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 Donald Trump has signed an executive
Speaker 1: order to dismantle Voice of America.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The Lincoln Project's own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss
Speaker 1: the handling of the cr and democratic leadership strategies. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to comedian Trey Crowder about his new comedy special,
Speaker 1: Trash Daddy.
Speaker 2: But first the news.
Speaker 3: So, Molly, the Trump deportations are starting to not seem
Speaker 3: like it's the rapists and criminals he promised, and some
Speaker 3: people we really need in this country. And this is
Speaker 3: getting confusing for some of those MAGA people who are
Speaker 3: willing to admit that Trump can have faults at times.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it turns out that Trump is actually just deporting
Speaker 1: people who have last names. So here's a doctor studying
Speaker 1: at Brown. You may know Brown as the Ivy League
Speaker 1: institution in Rhode Island. She was deported out of the
Speaker 1: country for reasons still unclear to her family, her lawyer,
Speaker 1: and her Brown Medicine colleagues. They did not do anything
Speaker 1: to stop the plane who was learning details of the
Speaker 1: event through information relaid by her family members, So clearly
Speaker 1: they wanted to deport her, regardless of if the judge
Speaker 1: said orders are not worth seeing this everywhere Trump world
Speaker 1: getting court orders telling them not to deport people, and
Speaker 1: them just deporting people. Why because they don't follow the law.
Speaker 1: Why don't they follow the law because they're criminals.
Speaker 2: And we're seeing this more and more.
Speaker 1: She was a doctor in Rhode Island evaluating potential transplant
Speaker 1: recipients and following the progress of those patients after their procedures. Oh,
Speaker 1: a transplant doctor. That is not who we should be
Speaker 1: deporting team.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and people don't realize transplant doctors are really hard
Speaker 3: to come by.
Speaker 1: Well, and also the whole idea here is I mean,
Speaker 1: this is just so fucked up, and you'll be shocked
Speaker 1: to know that she is not the only one.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: No, I've read another story that just seemed dumbfounding why
Speaker 3: they would deport this person. They had a light marijuana
Speaker 3: possession charge that was then forgiven and they deported him.
Speaker 4: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 3: So Molly Trump is celebrating after killing an anti money
Speaker 3: laundering law.
Speaker 4: Does that sound like training the swamp to you.
Speaker 1: Trump celebrates after killing anti money laundering law. Look, this
Speaker 1: is the whole thing, right. They're ending the Consumer Protection Bureau,
Speaker 1: They're ending all these laws, these anti corruption laws. They're
Speaker 1: just firing inspectors general. These are not things that you
Speaker 1: do when you want to end corruption. These are not
Speaker 1: moves for transparency. These are things you do when you
Speaker 1: want to increase corruption. Firing the people people who root
Speaker 1: out corruption means that they are planning on doing corruption
Speaker 1: in In fact, the government will no longer require shell
Speaker 1: companies to disclose their owners and beneficiaries, allowing wealthy corporations
Speaker 1: and individuals to hide the profits from the public. Some
Speaker 1: businesses to report information on people who control or own
Speaker 1: a company indirectly.
Speaker 2: Quickly, Trump went.
Speaker 1: To Truse Social after the Treasury announcement, posting exciting news.
Speaker 1: The Biden rule has been an absolute disaster for small businesses.
Speaker 1: It has been an absolute disaster for people who want
Speaker 1: to do crimes.
Speaker 2: And hide them.
Speaker 1: And now it is gone coincidence.
Speaker 3: I think not no, And I think the Lever did
Speaker 3: that great documentary, The Master Plaod that really laid out
Speaker 3: how much of this has been a long played The
Speaker 3: Republican Party to do these type of things, and that
Speaker 3: people that we thought were saying, like John Roberts, the
Speaker 3: Supreme Court justice, is all part of this and totally
Speaker 3: in on it. Yeah, but Molly, this must just be
Speaker 3: our Trump arrangement syndrome talking and sadly, in Minnesota.
Speaker 2: Our mental illness.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Republicans are pushing to get that classified as a
Speaker 3: mental illness in Minnesota.
Speaker 1: Yes, mental illness, all right, whatever, I mean, this is
Speaker 1: so dumb. This is like welcome to peak dumb Trump troll.
Speaker 2: We're not mentally ill. We just want him to stop
Speaker 2: breaking the law.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's the more craven reads of this are that
Speaker 3: you know this is going to be for in prison.
Speaker 4: I don't think this is that.
Speaker 3: This is just that everything in the Republican everything, the
Speaker 3: Republican Party is trying to own the Libs s right now.
Speaker 1: Okay, So Chris Murphy says, Americans want Democrats to take
Speaker 1: risks right now to save our democracy. Direct Chris Murphy,
Speaker 1: that is correct. Nobody wants Democrats to just roll over
Speaker 1: and watch Republicans and American democracy. We want to see
Speaker 1: Democrats fight like Republicans. We want to see them protect
Speaker 1: norms and institutions.
Speaker 2: We want to see them.
Speaker 1: Protect us, protect their voters. I mean they're already deporting people.
Speaker 1: Where does this end? And I think Chris Murphy is
Speaker 1: completely right. I think the whole idea that I feel
Speaker 1: like our elected leaders are just not meeting the moment
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: And I'm not the only one, by the way.
Speaker 1: The polling, I mean, like the polling shows that Democrats
Speaker 1: are like the least popular they've ever been, twenty seven percent.
Speaker 2: I mean, the voters are not happy.
Speaker 3: And I think a lot of people are mistaking that.
Speaker 3: For the voters just hate the Democratic brand right now,
Speaker 3: and it doesn't seem to be that it's that it's
Speaker 3: like embarrassing because they don't represent what we want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I also think like people are taking real risks.
Speaker 1: They're out there protesting in a very crazy moment in
Speaker 1: American life, and your constituent should not be taking.
Speaker 2: More risks than you will.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
Speaker 1: the host of the Enemy's List Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, Mollie junk Fast. Thanks, going great, going great.
Speaker 4: It's going great. Everything is awesome.
Speaker 1: So basically every what I love about European newspapers. Is
Speaker 1: they're all like you guys are on the knife edge
Speaker 1: of fascism.
Speaker 4: FYI, I will say this, I'm not even sure we're
Speaker 4: on the knife's edge anymore. I feel like the diving
Speaker 4: board is like going, and we're headed towards it at
Speaker 4: a very fast pace after having decided to dive right
Speaker 4: into the delicious warm waters of oppression.
Speaker 2: So here's a question for you.
Speaker 1: I vacinate between being very worried m thinking oh, these
Speaker 1: guys are pretty incompetent and it'll be okay.
Speaker 4: I embrace their incompetence.
Speaker 2: If we survive, it will be because of that.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, I embrace their incompetence. But I mean I
Speaker 4: can't count on.
Speaker 2: It, right, right, That's I think that's a move.
Speaker 4: I can't like wake up in the marine and go, well,
Speaker 4: thank god, they'll all fuck up because they're such idiots.
Speaker 4: I mean, they may well fuck up, but there is
Speaker 4: a certain degree of momentum right now on things where
Speaker 4: they're not fucking up. And I'll give you the perfect example.
Speaker 4: And not a lot of people have like fully locked
Speaker 4: onto this yet. But today, in absolute defiance of a
Speaker 4: federal court order, Trump continued to deport el Salvadorians out
Speaker 4: of the country. There's an absolute court order that says
Speaker 4: thou shalt not until we have a hearing, and they said,
Speaker 4: fuck you, and they're doing it.
Speaker 1: But hot take, they're not deporting them to al Salvador, right.
Speaker 4: No, of course not. Who the fuck knows where they're
Speaker 4: going to deport him. But this idea though, that these
Speaker 4: guys have have just decided to ignore the very clear
Speaker 4: stipulations of a court order. That is a post small
Speaker 4: d democratic country unless you have a rule of law
Speaker 4: that everybody plays by, and these guys do not. Right now,
Speaker 4: I think we're in some terrible kind of position.
Speaker 1: So let's not get fatalistic, let's get happy and I'm
Speaker 1: just kidding. No, let's just sort of talk to where
Speaker 1: we are right now. There was a CR. It was
Speaker 1: in the House. I want to talk this through because
Speaker 1: they had to pass the CR to stop a shutdown.
Speaker 1: The Democrats didn't have to, but there was a moment
Speaker 1: right a cliff and Republicans probably would have written Republicans
Speaker 1: were supposedly from what I understand from what I heard
Speaker 1: from the office one of the leadership offices. I'm not
Speaker 1: going to say which one. They were told that OMB
Speaker 1: was delighted with a shutdown and that ross Volt was
Speaker 1: planning on designating HR as essential.
Speaker 4: Workers a central personnel.
Speaker 1: Yeah right, so they were going to put HR as
Speaker 1: a center to workers and just keep firing the federal
Speaker 1: government during the shutdown. And this thread got the leadership
Speaker 1: world scared enough to just keep going and just give
Speaker 1: them the R. But here's my hot ist taken. I
Speaker 1: want you to talk to us about this again. You know,
Speaker 1: what people say and what really happened are two different things. Maybe,
Speaker 1: but I wonder if you could talk through why once
Speaker 1: the CR got out of the House, Democrats were actually cooked.
Speaker 4: I still believe that Schumer had more leverage than he
Speaker 4: either understood or cared to exercise. I found the whole
Speaker 4: thing still deeply inexplicable.
Speaker 1: But if we could go back to the original sin
Speaker 1: here the CR in the House.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, Look, my view on everything with the Democrats
Speaker 4: right now is they've got to form a shield wall
Speaker 4: of absolute no on this bullshit. They've got to stop
Speaker 4: this idea that they're going to My honorable colleague across
Speaker 4: the aisle is a good faith interlocktor. They're not. They've
Speaker 4: yet to understand you have to stop them over and
Speaker 4: over again. You don't just get to stop them one time.
Speaker 4: You have to stop them every time.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about this CR in the House,
Speaker 1: it was voted, there was one Democrat who voted for it,
Speaker 1: Jared Golden, main.
Speaker 4: Beloved of no labels. Jared Golden.
Speaker 1: Well, I have met him before, and he's a in
Speaker 1: an R plus twenty seven district.
Speaker 2: Right, he's like the last rural Democrat. Now pause for
Speaker 2: a minute.
Speaker 1: I still think that had Jeffries been more with it,
Speaker 1: he could have told Golden not to vote for it
Speaker 1: and it wouldn't have passed.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he could have said to Golden, I'm counting this vote.
Speaker 4: I'm whipping this vote. You don't get a pass on
Speaker 4: this one, but you do get ten million dollars if
Speaker 4: you need it. None of this is to my mind
Speaker 4: forgivable for any of them. They all have to take
Speaker 4: some responsibility here. But I think Schumer precapitulated in this thing,
Speaker 4: which really I found unbelievable that he showed his cards
Speaker 4: before even bothering to find out what he could get. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he should have asked for something. He should have
Speaker 4: gone for something.
Speaker 2: Right, This is something I'd love to talk to you.
Speaker 1: For one we're talking about, which is when you have
Speaker 1: a cr like this and you have a House that's
Speaker 1: so tight and a Senate where you know you need
Speaker 1: four votes, right, I wonder if you could play out
Speaker 1: to me what you think this would have looked like
Speaker 1: with a Harry Reed, Nancy Pelosi one two.
Speaker 4: Or if it was Mitch McConnell on the other side.
Speaker 4: They would have leaned in on everybody. They would have
Speaker 4: leaned in on those House members that like Golden they
Speaker 4: got flaky and shaky. They would have told their own members,
Speaker 4: you are voting for this bill at your mortal fucking peril.
Speaker 4: Do not believe for a moment I'm not keeping track
Speaker 4: of every one of you. This is not acceptable. If
Speaker 4: you don't show a weak spot, it can't be exploited.
Speaker 4: And they showed very simply that Chuck Schumer was afraid
Speaker 4: more of the blow back than of the game. I
Speaker 4: don't accept a world where I know for a fact
Speaker 4: Mitch McConnell would have absolutely run John Thune's bell if
Speaker 4: he was on the other side of this equation.
Speaker 2: Right, No, No, absolutely, one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: I just think it's unforgivable, and.
Speaker 1: It seems like my man is not getting forgiven. So
Speaker 1: let's talk about sort of where we are as a
Speaker 1: party right now. So Democrats are everyone I know, Maybe
Speaker 1: not everyone I know, but a lot of people I
Speaker 1: know are protesting all the time. Right, You cannot walk
Speaker 1: down the street without whacking into a protest. Right, They're
Speaker 1: everywhere there on the west side, they're on the east side,
Speaker 1: then they're uptown, theyir midtown. Columbia University grad student still
Speaker 1: in a Louisiana detention center. He is got a green card,
Speaker 1: married to a pregnant citizen.
Speaker 4: Pregnant American citizen.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, his crime was being the negotiator, right, and yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we are seeing a preview. They're finding a person
Speaker 4: who is an affiliate, if you want to say it
Speaker 4: that way in the most exaggerated case, but a loud
Speaker 4: mouth in the actual case. If you believe that you
Speaker 4: can redefine everything as terrorism, then nothing is terrorism. If
Speaker 4: you're gonna if you're gonna find a college protester who's
Speaker 4: started to build a you know what, it was illegal, Okay,
Speaker 4: he violated the law. There are plenty of ways and
Speaker 4: plenty of things on the scale where violating the law
Speaker 4: is horrible but is punishable, And this is one of
Speaker 4: their things where they want they're trying to lure the
Speaker 4: country into this dialogue that anyone who's critical of Trump's
Speaker 4: priorities eg. Israel is somehow a terrorist or a terrorist affiliate, right.
Speaker 1: But I also think some of this is that he's
Speaker 1: using antisept like this guy does not give a fuck
Speaker 1: about anti Semitism.
Speaker 2: Oh share about anti Semitism.
Speaker 1: He's like, anti Semitism is the scourge and these people
Speaker 1: aren't anti Semitic. And it's like, as a liberal Jew,
Speaker 1: I can tell you that this is not about making
Speaker 1: life better for Jews. And I think the sooner that
Speaker 1: Jews are able to wake the fuck up and know
Speaker 1: that this has nothing to do with an anti Semitism,
Speaker 1: the better look.
Speaker 4: I think there are a lot of people on the
Speaker 4: right who have decided that their superpower is going to
Speaker 4: be leveling opposition by saying that if you're not with us,
Speaker 4: you're anti anti semit you're a terrorist. And then the
Speaker 4: problem I think we're about to encounter, and I don't
Speaker 4: think it's a trivial problem, is that they have found
Speaker 4: a weak spot in American liberals where they don't want
Speaker 4: to be called anti Semitic, even if they know it's
Speaker 4: not true, even if they know it's garbage. They don't
Speaker 4: want to be called that. They don't want to be
Speaker 4: in that position. They don't want to feel that way.
Speaker 4: And it's awful. But you know, these guys are not
Speaker 4: good faith actors. I keep saying that to people. It's like,
Speaker 4: do not think that this that this is some sort
Speaker 4: of difference of opinion, This is some sort of difference
Speaker 4: of ideology. This is a politic tactic where they're going
Speaker 4: to say, Okay, well, now we took out that terrorist
Speaker 4: and that now we have to take out these other
Speaker 4: terrorists who are also opposed to Trump's policies, whether it's
Speaker 4: on Israel or anything else.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think that is I think that is
Speaker 1: the big that this really does not have anything to
Speaker 1: do with anti Semitism, but has everything to do with
Speaker 1: Trump's enemies or perceived.
Speaker 2: Or real enemies.
Speaker 4: That's right. I think that's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And this is hit with a one two punch, right,
Speaker 1: four hundred million dollars of funding from Columbia arresting grad
Speaker 1: students and sending them to Louisiana, right, Like, this is
Speaker 1: part of authoritarian playbooks. So all of the experts in authoritarianism,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking about Steven Lebitski from Harvard, who is
Speaker 1: one of my favorites, say you have to push back hard,
Speaker 1: you have to push back right away. You have to
Speaker 1: immediately get together as a group. Like, how much of
Speaker 1: the country do you think like love this trump ism,
Speaker 1: this authoritarianism, this sort of orange orbonism.
Speaker 4: Twenty five percent?
Speaker 2: That's what I think too.
Speaker 4: I think it's I think it's twenty five percent, And
Speaker 4: I think an awful lot of that twenty five percent
Speaker 4: is relatively soft, because you know they're there. Yes, there
Speaker 4: are the Tucker Carlsonite sort of tendency in the GOP today,
Speaker 4: but that is still a minority, and there are still
Speaker 4: a lot of people that don't look at at oppression
Speaker 4: and dictatorship as the role model for American political life.
Speaker 4: Even in the MAGA world, there's some there's been some
Speaker 4: hesitation in some like, oh do we have to do
Speaker 4: that right? Not enough in my opinion, not consistently in
Speaker 4: my opinion. But the space that they're in right now
Speaker 4: I think is very problematic for them because you really
Speaker 4: are asking a bunch of Americans who grew up in
Speaker 4: the Cold War, who did not believe in Putin and
Speaker 4: the Russians as the good guys. You're asking them to
Speaker 4: pretend that Putin and the Russian are the good guys.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're not.
Speaker 5: Nope, they are.
Speaker 4: Not, are not, now, never have been, never will be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, nobody thinks they're the good guys. They are not
Speaker 1: the good guys.
Speaker 4: Man, they are exceedingly bad guys. And one of the
Speaker 4: things we're about to learn. I think I think the
Speaker 4: Europeans have done a kind of brilliant job in resetting
Speaker 4: the power equation in Europe. Yeah, by just saying, Okay,
Speaker 4: well we'll buy our own airplanes, we'll build our own Shit,
Speaker 4: We're not going to play this game, and we're not
Speaker 4: going to sit here in MacDonald Trump break apart the
Speaker 4: rest of the European Alliance. I think Trump really thought
Speaker 4: that there would be a quick capitulation by the rest
Speaker 4: of Europe, because he does have that sort of that
Speaker 4: sort of cheesy, cliched Tucker style thing of like everyone
Speaker 4: in the European Union is a trans wissy or whatever.
Speaker 4: They have this like stupid image in their heads, that
Speaker 4: is not true.
Speaker 1: Right, We're in it, right, We're in Project twenty twenty five.
Speaker 4: Right, we are all in that shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's sort of talk from minute. If you were
Speaker 1: in the kind of dream scenario where you like, if
Speaker 1: you you were actually sort of setting up people to
Speaker 1: survive democracy, to survive what would be your first thing
Speaker 1: you would do?
Speaker 4: Well, The first thing you have to do is address
Speaker 4: the singular force that's giving all these Republicans' confidence to
Speaker 4: stick with Trump, and that singular force is Elon Musk.
Speaker 4: Right now, they wake up every day and they say, Haha,
Speaker 4: if I do what Elon wants, He'll throw twenty five
Speaker 4: to fifty million, one hundred million dollars at my campaign
Speaker 4: if I need it. And look, I don't think a
Speaker 4: lot of them are wrong about that. So the destruction
Speaker 4: of Tesla's stock value in the market has done more
Speaker 4: for American politics in the last ten days than any
Speaker 4: of us bitching or writing op eds. I think that
Speaker 4: is an important thing to consider. What's the only thing
Speaker 4: that started to alter his behavior. It's his stock price
Speaker 4: crashing into the ground. Look, folks, if you've got a
Speaker 4: Tesla to sell it, if you're think about buying a Tesla. Don't.
Speaker 4: If you're a state government and you give Tesla buyers
Speaker 4: any kind of incentive, cancel it tomorrow. California, by the way,
Speaker 4: is part of why Elon Musk is still surviving financially,
Speaker 4: because California is still giving people these enormous tax credits
Speaker 4: and rebates for electric vehicles. I know you love electric vehicles, guys.
Speaker 4: I'm not no hate on electric vehicles, but Tesla is
Speaker 4: no longer an electric vehicle company. It is a bank
Speaker 4: for fascists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean no, it's true. I mean that's the
Speaker 1: thing is, they can't make us fine. Tesla is as
Speaker 1: much as Teslay Teslay. Yeah, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1: Tesla stock. So basically Elon has has.
Speaker 4: You gotta start. You gotta start knocking Elon's knocking Elon's
Speaker 4: ability to wage these battles down to size. Everything about
Speaker 4: his financial position is about the value of his Tesla
Speaker 4: stock everything. And I think if you end up where
Speaker 4: Elon's waking up in the morning and saying, ah, crap, now,
Speaker 4: it's starting to get tighter and smaller my margin of error,
Speaker 4: and I could be fucked. I could lose Starlink, I
Speaker 4: could lose SpaceX, I could lose all this financial leverage
Speaker 4: I've had over so many Republican members of the House
Speaker 4: and the Senate.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: No, it's a really good point, Rick Wilson, do you
Speaker 1: think Democrats should have a new Senate leadership?
Speaker 4: Yes? I do.
Speaker 2: And who do you think it should be?
Speaker 4: I don't know who it should be, but Chuck Schumer
Speaker 4: is not a wartime consigliary, and we need a wartime
Speaker 4: consiguliary right.
Speaker 2: Now, Rick Wilson, will you come back always?
Speaker 4: You know me?
Speaker 1: Tree Crowder is a comedian whose new special, Trash Daddy
Speaker 1: is out on YouTube right now.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 4: Try Yeah, glad to be here.
Speaker 1: So explain to us how you got to be the
Speaker 1: liberal redneck and your origin story, as we.
Speaker 5: Say, yeah, well, for that, you got to go back
Speaker 5: to the mid nineties rural Tennessee place called Clay County.
Speaker 5: There's no traffic lights for McDonald's in Clay County where
Speaker 5: I grew up. It's incredibly rural. But I kind of
Speaker 5: grew up in a family of Southern Democrats and was
Speaker 5: raised by one, actually my dad. I was raised by
Speaker 5: a single father and I and thinking back on it,
Speaker 5: I think that the big reason my dad was like
Speaker 5: that is because his only sibling, my uncle Tim, who
Speaker 5: I also loved very much, was gay and openly gay
Speaker 5: man and had been since they were young adults. And
Speaker 5: so I think in part because of that, and also
Speaker 5: just in part because he wasn't really down with it,
Speaker 5: my dad didn't He didn't mess with the church at all,
Speaker 5: so we didn't go to church growing up. And he
Speaker 5: also he just was like a lifelong Democrat, and so
Speaker 5: I just always kind of was the weird old comedy
Speaker 5: kid or whatever and like growing up like the whole time.
Speaker 5: But like a lot of people, really, I'm sort of
Speaker 5: kind of just the way that I was raised to be.
Speaker 5: It's just that I was raised in an odd place
Speaker 5: for that too have happened most of the other liberal rednecks.
Speaker 5: I'd nothing like my wife and a lot of my
Speaker 5: good friends and guys that I do comedy with and stuff,
Speaker 5: they're kind of all the blue sheep and their family.
Speaker 5: It seems like that's more common, Yeah, but that's not
Speaker 5: really the case for me actually.
Speaker 1: So Yeah, my first question is one of the problems
Speaker 1: that I think about a lot, right, which is that
Speaker 1: Democrats have a lot of really popular policies for working people, right,
Speaker 1: Like Republicans are not fighting to get free classes. Right,
Speaker 1: that's a democratic policy. But for whatever reason, that is
Speaker 1: not how a lot of people in the area you
Speaker 1: grew up vote.
Speaker 5: So why do you.
Speaker 2: Think that is.
Speaker 5: I can start with a personal anecdote that I'll never
Speaker 5: forget my grandfather, my dad's dad, who had also been
Speaker 5: a lifelong Southern Democrat. And I'm not gonna lie when
Speaker 5: we're talking about my grandpa and I say Southern Democrat,
Speaker 5: I do kind of mean the old school type of
Speaker 5: Southern Democrat, which is to say, you know, he definitely
Speaker 5: wasn't not racist, but he had voted Democrats whole life
Speaker 5: and was doing so in the nineties and for Clinton
Speaker 5: and everything. But I'm from a small town. There was
Speaker 5: the beating heart of that town's economy was a big
Speaker 5: clothing factory, an Oshkosh Bagosh factory, and my grandpa had
Speaker 5: a car lot, my dad had a video store, my
Speaker 5: gay uncle I mentioned earlier had a deli. And then
Speaker 5: the factory closed after NAFTA, and in pretty short order
Speaker 5: all those other businesses closed too, and the town just
Speaker 5: kind of died. And I can remember when that was
Speaker 5: in the process of happening. I was probably ten, and
Speaker 5: I remember sitting in my dad's video store, and I
Speaker 5: have a vivid memory of my grandpa storming into the
Speaker 5: video store holding a newspaper that I'm assuming had something
Speaker 5: on it about the factory leaving or whatever, and he
Speaker 5: spiked the newspaper on the counter and he goes, I'll
Speaker 5: never vote for another Democrat as long as I live.
Speaker 5: And my dad was like kind of trying to talk
Speaker 5: him off that ledge a little bit, but he wasn't
Speaker 5: having it. Now, my grandpa didn't live that much longer.
Speaker 5: He had a massive heart attack as a few years later,
Speaker 5: but so he hasn't been around for all this. But
Speaker 5: I think it kind of started there. And then that
Speaker 5: was around the same time that you know, propaganda got
Speaker 5: into full swing in my opinion, you know, that was
Speaker 5: like that was sort of the rush Inball era and
Speaker 5: then followed by the Fox News era, and the narrative
Speaker 5: got firmly entrenched that, you know, the Democrats not only
Speaker 5: don't care about you, but like look down on you,
Speaker 5: and you know, think they're better than you and think
Speaker 5: you're gross and all that type of stuff. And now
Speaker 5: in the modern era. It's even worse than that because
Speaker 5: now they're all, of course sex trafficking, pedophiles and all
Speaker 5: this crazy. So it's like they hear all that and
Speaker 5: don't ever get to like, or even if they get
Speaker 5: to it, don't believe in the actual like working people
Speaker 5: policies that the Democrats do try to do or get
Speaker 5: across to them. And it's frustrating.
Speaker 1: I mean, it certainly seems like NAFTA was the original
Speaker 1: sin right in this case, you know, this is one
Speaker 1: of the Originalton's right, the idea that it's manufacturing that left,
Speaker 1: so we're talking sort of the Clinton era, you know,
Speaker 1: losing those I think it's super interesting, and I also
Speaker 1: wonder a lot, like when we talk about this propaganda stuff,
Speaker 1: because that is certainly worked incredibly.
Speaker 2: Wow, why do you think it worked so well?
Speaker 1: And what are these threads that you think I've been
Speaker 1: the most successful.
Speaker 5: I think part of why it works so well as
Speaker 5: it gets tied to like people's identity and everything, and
Speaker 5: like at a fundamental level, like religion is obviously a
Speaker 5: big part of it gets drawn into it, which I
Speaker 5: alluded to earlier, is a huge thing, at least in
Speaker 5: my part of Red America, well most of like red
Speaker 5: rural America, you know, the church is pretty big, and
Speaker 5: it's like that was another kind of earlier factor that's
Speaker 5: been very successful with them, like aligning themselves so incontrovertibly
Speaker 5: with the Church, you know, so successfully. So it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, you're not a good Christian if you're not
Speaker 5: you know, a Republican. And then you know, and then
Speaker 5: on top of that, especially when you hear you know,
Speaker 5: the Democrat you know, they whatever, you know, they love
Speaker 5: abortions and they love drug addicts and all this stuff.
Speaker 5: And it's like, you know, even though obviously Jesus was
Speaker 5: like a you know, like a barefoot socialist who hung
Speaker 5: out with constitution reprobates and centers and stuff. Yeah, but
Speaker 5: that's you know, they don't that Jesus is kind of
Speaker 5: he sort of they've been like catfished by uh, you know,
Speaker 5: Naga Jesus or whatever they you know, that lost sight
Speaker 5: of the old one, the real one.
Speaker 1: I mean, I just wonder like when we talk about
Speaker 1: these MAGA influencers, people like Charlie Kirk or Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: actually think Steve Banner is not in the same category
Speaker 1: as Charlie kirkuse, I think Steve Bannon is very very smart.
Speaker 1: I don't think Charlie Kirk is so smart. But the volume,
Speaker 1: the sheer volume of content, Like there is no liberal
Speaker 1: producing hours and hours and hours of content like that.
Speaker 5: No, And it's like, so if you get into that
Speaker 5: whole world, you get down that rabbit hole, it's like
Speaker 5: you can be satiated endlessly. You know, you never have
Speaker 5: to come out of it. Like it's just it's perpetual,
Speaker 5: the content stream over there. You're right, Liberals have ourd
Speaker 5: time replicating that. And I think, you know, I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm kind of in that world. I make you know,
Speaker 5: comedic political videos on the Internet for a liberal audience
Speaker 5: and stuff. So I've definitely thought about this type of thing.
Speaker 5: And I think that it's also just kind of a
Speaker 5: fundamental difference in the demographics. Speaking as a liberal, you
Speaker 5: just don't see the same type of cultish devotion or
Speaker 5: whatever that you see, Like it's not as people aren't
Speaker 5: as zealous, like you know, I'll go after like the
Speaker 5: Democrats too, they pissed me off often, you know, And
Speaker 5: also the Democrats are much more diverse coalition because it's like,
Speaker 5: you know, it's everybody or you know, trying to be
Speaker 5: and so it's not as like unified in that way,
Speaker 5: and you see fewer bumper stickers and T shirts and stuff.
Speaker 5: We don't treat it as much like a sports team
Speaker 5: on the left. And so that's like another reason why
Speaker 5: it's hard to get that level of influence on this
Speaker 5: side of you know, the isle or the fence or whatever.
Speaker 2: Do you think that is actually how we got here?
Speaker 1: I mean, I often puzzle about the fact that we
Speaker 1: have elected this man twice?
Speaker 2: Yeah, how do you think we got here?
Speaker 1: Oh?
Speaker 5: I don't. I mean, no, I'm with you. I mean,
Speaker 5: even though like in twenty sixteen and during his rise,
Speaker 5: he gotten a little bit of a following and stuff,
Speaker 5: and I was posting online and even though I was
Speaker 5: telling people because of where I'm from, you know, I
Speaker 5: described earlier my town, that factory, my grandpa, everything that
Speaker 5: happened there, and what state was it in Tennessee to Salina, Tennessee.
Speaker 5: And because of all that, I was telling people during
Speaker 5: his rise, like, you know, some of y'all are not
Speaker 5: taking this seriously enough. This is definitely a real thing.
Speaker 5: But even I still didn't go into my head at
Speaker 5: the end of the day actually think he was gonna
Speaker 5: win though, and so I was kind of blindsided by
Speaker 5: what he did, and then I was more ready for
Speaker 5: it this last time. But it was like, to me,
Speaker 5: in my head, I was like, okay, that first time,
Speaker 5: I know, I could understand. I could understand people in
Speaker 5: my hometown. I don't know how they didn't see that
Speaker 5: it was complete bullshit what he was doing. I don't
Speaker 5: know how they couldn't tell that, but I could see that,
Speaker 5: you know, he was like pretending to care about them
Speaker 5: and nobody else was, and he was saying things they
Speaker 5: wanted to hear, and I could understand how that was
Speaker 5: like effective. But to me, all these years later, after
Speaker 5: him having proven that he's not going to do any
Speaker 5: of that, he's not going to like help any of
Speaker 5: them and everything, was surprised that not only would they
Speaker 5: go back to the will, but that he knew people
Speaker 5: would sign up. Of course, a lot of other things
Speaker 5: happened along the way with.
Speaker 1: Biden his perception, right, Yeah, and for sure that was
Speaker 1: definitely an issue. And I think that one of the
Speaker 1: things that happened was Biden disappeared, so there was no
Speaker 1: candidate that they had, no one right, they didn't even
Speaker 1: know if he was running for president really, and in fact,
Speaker 1: like we saw the day of the election google searches
Speaker 1: of people trying to figure out who was running for president.
Speaker 1: So obviously mistakes were made. But I just wonder, like
Speaker 1: one of the things that a lot of people think,
Speaker 1: including myself, is that I always thought, and I think
Speaker 1: this is a mistake I made, that at some point
Speaker 1: voters and especially these conservative voters right, would be like, oh,
Speaker 1: we've been had, right, We've been conned. But it seems
Speaker 1: like that moment has never happened. Will that never happen?
Speaker 1: And explain that, Yeah, I'm with you completely. That's what
Speaker 1: I was thinking too. That's what I was, you know,
Speaker 1: trying to get at a minute ago. Was like I
Speaker 1: kept thinking that moment would come to and then clearly
Speaker 1: after just like, clearly it hasn't yet.
Speaker 5: Will it ever? I think for a certain subset of them, no, no,
Speaker 5: absolutely no, it won't. Oh wow never, oh wow, certain
Speaker 5: chunk But I do think that that and I don't
Speaker 5: know what the percent is, but I'm just saying some
Speaker 5: of them I do think are like I think are
Speaker 5: basically unreachable at this point. But like I think enough
Speaker 5: of them, I think it still could happen. But I
Speaker 5: think the only way that the only way he gets
Speaker 5: there is like it gets bad enough for enough people,
Speaker 5: like in a way that they can't ignore, you know.
Speaker 5: I mean we've already seen some you know, it's like
Speaker 5: some anecdotal viral accounts of people being like I didn't
Speaker 5: know he was going to do this when I voted
Speaker 5: for him, even though it was stuff he said he
Speaker 5: was going to do the whole time. But like, if
Speaker 5: that happens to enough people in effect, because that's always
Speaker 5: been the thing with them that I found, it has
Speaker 5: to affect them personally, right, like for them to really care.
Speaker 5: It's kind of a lack of empathy that's behind it all,
Speaker 5: in my opinion. But if things get bad enough to
Speaker 5: affect enough of these people on a personal level that
Speaker 5: they can't ignore, then I would like to think surely
Speaker 5: they'll wake up. And then if and when they wake up,
Speaker 5: then the Republicans won't feel they're beholden to Trump anymore
Speaker 5: if enough of the public turns on them, and then
Speaker 5: maybe there's some hope at that point. But I don't
Speaker 5: know where that line is or how bad things have
Speaker 5: to get or you know how far we have to go.
Speaker 5: But I'd like to think it's that it exists, that
Speaker 5: it's possible, right right, right?
Speaker 1: No, No, I mean I too would like to think
Speaker 1: it exists in as possible. So like that's the big question, right,
Speaker 1: Like I think about this a lot, because you know,
Speaker 1: this summer, I did a whole YouTube series on Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five, and when I did it, I have
Speaker 1: this realization, which was, if you are dependent on anything
Speaker 1: from the government, Project twenty twenty five will completely fuck you,
Speaker 1: because it was like, you know, it's basically stripping the
Speaker 1: government to the studs, making it a government that doesn't
Speaker 1: do stuff for people anymore. So that's the ethos, right,
Speaker 1: that's the Koch brothers, that's the dream of all Republican
Speaker 1: elected maybe not all, but many. So what I wondered
Speaker 1: when I went down this path was I thought, like,
Speaker 1: when will the moment be where these Tennessee voters who
Speaker 1: you know elected Marsha Blackburn, Like that crew goes like,
Speaker 1: wait a second, I had social Security stacks under Biden.
Speaker 1: I mean they're saying they won't touch social Security, Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's say they touch Medicaid, right, say because you know,
Speaker 1: that original House bill had eight hundred.
Speaker 2: And eighty billion from Medicaid over ten years.
Speaker 1: So that means like I live in rural Tennessee and
Speaker 1: my local hospital is gone. It's closed because they don't
Speaker 1: have Medicaid money anymore, So I now have to go
Speaker 1: to a hospital an extra forty miles or fifty miles
Speaker 1: the way. Do you think that will be the moment
Speaker 1: or will they just go into some other coping mechanism.
Speaker 5: I mean, I think I know what the coping mechanism
Speaker 5: will be. If that's the path that choose, they'll find
Speaker 5: I don't know. I know this sounds crazy, but they'll
Speaker 5: just find some way no matter what. To still blame
Speaker 5: Democrats for it, because like the town I'm from I
Speaker 5: mentioned earlier, our hospital is currently closed and has closed
Speaker 5: and reopened like three or four times in the past
Speaker 5: few years, and closed for good during Joe Biden's administration.
Speaker 5: But it's because of.
Speaker 2: A state refusing to take the Medicaid expansion.
Speaker 5: The Republicans who run the state are the reason that
Speaker 5: it closed. But Joe Biden was the president, and so
Speaker 5: it's like, you know, they're like, this is Biden's America
Speaker 5: and so I wonder too, will they be able to
Speaker 5: convince themselves, delude themselves, or whatever, and to find when
Speaker 5: they have every you know, branch of government and every
Speaker 5: lever of power there is right now and everyone knows that,
Speaker 5: will they still find some way even despite that, to
Speaker 5: blame Democrats for some of these bad things that do
Speaker 5: happen and then just you know, go on from there.
Speaker 5: Because that's part of what worries me. I'd like to
Speaker 5: think that enough of them won't be able to do that,
Speaker 5: because even they will have to admit it's like, well, hey,
Speaker 5: this is Trump's in the White House, the Republicans are
Speaker 5: or in Congress, so this kind of has to be
Speaker 5: on them. I'd like to think that's what happens, but
Speaker 5: I'm not you know, I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: What you're saying here. And this is the thing, And
Speaker 1: actually Paul Krugman wrote a really smart substack about this
Speaker 1: where he's said, the problem with trump Ism is that
Speaker 1: ultimately they are constantly using conspiracies to explain things, and
Speaker 1: so you find, you know, another conspiracy ends up being
Speaker 1: the solve for this conspiracy, if that makes sense, And
Speaker 1: that is kind of crazy.
Speaker 5: Absolutely crazy that I mean, that's that, like we mentioned earlier,
Speaker 5: with like them becoming inextricably intertwined with like the Christians
Speaker 5: and the Church and everything. That's like now also happened
Speaker 5: with like every conspiracy theory is like after QAnon, and
Speaker 5: now it's like every right winger who's serious about it
Speaker 5: is also a conspiracy theorist or whatever. And it's you know,
Speaker 5: because I mean I used to like reading about aliens
Speaker 5: and UFOs and stuff, and you know, watching Oliver Stone
Speaker 5: over here and there and that type of thing that
Speaker 5: was fun. I never liked seriously, God never got too
Speaker 5: deep into it, but I thought it was like neat
Speaker 5: that type of thing. And then now it's just, like
Speaker 5: like so many other things, just going completely off the
Speaker 5: deep end is way more nefarious. And yeah, and it's
Speaker 5: dangerous because, like you said, when you're into that type
Speaker 5: of thing, you can make almost anything, make exactly the
Speaker 5: kind of sense that you want it to, because making
Speaker 5: actual sense doesn't matter to you anymore when you're you know,
Speaker 5: when you're into that stuff.
Speaker 1: It's just a rabbit hole that I don't quite understand
Speaker 1: how you get yourself out of. If Republicans are responsible
Speaker 1: for nothing, then when would you be able to ever
Speaker 1: sort of process and change. I mean that's the question
Speaker 1: is like the market, right, Like Trump is crashing the
Speaker 1: markets and it's not entirely clear why, right, Yeah, you
Speaker 1: know he's doing it because he's mad at what.
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Estion is sort of like if he's doing that and
Speaker 1: everything is about a conspiracy, then how do you ever stop?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: Where's the exit?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 5: No, I don't. I'm yeah, I'm with you. I worried
Speaker 5: about that. That's also another huge factor, you know, him
Speaker 5: establishing the like sort of fake news paradigm or whatever too.
Speaker 5: It's like any you know, like that quote everybody uses
Speaker 5: pretty appropriately from nineteen eighty four about the Party told
Speaker 5: you ignore the evidence of your eyes and ears. It
Speaker 5: was their final most fundamental command or whatever, and he
Speaker 5: like started with that in twenty sixteen, like you know,
Speaker 5: even if you see something doesn't mean it's true. And
Speaker 5: so it's just all kind of like wrapped up together
Speaker 5: into one big, you know, ball of really shitty yarn
Speaker 5: that the rest of us are choking on. And I
Speaker 5: don't know what today, you know, I know the left
Speaker 5: is trying to figure it out, as always talking about
Speaker 5: like the search for a leftist Joe Rogan and all
Speaker 5: this type of thing about like pushing back. But the
Speaker 5: thing is, I do think it's important to find for
Speaker 5: the left and get writ large, to find a way
Speaker 5: to push back in that fight, the propaganda fight, you know.
Speaker 5: But it's hard.
Speaker 2: But isn't the leftist Joe Rogan just Joe Rogan, Like
Speaker 2: Joe Rogan endorsed Bernie Sanders, Like he's obviously somewhat open
Speaker 2: to that, at least maybe not anymore.
Speaker 5: But he was. I'm a comedian and I was a
Speaker 5: comedy nerd before I was a comedian. I don't know
Speaker 5: Joe personally, but I was a big fan of Joe's
Speaker 5: and I used to listen to his podcast all the time.
Speaker 5: And I also for a while when it kind of
Speaker 5: first started to talk about him, you know, being up
Speaker 5: gateway to the right or whatever, people said, I was
Speaker 5: an apologist for him. I was like, Nah, he's really
Speaker 5: not like that. Again, he's a Bernie guy. If you
Speaker 5: actually listen to what he says, he's like, he ain't
Speaker 5: that guy. But speaking as a fan in COVID in
Speaker 5: the years COVID and moving to Texas, the Spotify deal
Speaker 5: and all the years since he has definitely drifted much further.
Speaker 5: He's pretty solidly on the on the right at this point,
Speaker 5: not the same Joe that I recall and was and
Speaker 5: was into in my twenties and stuff. So I mean,
Speaker 5: I don't know who they left. I saw somebody pointed out,
Speaker 5: you know, it's like it could be Bill Burr, but
Speaker 5: Bill Burr's not I don't interested in doing it. He's
Speaker 5: like probably the best best comedian right now, and he's
Speaker 5: very much a common sense guy. And it's like, but
Speaker 5: I don't think he's looking for that job necessarily. So
Speaker 5: but again I did because I have two I have
Speaker 5: two sons, they're twelve and thirteen, and everything's cool right now.
Speaker 5: Everything's fine, But like, I just worry a lot about
Speaker 5: the narrative of like gen Z Boys and like Andrew
Speaker 5: Tait of it All and all that stuff. You know,
Speaker 5: there needs to be a response to that out there,
Speaker 5: like on the left, because when I was like coming
Speaker 5: of age, the coolest thing there was, like when I
Speaker 5: was in college age and stuff, the coolest thing there
Speaker 5: was was like John Stewart in the Daily Show and
Speaker 5: Stephen Colbert and every college every frat bro, every college
Speaker 5: guy was watching that every night, getting high and watching
Speaker 5: the Daily Show and stuff.
Speaker 2: Yep, so good and so important.
Speaker 5: Tray.
Speaker 2: I hope you'll come back.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah, absolutely anytime. Thank you out, thank you for
Speaker 5: having me.
Speaker 4: And all on moon. Rick Wilson, It's a time for
Speaker 4: a moment of fucker.
Speaker 2: It is the moment of fuckery.
Speaker 4: What's your moment of fuckery this week?
Speaker 1: Molly, So we are gonna we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the Alien Insurrection Act, which was an eighteenth century law that,
Speaker 1: by the way, was in.
Speaker 2: Project twenty two. I know you're going to be shocked
Speaker 2: to hear this.
Speaker 4: Pit Wait, no way, are you telling me that Project
Speaker 4: twenty twenty five was the plan all along? I am
Speaker 4: that is remarkable.
Speaker 1: Remember when we said that A yeah, you said no,
Speaker 1: he wouldn't and everyone was like, why would he lie?
Speaker 2: Don' for lying?
Speaker 1: I don't know what to tell anyone except what what.
Speaker 4: Look if they really believe we're going to be in
Speaker 4: a world where where we returned to eighteenth century laws
Speaker 4: and and apply them as a political tool of Donald Trump,
Speaker 4: well they are telling us once again that American institutions
Speaker 4: and the rule of law and democracy are not only
Speaker 4: a thing of the past, but that they're going to
Speaker 4: use every conceivable tool in the toolbox to make that
Speaker 4: the case.
Speaker 1: Can I just say one last thing about this Alien
Speaker 1: Interaction Act and Republicans more generally, this was the plan
Speaker 1: right to use these zombie laws the age, and you're
Speaker 1: going to see over the next four years, hopefully only
Speaker 1: four years, that they're going to use more laws like this,
Speaker 1: Like the next one is going to be calm stock.
Speaker 1: This is a function of the Democratic Party not being
Speaker 1: careful and saying, well, these laws aren't getting any use,
Speaker 1: so there's no point in having to repeal them, right right.
Speaker 4: When they say something to the effect of, well, yeah,
Speaker 4: but that's so unlikely, and the courts would if anybody
Speaker 4: is like counting on the courts to save us anymore,
Speaker 4: I do have some terrible news for it. Well.
Speaker 1: The thing that's weird, though, is the courts are actually
Speaker 1: saving us. The problem is that it turns out the
Speaker 1: totally lawless guy does really give a fuck about the course.
Speaker 4: That is to my mind a bit of an issue
Speaker 4: that you have somebody who is now there's no political
Speaker 4: accountability from his own party. Certainly you know, as you
Speaker 4: would not expected, but there's no political accountability whatsoever for
Speaker 4: the people that are enabling him. It's just a very
Speaker 4: dark and problematic thing because you would in an ordinary
Speaker 4: universe these people would have to face consequences for doing
Speaker 4: things that are lawless and insane. But again, going back
Speaker 4: to Elon Musk, they all feel like Daddy Elon will
Speaker 4: save me if I get in political trouble for doing
Speaker 4: the stupidest fucking things in the world.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, I'll see you soon.
Speaker 4: Pleasure talk to you later.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.