WEBVTT - Zack Stanton & Brian Edwards 0:00:00.640 --> 0:00:04.160 Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.120 where we discussed the top political headlines with some of 0:00:07.160 --> 0:00:11.000 today's best minds, and Galaine Maxwell has been moved to 0:00:11.039 --> 0:00:13.880 a minimum security prison camp in Texas. 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:16.280 We have such a great jow for you today. 0:00:16.400 --> 0:00:21.560 Politico's Zach Stanton stops by to talk about Donald Trump's 0:00:21.960 --> 0:00:27.320 job number crisis. Then we'll talk to Tulane's Brian Edwards 0:00:27.400 --> 0:00:29.360 about the American Century. 0:00:29.680 --> 0:00:34.479 But first we have the news, Mollie, mister Epstein, his 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:38.400 files have many reductions and whose name do you think 0:00:38.440 --> 0:00:39.720 they reducted in them? 0:00:39.760 --> 0:00:40.360 Donald Trump? 0:00:40.400 --> 0:00:43.840 So here's Jason Leopold, who's a really good reporter and 0:00:43.880 --> 0:00:46.519 who is sort of the master of FOYA. 0:00:46.760 --> 0:00:48.840 FOYA is the Freedom of Information Act. 0:00:49.200 --> 0:00:51.840 If you feel out forms the right way, you can 0:00:51.920 --> 0:00:56.600 get these FOYA files sent to you because you have 0:00:56.800 --> 0:01:00.160 this freedom of information until Trump takes it away, which 0:01:00.200 --> 0:01:05.559 seems inevitable at this point. Jason is a journalist at Bloomberg. 0:01:05.680 --> 0:01:08.360 Now he foiled some of the files around the Ebstein 0:01:08.400 --> 0:01:10.320 files because I don't think he was able to get that. 0:01:10.480 --> 0:01:13.920 But while we have labored to provide the public with 0:01:14.080 --> 0:01:17.880 maximum information regarding Epstein in the statement read, it is 0:01:18.160 --> 0:01:21.480 a determination of the Department and justin that no further 0:01:22.040 --> 0:01:25.720 disclosure would be warranted. So the FBI has redacted Donald 0:01:25.720 --> 0:01:29.839 Trump's name, along with the names of other prominent public figures, 0:01:30.160 --> 0:01:33.360 from references in the Epstein files. Three people familiar with 0:01:33.400 --> 0:01:38.360 the matter told Bloomberg's Jason Leopold, so internal directives instructed 0:01:38.560 --> 0:01:42.040 a thousand FBI agents to flag any mention of Trump 0:01:42.400 --> 0:01:46.400 during a March review of the roughly one hundred thousand 0:01:46.480 --> 0:01:50.920 pages of records. People familiar with the process told Bloomberg, So, 0:01:51.600 --> 0:01:52.240 think about this. 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:53.000 So you'll have. 0:01:53.320 --> 0:01:57.920 People in the FBI telling a journalist that people sat 0:01:57.960 --> 0:02:01.200 down with a hundred thousand pages of records, and I'm 0:02:01.240 --> 0:02:03.360 sure there was more than that, because we know there 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:06.200 were videos, there were photographs, and went through and looked 0:02:06.240 --> 0:02:10.119 for the name of Donald Trump to redact it. Redacting 0:02:10.320 --> 0:02:12.880 is when you take when you blacken a name so 0:02:12.960 --> 0:02:15.600 that people can't see it. 0:02:15.600 --> 0:02:17.880 It's meant to protect the privacy. 0:02:18.040 --> 0:02:19.960 You know, a lot of the victims might have their 0:02:20.040 --> 0:02:23.960 names were redacted, or to protect national security. I wonder 0:02:24.000 --> 0:02:27.440 what national security redacting Donald Trump's name from the Epstein 0:02:27.480 --> 0:02:28.880 files protects. 0:02:28.919 --> 0:02:30.239 This is just a crazy story. 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.280 FBI agents were directed to search all documents associated with 0:02:34.280 --> 0:02:37.280 the Epstein case and determine which could be released. This 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:40.600 is just such a crazy story. FBI personnel were said 0:02:40.639 --> 0:02:44.079 to have identified numerous references to Trump and other high 0:02:44.120 --> 0:02:48.600 profile people, with the names then redacted by feuer officers 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:50.960 because they were private citizens at the time. 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:56.320 Okay, so redacting names. It's just so suspicious, right, So. 0:02:56.200 --> 0:02:58.839 It feels like a pedophile cabal cover up. I feel 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:05.120 like I'm cue not all of a sudden, yes, it's crazy. 0:03:05.320 --> 0:03:08.120 Well, it's just like if you were trying to cover 0:03:08.280 --> 0:03:10.280 something up, this would be the way to do it. 0:03:10.480 --> 0:03:10.799 Yeah. 0:03:11.919 --> 0:03:14.360 This is also one of those things though that we 0:03:14.480 --> 0:03:16.680 all assumed would happen, but you can't say it out 0:03:16.720 --> 0:03:17.840 loud till it actually happens. 0:03:17.840 --> 0:03:19.320 We're all like, this is the next step. 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:22.040 So this is the next step. Here we are, and 0:03:22.320 --> 0:03:22.720 there we go. 0:03:23.040 --> 0:03:25.680 Let's talk about some other nice, nice fuckery. 0:03:25.720 --> 0:03:27.280 I mean, I feel like this whole intro is just 0:03:27.360 --> 0:03:29.880 a big, long moment of fuckery, because these judges got 0:03:29.919 --> 0:03:32.919 together to talk about the horrors they've experienced since ruling 0:03:32.919 --> 0:03:35.960 against Trump, and you know, it was so disheartening to 0:03:36.040 --> 0:03:38.280 read this because we have to discuss it. But also 0:03:38.520 --> 0:03:41.120 when we discuss this, it also makes me feel like, well, 0:03:41.200 --> 0:03:42.920 now judges are going to hear how bad their lives 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:44.280 are going to be if they rule against them. 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:46.160 Yeah, you know, but we have to talk about it 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:50.120 because it's really important. So these judges are facing just 0:03:50.440 --> 0:03:53.400 their lives are becoming nightmares. And you know, there's a 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:58.240 reason why these Republicans are such cowards, right that they're 0:03:58.280 --> 0:04:01.080 just letting Trump do whatever they want because they're scared, 0:04:01.360 --> 0:04:04.440 and so are judges, and so are all of us. 0:04:04.480 --> 0:04:07.600 Were all scared. It's really scary. That's what it is. 0:04:07.720 --> 0:04:10.880 Man. That's where we are in America right now. Federal 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:15.080 judges worry. The judiciary is at stake. I'm aware. US 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:19.360 District Judge John McConnell, who blocked Trump's federal aid freeze 0:04:19.360 --> 0:04:22.120 earlier this year, said his court has received four or 0:04:22.240 --> 0:04:26.160 five hundred file threatening voicemails. We're going to come for him, 0:04:26.240 --> 0:04:29.760 said one voicemail. You know what, motherfucker, your ass is 0:04:29.800 --> 0:04:33.839 going to be in prison. I mean, look, Trump encouraged this. 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:38.240 This is not surprising. They receive these pizza deliveries their 0:04:38.279 --> 0:04:42.719 home address, indicating they've been docked. Sometimes they put in 0:04:43.000 --> 0:04:46.800 the last the pizza gets sent to them by the 0:04:46.920 --> 0:04:52.240 name of poor district Judge Esther Sallas's son who was 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:58.039 killed in twenty twenty. This guy, Robert Lasnik said he 0:04:58.600 --> 0:05:02.200 was sent pizza's est has been amazing going on television. 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.960 I was on Nicole's show with her. I mean, these 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:09.520 people are putting their lives on the line to protect 0:05:09.560 --> 0:05:12.279 our democracy, to protect. 0:05:11.880 --> 0:05:12.919 The rule of law. 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.080 And you know, then we have all these billionaires who 0:05:16.560 --> 0:05:20.080 who are too scared to even say anything. 0:05:20.400 --> 0:05:21.640 So here we are. 0:05:22.000 --> 0:05:26.800 So another really stupid news, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting 0:05:26.880 --> 0:05:28.400 is going to shut down, which is going to mean 0:05:28.600 --> 0:05:31.960 very big things for PBS and NPR and also Donald 0:05:31.960 --> 0:05:33.159 Trump's jobs numbers. 0:05:34.279 --> 0:05:36.080 Wait, this is a lot of people who are going 0:05:36.120 --> 0:05:36.719 to be out a point. 0:05:37.040 --> 0:05:37.400 Yeah. 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:41.320 Despite the efforts of Americans who called, voted, and petitioned 0:05:41.480 --> 0:05:45.159 Congress to preserve federal funding, we are now facing the 0:05:45.200 --> 0:05:49.920 difficult reality of closing our operations, so public broadcasting. I 0:05:49.960 --> 0:05:53.720 think there'll be some public broadcasting that'll still exist. By 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:55.880 the way, it is one point one billion dollars in 0:05:55.920 --> 0:05:58.679 federal funding. This is like how much it's going to cost. 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:00.680 I mean slightly more than how much It's going to 0:06:00.760 --> 0:06:04.120 cost to fix up Donald Trump's new plane. Yeah, just 0:06:04.240 --> 0:06:07.560 a fucking rounding error. But the point is not that 0:06:07.640 --> 0:06:10.160 it's about money. The point is that it's about control. 0:06:10.320 --> 0:06:12.760 So m it's silencing reporting. 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:14.680 Yeah, and silencing reporting. 0:06:14.880 --> 0:06:18.440 So hard to think of something worse than this, But 0:06:18.720 --> 0:06:20.760 here we are, ladies and gentlemen. 0:06:21.240 --> 0:06:23.320 Just a complete fucking shit show. 0:06:23.760 --> 0:06:24.200 Somali. 0:06:24.400 --> 0:06:29.240 We now have a report from Yale Budget Lab about 0:06:29.279 --> 0:06:31.799 Trump's tariffs, which I'm We've starting to become convinced shouldn't 0:06:31.800 --> 0:06:34.520 call teriffs, we should call his robbing of the American 0:06:34.520 --> 0:06:36.560 people to give to the rich. It's going to cost 0:06:36.600 --> 0:06:40.200 us all at least twenty four hundred dollars a year 0:06:40.400 --> 0:06:41.200 for the average home. 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.400 Yeah, congratulations to all of us. Trump's tariffs are terrible, 0:06:45.560 --> 0:06:49.840 They're inflationary, their attacks on the consumer. It will cost 0:06:50.240 --> 0:06:55.520 twenty four hundred dollars per household the tariff rates combined 0:06:55.560 --> 0:06:59.440 with surprisingly weak jobs report for Friday morning, it's the 0:06:59.520 --> 0:07:03.560 latest that American household space and much more deep difficult. 0:07:03.839 --> 0:07:07.160 We went from the envy of the world to very 0:07:07.240 --> 0:07:10.760 much not just complete disaster. 0:07:11.320 --> 0:07:13.240 Personally, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, though, 0:07:13.320 --> 0:07:17.800 I livid at the Democratic establishment for not messaging this more. 0:07:18.080 --> 0:07:20.680 Here's the thing, if you want to like get in 0:07:20.720 --> 0:07:24.400 the weeds here, we have no mainstream media anymore. So 0:07:24.480 --> 0:07:28.600 you have a group of people who are Democratic electeds 0:07:28.640 --> 0:07:33.920 who are now tasked with transmitting what's happening. I mean, 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:36.960 I'm happy to blame them for a lot of stuff, 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:40.520 because there's been mistakes have been made again and again 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.880 and again on multiple levels, in multiple different ways. But 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:46.440 I'm just not I don't you know, it's like an 0:07:46.480 --> 0:07:48.720 impossible situation. I don't know how you make up for 0:07:48.760 --> 0:07:54.040 the shortfall of people now getting their news from Charlie Kirk. 0:07:54.280 --> 0:07:55.440 I don't know how you do that. 0:07:55.800 --> 0:07:58.800 I think that's going on podcasts and making tiktoks about it. 0:07:58.840 --> 0:08:00.920 I mean, I think Zoron is the ouprint is that 0:08:01.320 --> 0:08:03.400 he has an issue that he thinks is important, he 0:08:03.480 --> 0:08:05.960 makes an engaging video on it, and that's how information 0:08:06.040 --> 0:08:06.480 is delivered. 0:08:06.480 --> 0:08:08.680 Now It's not quite so simple, but yes. 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.000 Zach Stanton is the deputy editor of Playbook and a 0:08:19.120 --> 0:08:21.000 contributor to Political Magazine. 0:08:21.280 --> 0:08:24.360 Zack Stanton, welcome my pleasure to be here. 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:29.360 Luckily we have waited until after the Friday news dump 0:08:30.000 --> 0:08:33.560 to go through all of the sewage I think we 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:36.800 start with Trump didn't like the jobs reports, so he 0:08:36.960 --> 0:08:38.400 fired the statistician. 0:08:39.080 --> 0:08:42.720 Yes, he has fired the person in charge of jobs 0:08:42.760 --> 0:08:45.720 numbers at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, entirely because the 0:08:45.800 --> 0:08:48.240 jobs numbers were downgraded for previous months and they came 0:08:48.280 --> 0:08:51.640 in much weaker than expected for July. They always come 0:08:51.679 --> 0:08:54.120 out the first Friday of every month, we get the 0:08:54.160 --> 0:08:55.439 previous month's numbers. 0:08:55.520 --> 0:08:56.600 He didn't like the numbers. 0:08:56.640 --> 0:08:59.440 He had advanced notice of them, and so despite his 0:08:59.440 --> 0:09:01.640 claim that he just now found out about this, he 0:09:01.720 --> 0:09:05.319 had some advance warning. It's of a piece of certainly 0:09:05.559 --> 0:09:10.400 an ongoing politicization of the civil service, and of more 0:09:10.440 --> 0:09:13.320 broadly a sort of a purge that is taking place 0:09:13.559 --> 0:09:16.600 across pretty much everything that the federal government has its 0:09:16.600 --> 0:09:19.680 tendrils on, ranging from the Smithsonian, where we saw this 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.160 week the sort of censoring of the impeachment exhibit. He 0:09:23.160 --> 0:09:26.320 didn't like it exactly. He didn't like it. Where this ends, 0:09:26.400 --> 0:09:29.960 it's hard to know. But it's also bizarre to me, 0:09:30.160 --> 0:09:33.360 just on a pure messaging or narrative level, in that 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:38.920 you know, with the job numbers, and with recent economic moves, 0:09:39.400 --> 0:09:43.560 he had had sort of a good negative news cycle 0:09:43.600 --> 0:09:47.040 for Jerome Powell for the first time, and he immediately 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.959 steps on it by doing something like this. 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:52.600 Yes, I mean, the only thing Trump can do at 0:09:52.600 --> 0:09:55.640 this moment is bring the conversation back to Jeffrey Epstein. 0:09:55.720 --> 0:09:59.800 I think that is his only smart play I wanted 0:09:59.840 --> 0:10:04.280 to talk about. Her name is Erica mcer as, a 0:10:04.280 --> 0:10:10.439 Commissioner on Labor and Statistics MCAR. She was voted bipartisan, 0:10:10.800 --> 0:10:17.800 voting eighty six yes, is including Vice President Jade Events. 0:10:18.000 --> 0:10:21.480 Including Vice President Jadie Vance. But you know, it's it's 0:10:21.520 --> 0:10:25.439 in keeping with pretty much what we've seen from Vance, 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:29.160 but also more broadly senate Republicans ever since Trump has 0:10:29.679 --> 0:10:32.320 re emerged as the center of the national conversation that 0:10:32.520 --> 0:10:36.480 really any ideological preferences that people have, or any sort 0:10:36.480 --> 0:10:39.800 of independent views of their own all gets subsumed by Trump. 0:10:39.920 --> 0:10:41.640 That he is sort of the yes or no, up 0:10:41.760 --> 0:10:44.280 or down question that defines our politics, or at least 0:10:44.280 --> 0:10:46.520 defines what it means to be a Republican. We've seen 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:49.240 that this week, not only with things like this, but 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:53.000 you know, we're now seeing like Republican Senate candidates do 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.760 pro tiff ads, which is kind of a stunning development 0:10:56.840 --> 0:10:58.880 that I wouldn't have expected, you know, a year ago, 0:10:58.920 --> 0:10:59.319 at this time. 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:01.520 Necessarily, it's just simply. 0:11:01.280 --> 0:11:03.600 A matter of whether or not Donald Trump is in 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.200 favor of something, and that becomes sort of a litmus test, 0:11:06.240 --> 0:11:07.560 and all else flows from it. 0:11:07.760 --> 0:11:11.160 So he can fire the head of the Bureau of 0:11:11.280 --> 0:11:14.600 Labor Statistics. I'm going to get really nerdy with you 0:11:14.760 --> 0:11:16.760 here for a minute, because I was reading about the 0:11:16.760 --> 0:11:19.760 Bureau of Labor and Statistics. And as much as Trump 0:11:19.840 --> 0:11:23.880 is wrong to fire people who displease him, the reason 0:11:24.000 --> 0:11:28.640 why a lot of times these numbers are revised is 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:34.280 because they don't get necessarily accurate measure And what needs 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:37.200 to happen is people need to respond to surveys in 0:11:37.360 --> 0:11:42.000 order to get surveyed information, and so in fact, the 0:11:42.080 --> 0:11:46.320 surveys are getting a little bit less accurate because people 0:11:46.360 --> 0:11:47.160 do not trust the. 0:11:47.120 --> 0:11:48.240 Government as much. 0:11:48.320 --> 0:11:52.400 So as much as Trump is absolutely, are all numbers woke? 0:11:52.720 --> 0:11:56.800 Maybe yes, it does speak to a larger problem with 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.800 trust and institutions and trust in the federal government. 0:12:00.080 --> 0:12:00.720 Absolutely. 0:12:00.840 --> 0:12:03.040 And the irony of it, of course, is that people 0:12:03.080 --> 0:12:06.079 will trust numbers even less now if they don't have 0:12:06.240 --> 0:12:10.160 any reason to believe that they're independently, verifiable or based 0:12:10.160 --> 0:12:13.800 in reality. It all just gets stuck in this general 0:12:13.920 --> 0:12:17.120 mud of seeming like it's all politics. And I think 0:12:17.280 --> 0:12:19.960 that's one of the challenges here, is that there are 0:12:20.000 --> 0:12:22.840 certain voters who are just cynical about it all and 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.800 think that all politicians lie and don't necessarily differentiate between 0:12:26.880 --> 0:12:29.960 little eyes and consequential ones. And so it's difficult to 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:31.679 know whether or not this is going to resonate with 0:12:31.800 --> 0:12:34.120 voters in the way that it should. But it's hard 0:12:34.120 --> 0:12:36.240 to imagine too many voters getting that worked up about 0:12:36.280 --> 0:12:39.000 the Bureau of Labor statistics. But it's like a canary 0:12:39.080 --> 0:12:40.720 in the coal mine in some sense. 0:12:40.960 --> 0:12:46.160 Well, and also, if you want to lower inflation, which 0:12:46.480 --> 0:12:49.560 it's not entirely clear that Donald Trump wants to lower inflation, 0:12:50.000 --> 0:12:52.679 but if you do want to make things cheaper, which 0:12:53.000 --> 0:12:54.920 if you were to say Donald Trump had been given 0:12:54.920 --> 0:12:57.400 a mandate in any way, shape or form, it would 0:12:57.440 --> 0:13:00.400 be to make things cheaper. Yes, you would want your 0:13:00.440 --> 0:13:03.840 government to be trusted, you would want your debt to 0:13:03.920 --> 0:13:08.400 be good, you would want your currency to be the 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:12.160 standard and not to experience dollar flight, which seems like 0:13:12.280 --> 0:13:16.720 he's just at every point setting himself up for a 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.800 world in which the dollar stops being the reserve currency 0:13:19.840 --> 0:13:23.120 and our debt becomes so expensive to service. He just 0:13:23.320 --> 0:13:27.480 feels right now like we are on the sort of 0:13:27.640 --> 0:13:28.840 edge of catastrophe. 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:32.040 Yeah, you know in a way that that's how it's 0:13:32.080 --> 0:13:35.079 held for a while now. But it does feel, you know, certainly, 0:13:35.080 --> 0:13:38.800 with the economy in particular, that we're on some sort 0:13:38.840 --> 0:13:41.680 of precipice of no longer being you know, the big 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:42.560 dog on the block. 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:44.079 I guess you know that we're. 0:13:43.920 --> 0:13:46.520 No longer the ones that are sort of running the show, 0:13:46.600 --> 0:13:50.560 and that with the dollar getting weaker, which Trump sees 0:13:50.640 --> 0:13:52.800 is in many ways a good thing because it can 0:13:52.880 --> 0:13:56.880 boost exports. But between that and the size of the 0:13:56.920 --> 0:13:59.720 federal debt, there are any number of fronts on which 0:13:59.720 --> 0:14:02.760 it just feels like we're being squeezed and it's hard 0:14:02.760 --> 0:14:03.920 to know how to get out of that. 0:14:04.360 --> 0:14:07.280 Yeah, I don't know, and it's a real question. So 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.199 let's talk about the political calculus. The house has been 0:14:10.280 --> 0:14:13.160 sent home by Mike Johnson a few days early. 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:17.520 That was last week's drama. The Gang of Five has 0:14:17.600 --> 0:14:20.480 this plan. The rule is it called the rule of five, 0:14:20.840 --> 0:14:25.400 the Game of four five whatever. 0:14:25.920 --> 0:14:29.680 We're not into accuracy here, the Rule of five, the 0:14:29.800 --> 0:14:33.840 Gang of four, that crew they are going to release 0:14:33.920 --> 0:14:36.600 the Epstein files discuss. 0:14:36.000 --> 0:14:38.680 Well, you know, it's again it's hard to know how 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:41.240 this exactly plays out. 0:14:41.360 --> 0:14:44.320 There is a reality that I. 0:14:44.360 --> 0:14:47.120 Think every Republican is facing right now, which is that 0:14:47.520 --> 0:14:50.640 back home in their districts for all of August, the 0:14:50.680 --> 0:14:52.880 House doesn't come back till September. Second, I think it 0:14:52.920 --> 0:14:56.800 is and between economic news, which is its own thing 0:14:57.040 --> 0:14:59.880 where they're not going to differentiate themselves from Trump and Epstein, 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.040 which is now set to really dominate the conversation for 0:15:03.080 --> 0:15:05.640 the next couple of weeks because it has this strange 0:15:05.720 --> 0:15:08.080 lasting power in a way that very few stories have 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:10.680 been able to break through and sort of remain center 0:15:10.720 --> 0:15:13.360 stage in the Trump era. You have this pressure that 0:15:13.400 --> 0:15:17.880 they're facing. It's not necessarily something we for Playbook talk 0:15:18.000 --> 0:15:21.880 to a Republican strategist who said that it's not necessarily 0:15:21.960 --> 0:15:24.120 that it's the thing that most voters will care about, 0:15:24.160 --> 0:15:26.160 but it is the thing that the loudest voters will 0:15:26.200 --> 0:15:28.480 care about. And so when you go to a town 0:15:28.560 --> 0:15:30.640 hall Forum or something like that. It is the type 0:15:30.640 --> 0:15:32.560 of thing they're going to be pressed on, you know, 0:15:32.640 --> 0:15:35.640 they're going to look for opportunities here to show some 0:15:36.040 --> 0:15:39.600 if not independence, then some responsiveness to what voters want. 0:15:39.720 --> 0:15:42.600 And the thing with this issue, compared to so many 0:15:42.720 --> 0:15:45.680 other criticisms of Donald Trump, is that Epstein Files is 0:15:45.720 --> 0:15:50.080 like really easy to understand. It's like it's very digestible 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:51.880 in a way that like, if I'm talking about the 0:15:51.880 --> 0:15:54.160 Bureau of Labor Statistics firing, I have to explain it, 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.960 like there's so much backstory there, whereas Epstein is like easy, 0:15:58.280 --> 0:15:59.760 you know, it's just a snap of the fingers. You 0:15:59.800 --> 0:16:03.160 can understand what's at stake and what the moving parts are. 0:16:03.560 --> 0:16:05.840 And so I think it resonates with folks. So we'll 0:16:05.880 --> 0:16:08.600 see how that actually comes through to fruition. 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:14.320 The Ploomberg story about the foyer, where Jason Leopold sees 0:16:14.360 --> 0:16:17.040 that they have had all of these people in the 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:20.880 FBI redact Trump's name from the files. 0:16:20.480 --> 0:16:22.960 That feels like another two days on the story. 0:16:23.160 --> 0:16:26.360 Yeah, these things just sort of snowball with this story 0:16:26.360 --> 0:16:30.160 in particular, it's just sort of this smoke that stays 0:16:30.200 --> 0:16:32.440 in the air and it's like you have a smoky 0:16:32.520 --> 0:16:34.520 room with a fan, but the fan doesn't suck the 0:16:34.560 --> 0:16:37.400 air out, it just circulates. And that's kind of what 0:16:37.480 --> 0:16:40.480 they're stuck in. And you know the thing with Trump 0:16:40.520 --> 0:16:43.120 is that he's thrown so many things against the wall 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.720 here to try and see what will stick, to try 0:16:45.720 --> 0:16:48.520 and change the conversation in some way, and maybe the 0:16:48.560 --> 0:16:51.560 conversation will change and people will talk about the Bureau 0:16:51.560 --> 0:16:55.320 of Labor statistics are something else, terriffs, but none of 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:58.760 it seems to really be erasing this from people's consciousness. 0:16:58.800 --> 0:17:01.360 My favorite part was said, the White House says this 0:17:01.480 --> 0:17:02.360 story is. 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:05.080 Over, and I was like, I know you want the 0:17:05.160 --> 0:17:07.639 story to be over, but you don't get to say it. 0:17:07.920 --> 0:17:10.880 And it's like it is an interesting moment because Trump 0:17:10.960 --> 0:17:17.000 has been so good at bifurcating reality and creating a 0:17:17.200 --> 0:17:21.679 base that trusts him more than they trust anything else, 0:17:21.960 --> 0:17:28.040 right their own families. But there's something about this story 0:17:28.800 --> 0:17:31.400 that gets to the core. I have this theory that 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:35.000 Trump is a coastal elitist, the way that I am right, 0:17:35.040 --> 0:17:37.640 but I'm much poorer than he is. The point here 0:17:37.760 --> 0:17:41.560 is he's a coastal elitist. Right always grew up with 0:17:41.680 --> 0:17:46.800 wealth power, friends with all of the Jeffrey Epstein people, right, 0:17:46.920 --> 0:17:50.680 the fanciest people, the people who is now his administration 0:17:50.840 --> 0:17:54.280 is trying to you know, academics, literati, you know, the 0:17:54.400 --> 0:17:56.800 members of the mainstream media, the people who he is 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:57.679 now targeting. 0:17:58.080 --> 0:18:00.800 Those are the people that he grew up with. 0:18:01.400 --> 0:18:06.280 So my question is is it that the base remembers 0:18:06.400 --> 0:18:09.040 that he is actually not one of them? 0:18:09.200 --> 0:18:12.119 That is there there's some little bit. 0:18:11.960 --> 0:18:16.640 Of this story that is like, oh, actually he's he's 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:20.200 actually in the intelligence for lack of a better word, 0:18:20.760 --> 0:18:23.679 then you know, he is a member of the glitarati. 0:18:24.000 --> 0:18:26.640 He can't drain the swamp because he's in the swamp. 0:18:26.920 --> 0:18:29.480 Yeah, you know, I think that for some people, being 0:18:29.640 --> 0:18:31.280 of the swamp, for lack of a better way of 0:18:31.320 --> 0:18:33.560 putting it, is kind of an asset. Like, you know, 0:18:33.640 --> 0:18:36.720 there's this idea that he understands this world, which is 0:18:36.720 --> 0:18:40.600 why he's uniquely able to be immune to its charms 0:18:40.720 --> 0:18:42.520 or something like that, and so he's going to fight 0:18:42.600 --> 0:18:45.639 for us against them. And this is something that's been 0:18:45.680 --> 0:18:47.679 part of his brand for quite some time. You know, 0:18:48.040 --> 0:18:51.760 I remember years ago I read I came across a 0:18:51.840 --> 0:18:53.760 New York magazine story from I want to say two 0:18:53.760 --> 0:18:57.080 thousand and four, two thousand and five that was basically 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:01.000 this giant feature piece in New York Magazine advocating for 0:19:01.359 --> 0:19:04.320 New York City to become its own nation. And you know, 0:19:04.680 --> 0:19:07.760 it's a little bit of a modest idea type approach, 0:19:08.000 --> 0:19:10.600 but the very tail end of the story of the 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:12.920 article is suggesting, you know, that we will need someone 0:19:12.960 --> 0:19:15.600 who is able to speak New York Keys but also 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:20.640 resonates with read America, how about Donald Trump? And it 0:19:20.680 --> 0:19:23.560 was like Trump was able to be seen as relatable 0:19:23.560 --> 0:19:26.000 to a lot of people and in a similar way, 0:19:26.240 --> 0:19:28.640 though it's very different and I'm not at all comparing 0:19:28.680 --> 0:19:31.800 them in a broad sense, but it's reminiscent of like 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:34.119 Richard Nixon always having the sort of chip on his 0:19:34.160 --> 0:19:37.680 shoulder at like not being at the cool kids table. 0:19:37.720 --> 0:19:37.879 You know. 0:19:38.080 --> 0:19:41.440 In Nixon's case, he tried to join this nice fraternity 0:19:41.520 --> 0:19:44.080 in college and was denied, and so he started his 0:19:44.160 --> 0:19:47.600 own competing fraternity that was called, I think was the 0:19:47.720 --> 0:19:50.520 Orthogonians or something like that, the idea being that they 0:19:50.560 --> 0:19:53.800 were all like right angles, they were all squares, and 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:57.159 so he found that he was able to gain power 0:19:57.200 --> 0:20:01.640 and influence on campus by really playing to people's insecurities 0:20:01.640 --> 0:20:04.639 about being left out and not being in the inside crowd. 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:06.920 And for Donald Trump, there's been sort of a similar 0:20:07.000 --> 0:20:10.159 dynamic in many ways where he is part of this 0:20:10.240 --> 0:20:13.720 crowd and really seeks its approval. But there's always part 0:20:13.720 --> 0:20:15.280 of him that's going to be, you know, the kid 0:20:15.280 --> 0:20:19.280 from Queens who is struggling to break through in Manhattan 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:23.000 and trying to get the approval of those folks. And 0:20:23.119 --> 0:20:25.640 that's part of the reason why he's so solicitous, even 0:20:25.640 --> 0:20:28.160 as he hates The New York Times is very obsessed 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:30.080 with you know, how they cover him all of us 0:20:30.119 --> 0:20:32.880 like validation. It's a very human thing for Donald Trump. 0:20:32.960 --> 0:20:35.800 It's something that is a through line that carries through 0:20:35.840 --> 0:20:37.240 decades of his public life. 0:20:37.400 --> 0:20:41.239 Talk to me about the redistricting. Besides Trump firing the 0:20:41.560 --> 0:20:44.960 head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the redistricting is 0:20:45.000 --> 0:20:49.240 a big deal. Talk me through what you think of 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:51.720 it as a sort of play and does it work? 0:20:52.000 --> 0:20:54.560 And also, like you know, there's so many parts of 0:20:54.600 --> 0:20:57.360 this story like it's an anti democratic, it's this is that, 0:20:57.440 --> 0:20:59.680 But I also wonder and. 0:20:59.640 --> 0:21:01.040 I want you to talk us through it. 0:21:01.160 --> 0:21:03.720 Like people who turn out for Trump don't necessarily turn 0:21:03.760 --> 0:21:08.520 out for random R And so the idea that you're 0:21:08.560 --> 0:21:11.119 going to so if you if you redistrict all these 0:21:11.160 --> 0:21:14.679 seats in Texas to our plus one or our plus four. 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:18.000 You know Trump won it by nine. So talk us 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:19.000 through that exactly. 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:19.320 Yeah. 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.920 So in Texas, just for those who haven't heard about it, 0:21:23.000 --> 0:21:27.680 Texas is undergoing a redistricting at Trump's behest to create 0:21:27.800 --> 0:21:30.520 essentially five new Republican US House seats. This is in 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.119 order to pad the overall nationwide US House majority that 0:21:34.160 --> 0:21:37.320 Republicans have, and it's doing so really against the wishes 0:21:37.359 --> 0:21:39.880 of a lot of Republican incumbents in Texas who are 0:21:39.960 --> 0:21:43.560 mindful of not wanting to imperil the advantage of their incumbency. 0:21:43.640 --> 0:21:45.680 And what I mean by that is that in order 0:21:45.800 --> 0:21:49.440 to create five new Republican districts, you need to dilute 0:21:49.600 --> 0:21:53.119 the number of Republicans in the existing districts. And so, 0:21:53.440 --> 0:21:56.400 in a wave election, if it works out well for Democrats, 0:21:56.440 --> 0:21:58.960 and it generally tends to be that midterms do work 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:01.000 out well for the party that not in power, in 0:22:01.040 --> 0:22:03.960 a wave election, you potentially could have a good year 0:22:03.960 --> 0:22:06.320 for Democrats in a place like Texas. But you know, 0:22:06.359 --> 0:22:09.720 the Republican calculus, as you note, is really based on 0:22:09.800 --> 0:22:13.080 this idea that Trump voters are Republican voters, and I 0:22:13.119 --> 0:22:16.520 don't necessarily see evidence that that's entirely the case. You know, 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:21.080 Democrats in recent cycles have performed exceptionally well in low 0:22:21.119 --> 0:22:24.040 turnout elections. This is true of special elections, it's true 0:22:24.040 --> 0:22:26.439 of midterms. You know, it's very different than it was 0:22:26.480 --> 0:22:29.720 decades ago, when Republicans were the ones that dominated in 0:22:29.760 --> 0:22:30.760 low turnout elections. 0:22:30.800 --> 0:22:31.800 Democrats do now. 0:22:32.040 --> 0:22:34.879 And so if you're looking at the midterms in twenty 0:22:34.920 --> 0:22:37.560 twenty six, and you're looking at, you know, an election 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:39.639 where Trump is not going to be on the ballot, 0:22:39.800 --> 0:22:41.960 and so a lot of the low propensity voters are 0:22:42.119 --> 0:22:44.440 either not going to vote, or you know, there is 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:46.560 this idea that a lot of voters have that Trump 0:22:46.600 --> 0:22:48.840 is like you know, has had all these different positions 0:22:48.840 --> 0:22:51.000 over the years, and so he's not doctrinaire, and so 0:22:51.080 --> 0:22:53.840 he's different, He's not like the other Republicans. You know, 0:22:54.040 --> 0:22:55.760 this is a way that some people think about it. 0:22:55.880 --> 0:22:57.919 Given all of that, you know, it's hard to know 0:22:58.000 --> 0:23:00.959 whether this calculus that they've made is it all going 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:03.600 to work out for them? But what Texas is doing 0:23:03.680 --> 0:23:07.120 is sort of setting off this arms race for redistricting nationwide, 0:23:07.160 --> 0:23:10.040 where you have other red states also at Trump's behest 0:23:10.440 --> 0:23:12.919 Trump in the White House, pressuring them to try and 0:23:12.920 --> 0:23:15.679 do similar mid cycle redistricting, which is very unusual. You 0:23:15.720 --> 0:23:18.960 only have redistricting once every ten years in normal circumstance. 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:21.280 But they're looking at doing it in Ohio where JD. 0:23:21.400 --> 0:23:24.600 Vances is sort of inveighing on Republicans there to try 0:23:24.600 --> 0:23:27.320 and do something and potentially take out someone like a 0:23:27.400 --> 0:23:30.960 Marci Capito type in the Toledo area. They're talking about 0:23:31.000 --> 0:23:34.560 doing it in Florida, where Governor DeSantis is even talking 0:23:34.560 --> 0:23:38.200 about trying to pay for a census before twenty thirty. 0:23:38.640 --> 0:23:40.120 God love them and. 0:23:40.200 --> 0:23:43.520 The idea that you know there too they can maybe 0:23:43.800 --> 0:23:46.840 squeeze out a couple more Republican House seats. And meanwhile 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:49.840 in California you have sort of this response that's happening 0:23:49.880 --> 0:23:53.240 from Governor Gavin Newsom who notes that there are still 0:23:53.359 --> 0:23:57.960 I think nine Republicans in the congressional delegation not for 0:23:57.960 --> 0:24:01.000 a law. Yeah, and so like there is an easy 0:24:01.000 --> 0:24:03.240 scenario in which you can draw these maps. But the 0:24:03.280 --> 0:24:05.440 problem that you have in California is a problem that 0:24:05.480 --> 0:24:07.119 you have in a lot of Blue states, which is 0:24:07.119 --> 0:24:10.760 that many Blue states have sort of unilaterally disarmed themselves 0:24:10.840 --> 0:24:14.879 in this fight by passing nonpartisan redistricting commissions, this idea 0:24:14.920 --> 0:24:17.720 being that district shouldn't be drawn by politicians, they should 0:24:17.720 --> 0:24:20.840 be drawn in a nonpartisan, in a fair way. And 0:24:20.920 --> 0:24:25.040 in California, voters enacted this years ago. And what Newson 0:24:25.080 --> 0:24:26.800 would have to do, and what he's talking about doing 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:31.240 is going before voters this year and basically saying, yeah, 0:24:31.280 --> 0:24:33.800 doing this kind of he says, as a one time thing. 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:37.120 But you know, once you open Pandora's box, you can't 0:24:37.119 --> 0:24:39.760 really close it again, and so it's hard to know. 0:24:39.880 --> 0:24:42.159 It just seems like this is a spiral that is 0:24:42.800 --> 0:24:46.119 hard to stop once it starts. Once one state redistricts 0:24:46.280 --> 0:24:48.159 another one who's going to follow a suit, and it 0:24:48.240 --> 0:24:49.120 just goes on and on. 0:24:49.359 --> 0:24:51.280 We're at a time but on the scale of how 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:52.400 fucked we are. 0:24:53.480 --> 0:24:59.480 One being like a constitution, normal constitutional democracy, ten being 0:25:00.720 --> 0:25:02.359 uh huh, where do you think we are here? 0:25:02.680 --> 0:25:03.639 That's a good question. 0:25:04.000 --> 0:25:06.320 I mean, it would depend on the day and probably 0:25:06.320 --> 0:25:07.720 depend on how much sleep I've got. 0:25:07.760 --> 0:25:10.639 But you know, but maybe a six and a half. 0:25:10.760 --> 0:25:13.160 We'll go six six, six and a half is good. 0:25:13.240 --> 0:25:13.680 That's good. 0:25:13.840 --> 0:25:14.760 A solid six. 0:25:15.200 --> 0:25:18.000 Closing PBS got us to six and a half, I 0:25:18.000 --> 0:25:22.880 think exactly, Yes, Zack Stanton, will you please come back anytime? 0:25:22.920 --> 0:25:23.680 Happy to be here. 0:25:25.359 --> 0:25:28.359 Brian Edwards is the dean of the School of Liberal 0:25:28.480 --> 0:25:32.600 Arts at Too Late. Welcome to Fast Politics, Brian Edwards. 0:25:32.920 --> 0:25:35.320 It is so great to be here as someone who's 0:25:35.359 --> 0:25:37.400 been enjoying listening to your show for a long time. 0:25:37.680 --> 0:25:40.800 As we say, we do this with Pete Siegel from 0:25:40.840 --> 0:25:45.520 Wait Waite, you're a longtime listener, first time caller. I 0:25:45.600 --> 0:25:48.880 really wanted to talk to you about this idea of 0:25:48.960 --> 0:25:52.320 after the American century, like that there was a moment 0:25:52.680 --> 0:25:56.280 in nineteen forty one, after sort of right at the 0:25:56.400 --> 0:26:01.040 tail end of World War Two, when a mayor was 0:26:01.920 --> 0:26:04.160 we were the sort of the center of the. 0:26:04.119 --> 0:26:07.600 World, and perhaps we are not anymore. 0:26:07.720 --> 0:26:12.080 So this is an idea brought on by a book 0:26:12.080 --> 0:26:15.800 you've written a while ago that really did breakthrough from 0:26:15.800 --> 0:26:19.920 the academic world to the cultural world. So I mean, 0:26:20.000 --> 0:26:22.560 obviously those two things are the same, but talk to 0:26:22.680 --> 0:26:25.160 us about what that means. 0:26:25.400 --> 0:26:30.040 Well, the idea of the American century is really, as 0:26:30.080 --> 0:26:33.080 you said, influential in the second half or a little 0:26:33.080 --> 0:26:35.280 bit the last sixty years of the century. And the 0:26:35.359 --> 0:26:38.840 question of when it ends as interesting. Henry Luce Winter 0:26:38.920 --> 0:26:42.959 of nineteen forty one, months before Pearl Harbor, publishes this 0:26:43.160 --> 0:26:48.399 massively influential editorial in which he argues that although the 0:26:48.480 --> 0:26:52.119 United States wasn't yet in the war, we already were kind. 0:26:52.000 --> 0:26:53.960 Of in the war to a certain extent. 0:26:54.000 --> 0:26:58.040 It's a very interesting argument, and that really that the 0:26:58.119 --> 0:27:02.720 world was about to become a century ruled by America, 0:27:02.720 --> 0:27:06.560 American culture, and he lays out this idea of what 0:27:06.600 --> 0:27:10.600 we would come to call soft power, that the United 0:27:10.640 --> 0:27:14.199 States was going to be really the leader of a 0:27:14.200 --> 0:27:16.960 certain way of imagining the world that would follow World 0:27:16.960 --> 0:27:19.120 War Two. I mean, this is still when it comes out, 0:27:19.280 --> 0:27:22.919 not only is the war happening, but it's still a 0:27:22.960 --> 0:27:28.600 world dominated in many ways by British and French imperialism, colonialism. 0:27:28.640 --> 0:27:31.400 I mean, this idea that never said on the British Empire. 0:27:31.440 --> 0:27:33.399 That was still the world that we were living in, 0:27:33.400 --> 0:27:37.600 and the United States did not have whether or not geopolitically, it. 0:27:37.520 --> 0:27:39.440 Was in that moment of his sentence, it hadn't. 0:27:39.480 --> 0:27:42.520 We hadn't come to terms with ourselves as leaders in 0:27:42.560 --> 0:27:44.919 that way. So what I love about the argument, and 0:27:44.960 --> 0:27:48.119 what's so fascinating about it is he says in this 0:27:48.200 --> 0:27:53.040 long essay that things like American slang and music and 0:27:53.119 --> 0:27:57.880 culture would have a political purpose or have a political 0:27:57.960 --> 0:28:01.360 efficacy and make the world one that would be American. 0:28:01.680 --> 0:28:05.480 And of course he's right to a certain extent. I mean, 0:28:05.680 --> 0:28:08.919 and one of the really interesting things about US power 0:28:09.000 --> 0:28:13.200 post World War two is that as the colonial empires 0:28:13.240 --> 0:28:15.760 of Europe, of Britain and France in particular, start to 0:28:15.800 --> 0:28:18.040 fall apart in the wake of World War Two, the 0:28:18.160 --> 0:28:20.440 US doesn't take on the mantle in the same way, 0:28:20.600 --> 0:28:25.000 but we do nonetheless become the global superpower, and American 0:28:25.000 --> 0:28:28.679 culture is incredibly efficient in setting the stage for that. 0:28:29.000 --> 0:28:31.320 How long does that last? As a question does it end? 0:28:31.400 --> 0:28:32.199 And when would it end? 0:28:32.320 --> 0:28:34.840 That's really been on my mind for a really long time, 0:28:34.920 --> 0:28:36.880 and in part because I spent a lot of time 0:28:36.920 --> 0:28:39.840 outside the United States looking at HOW and talking to 0:28:39.920 --> 0:28:43.920 folks at HOW and studying how American popular culture, movies, 0:28:44.040 --> 0:28:48.440 digital culture, music culture, then social media culture, shopping malls, 0:28:48.520 --> 0:28:51.800 architecture cut starts to be copied around the. 0:28:51.800 --> 0:28:53.880 World in sometimes really surprising ways. 0:28:54.240 --> 0:28:57.239 So tell me when this period sort of starts and 0:28:57.280 --> 0:28:58.120 when it ends. 0:28:58.520 --> 0:29:01.440 I would say it starts during World War two. I 0:29:01.480 --> 0:29:01.920 mean I do. 0:29:02.080 --> 0:29:05.360 I'll follow Loose himself and say that his naming of 0:29:05.400 --> 0:29:09.160 the American Century is at a key moment because there's 0:29:09.200 --> 0:29:12.480 this internal debate politically about getting involved in the war. 0:29:13.080 --> 0:29:15.600 And if you look backwards. Even though, of course when 0:29:15.720 --> 0:29:19.000 when when Y two K was we thought and nicknaming 0:29:19.040 --> 0:29:20.520 the end of the twentieth century. 0:29:20.640 --> 0:29:21.479 I remember it. 0:29:21.720 --> 0:29:24.320 At the time, we probably had on our coffee tables, 0:29:24.360 --> 0:29:27.840 you know, these big books the American Century. President Clinton 0:29:27.960 --> 0:29:29.920 was referring to kind of, you know, the end of 0:29:29.920 --> 0:29:32.520 this century. We started to name it backwards one hundred years, 0:29:32.520 --> 0:29:35.360 but really it was the conditions for the American Century 0:29:35.400 --> 0:29:38.920 were post war, and you know, and what's interesting too, 0:29:39.360 --> 0:29:42.840 is how the Europeans, especially the French and Western Europeans, 0:29:42.840 --> 0:29:45.720 felt a bit of anxiety about the rise of American 0:29:46.000 --> 0:29:46.720 soft power. 0:29:46.800 --> 0:29:48.360 The French used to call it. 0:29:48.600 --> 0:29:53.440 In the fifties and sixties coca colin, coca colonization, Coca colonization. 0:29:53.560 --> 0:29:55.920 I guess this idea. I mean it's great. 0:29:56.000 --> 0:29:56.200 You know. 0:29:56.280 --> 0:29:58.920 Then in Europe, you know, in the eighties and nineties 0:29:58.960 --> 0:30:02.760 when popular music was taking over the radios sum European countries. 0:30:02.760 --> 0:30:05.680 I think Spain it limited the number of American songs 0:30:05.680 --> 0:30:07.840 that even could be played per hour because the culture 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:10.920 was so you know, charismatic. Of course, the second half 0:30:10.920 --> 0:30:14.080 of the twenty century really is a very dominant time. 0:30:14.120 --> 0:30:17.560 As Hollywood starts to you know, continue to grow, and 0:30:17.800 --> 0:30:21.800 movie theaters around the world are just filled with American cinema. 0:30:22.240 --> 0:30:25.520 The culture kind of pendulum shifts. Does it end, you know, 0:30:25.560 --> 0:30:27.200 with nine to eleven? And this is a question we 0:30:27.200 --> 0:30:28.600 can say, when does it end? I don't think it 0:30:28.680 --> 0:30:29.280 ends right. 0:30:29.520 --> 0:30:33.360 The soft power I want to talk about solf power. 0:30:33.640 --> 0:30:36.960 The soft power that has been has been given up 0:30:37.000 --> 0:30:42.280 by Marco Rubio and Trump and Trump two point zero. 0:30:42.680 --> 0:30:45.680 So what does it mean to give up soft power 0:30:46.000 --> 0:30:47.040 in a global sense? 0:30:47.520 --> 0:30:48.680 Well, what is soft power? 0:30:48.720 --> 0:30:52.680 Soft power is something that kind of operates on another wavelength, 0:30:52.760 --> 0:30:56.520 that's doing work for a nation without trying to do work. 0:30:56.560 --> 0:30:59.720 It's doing work for a nation without even being on 0:30:59.760 --> 0:31:03.880 this same side of the political hard so called hard power. 0:31:03.920 --> 0:31:08.200 You might have Hollywood films and Hollywood filmmakers at different 0:31:08.200 --> 0:31:13.560 moments a critical of military actions by the US and 0:31:13.720 --> 0:31:18.320 still be effective at making it possible for the United 0:31:18.320 --> 0:31:20.120 States to act in certain ways. 0:31:20.120 --> 0:31:20.920 I'll give you an example. 0:31:20.960 --> 0:31:23.320 You know, I was spending a lot of time in 0:31:23.360 --> 0:31:27.200 the first decade of this century writing a book, writing 0:31:27.200 --> 0:31:29.479 this book called After the American Century, and shuttling back 0:31:29.520 --> 0:31:33.320 and forth between Morocco, Egypt, Iran, and Lebanon. And at 0:31:33.320 --> 0:31:36.680 the time the movie Babbel was incredibly popular in the 0:31:36.720 --> 0:31:39.720 United States, and euraut To the director, was very critical 0:31:39.800 --> 0:31:42.600 of the so called War on Terror. But this film 0:31:43.040 --> 0:31:47.400 was just incredibly resisted, very strongly by folks in Muslim 0:31:47.440 --> 0:31:50.000 majority countries as being very hostile to them. So it 0:31:50.040 --> 0:31:53.560 didn't it doesn't even necessarily matter what the explicit politics 0:31:53.640 --> 0:31:57.400 of American culture makers might be to to kind of 0:31:57.640 --> 0:32:00.400 help pave the you know, pave the way for for 0:32:00.880 --> 0:32:04.160 hard power to operate, and so that could happen in 0:32:04.200 --> 0:32:04.800 a lot of places. 0:32:04.840 --> 0:32:06.120 I mean, and it's very abstract. 0:32:06.440 --> 0:32:10.640 I wonder if you could talk about this idea after history, 0:32:10.880 --> 0:32:15.320 because it strikes me and I really like Francis, but 0:32:15.600 --> 0:32:19.320 talk about calling balls and strikes a little early I 0:32:19.400 --> 0:32:21.440 wonder if you could sort of talk about it and 0:32:22.000 --> 0:32:24.280 sort of get us to where we are right now. 0:32:24.600 --> 0:32:26.719 Yeah, well, of course, you know the idea of the 0:32:26.840 --> 0:32:30.560 end of history that Francis Fukuyama proposes. You know, the 0:32:30.640 --> 0:32:34.400 nineteen nineties is a really interesting decade because it looks 0:32:34.600 --> 0:32:37.320 like for a moment, or for an extended moment of 0:32:37.360 --> 0:32:41.400 the nineties, that with the apparent fall of the Soviet Union, 0:32:41.640 --> 0:32:44.680 that we had won, that there was an economic and 0:32:44.720 --> 0:32:46.760 cultural system that won. And so there's a number of 0:32:46.760 --> 0:32:49.200 people who are claiming kind of victory and that what 0:32:49.240 --> 0:32:51.240 would come next. I mean, this is why the nineties 0:32:51.240 --> 0:32:54.160 are really interesting. Of course, you know, conflicts continue through 0:32:54.200 --> 0:32:56.520 the nineties. There was not the end of history, and 0:32:56.520 --> 0:32:58.640 what's really brewing, particularly in the part of the world 0:32:58.640 --> 0:33:00.400 that I was living in and spending a lot of 0:33:00.440 --> 0:33:04.040 time in North Africa, in the Middle East, there is 0:33:04.760 --> 0:33:08.440 a whole lot of reconfigurations happening between the end of 0:33:08.480 --> 0:33:11.560 the Iran Iraq War and nine to eleven. Really in 0:33:11.640 --> 0:33:14.760 nineties are a very fraught period obviously in the Balkans 0:33:14.800 --> 0:33:17.600 as well. So this calling you said, calling the calling 0:33:17.640 --> 0:33:20.480 the count a little bit too early for sure, as 0:33:20.520 --> 0:33:24.200 if the Cold War, the terms of engagement were between 0:33:24.240 --> 0:33:26.680 two economic systems, and we had won. 0:33:26.920 --> 0:33:29.840 Clearly was not the case. Something else was happening. 0:33:29.880 --> 0:33:31.880 But the other thing that's happening that I think is 0:33:31.920 --> 0:33:34.440 really important to thinking about soft power and really important 0:33:34.440 --> 0:33:35.440 to thinking about the. 0:33:35.320 --> 0:33:38.200 Present moment is the digital revolution. 0:33:38.440 --> 0:33:42.360 Because Henry Lewis, after all, was the was the head 0:33:42.560 --> 0:33:45.200 of Time magazine, head of Time Life, Right, he was 0:33:45.520 --> 0:33:49.719 really a publisher in what I would call the analog age. 0:33:49.760 --> 0:33:53.160 You know, we're reading his publications in Life magazine, Hollywood 0:33:53.160 --> 0:33:56.120 pictures are being carried around in canisters. The radio and 0:33:56.160 --> 0:33:59.440 television operated in a tremendously different way than they do today, 0:33:59.600 --> 0:34:02.920 needless to say. And it was an analog logic for 0:34:03.280 --> 0:34:07.280 how people would engage with American soft power, right. I 0:34:07.400 --> 0:34:10.760 call it like broadcasting logic of broadcasting. Remember the RCA 0:34:10.960 --> 0:34:14.319 Victor kind of logo, where there's this dog listening to 0:34:15.040 --> 0:34:18.920 a kind of the trub the ear of a record player. 0:34:19.040 --> 0:34:21.760 Like that was this idea that America would give culture 0:34:21.760 --> 0:34:23.319 and the rest of the world would listen and take 0:34:23.360 --> 0:34:25.319 it all in and not have anything to say about it. 0:34:25.360 --> 0:34:28.759 The digital revolution makes clear that that that's not the 0:34:28.760 --> 0:34:31.919 way culture operates. People can listen, they can talk back, 0:34:31.960 --> 0:34:34.080 they can engage back. Now, this is quite obvious to 0:34:34.080 --> 0:34:37.520 anybody now, because we're used to commenting, we're used to sharing, 0:34:37.560 --> 0:34:40.920 we're used to being all of us actors in making 0:34:40.960 --> 0:34:44.080 culture happen. And that's a tremendous difference that the twenty 0:34:44.120 --> 0:34:47.160 first century starts to bring in, and it therefore changes 0:34:47.200 --> 0:34:51.320 how soft power operates. People engage with American cultural products. 0:34:51.560 --> 0:34:55.480 The products themselves become things like Twitter and Facebook and 0:34:55.600 --> 0:34:56.719 eventually Instagram. 0:34:56.840 --> 0:34:58.440 And I remember being, you know, in. 0:34:58.520 --> 0:35:03.239 Egypt before the Talkerer uprisings, the Middle East uprisings two 0:35:03.280 --> 0:35:06.200 thousand and nine, twenty ten, twenty eleven, and talking to 0:35:06.280 --> 0:35:08.800 young Egyptians and they're like, how can we have a voice. 0:35:09.040 --> 0:35:12.279 This was right before everybody with a smartphone could have 0:35:12.320 --> 0:35:14.920 a voice. And in fact, the Middle East uprisings of 0:35:15.000 --> 0:35:19.000 that period were incredibly propelled by millions and millions of 0:35:19.040 --> 0:35:21.799 people now being able to communicate with each other in 0:35:21.880 --> 0:35:23.960 ways that they hadn't been able to before. 0:35:24.040 --> 0:35:25.279 So it's really important what. 0:35:25.320 --> 0:35:27.600 We think about soft power, and we think about Henry 0:35:27.680 --> 0:35:30.239 Loos and this idea of an American century to think 0:35:30.239 --> 0:35:32.680 about how culture moves through the world, how all of 0:35:32.719 --> 0:35:34.600 us engage with it. I mean, here we are in 0:35:34.640 --> 0:35:38.360 a podcast right forms that just didn't exist in this 0:35:38.480 --> 0:35:43.120 earlier moment, and it changes absolutely everything about politics. To me, 0:35:43.680 --> 0:35:47.000 that is incredibly important to talk about at this moment, 0:35:47.480 --> 0:35:51.600 especially because of the relationship of this presidency and this 0:35:51.719 --> 0:35:56.040 president with things like reality television, with social media being 0:35:56.120 --> 0:35:59.040 quite a genius at it actually being very able to 0:35:59.600 --> 0:36:03.080 use the prevailing technologies. You know, they use to say that, 0:36:03.160 --> 0:36:06.239 you know, when you look at every presidential campaign, you know, 0:36:06.280 --> 0:36:08.760 you decide who the winner is. I always have thought 0:36:08.760 --> 0:36:12.200 that whoever was able to best use the then prevailing 0:36:12.480 --> 0:36:15.200 entertainment technology, whether it was Kennedy against Nixon and the 0:36:15.200 --> 0:36:18.560 television debates, or those who could use the Internet at 0:36:18.560 --> 0:36:21.279 different moments, you know, would be the winner. And I 0:36:21.280 --> 0:36:24.400 think that to really understand how soft powered American hard 0:36:24.440 --> 0:36:27.520 power now are in tension with each other, you have 0:36:27.600 --> 0:36:30.560 to think about the president and the presidency in relationship 0:36:30.640 --> 0:36:34.440 to those media technologies, including reality television, which is in 0:36:34.480 --> 0:36:36.600 a lot of ways what we feel like we're watching 0:36:36.680 --> 0:36:39.080 even while we're watching global politics. 0:36:39.320 --> 0:36:41.440 That's not incidental in my opinion. 0:36:41.680 --> 0:36:43.320 Now we're just going to go into therapy. 0:36:43.440 --> 0:36:45.760 For me, one of the things that makes me really 0:36:45.800 --> 0:36:50.000 anxious is this sort of post truth society, This sort 0:36:50.040 --> 0:36:53.160 of idea that we are in America where there are 0:36:53.200 --> 0:36:54.360 two sets of facts. 0:36:54.440 --> 0:36:56.440 That our president is on Earth to a. 0:36:56.400 --> 0:36:58.600 Lot of his people on Earth too, some of us 0:36:58.600 --> 0:37:01.240 are on Earth one make me feel better about that 0:37:01.719 --> 0:37:04.000 we're in this bifurcated reality. 0:37:04.040 --> 0:37:05.600 There's an Earth one on Earth two. 0:37:06.000 --> 0:37:10.359 A certain percentage of Americans are occupying Earth too. We're 0:37:10.360 --> 0:37:13.399 in a country where truth is not universally agreed upon. 0:37:13.800 --> 0:37:17.240 Discuss well, I mean this idea of the filter bubble, 0:37:17.320 --> 0:37:19.160 I guess is what some people used to call it, 0:37:19.200 --> 0:37:23.080 That the media that we most of us get is 0:37:23.239 --> 0:37:28.440 curated for us by algorithms that we ourselves have something 0:37:28.480 --> 0:37:32.440 to do with creating, is of course, really worries for 0:37:32.520 --> 0:37:35.640 all of us who believe in having public discourse and 0:37:35.719 --> 0:37:40.239 having real and open conversation debate around the things that 0:37:40.320 --> 0:37:43.440 matter which our country are politics and so on, and 0:37:43.520 --> 0:37:48.920 so the idea that we can't find ways to bridge 0:37:48.960 --> 0:37:51.759 those gaps, whether it's made literal by like the idea 0:37:51.800 --> 0:37:55.080 of the political aisle, or in metaphor, I guess, by 0:37:55.080 --> 0:37:57.080 your idea of Earth one or Earth two, or this 0:37:57.200 --> 0:37:59.359 idea of the filter bubble, that we can't break through 0:37:59.360 --> 0:38:01.840 it that just like you know that that's really worrisome. 0:38:01.880 --> 0:38:04.440 I mean, I get really patriotic at this moment as 0:38:04.440 --> 0:38:06.279 I say, my kids think I'm the most patriotic member 0:38:06.320 --> 0:38:08.120 of our family, and I think, you know, I start 0:38:08.200 --> 0:38:10.359 going back to the founders of the United States that 0:38:10.400 --> 0:38:13.480 we need a civic discourse to have a successful democracy, 0:38:13.880 --> 0:38:15.799 and then bring it to the present with how is 0:38:15.840 --> 0:38:20.400 it that we engage with ideas and news and information. 0:38:20.719 --> 0:38:23.200 So your idea of Earth's too Yeah, that's really worrisome, 0:38:23.320 --> 0:38:25.959 this idea that we can't hear. I mean, I hope 0:38:26.000 --> 0:38:27.919 I'm not the only I know. Lots of us try 0:38:27.960 --> 0:38:31.879 to consume media from a lot of different perspectives. It's 0:38:31.880 --> 0:38:34.840 a great thought experiment. If someone listening doesn't do it themselves. 0:38:35.000 --> 0:38:36.640 Something that you care a lot about, go see how 0:38:36.640 --> 0:38:40.120 it's being reported in a completely different venue than than 0:38:40.160 --> 0:38:42.200 your own political persuasion, and it is. 0:38:42.400 --> 0:38:43.800 It's as if it's a different reality. 0:38:43.840 --> 0:38:46.960 Sometimes it does strike me that it seems like social 0:38:47.000 --> 0:38:52.920 media is growing, mainstream media is shrinking, reporting is suffering, 0:38:53.400 --> 0:38:56.319 AI is poised to go to zero, right, they will 0:38:56.320 --> 0:38:59.880 no longer link to reporting. They will just you know, 0:38:59.880 --> 0:39:03.319 your AI butler will go and get your facts. And 0:39:03.360 --> 0:39:05.800 maybe they're right and maybe they're wrong. I mean, doesn't 0:39:05.840 --> 0:39:08.320 this seem like we're heading towards a catastrophe? 0:39:08.400 --> 0:39:11.399 Well, where's my optimism in all that? I mean my optimism. 0:39:11.960 --> 0:39:15.239 I am optimistic in this sense. And by the way, 0:39:15.320 --> 0:39:17.919 sitting standing here in New Orleans in August, where it's 0:39:18.040 --> 0:39:21.279 an immensely hotter and more humid than wherever you are 0:39:21.360 --> 0:39:24.080 right now, is I can still be optimistic here. My 0:39:24.120 --> 0:39:28.440 optimism is that there are so many more avenues and 0:39:28.640 --> 0:39:34.600 venues for journalists and people with opinions and ideas to 0:39:35.000 --> 0:39:38.600 enter into the discourse that that in itself is a 0:39:38.600 --> 0:39:39.040 good thing. 0:39:39.239 --> 0:39:40.600 It's super risky. 0:39:40.440 --> 0:39:43.719 Because the algorithms are fed, you know, or tend to be, 0:39:43.760 --> 0:39:46.960 as much as we understand, fed by emotional responses and 0:39:47.800 --> 0:39:51.200 self perpetuating filter bubbles, as I said, and so we 0:39:51.280 --> 0:39:53.319 got to figure out ways to get outside of them. 0:39:53.520 --> 0:39:55.600 And AI the way you described it. 0:39:55.520 --> 0:39:58.320 You know, as as it curates and as it brings 0:39:58.360 --> 0:40:01.239 things together, seems to limit even further. So that's a 0:40:01.239 --> 0:40:04.600 pessimics experience. But my optimism is that there's more and 0:40:04.640 --> 0:40:09.040 more ways for folks to enter into the discourse. That's 0:40:09.600 --> 0:40:11.799 I do believe in the discourse. I know it's one 0:40:11.800 --> 0:40:12.560 of your favorite words. 0:40:12.640 --> 0:40:13.960 Do you think that's enough. 0:40:14.360 --> 0:40:16.480 We have to be active in our engagement with it. 0:40:16.680 --> 0:40:20.960 At least twenty five percent of the country, including much 0:40:21.239 --> 0:40:25.120 of the federal government, has a sort of fact free 0:40:25.600 --> 0:40:29.600 vision of what the future can be, right, and you 0:40:29.800 --> 0:40:33.680 have a percentage of the country that's completely disengaged right 0:40:34.000 --> 0:40:38.080 from any sense of what's happening. It just strikes me 0:40:38.200 --> 0:40:41.080 that it's an unsustainable pottern. 0:40:41.400 --> 0:40:45.000 You know, as an educator, I see college students coming 0:40:45.320 --> 0:40:48.000 to us who want to break free of that, who 0:40:48.080 --> 0:40:52.560 are anxious about certainly anxious, and often have ideas about 0:40:52.560 --> 0:40:54.400 how we can break free of that and looking for 0:40:54.480 --> 0:40:57.800 other venues. And one thing that's true about the ways 0:40:57.840 --> 0:41:01.480 in which digital media intersects with culture is endlessly creative 0:41:01.480 --> 0:41:04.319 and finding new places for us in ways for us 0:41:04.400 --> 0:41:06.960 to engage. The rise of substack, the rise of podcasts, 0:41:07.000 --> 0:41:10.560 the rise of different ways that work outside of the 0:41:10.640 --> 0:41:13.960 kind of corporate media culture that could otherwise be very stifling. 0:41:14.120 --> 0:41:16.080 I mean, that's the interesting. Yeah, we're talking about now 0:41:16.080 --> 0:41:18.280 we're talking about the media. But that's the interesting tension 0:41:18.480 --> 0:41:21.520 as people who again young people. 0:41:21.600 --> 0:41:23.400 As an educator, I always. 0:41:23.160 --> 0:41:25.520 Say you have to be an optimist if you're an educator, 0:41:25.560 --> 0:41:27.320 because the folks who are in front of you always 0:41:27.440 --> 0:41:29.560 coming into college are coming next, are going to be 0:41:29.600 --> 0:41:31.600 the ones who are pretty soon going to be running 0:41:31.600 --> 0:41:31.959 the show. 0:41:32.120 --> 0:41:33.160 And they are right now. 0:41:33.360 --> 0:41:35.600 My sense for the last few years is really frustrated 0:41:35.680 --> 0:41:38.520 at what they've inherited. They've frustrated by cancel culture. They're 0:41:38.520 --> 0:41:42.280 certainly frustrated by political culture. And their creativity is something 0:41:42.280 --> 0:41:43.960 that we're trying to mold. 0:41:43.880 --> 0:41:45.160 Or help or facilitate. 0:41:45.480 --> 0:41:50.520 So that's the incredible novelty and creativity that we keep 0:41:50.560 --> 0:41:52.640 seeing in the realm of culture and in the realm 0:41:52.719 --> 0:41:55.520 of how journalism and discourse kind of intersect with it. 0:41:55.600 --> 0:41:57.040 But I mean, the other thing that we were talking 0:41:57.040 --> 0:41:59.960 about before around the American Century relates to that, right, 0:42:00.120 --> 0:42:02.719 because one of the things that the intersection of the 0:42:02.719 --> 0:42:06.239 American century logic, let's go back, like now get a 0:42:06.239 --> 0:42:08.880 little bit more contemporary, go back to post nine to 0:42:08.880 --> 0:42:12.200 eleven world when we get into this long war on terror, right, 0:42:12.200 --> 0:42:15.799 which also consumes our culture becomes our form of this 0:42:15.880 --> 0:42:19.319 twenty year war. That's also our form of entertainment and 0:42:19.400 --> 0:42:23.759 television dramas. And we're obsessed with this war against an emotion, right, 0:42:24.000 --> 0:42:26.560 a war named against an emotion, not named against an 0:42:26.560 --> 0:42:29.880 actual antagonist. It's everywhere, It's everywhere, and you can't find it. 0:42:29.960 --> 0:42:30.160 Right. 0:42:30.280 --> 0:42:33.480 That's very existential for all of us for the last 0:42:33.719 --> 0:42:36.040 two decades, and really, in some ways COVID kind of 0:42:36.160 --> 0:42:39.040 distracts us from that and wipes out that sensation that 0:42:39.120 --> 0:42:42.120 was really prevailing. But during all that time, and of 0:42:42.160 --> 0:42:45.800 course American culture of soft power continues, it is still 0:42:46.280 --> 0:42:48.839 incredibly popular. I mean again, I've just been on four 0:42:48.880 --> 0:42:51.120 continents this summer. I've just been trapped doing a lot 0:42:51.120 --> 0:42:53.520 of travel, talking to a lot of folks in South America, 0:42:53.920 --> 0:42:58.640 Southeast Asia, Western Europe, Latin America and Singapore and so on. 0:42:58.719 --> 0:43:02.640 And you still see everywhere American culture is still very popular. 0:43:02.680 --> 0:43:06.359 It's not the only popular thing, but there's this disassociation 0:43:06.880 --> 0:43:10.440 of our politics with the popularity of our culture. American 0:43:10.560 --> 0:43:13.920 language that you know, English language, but really from American 0:43:13.960 --> 0:43:16.880 culture is of course more and more dominant around the world. 0:43:17.000 --> 0:43:19.200 But it doesn't work the way it did. 0:43:19.560 --> 0:43:22.880 Under Henry Lus's American Century model, you could love the 0:43:22.960 --> 0:43:27.239 culture and get very and hate the politics, will be 0:43:27.280 --> 0:43:29.279 resistant to the politics. And that wasn't how it was 0:43:29.280 --> 0:43:32.280 supposed to go. Under the American Century line. You're supposed 0:43:32.320 --> 0:43:36.120 to see in American music and Hollywood and jazz and 0:43:36.160 --> 0:43:39.239 abstract expressionism in the twentieth century, that this was a 0:43:39.280 --> 0:43:42.439 culture of freedom and everybody wanted freedom after it all. 0:43:42.920 --> 0:43:45.680 But now the thing that really is worrisome in a 0:43:45.800 --> 0:43:49.000 sense is that that is that equation is falling apart. 0:43:49.200 --> 0:43:50.759 Higher education is a part of the two. 0:43:50.880 --> 0:43:53.120 I mean, part of the soft power of the United 0:43:53.120 --> 0:43:57.200 States is that American higher educa educated is, you know, 0:43:57.280 --> 0:44:01.040 as a model that folks really admired around the world. 0:44:01.200 --> 0:44:03.880 Most of the great universities, by every ranking were located 0:44:03.880 --> 0:44:06.000 in the United States, I mean, you know, with some 0:44:06.320 --> 0:44:10.040 notable important exceptions, and even when people didn't aspire to 0:44:10.080 --> 0:44:13.279 come study in the United States, they were around the 0:44:13.320 --> 0:44:16.279 world copying the model, whether it was the seminar room, 0:44:16.320 --> 0:44:18.120 whether it was the idea of the campus, or the 0:44:18.120 --> 0:44:21.560 liberal arts. Kind of general curriculum was being sometimes with 0:44:21.600 --> 0:44:24.239 the help of American universities in the Middle East and 0:44:24.280 --> 0:44:26.960 the Gulf and around the world and other times just 0:44:27.040 --> 0:44:29.560 autonomously by different countries Like that was a model that 0:44:29.640 --> 0:44:33.560 people really really respected American science and science and technology 0:44:33.600 --> 0:44:34.200 the same thing. 0:44:34.440 --> 0:44:36.640 Right, We've been that kind of soft power too. 0:44:36.800 --> 0:44:39.399 Brian Edwards, thank you, thank you, thank you. 0:44:39.880 --> 0:44:43.120 Well, it's great chatting Litiamali. I really appreciate the chance 0:44:45.280 --> 0:44:46.480 a moment. 0:44:49.280 --> 0:44:54.280 Jesse Cannon Molly, do you report from Senator Richard Blumenthal 0:44:54.320 --> 0:44:58.680 of Connecticut has an interesting conclusion, which those wasted twenty 0:44:58.719 --> 0:45:01.439 one point seven billion in just six months. 0:45:01.440 --> 0:45:06.720 Fraud, waste and abuse, maybe not fraud, but certainly waste 0:45:06.880 --> 0:45:08.040 and absolute abuse. 0:45:08.400 --> 0:45:11.239 Elon mus Department of Government was. 0:45:11.480 --> 0:45:14.279 Expensive, but luckily he's a billionaire, so he could just 0:45:14.320 --> 0:45:17.720 give that money. Wasting government funds, making a series of mistake. 0:45:17.920 --> 0:45:20.720 You know, like half the country, half the federal government 0:45:20.840 --> 0:45:22.960 is being paid to not work at this moment, not 0:45:23.040 --> 0:45:25.480 quite half, but a lot of federal employees. 0:45:25.600 --> 0:45:28.480 They wasted twenty one billion dollars. Yeah, they suck. 0:45:28.719 --> 0:45:31.960 I mean you could have seen that when it was happening, right, 0:45:32.320 --> 0:45:35.640 the Deferbred resignation program where they paid all these people 0:45:35.680 --> 0:45:39.879 not to work fourteen point eight billion. Because all these 0:45:39.920 --> 0:45:42.720 people are not are being paid not to work, six 0:45:42.719 --> 0:45:46.360 point one billion spent on one hundred thousand plus workers 0:45:46.360 --> 0:45:50.440 placed an administrative leave pending separation. And then also you're 0:45:50.480 --> 0:45:53.040 going to eventually have to retrain the people you're going 0:45:53.120 --> 0:45:55.200 to have to rehire, and that's going to be a 0:45:55.239 --> 0:46:00.560 disaster too. I mean, this is so incredibly wait a ball, 0:46:00.800 --> 0:46:03.080 let's real talk. A lot of stupid crap has happened 0:46:03.080 --> 0:46:06.480 in the last six months, but this is the stupidest 0:46:06.800 --> 0:46:07.799 and the crappiest. 0:46:08.120 --> 0:46:08.560 Quote me. 0:46:09.280 --> 0:46:13.640 That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in 0:46:13.960 --> 0:46:19.400 every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday and Saturday to hear the best 0:46:19.480 --> 0:46:23.799 minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If 0:46:23.800 --> 0:46:26.880 you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend 0:46:27.320 --> 0:46:28.920 and keep the conversation going. 0:46:29.400 --> 0:46:30.520 Thanks for listening.