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 President Zelenski says to Trump, if
Speaker 1: you can really stop the war in twenty four hours,
Speaker 1: I invite you to Ukraine.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich joins us to talk
Speaker 1: about the impact of the child tax credit and other
Speaker 1: policies Biden.
Speaker 2: Can enact in a second term. And also right now
Speaker 2: then we'll talk to balls and Strikes.
Speaker 1: Editor Jay Willis about the Supreme Court's horrifying next move.
Speaker 1: But first we have, because it's a Monday, the host
Speaker 1: of the Enemy's List, the one, the only, the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Project's own, Rick Wilson, Welcome to Fast Politics, my Baddy,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, it is I. It's been a fruitful week
Speaker 1: for you and also for the Lincoln Project more generally.
Speaker 3: I would say, So, we had an ad that now
Speaker 3: has something like eleven million views and six hundred thousand shares,
Speaker 3: and it's right now in beautiful New Hampshire on a
Speaker 3: truck outside of every Trump rally.
Speaker 1: I wanted to talk about the truck. Sure, so the
Speaker 1: ad is playing on a truck.
Speaker 3: Well it's playing on TV also, But yes, right.
Speaker 2: That seems like the kind of thing that would make
Speaker 2: him pleasy.
Speaker 3: Well, here's the thing we did. I give full credit
Speaker 3: to Philip Jermaine and our team, who is the master
Speaker 3: of these truck things. He's our trolling director for the trucks.
Speaker 3: We've got two of them. One of them followed the
Speaker 3: Trump bus where at least saphonic the aggression meaners of
Speaker 3: Republican politics was. And one of them was in front,
Speaker 3: one was behind outside the rally space. You had to
Speaker 3: walk by the truck twice if you were in line
Speaker 3: to go to the Trump rally. We know that this
Speaker 3: kind of thing. And by the way, it's like deminimous
Speaker 3: expense but his maximum trolling. We know their staffers coming
Speaker 3: out to like you're going to get sued by mister Trump. Okay,
Speaker 3: fuck off, go away. We've been to this road, Johns.
Speaker 3: But the ad basically came out and it flipped this
Speaker 3: whole like Trump is God thing and on its head,
Speaker 3: and it's called you know, God made a dictator. It's
Speaker 3: an inversion of their bullshit from last week, which Trump
Speaker 3: is telling evangelicals I am God or I am God's representative,
Speaker 3: I'm the avatar of the of all your religious desires.
Speaker 3: You know, we just weren't going to put up with it.
Speaker 3: It's been an ad that's been bigger than anything anybody's
Speaker 3: done this year, and Friday bigger than anything we've done
Speaker 3: this year. We've got a few good ads this year,
Speaker 3: are in the last twelve months, but this one was
Speaker 3: a really big smack into Trump's head. He's very unhappy
Speaker 3: about it because our little birds from his campaign sing
Speaker 3: to us again, and we know they're trying to keep
Speaker 3: him away from commenting on it, because every time Trump
Speaker 3: opens his mouth this week, he sounds like it's good
Speaker 3: for you, get crazy, lunatic, which is, you know, probably
Speaker 3: the advantage of being true.
Speaker 1: I want to like pause for a second. Trump is
Speaker 1: going to be the nominee. And we in the chattering
Speaker 1: political pundon industrial complex have been saying this for about, oh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, two and a half years, not.
Speaker 3: All of us, but a lot of us.
Speaker 1: Yes, correct, Yeah, because the reality is if you offer nothing,
Speaker 1: which the other candidates did, Trump without the charisma and
Speaker 1: Christy who never had a shot, and how you know,
Speaker 1: it's like this saying you, if you come at the king,
Speaker 1: you best not miss. If you come at the king
Speaker 1: and don't even come at him, you miss.
Speaker 3: Right, if you come at the king and don't make
Speaker 3: an argument why you should be the king, a real argument,
Speaker 3: not like a I'm nicer or anything. And again, we've
Speaker 3: talked about this a lot. There's no diet Trump, Okay,
Speaker 3: there's no like light less sugar less, caffeine less fat Trump.
Speaker 3: They want the real thing. And so Ron DeSantis was
Speaker 3: always trying to be Trump without being Trump.
Speaker 2: Well he was Trump without the charisma.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, Look he was saying, I'll give you all
Speaker 3: the culture worshit you want without being assumed to be
Speaker 3: indicted felon. And that didn't work out either, because they
Speaker 3: don't care their post rule of law, their post conservative.
Speaker 3: All these people today who are like Mickey Haley's taking
Speaker 3: the fight to Trump, I'm like, guys, you got three
Speaker 3: days till THEO in New Hampshire primary.
Speaker 2: She came in third in Iowa.
Speaker 3: Right, the ballgame has already over. Stop insulting everyone's intelligence
Speaker 3: by pretending that this thing is going to last to
Speaker 3: Super Tuesday. DeSantis will be out by Tuesday night. As
Speaker 3: my guess, I don't think I.
Speaker 2: Think he's going to be out today.
Speaker 3: Right, he might be out today. Look, let me tell you,
Speaker 3: the first time Casey DeSantis has to fly coach on Delta,
Speaker 3: that campaign is over, over and done.
Speaker 2: She backed down, They backed down, back down.
Speaker 3: The backing down has been spectacular. In the last week,
Speaker 3: they have gone through one hundred and fifty million dollars modestly,
Speaker 3: that's a low boundary.
Speaker 1: Of which Jeff row got sixty seven Who's gonna say, yeah,
Speaker 1: go on.
Speaker 3: Sixty seven cents of every dollar that the Dasanta's campaign spent.
Speaker 3: Jeff where O took in to his companies, whether it
Speaker 3: was to the De Santa's campaign or the super pac,
Speaker 3: which was, as you know, not what we call traditionally legal. Right,
Speaker 3: it requires a novel interpretation of what we call the law.
Speaker 3: But okay, we'll play that out. We'll pretend that doesn't
Speaker 3: exist right now. All that happens in this space of
Speaker 3: a campaign that was doomed from the start. Everyone knew
Speaker 3: it except apparently Ron and Casey, and people are shocked
Speaker 3: that it's failed. People are shocked that that it didn't work.
Speaker 3: We've said it from the start. Every single thing about
Speaker 3: Trump and trump Ism is a cult. It depends on
Speaker 3: cult like adulation and adoration, and no one, no one
Speaker 3: should be fooled that the result was going to be
Speaker 3: anything but what it was. I'm just it's exhausting.
Speaker 2: Let's have a minute of media on media violence.
Speaker 3: I'm always here for that.
Speaker 1: We saw so many think pieces about Joe Biden's age. Sure,
Speaker 1: over the last two days, Donald Trump has confused Obahama
Speaker 1: with Biden more than once, and he has confused Nikki
Speaker 1: Haley with Nancy Pelosi, two people who, while they their
Speaker 1: names start with N, have almost nothing in common.
Speaker 3: I'm starting to think Grandpa Mumbleforts out there on stage
Speaker 3: is not altogether. I'm starting to think Donald Trump might
Speaker 3: be feeling a little wee touch of the old Alzheimer's
Speaker 3: because this is a guy who there used to be
Speaker 3: an era where serious reporters would say, oh, he said kaffevy.
Speaker 3: That's because he's a brilliant five D thinker and its
Speaker 3: three dimensional chess. And Trump's communicating secretly with his bait. No, No,
Speaker 3: he's a drooling old fool. He's a guy who's got
Speaker 3: a diaper valet now following him around because He's verbally
Speaker 3: and physically incontinent. Nothing about this is from strength. It's
Speaker 3: because he's just a gibbering fool. I wish the national
Speaker 3: media would spend one minute of the time that The
Speaker 3: New York Times has done, like insiders say, Biden's age
Speaker 3: continues to concern and I don't see a headline double
Speaker 3: truck front page saying Trump's seventeenth about of verbal dysentery
Speaker 3: this week where he conflated, you know, the wrong people,
Speaker 3: the wrong facts. He thinks he beat President Obama. Really what?
Speaker 3: And even the Republicans are pretending this isn't real now.
Speaker 3: They used to pretend, Oh he's playing some game or
Speaker 3: that's Trump being Trump. Now they're saying, like, oh shit,
Speaker 3: you know what the fuck?
Speaker 1: I've sat through a million conversations with people.
Speaker 2: Biden looks too old. He walks like an old man.
Speaker 1: You know this is that you have a guy who's
Speaker 1: out there looking like he's going to die.
Speaker 2: Confusing and Melosi and.
Speaker 3: Barack Obama with Joe Biden and saying Jeb Bush started
Speaker 3: the Iraq War, right, Jeb. You can criticize Jeb for
Speaker 3: any number of things in that campaign, but he didn't
Speaker 3: start the Iraq War war.
Speaker 2: I mean, so that's what I don't I don't totally get.
Speaker 3: Oh listen, I totally get it. It's explicable as holl mollie.
Speaker 3: This guy is great for ratings. He's great fun. The
Speaker 3: craziness is spectacle, and the idea that he's going to
Speaker 3: be such a nut on the trail is unbelievably appealing
Speaker 3: to a lot of people who will they'll be mad
Speaker 3: at me for saying this, and they're man, oh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, go for it. Then we like it even more.
Speaker 3: But a lot of these folks had a great run
Speaker 3: with Trump. They got to write books, they got to
Speaker 3: do they got to do a lot of TV, they
Speaker 3: got to have fun. And look, people would say, oh,
Speaker 3: you did the same thing. I was trying to warn
Speaker 3: you fuckers off this guy. I was trying to scare
Speaker 3: you because he would lead to the destruction of America.
Speaker 3: And I guess I was wrong. I guess people, you know,
Speaker 3: wanted more of the chaos, and the more they want,
Speaker 3: the more they'll get.
Speaker 1: I mean, no, I get you, and I get what
Speaker 1: you're saying. But I also think it just it's surprising
Speaker 1: to me. Here we are we all know, like if
Speaker 1: Trump gets elected again, there won't be no more mainstream
Speaker 1: media right right.
Speaker 3: When he says things like I'm going to take away
Speaker 3: MSNBC's license, he's not fucking around. You don't think Steve Bannon.
Speaker 3: You think you people don't think Steve Bannon. Day one
Speaker 3: is going to say to the FEC, by the way,
Speaker 3: I want to remove all of NBC's broadcast licenses because
Speaker 3: they are libtard cucks. And they'll say, but mister Bannon,
Speaker 3: libtard coukery is not a reason or an excuse, and
Speaker 3: he'll say, well, fuck you. The President's going to issue
Speaker 3: an executive order banning libtardcock media.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: How hard is this?
Speaker 1: And by the way, I mean, what I think is
Speaker 1: the scariest is that the Heritage Foundation has a you know,
Speaker 1: a twenty thirty plan or whatever it's called for. When
Speaker 1: Trump gets back in office.
Speaker 3: Project twenty twenty five. This time, it's personal.
Speaker 1: Right project twenty twenty five. This time, we really fuck you.
Speaker 1: I actually don't think that people want Trump back. I
Speaker 1: actually think it's this weird perverse two sidesism and an
Speaker 1: overcompensation to look nonpartisan that drives a lot of mainstream media.
Speaker 3: I think that's a lot of it. And look, the Republicans.
Speaker 3: I wrote about this a lot in my second book.
Speaker 3: The Republicans have played the refs on the media side
Speaker 3: for so long. The New York Times is now afraid
Speaker 3: to not have a pro coup voice or whatever on
Speaker 3: the op ed page. I mean, when you see that
Speaker 3: piece last week from Ross, it wasn't really a coup
Speaker 3: per se. They didn't call it one, so it wasn't
Speaker 3: what wait what right? Fuck?
Speaker 1: I know, well, and I mean you know it was
Speaker 1: bad because the Atlantic was like, no.
Speaker 3: It was right, right, Yeah. The Atlantic is more genteel
Speaker 3: than a lot of organizations. And when they say it's
Speaker 3: a coup, it's a coup people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they were like, yeah, actually it's kind
Speaker 1: of a coup. But the other thing about it is
Speaker 1: like a failed coup is still a coup.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so failed coup is a training exercise.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Another thing that trump enablers have done, which is what
Speaker 1: Adam Stirwell in that very good piece in the Atlantic said,
Speaker 1: was that they've been killing themselves to sort of say
Speaker 1: it wasn't a coup because it didn't work. And then
Speaker 1: also this idea that the Fourteenth Amendment was about reconstruction,
Speaker 1: and reconstruction is totally different than trying to have slates
Speaker 1: of fake electors change the results of an election.
Speaker 3: The bright line lettering of the fourteenth Amendment. And I
Speaker 3: know what constitutional attorney or an attorney of any kind,
Speaker 3: so don't take legal advice from me. The idea that
Speaker 3: the bright line lettering of the words insurrection only referred
Speaker 3: to the Civil War is madness.
Speaker 1: It's madness, yeah, But it's also this phenomenon where people
Speaker 1: just continually change the rules for trumpty. Right, Like, if
Speaker 1: you're under thirty five, you can't run for a president, right,
Speaker 1: if you're born in a different country, you can't run
Speaker 1: for president, if you are involved in an insruction, you
Speaker 1: can't run for a president, except if you're Trump, because
Speaker 1: it's different because his people will get upside and by.
Speaker 3: The way, the same argument that they're making now of
Speaker 3: Trump and exceptions to the Constitution and the rule of law,
Speaker 3: which they make that argument every day, they will make
Speaker 3: that argument for a third full term, mark my words.
Speaker 3: They will come out and say, well, he was treated badly,
Speaker 3: and look he said this himself. They treated me so
Speaker 3: unfairly that I deserve another term. And if people don't
Speaker 3: think that's what's going to happen if he's president again,
Speaker 3: or they'll just make it dynastic. Well, I now have
Speaker 3: reached the age where I'm going to pass along the
Speaker 3: presidency to my son, Prince Eric the slow you.
Speaker 1: Know, And I want to like talk about this for
Speaker 1: a minute, because the things Trump has been saying on
Speaker 1: the stump.
Speaker 2: When he's not confusing Nancy.
Speaker 1: Pelosi with Nikki Haley or confusing Barack Obama with Joe
Speaker 1: Biden because they seem so similar.
Speaker 3: They all look the same to him, right.
Speaker 1: Exactly, he does this other thing where he makes this
Speaker 1: whole argument about how president should have complete and utter immunity.
Speaker 1: Now we know this is because he's facing ninety one
Speaker 1: criminal count So how does an electorate get excited about that?
Speaker 1: Explain to me how this helps candidate Trump.
Speaker 3: Candidate Trump is driven or his people are driven by
Speaker 3: this imaginary sense of oppression and this imaginary sense that
Speaker 3: there's an elite constantly out to get them. Look, the
Speaker 3: elite wants you to not fuck your first cousin and
Speaker 3: to brush your teeth.
Speaker 2: Okay, I don't even care about the first cousins. I'm
Speaker 2: tal with that.
Speaker 3: I will say this. That world though, for them, is
Speaker 3: very coherent, and they see any time that Trump is
Speaker 3: held to account for anything he's done, said, or desired,
Speaker 3: they see that as an attack on themselves. It is
Speaker 3: a superpower in politics right now. I take it seriously.
Speaker 3: Which is why when people say, oh, Trump's just joking,
Speaker 3: he's just shit talking, it's just Trump being Trump. It's
Speaker 3: never just Trump being Trump. It's never just shit talking.
Speaker 3: This is a guy with a movement behind him. It
Speaker 3: is an authoritarian movement. We'll say it a thousand more
Speaker 3: times before this election's over. But that authoritarian movement is
Speaker 3: dedicated to taking power at any cost and holding that
Speaker 3: power as long as they can. They are not small
Speaker 3: d democracy fans. They are not fans of liberty or freedom.
Speaker 3: Except for Trump and his family and a limited clack
Speaker 3: of his supporters, this is a dangerous movement. And for
Speaker 3: all the fun that people seem to have with it,
Speaker 3: look look at the crazy thing you said today. The
Speaker 3: craziness is a very deep, scary element of our politics now.
Speaker 3: People are wired in for it. People who don't take
Speaker 3: it seriously and don't take him seriously are the ones
Speaker 3: putting us at risk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and the Heritage Foundation is right there with them.
Speaker 3: By the way, the Heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: that's the gentry part of their plan. That's the country
Speaker 3: club part of their plan. That's the part of their
Speaker 3: plan they can take out to major donors and say, well,
Speaker 3: this is here. We're going to reform the way processing
Speaker 3: is done on applications in the Department of the Interior.
Speaker 3: When they mean we're going to set up a system
Speaker 3: where our political opponents are systematically jailed and prosecuted, We're
Speaker 3: going to do the things that we claim are being
Speaker 3: done to Trump because we want to exercise political power
Speaker 3: in a way that is tyranny adjacent, and they will.
Speaker 3: Trump was incompetent in his first term because he didn't
Speaker 3: know what he had, and not even his most weird
Speaker 3: and passionate supporters like Steve Bannon understood what they had,
Speaker 3: and what they had was miss handled and put in
Speaker 3: the hands of a variety of people who were not
Speaker 3: so smart in Jared Kushner, et cetera. That problem will
Speaker 3: not be there this time.
Speaker 1: Right, I just want to pause for saying this. We're
Speaker 1: out of time, but I just want to say one thing.
Speaker 1: During Trump's only term. The first two years he had
Speaker 1: the House, the Senate, the presidency and they still had
Speaker 1: a government shutdown.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course it's a feature, not a.
Speaker 2: Bug, which is incredible. Thank you. Rick Wilson, any Time by.
Speaker 1: Robert Reich is former Secretary of Labor and substack author.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics. Robert Reich.
Speaker 5: Well, thank you very much, Molly.
Speaker 2: It's really great to have you.
Speaker 1: And I was reading about you before we started podcasting,
Speaker 1: and you have been in every Democratic administration.
Speaker 5: Since, yes, since Franklin D. Roosevelt. No, actually we go
Speaker 5: back to nineteenth century. It starts with Jimmy Carter. You know,
Speaker 5: I say, I said my students, I was in the
Speaker 5: Clinton administration, Carter administration, and I was a special assistant
Speaker 5: to Abraham Lincoln. And they used to laugh at that.
Speaker 5: They don't laugh at this anymore and starting to worry me, Molly.
Speaker 2: But it is interesting.
Speaker 1: You really have seen the Democratic Party through a number
Speaker 1: of decades and seeing the sort of trajectory.
Speaker 2: I have this theory, maybe.
Speaker 1: Because I'm gonna name drop here, but I'm going to
Speaker 1: name drop someone that no one cares about anymore.
Speaker 2: When I was growing up, I spent a.
Speaker 1: Lot of time with Gorbidal and well, not a lot,
Speaker 1: but a little time with Gorbudal, and Gorbadal had this
Speaker 1: whole theory that America's United States of Amnesia, because we
Speaker 1: remember nothing, we never.
Speaker 2: Look back at all.
Speaker 1: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about
Speaker 1: kind of how you feel that these democratic administrations have
Speaker 1: changed and what your takeaways from that.
Speaker 5: I mean, the big shift happened in the late nineteen seventies,
Speaker 5: and that was at a time when workers in the
Speaker 5: United States stopped getting wage increases. I'm talking about most
Speaker 5: of our workers, people who were paid an hourly wage,
Speaker 5: people who were at that time a third of them unionized.
Speaker 5: But everything came to a fairly grinding halt in the
Speaker 5: late nineteen seventies. This was the fault of Jimmy Carter.
Speaker 5: Happened to happen on Jimmy Carter's watch, but Ronald Reagan
Speaker 5: did kind of exploit it and celebrate it. He said
Speaker 5: government is the problem. And I think from that point
Speaker 5: on Democrats were very were intimidated. They didn't want to
Speaker 5: go back to the New Deal. They did want a
Speaker 5: strong government to help average working people. And I worked
Speaker 5: for Well, I campaigned for Walter Mondale in eighty four,
Speaker 5: and then I campaigned for Michael Decaccus. You remember these.
Speaker 2: Names, yeah, very much.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then Clinton Intewo and these people, these men
Speaker 5: really adopted the notion they were called Atari Democrats. They
Speaker 5: adopted the notion that the Democratic Party really did need
Speaker 5: to move toward the information economy and the suburban swing
Speaker 5: vote and the knowledge workers, rich people, well who became
Speaker 5: rich people, but essentially abandoning the blue collar working class
Speaker 5: that had been the foundation of the Democratic Party. And
Speaker 5: we're living with that legacy right now.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's really such an interesting and salient point.
Speaker 1: And I mean, I do feel like Reagan is the
Speaker 1: original sin on a lot of this, and he did
Speaker 1: he sort of took advantage of it. And then this
Speaker 1: idea of democratic anxiety is so interesting to me because
Speaker 1: I do think you cannot live in our political world
Speaker 1: without being very clear that Democrats are anxious. And you
Speaker 1: could say it's because of the stakes, but it's also
Speaker 1: just a different way of operating in the political world
Speaker 1: versus Republicans.
Speaker 5: Well, I think the Democrats did let the American working
Speaker 5: class go. I mean, they kind of abandoned them. And
Speaker 5: I saw this happening. I mean it happened during the
Speaker 5: nineteen seventies to eighties, nineteen nineties. There was a void.
Speaker 5: I mean, the traditional Republican establishment was big business at
Speaker 5: Wall Street. So who's there for the working class? Who's
Speaker 5: there for working Americans? I mean, in effect, from a
Speaker 5: filled a void that was already there, from exploited the
Speaker 5: fact that there was a large and an ever more
Speaker 5: desperate working class had not really got a raise adjusted
Speaker 5: for inflation since the late nineteen seventies. Most Americans living
Speaker 5: paycheck to paycheck, no job security, no more pensions. Most
Speaker 5: people don't really have the advantage of looking forward to
Speaker 5: a pension. I mean, America and workers have got screwed
Speaker 5: and shafted. You know, in recent years, Democrats are much better,
Speaker 5: and I think Biden is a much better job. But
Speaker 5: a lot of Democrats over the last thirty forty years
Speaker 5: have not really given the working class an opportunity to
Speaker 5: move ahead.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about what that would look like.
Speaker 1: I mean, the ways in what you feel that Biden
Speaker 1: has been more pro worker and how that could keep
Speaker 1: going well.
Speaker 5: I think Biden, unlike Barack Obama and Bill Clinton and
Speaker 5: Jimmy Carter, really has embraced average working class people and
Speaker 5: labor unions, and you know, he's really tried to give
Speaker 5: workers an opportunity to bring back manufacturing and manufacturing jobs.
Speaker 5: I mean, all of these investments that have been made
Speaker 5: under Biden in manufacturing in the Midwest in many Republican states.
Speaker 5: They don't know it yet, maybe they'll never give credit
Speaker 5: to Joe Biden, but he really has done it. There
Speaker 5: are all sorts of industries that will generate a lot
Speaker 5: of jobs and manufacturing jobs and good jobs, particularly if
Speaker 5: they're unionized.
Speaker 1: Do you think this is in some way related to
Speaker 1: Joe Biden considering himself to be a working class person.
Speaker 5: I think so, you know, I think Joe Biden really
Speaker 5: you know, born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, grew up in Pennsyla.
Speaker 5: That's where I was born, by the way, and Delaware,
Speaker 5: and you know, taking the train back and forth as
Speaker 5: far as I remember. And I worked around him and
Speaker 5: with him on various things over the years. He never
Speaker 5: really took on the mantle that some Democrats did of
Speaker 5: the kind of fancy modern Washington world. I knew Washington
Speaker 5: qually when Washington was kind of a CD town, you know,
Speaker 5: under Reagan and after Reagan it became a very rich town.
Speaker 5: But Biden never really indulged that aspect of Washington. To
Speaker 5: his credit, I think he stayed a working class person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, really really important point. And I think that's also true.
Speaker 1: And you do hear when he talks about it, because
Speaker 1: the fact that his father lost his job and they
Speaker 1: all had to move was one of the things that
Speaker 1: shaped him in a good way, I think as a president.
Speaker 5: The loss of a job and having to move your family,
Speaker 5: these were traumatic events for a kid, they're traumatic for
Speaker 5: a family. Most American workers right now have even less
Speaker 5: security than Joe Biden's family had when Joe Biden was
Speaker 5: growing up. And the lack of job security, the fact
Speaker 5: that in this country you can be fired at any
Speaker 5: time for no reason, you know, makes American capitalism one
Speaker 5: of the harshest forms of capitalism on the planet.
Speaker 1: Hot take even worse is the fact that your health
Speaker 1: insurance is tied to your job.
Speaker 5: Your health insurance is tied to your job, your pension
Speaker 5: is tied to your job. Any other benefits that unions
Speaker 5: have fought for over the years is tied to your job. Obviously,
Speaker 5: But if you lose a job or if you are
Speaker 5: a part time worker, and right now, you know, anywhere
Speaker 5: from fifteen to twenty five percent of American workers are
Speaker 5: working part time. They are working maybe two or three
Speaker 5: jobs part time, but they're not as workers were thirty
Speaker 5: or forty years ago, attached to their companies for lifetime. Well,
Speaker 5: that means that there is a deeper level of insecurity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think is really an important point. I think
Speaker 1: there's more positive tey towards unions publicly, but it does
Speaker 1: seem like we're at a place where rebuilding unions should
Speaker 1: be high on the list of things that Americans are doing.
Speaker 5: Absolutely because unions fought for higher wages. I mean in
Speaker 5: the fifties and sixties when I was growing up, over
Speaker 5: a third of Americans private sector workers were unionized. Now
Speaker 5: six percent are in unions. A progressive pro worker agenda
Speaker 5: also attacks monopolies, and this is something else that Joe
Speaker 5: Biden has done an a trust division of the Justice
Speaker 5: Department and the Federal Trade Commission, very very proactive. A
Speaker 5: pro worker policy also fights to make sure that big
Speaker 5: companies are following the Dictates National Relations Act of nineteen
Speaker 5: thirty five, And this is something Joe Biden's labor board
Speaker 5: is trying to do is really doing actually more successfully
Speaker 5: than any labor board is done in forty years. It
Speaker 5: gets no publicity, but it just like fighting monopolies, it's
Speaker 5: exceedingly important.
Speaker 2: Didn't they reject the merger with spirit?
Speaker 5: The anti monopoly crew of the Biden administration was very
Speaker 5: active in that litigation, And yes, it was important and
Speaker 5: is important to fight monopolies like well, aircraft monopolies are
Speaker 5: a good example.
Speaker 1: Yeah, talk to us about Boeing because I feel like
Speaker 1: a great time to just I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you saw this, but Secretary Blinken's plane broke and he.
Speaker 2: Couldn't get home. It was yet another Boeing.
Speaker 1: There was some blaming in the billionaire class that this
Speaker 1: was all caused by diversity and inclusion.
Speaker 2: So I'm hoping you could talk about.
Speaker 5: That, Well, it's caused by monopolization, in corporate greed. Boeing
Speaker 5: is the poster child from monopoly. I mean, there's nobody
Speaker 5: else but Boeing merged with McDonald Douglas and became a
Speaker 5: giant monopoly. Nobody has any choice. I mean, if you
Speaker 5: are an airline and you want to buy an aircraft.
Speaker 5: What are you going to do if you go to
Speaker 5: Europe and try to buy something from one of the
Speaker 5: major European manufacturers, You've got to wait in line for
Speaker 5: ten years. If you need aircraft right now, Boeing is
Speaker 5: about the only possibility you have. But if you're a
Speaker 5: monopolistlight Boeing, you don't have to worry about your consumers,
Speaker 5: you don't have to worry about quality, you don't have
Speaker 5: to worry about anything. Obviously, Boeing is concerned right now
Speaker 5: because of all of the problems with its max and
Speaker 5: it's had those problems for years. That's something else about
Speaker 5: a monopoly, Molly, I mean, a monopoly has lous equality
Speaker 5: because there's no competition.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about one of the other things that Biden
Speaker 1: administration is doing, very unsexy but really disproportionally affects people
Speaker 1: who have less money and also people who can't do
Speaker 1: math aka me overdraft fees.
Speaker 5: The Biden administration is cracked down on these fees, banking fees,
Speaker 5: overdraft fees. There there are things that if you put
Speaker 5: your money somewhere and you want to take it out,
Speaker 5: and it turns out that you have taken out a
Speaker 5: little bit too much more than you had. You are
Speaker 5: charged interest, but the interest can be huge and the
Speaker 5: bank there's really no good regulation on this. If you
Speaker 5: borrow from a lender on Wall Street, who is a
Speaker 5: local lender really backed by Wallstreet, but a lender that
Speaker 5: is charging up to could charge up up to three
Speaker 5: hundred percent on your loans. I mean that you've got
Speaker 5: these fees. You've got loan sharks out there. The average worker,
Speaker 5: the average person is very much susceptible all this, and
Speaker 5: so the Biden administration is definitely cracking down.
Speaker 2: It is a way to protect people who have lasts, right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: The other thing that needs to be said, Molly, is
Speaker 5: that the Biden administration, remember, it is facing a Republican
Speaker 5: wall of regression. Republicans really are standing in for big
Speaker 5: business and Wall Street, but they are using the rhetoric
Speaker 5: of anti establishment populism. So a lot of people are
Speaker 5: very confused. You know, somebody like Donald Trump comes along
Speaker 5: and says, I am your voice, I represent you. Yet
Speaker 5: what does he do. The only thing he did when
Speaker 5: he was president was a huge tax cut, mostly for
Speaker 5: very wealthy people and big corporations. Biden has to deal
Speaker 5: with a Congress. That is very, very difficult. You know,
Speaker 5: the Republicans now control the House, that Democrats are holding
Speaker 5: on to the Senate by a very thin margin. It's
Speaker 5: amazing what Biden was managed to accomplish in his first
Speaker 5: two years given the intransigence of the Republican Party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of the things that we don't talk about
Speaker 1: is corporate America. Even if they pretend to care, I mean,
Speaker 1: they really support the Republican Party.
Speaker 5: The corporate America is basically bank rolling Republicans. You know,
Speaker 5: Davos this week, where you have the biggest American corporations
Speaker 5: and the CEOs gathering in their annual becunfab in Switzerland.
Speaker 5: The theme this year, if you can believe it, is
Speaker 5: rebuilding trust. What's really ironic here is that many of
Speaker 5: the companies and CEOs who are talking about we worry
Speaker 5: that about American political instability and how it's going to
Speaker 5: affect our bottom lines, that they are pouring money into
Speaker 5: American politics. They are supporting the one hundred and forty
Speaker 5: seven election deniers who are still there. Right.
Speaker 2: You know, this is about tax sets for businesses.
Speaker 1: I've been trying not to talk about this because I
Speaker 1: don't think it helps them try to get it done.
Speaker 1: But there's some pretty exciting legislation that could happen with
Speaker 1: the child tax credit being brought back.
Speaker 2: Can you talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 5: America did an experiment in twenty twenty one. It didn't
Speaker 5: last very long, but it was an important experiment. We
Speaker 5: provided every family with children with a certain amount of
Speaker 5: money that enabled well, it enabled families to do better
Speaker 5: and also cut child poverty by almost fifty percent. And
Speaker 5: then because the Republicans in the Senate didn't want to
Speaker 5: continue it, and Joe Manchin joined the Republicans, it ended.
Speaker 5: That experiment ended. Now there is a possibility once again
Speaker 5: for having at least part of that experiment revived with
Speaker 5: an expanded child tax grit and hopefully this compromise will
Speaker 5: go through.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much, Robert, I hope you will come back.
Speaker 5: I'd be delighted. Molly Well, thank you for everything you're
Speaker 5: doing to alert the public with the truth.
Speaker 1: Jay Willis is the editor of Balls and Strikes.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Jay, Thank you for having me. What are you going
Speaker 4: to talk about today? Is anything going on?
Speaker 2: No and no legal staff?
Speaker 4: Oh well, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: We're going to start by talking about what's happening in
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court. This season of magas Supreme Court Chaos
Speaker 1: was billed as the season where they don't act as crazy.
Speaker 4: Go they are acting just as crazy. There's just I
Speaker 4: guess what's the analogy like, Yeah, this is still like
Speaker 4: a prestige drama. It's just that there's like fewer explosions
Speaker 4: in this one. I think this is like Season three
Speaker 4: of the Americans as opposed to some of the earlier ones.
Speaker 2: Right, it's succession and not Game of Thrones.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that's right, whereas last.
Speaker 1: Season was Game of Surrounds and this season before talk
Speaker 1: us through this case that they're hearing oral arguments about
Speaker 1: the Chevron deference.
Speaker 4: Right, I will talk through what that is first in
Speaker 4: the briefest possible fashion to avoid having listeners fall asleep
Speaker 4: quick into our conversation, because overturning this concept again, Chevron
Speaker 4: deference is very critical to the conservative legal movement. So
Speaker 4: if you hear it and you think that sounds boring,
Speaker 4: that is pretty much exactly what Neil Gorsuch wants you
Speaker 4: to decide. So basic schoolhouse rock. Right, Congress passes laws,
Speaker 4: but most of the laws Congress passes are very general.
Speaker 4: So for example, the Clean Air Act basically says we
Speaker 4: should have clean air, but lawmakers aren't saying exactly how
Speaker 4: to do this, Like Lauren Bober doesn't know shit about
Speaker 4: pollutant parts per million levels. So the laws just say, look, listen.
Speaker 4: The Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA, staffed by experts, staffed
Speaker 4: by scientists. You figure out the best way for us
Speaker 4: to have clean air. The EPA creates rules called regulations,
Speaker 4: basically the same thing, and that's sort of the bread
Speaker 4: and butter about how laws actually get enforced. Now, sometimes
Speaker 4: people will challenge these regulations. For example, a petrochemical plant
Speaker 4: that wants to pump more poison in the air will
Speaker 4: be upset about its obligations not to do that. And
Speaker 4: when these challenges come before courts, judges employ what's known
Speaker 4: as Chevron deference. It's named after a nineteen eighty four
Speaker 4: Supreme Court case. The court looks at a rule and
Speaker 4: it says, listen, is the law is it clear or
Speaker 4: is it ambiguous? And if the court thinks, you know,
Speaker 4: it's ambiguous. And the agency did a reasonable job of
Speaker 4: figuring out how to go about this, this isn't our
Speaker 4: lane as a judge. As long as the agency is,
Speaker 4: you know, not way outside the scope of what seems reasonable,
Speaker 4: Courts defer to the agency. Remember how Lauren Bobert isn't
Speaker 4: good at pollutant level determinations. Neither is bretttay Right. That's
Speaker 4: the idea behind Chevron deference. Conservatives, you know, if they
Speaker 4: want governments so small they can drown it in a bathtub.
Speaker 4: They hate Chevron difference because, in their view, it gives
Speaker 4: a lot of power to agencies. Now a little side note,
Speaker 4: can Conservatives didn't always hate Chevron deference because it was
Speaker 4: very helpful to them during Reagan era deregulation. Some of
Speaker 4: its loudest fanboys two guys named Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.
Speaker 4: But once Court started using it to uphold sort of
Speaker 4: more progressive rules under democratic administrations, You'll never believe it,
Speaker 4: but the Conservatives change their tune. So that's what these
Speaker 4: cases that the Court is considering now are about. It's
Speaker 4: about overturning Chevron and just turning decisions about air pollution
Speaker 4: and water contamination and medication safety and a billion other
Speaker 4: things over to unelected life tenure judges.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is that they can just sort
Speaker 1: of do whatever they want when it comes to the environment, right.
Speaker 4: They can. The idea is that they can sort of
Speaker 4: substitute their own judgment. If they don't agree with a rule,
Speaker 4: they may say, you know what, I don't think that's
Speaker 4: a reasonable interpretation of agency power and force the EPA
Speaker 4: to sort of go back to the drawing board.
Speaker 1: That really is sort of their larger geshtalled up trying
Speaker 1: to limit the power of the federal government.
Speaker 4: That's right, And there's not sort of a super clean
Speaker 4: answer as to what would happen to legal challenges without Chevron,
Speaker 4: But that's kind of part of the problem, right. This
Speaker 4: has been sort of a background principle of the law
Speaker 4: for nineteen eighty four, forty years now. The day to
Speaker 4: day work of governing a country of three hundred and
Speaker 4: fifty million people is really hard, and undermining agency's power
Speaker 4: to do that work would just be like, really disruptive
Speaker 4: and unsettling. I'm not saying that agencies always get their
Speaker 4: decisions right, but again, I want the FDA to make
Speaker 4: decisions about food contamination, not sam Alaedo, not Marjorie Taylor Green.
Speaker 2: Right, and the idea is that you can then politicize
Speaker 2: things that should be about science.
Speaker 4: That's right, And I mean we have a Supreme Court
Speaker 4: that is famously anti science, a conservative judiciary that is
Speaker 4: famously skeptical of that kind of thing. That sort of
Speaker 4: thinking could be tinging like major decisions about policy in
Speaker 4: this country in the years to come.
Speaker 1: So let's talk for a minute about the oral arguments
Speaker 1: for a second.
Speaker 2: Justice Kavanaugh is into the friend of mine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's just really a dumb dumb right, not to
Speaker 1: put too fine a legal point on it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sort of sorry for the legal jargon, right, Like, Yeah,
Speaker 4: sometimes I struggle to talk about this because I don't
Speaker 4: agree with Brett Kavanaugh's jurisprudence, ideology, life choices, any of that,
Speaker 4: But like I want to sort of separate that from
Speaker 4: sort of this like really unique role I think he
Speaker 4: plays on the court. Like I can't stress enough how
Speaker 4: much of like just a guy Brett Kavanaugh is. He
Speaker 4: is like repeatedly sort of the like most obviously in
Speaker 4: over his head at oral argue when he writes opinions.
Speaker 4: I just don't think he's very smart. And I mean
Speaker 4: this guy was like a Bush administration Lackey for years,
Speaker 4: like this is not someone with sort of the academic
Speaker 4: pedigree to the extent that anyone gives a shit about
Speaker 4: that that some of the other justices bring. Like he's
Speaker 4: just a dude who is in the right place at
Speaker 4: the right time, and now he gets to hear the
Speaker 4: sound of his own voice even more often.
Speaker 1: Yeah, one of my favorite things is all the people
Speaker 1: who are so mad about diversity, equity and inclusion seem
Speaker 1: to not understand that they're quote unquote non diversity. Higher
Speaker 1: is as dumb as Max Rocks.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He has like a very funny tick where he will
Speaker 4: latch on to a word or phrase and you can
Speaker 4: just tell he's thinking, like, man, I've come up with
Speaker 4: something smart here. Like famously, at oral argument in Dobbs
Speaker 4: with you know, the case the Conservatives used to overturn
Speaker 4: Roe v. Wade, he kept returning to this idea that
Speaker 4: the court could be and I'm quoting here, scrupulously neutral
Speaker 4: on the issue of abortion. And he said that a
Speaker 4: couple times, and I remember listening to it and just
Speaker 4: being like, oh God, Like he thinks he's got this,
Speaker 4: and sure enough, like he wrote a concurring opinion in Dobbs.
Speaker 4: That was just like littered with references to neutral and neutrality,
Speaker 4: the Court being neutral on the issue of abortion, which
Speaker 4: like is like, how would the some of the dumbest
Speaker 4: shit I've ever heard? Right, the Court's going to hear
Speaker 4: two more cases this term about abortion. The Court can't
Speaker 4: get out of this issue. It's only making different choices
Speaker 4: about whose side it comes down on. Yeah, he just
Speaker 4: very much brings the energy to these of a guy
Speaker 4: who like just remembered today that he asked to deliver
Speaker 4: a presentation on the book report and he didn't finish
Speaker 4: the book, but he did get to skin the spark notes.
Speaker 4: That's how he does his job as a Supreme Court justice.
Speaker 2: Now Justice Jackson is a bit different. Will you talk
Speaker 2: to us about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Justice Jackson got a lot of I think well deserved
Speaker 4: for like really doing her homework in her first couple
Speaker 4: years on the court. But this conservative court claims to
Speaker 4: be the champions of history and tradition. I think that
Speaker 4: is dumb and wrong and disingenuous for a host of reasons.
Speaker 2: And right also because they're not.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that is principally one of the reasons I don't
Speaker 4: like it. But Justice Jackson tried to play the game.
Speaker 4: Tries to play the game, really goes back and brings
Speaker 4: in famously the history of Reconstruction Amendments during the oral
Speaker 4: argument over affirmative action to correctly make the case that
Speaker 4: affirmative action policies are in fact consistent with the Fourteenth
Speaker 4: Amendment and the Reconstruction Amendments. She didn't win that argument, obviously,
Speaker 4: but shout out to her for at least trying. And
Speaker 4: I mean, the fact is that, like you know, a
Speaker 4: lot of these sort of competing ideologies is you know,
Speaker 4: mostly interesting to law professors and legal pundits and no
Speaker 4: one else. What matters is whether or not you can
Speaker 4: count to five votes. The liberals can't do that. But
Speaker 4: I respect the liberal justices for trying, for giving it
Speaker 4: a shot, and for at the very least right like
Speaker 4: exposing the fact that, as Justice Jackson did in the
Speaker 4: affirmative action cases, the Conservatives aren't real champions of history
Speaker 4: and tradition. They are champions of the history and tradition,
Speaker 4: the elements of it, the slivers of it often that
Speaker 4: lead to their preferred result.
Speaker 1: The Supreme Court is going to look at some trump
Speaker 1: I don't even want to say, cases, right, but they
Speaker 1: are cases. Can you explain to us what they're looking
Speaker 1: at and how and why.
Speaker 4: The biggest case, the most potentially consequential case, is the
Speaker 4: decisions about Trump's eligibility to run for president again under
Speaker 4: Section three of the Fourteenth Amendment. Fourteenth Amendment was passed
Speaker 4: in the wake of the Civil War, and one of
Speaker 4: its key provisions is that if you previously engaged in
Speaker 4: insurrection against the government, we are not going to let
Speaker 4: you hold political office again. You can't try and overthrow
Speaker 4: the Union and then be like a key part of
Speaker 4: its lawmaking governing process. At the time, there was sort
Speaker 4: of one big insurrection that they had in mind, but
Speaker 4: there have been other insurrections since then.
Speaker 2: There are new into our that's.
Speaker 4: Right, you may have been familiar. So the Colorado Supreme
Speaker 4: Court decided that Trump is not eligible under what this
Speaker 4: It's called the disqualification clause. The main Secretary of State
Speaker 4: made a similar decision, and both states for now want
Speaker 4: to leave Trump off their presidential primary ballots. And Trump,
Speaker 4: as you can imagine, does not much care for this,
Speaker 4: has challenged it, and the Supreme Court will hear oral
Speaker 4: argument in the case next month.
Speaker 1: One of the things I'm struck by with Trump, and
Speaker 1: the reason why Trump is where he is right now
Speaker 1: is because at every point sort of people have said, like, oh, no,
Speaker 1: the real rules don't apply to this guy.
Speaker 2: We have other special rules.
Speaker 1: Like it's kind of the definition of white privilege, right, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I know everybody else has to go to
Speaker 1: jail for doing crimes, but not our guy because he's
Speaker 1: you know, he's Donald Trump.
Speaker 2: And so I do think it's kind of interesting when
Speaker 2: it comes to fourteenth Amendment.
Speaker 1: You have people who are saying, you know, this is
Speaker 1: not what it's made for, but it's actually, this is
Speaker 1: exactly what it's made for.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I have been both surprised and unsurprised, definitely dismayed
Speaker 4: by sort of the army of political pundits and like
Speaker 4: ostensibly smart legal scholars who are just like twisting themselves
Speaker 4: into rhetorical knots to figure out why this shouldn't exclude
Speaker 4: a violent insurrectionist like Donald Trump from the ballots. Michael
Speaker 4: Lerof heard a great essay for Balls and Strikes Gray
Speaker 4: website Balls and Strikes or about this. There's sort of
Speaker 4: this through line in a lot of these op eds
Speaker 4: that's basically like, well, the legal process isn't the right
Speaker 4: way to reject Trump. Americans should reject him through the
Speaker 4: political process at the ballots that happens, I mean, if
Speaker 4: you want to get technical about it, outside of the
Speaker 4: electoral college that happened twice. There's also this idea that
Speaker 4: you know, we mustn't exclude Trump because if we exclude Trump,
Speaker 4: his supporters will become violent. And I just sort of
Speaker 4: question the use of the word become there. They are
Speaker 4: going to be violent no matter what. You can't as again,
Speaker 4: as Michael wrote for the site, like there aren't really
Speaker 4: magic words that you can get to stop reactionaries from
Speaker 4: being reactionaries, and it certainly certainly shouldn't stop you from
Speaker 4: using the howlingly obvious legal tools at your disposal to
Speaker 4: prevent dangerous people like that from being in positions of power.
Speaker 4: It just smacks of, again, as you said, sort of
Speaker 4: the deep Sea did sort of cowardice and tolerance within
Speaker 4: the pundit community of finding ways not to apply the
Speaker 4: law to people in ways where they sort of fear
Speaker 4: the unknown consequences.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I mean I also think like they're saying,
Speaker 1: what's a political process, and that Senators should be the
Speaker 1: ones who vote to convict, and as we remember, senators
Speaker 1: would absolutely not do that because they were scared for
Speaker 1: their same day right.
Speaker 4: Section three of the fourteenth Amendment. Congress enacted that to
Speaker 4: prevent violent people from assuming positions of power. I don't
Speaker 4: really understand the pundit's urge to sort of second guess
Speaker 4: that by requiring additional Congressional action, additional Senate confirmation, Like
Speaker 4: this is what the law says, and I don't deny it.
Speaker 4: Like again, as my friend Michael wrote, it's definitely true,
Speaker 4: right that, like removing a major party presidential candidate from
Speaker 4: the ballot is like kind of but you know what
Speaker 4: else is fraught a violent insurrection that almost ended with
Speaker 4: Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence getting murdered in the capital,
Speaker 4: Like there have to be consequences for this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's such an insane moment in American life, and
Speaker 1: I think we don't spend enough time sort of pulling
Speaker 1: back and going like this is not how any of
Speaker 1: this is supposed to work. The fourteenth Amendment is, you know,
Speaker 1: the fire alarm, because there is someone who did insurrection
Speaker 1: who wants to be in office, and now you know
Speaker 1: we're having an argument about gentility, right, I mean, like,
Speaker 1: this is not how any of.
Speaker 2: This is supposed to go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Like I get really frustrated with sort of the
Speaker 4: terminal collegial brain that political pundits and especially that legal
Speaker 4: pundits and law professors are infected with, where they will
Speaker 4: just find a way to say anything nice about like
Speaker 4: people who would deny them civil and human rights. But
Speaker 4: the the idea of looking the other way on a
Speaker 4: presidential candidate who you know, thanks immigrants are vermin and
Speaker 4: wants to round people up and deport them from the
Speaker 4: country on day one. That's almost a parody of frog
Speaker 4: in the in the boiling pop. Right, it's a little
Speaker 4: too on the nose.
Speaker 2: Jay, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Thank you again for having me.
Speaker 3: Moment. Wait, do you want fuckery? Do you want some dirty,
Speaker 3: hot fuckery?
Speaker 2: Yes, Psycho Jesse is like his life just.
Speaker 3: Jess's like mom and dad are talking weird.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's right, only by like six months.
Speaker 3: The fuckery that I have been paying the most attention
Speaker 3: to this week is, frankly, the desperate media driven attempt
Speaker 3: to make Nikki fetch. Yes, Nicki's not going to be fetched. Folks,
Speaker 3: Nicki's not going to be the one. It like borders
Speaker 3: on insulting to the American people. That as what Tim
Speaker 3: Miller calls the horse race industrial complex keeps trying to
Speaker 3: put the paddles on her. It really bothers me because
Speaker 3: we are not there anymore. This is not the world
Speaker 3: we live in. She's done. It's over. And the shock
Speaker 3: and awe effect that will hit people next week when
Speaker 3: they say, wait, we thought there was a prop Wait
Speaker 3: what I mean? It's time And I've had a lot
Speaker 3: of anger about that, because you know, we're in the
Speaker 3: moment where the greatest competition between authoritarianism and a limited
Speaker 3: government republic based on the constitution the rule of law
Speaker 3: has ever has ever been imagined in this country's about
Speaker 3: to happen. And a lot of people are going to
Speaker 3: be surprised, in part because we have seen over and
Speaker 3: over again that people cast this race not as what
Speaker 3: it really is, but as a viable republican primary, and
Speaker 3: that ain't the case.
Speaker 1: My moment of Fockray is going to be you talking
Speaker 1: with Frank LUNs Tell me why Frank Luntz is a problem.
Speaker 3: I've known Frank for a very very long time. Before
Speaker 3: I knew him. My first interaction with Frank and I
Speaker 3: got in trouble because I was actually working for the
Speaker 3: government at the time, was at an event where he
Speaker 3: was defending Ross Perrot saying, Oh, he's not going to
Speaker 3: take Republican votes away from George Bush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he totally we love that guy.
Speaker 3: I was like, yeah, he will, and what the fuck
Speaker 3: are you talking about? And I got a little like
Speaker 3: nasty gram for the White House Political I It's like,
Speaker 3: you didn't have to use your real name in that.
Speaker 3: Frank is a guy who's believed in this like dream
Speaker 3: of some sort of third party do gooder, not Republican
Speaker 3: or a Democrat, just American thing. And I kind of
Speaker 3: had to take him to school on ali Velshi on
Speaker 3: Sunday morning. Because this isn't a contest between the perfect
Speaker 3: third party candidate grown in a laboratory somewhere who's gonna
Speaker 3: pursue good technocratic impulses to make America, you know, a
Speaker 3: safer and healthier country. It's between Orangeler and Joe Biden.
Speaker 3: It's between the darkness for one thousand fucking years and
Speaker 3: a guy who has been a center left Democratic president
Speaker 3: has done a pretty good job. The idea that you
Speaker 3: have some perfect compromise candidate in the middle somewhere is
Speaker 3: a luxury that American politics cannot afford this year or
Speaker 3: maybe ever, because we're fighting a smart, evil movement. And
Speaker 3: when you get somebody who's willing to say this sort
Speaker 3: of things like oh, well, you know, people are going
Speaker 3: to run to it. Joe Manchin would be such a
Speaker 3: good No, stop it. It's insanity.
Speaker 1: Yes, exactly, it's insanity. Who is Joe Manchin for?
Speaker 2: No one? And stop it? No labels will do nothing
Speaker 2: but make Trump president again.
Speaker 3: Which they don't have a path to. Two seventy might
Speaker 3: be their goal, which is their goal. You're right, they're
Speaker 3: funded by Harlan Crow and the Republican Party, so you know,
Speaker 3: call me crazy. All right, Well, thank you as always,
Speaker 3: fun time, Wilson, you are betcha. I'm your Huckleberry.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode to Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds
Speaker 1: in politics make sense of all this chaos. If you
Speaker 1: enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.