, this unlimited power to issue pardons has
Speaker 6: become an engine of corruption. We see people giving big
Speaker 6: campaign contributions or big cash grants or other things to
Speaker 6: Trump getting pardons for family members the president of I
Speaker 6: never can remember the country. I don't think it's Ecuador,
Speaker 6: one of the other South American countries.
Speaker 4: It was convicted.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he just got pardoned drug trafficking.
Speaker 6: Just as we were attacking Venezuela. He's pardoned. There's every
Speaker 6: reason to think that these pardons are being issued in
Speaker 6: a corrupt way. And it's important to note that Trump,
Speaker 6: of course has taken this to an extraordinary extent.
Speaker 4: He didn't start it.
Speaker 6: Joe Biden at the end of his term pardoning his
Speaker 6: son and other family members was also.
Speaker 1: Problematic as blanket preemptive pardons.
Speaker 4: And even the president I worked for, Bill Clinton.
Speaker 6: Mark Ridge, Yeah, at the very end of his presidency
Speaker 6: pardoned Mark Rich.
Speaker 4: As they say, fugitive financier Mark Ridge. That is his
Speaker 4: homeric epithet.
Speaker 2: Who was a major Democratic donor too.
Speaker 4: I don't know if he was his wife was.
Speaker 2: But his wife was.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he was on the lamb and it had never
Speaker 6: pleaded guilty or anything like that.
Speaker 4: He was just literally a fugitive.
Speaker 6: His wife was this Clinton supporter and gave money to
Speaker 6: the library that Clinton was getting ready to start building,
Speaker 6: and he gave Mark Rich to pardon and it was
Speaker 6: a huge outcry, as it should have been, and there
Speaker 6: was even a criminal investigation of it. In the end,
Speaker 6: Clinton was cleared because in fact, there were a number
Speaker 6: of people in the federal government who had urged him
Speaker 6: to do this pardon and the government of Israel had
Speaker 6: urged him to do it because this guy had been
Speaker 6: helpful to the peace process. I mean, there were a
Speaker 6: lot of different things. There's a lot of reasons he
Speaker 6: did it. It was a bad idea and showed what
Speaker 6: could go wrong with the pardon power. And so in
Speaker 6: all the states, governors have pardon power, but there's also
Speaker 6: a board of Pardons or clemency that looks at the
Speaker 6: individual cases. There should be a constitutional amendment to address this.
Speaker 2: How do you did this stuff pass the Supreme Court?
Speaker 6: So, I mean, some of it, if you changed the constitution,
Speaker 6: they're supposed to follow that, although they don't always, but
Speaker 6: you're supposed to. And some of it are things where
Speaker 6: you can even now do things where the Supreme Court
Speaker 6: will let you do them. So this Supreme Court, which
Speaker 6: did Citizens United, has still allowed public financing system to
Speaker 6: go forward because they're voluntary and they boost speech. Just
Speaker 6: an example, they say they want disclosure of campaign money.
Speaker 6: None of us should be under any illusions that this
Speaker 6: Supreme Court has done everything it can to make it
Speaker 6: easy to be a corrupt public official. They've narrowed what
Speaker 6: corruption means, all these other things. But there have been
Speaker 6: other times. You mentioned Watergate, you mentioned after the Civil War,
Speaker 6: when things get really bad, people rise up, and you
Speaker 6: had the Progressive era, which was a series of reforms
Speaker 6: often in response to this very kind of thing. After
Speaker 6: Watergate in the nineteen seventies, you hit the same thing.
Speaker 6: So it's up to all of us. Do we want
Speaker 6: to just stand there at the end of assuming there
Speaker 6: is an end to all this, and look at the
Speaker 6: wreckage and see this wisps of smoke rising from the.
Speaker 4: The embers, and just say, well, there's nothing we can do.
Speaker 6: Or do we take this chance to build something that's
Speaker 6: a better system, that works better for people, that actually
Speaker 6: makes government serve them. I think it's actually going to
Speaker 6: be a major set of issues going forward. I think
Speaker 6: it's the campaign finance issue. I spoke to Selinda Lake,
Speaker 6: who's a major Democrat polster. She says she thinks campaign
Speaker 6: finance reform is the key issue for the Democrats, which
Speaker 6: is kind of an amazing thing.
Speaker 2: That is an insane statement.
Speaker 6: You know, it's not just dreamy eyed goo goo's like me.
Speaker 6: I think it's a real hardball political issue too wild.
Speaker 2: Michael, thank you. I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 4: I would love to thank you.
Speaker 2: No moment, Rick Wilson clue.
Speaker 1: So it is our moment of rockery and I have
Speaker 1: it today. It's a toy shop in Saint Paul, Minnesota
Speaker 1: called Mischief Toy Store and they were three D printing
Speaker 1: and giving away whistles right well, now they're being targeted
Speaker 1: by ICE. It's a beho owns it. They say that
Speaker 1: two ICE agents went to the store to hand deliver
Speaker 1: an audit asking for federal employee forms, payroll records, and
Speaker 1: names of past and present employees, just hours after the
Speaker 1: daughter of the owner of the store spoke to ABC
Speaker 1: News about the ongoing Trump operation and criticized DHS.
Speaker 4: I want to know what an ICE audit is? What
Speaker 4: is an ICE audit?
Speaker 5: What audit power does ICE have in any universe?
Speaker 1: They have given away thousands of three D printed whistles
Speaker 1: since Thanksgiving and they are being targeted by ICE for
Speaker 1: an audit. What does the Party of Small government say
Speaker 1: about such as it.
Speaker 5: You know, this is a fascinating example of the Party
Speaker 5: of small government being in everybody's fucking business. In what
Speaker 5: universe does this store printing out whistles? And by the way, folks,
Speaker 5: if you do want to get a three D printer,
Speaker 5: they're like less than one hundred bucks. Now you could
Speaker 5: print the a tech death whistle, which makes these ice
Speaker 5: whistles sound like nothing. So it is the loudest was
Speaker 5: terrified that you've ever heard. But look, this is the
Speaker 5: idea that they're going to use the power of the
Speaker 5: state to shut down a private business that's exercising the
Speaker 5: First Amendment rights of its owners. The correct answer to
Speaker 5: these guys is go fuck yourself, get a lawyer, come
Speaker 5: back with a real warrant. Otherwise we're calling the cops.
Speaker 5: And they should have called the cops to have these
Speaker 5: guys arrested for harassing them. Rick Wilson, oh I drunk,
Speaker 5: Fast Go mischief toys.
Speaker 2: Go mischief Toys.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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