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.
Speaker 2: And this CBO, the.
Speaker 1: Non partisan Congressional Budget Office, says the Republican megabill.
Speaker 2: Will now cost four point one trillion dollars due to
Speaker 2: higher borrowing costs.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today, Know
Speaker 1: your Enemy's own.
Speaker 2: Sam Adler Bell stops by to talk to us.
Speaker 1: About why Democrats attack their best messengers. Then we'll talk
Speaker 1: to NDRC's John Visignano about Texas is an insane jerrymandering plan.
Speaker 3: But first the news Somali.
Speaker 4: We keep tracking these ICE arrests. We read a report
Speaker 4: on the last episode that it seems it's gotten through
Speaker 4: Stephen Miller's skull as odd as it's shaped, that they
Speaker 4: can't arrest three thousand immigrants a day, and the ICE
Speaker 4: arrests are actually declining amid the backlash.
Speaker 1: So you'll be shocked to hear that. By the way,
Speaker 1: there was photographs today of ICE agents carrying like little girl.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, it was horrifor was yesterday, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yesterday, She's like four eleven, carrying her down the street.
Speaker 1: They put her in a facility, in that Louisiana facility. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let me tell you what's happening here. People are seeing
Speaker 1: these photographs and they are horrified, and they're seeing these
Speaker 1: videos and they're horrified. They're seeing the kind of stuff
Speaker 1: that pro Publica reported. I don't know if ESAs, but
Speaker 1: pro Publica had this sort of amazing and deeply disturbing
Speaker 1: reporting about all of the windows that ICE agents have
Speaker 1: broken in people's cars in order to arrest them. And
Speaker 1: you have these women crying, you have pregnant women crying,
Speaker 1: children watching in horror.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is this is pretty bleak stuff. And
Speaker 2: guess what what, voters don't like it.
Speaker 4: I know they don't. You know, ICE was actually on
Speaker 4: my block the day before yesterday.
Speaker 2: Ooh, what were they doing?
Speaker 4: Well, you know, they were walking around making people scared.
Speaker 4: And what you saw is a lot of people being various,
Speaker 4: made in people figuring out how they're going to get
Speaker 4: in their way, and they had a nice hiring sign
Speaker 4: on the side of the truck and it was deeply disturbing.
Speaker 1: The average arrests it was twelve hundred daily arrests in June,
Speaker 1: well short of what Stephen Miller's stated goal of three
Speaker 1: thousand immigration arrests for day.
Speaker 2: Here's one of those.
Speaker 1: Things that Stephen Miller is about to find out there
Speaker 1: aren't that many people to arrest. And also, this is
Speaker 1: just going to I mean, it's going to derail the economy,
Speaker 1: but before it does, it's going to derail the administration.
Speaker 4: And lots of it is in people's lives.
Speaker 1: I think it's important to say, like morally reprehensible, politically
Speaker 1: very stupid, and we're going to see this play out
Speaker 1: in a real way. I bet we're going to see
Speaker 1: a play out during this twenty twenty five election cycle too,
Speaker 1: I really do.
Speaker 2: We're seeing these town halls now. And I talked to.
Speaker 1: James Talarico, who is a Texas state legislator, or who
Speaker 1: was a Texas state legislator.
Speaker 2: And is now thinking about possibly running for.
Speaker 1: The Senate, and he was talking about just how much
Speaker 1: this world like people are really mad, Like he had
Speaker 1: a town hall and he said that he had never
Speaker 1: had so many people at his town hall, Like I
Speaker 1: think we in the mainstream media may be missing this
Speaker 1: story of these furious, furious, furious voters.
Speaker 3: And I saw it when I was on.
Speaker 1: My book tour talk about being a coastal elitist here,
Speaker 1: but I did.
Speaker 2: I saw people really mad.
Speaker 1: And I think, you know, when we see this poor
Speaker 1: polling for Democrats, it's not and we've talked about this before,
Speaker 1: but I think it's important to just reiterate it. It's
Speaker 1: not that Democrats have lost interest in other Democrats. It's
Speaker 1: that Democrats feel that their party is not as mad
Speaker 1: as they are. And I think that is the real
Speaker 1: That's what explains those numbers.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Really, what you could see is you can contrust two
Speaker 4: types of polls. Democratic policy is good, the elected officials
Speaker 4: were bringing to fight for them.
Speaker 1: Not popular, Yeah, not popular because they're not doing what
Speaker 1: their voters want them to.
Speaker 4: That's correct. So one of the things I'm really obsessed
Speaker 4: with is this Project twenty twenty five tracker. So we're
Speaker 4: a little over six months into this Trump administration, meaning
Speaker 4: one eighth of the way through it, Dear God help us,
Speaker 4: and Project twenty twenty five is already forty seven percent complete.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a lot of this stuff they wanted to do
Speaker 1: in Project twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Five they are clearly doing right.
Speaker 1: The attacks on institutions that making the DOJ and arm
Speaker 1: of the Trump administration. There were a lot of opportunities
Speaker 1: that the folks at the Heritage Foundation were able to
Speaker 1: put it together to find, So I think this is
Speaker 1: probably pretty accurate. I would say that it's just we're
Speaker 1: just going to have.
Speaker 2: To do a lot of a lot of soul searching.
Speaker 1: And a lot of regulation, and a lot of connecting
Speaker 1: with each other and with voters, and we're going to
Speaker 1: have to really start a kind of now, you know, reconciliation,
Speaker 1: a kind of return to American normalcy, and it's going
Speaker 1: to be a long process.
Speaker 2: But yes, it's here. We see it happening right now,
Speaker 2: and it's bad.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Speaking of that, there is a new poll that says
Speaker 4: most US adults are stressed by grocery costs. I noticed
Speaker 4: my local grocery store just three weeks ago announced that
Speaker 4: they have heard their consumers and they are doing everything
Speaker 4: they can to find the ways they could cut costs
Speaker 4: at the store because they see how enormously costs of skyrocketed.
Speaker 2: No groceries are really expected.
Speaker 1: I go to a grocery store and I'm like, huh,
Speaker 1: it's shockingly expensive. And part of that is inflation. And
Speaker 1: part of that is inflation, and by the way. I
Speaker 1: was told that Donald Trump was going to bring the
Speaker 1: price of groceries down on day one.
Speaker 4: You know what day it is like one hundred and ninety.
Speaker 1: Something, and the price of groceries they're not down, let
Speaker 1: me tell you.
Speaker 5: But I like that.
Speaker 2: My favorite thing is he has it all.
Speaker 1: He's laser focused on bringing down the prices of things.
Speaker 4: That's why he's walking on the White House roof.
Speaker 2: Boy, wait, he's walking on the White House roof.
Speaker 4: Oh you haven't seen this. Everybody thinks it's a distraction
Speaker 4: from Epstein. I actually think it's that he's losing his
Speaker 4: shit with the de Bedsha.
Speaker 1: My favorite thing is that he is laser focused on
Speaker 1: putting the big banks in the process. The President accuses
Speaker 1: both JP Morgan Chase and Bank of America of discrimination
Speaker 1: by refusing to take his personal business.
Speaker 2: You know, when you are.
Speaker 1: In a Banana republic, it's important that your monarch makes
Speaker 1: lots of truly unhinged declarations, and this can be one
Speaker 1: of them. He is going to direct regulators to penalize
Speaker 1: anybody found who have dropped a client on political grounds,
Speaker 1: including Donald J.
Speaker 2: Trump. Incredible stuff, No notes.
Speaker 1: Sam Adler Bell is the co host of the Know
Speaker 1: Your Enemy Podcast. Welcome to Fast Politics, Sam Adler.
Speaker 5: Bell, Hi, Molly, so happy to be here.
Speaker 2: Here we are.
Speaker 1: Another day in paradise or authoritarian tilt towards whatever is
Speaker 1: happening here. Tell me what are the things that are
Speaker 1: keeping you up at night?
Speaker 6: Not out of fear, but out of just burning contempt.
Speaker 6: This story, burning contempt, this story with firing the BLS
Speaker 6: chief over the bad jobs numbers. I you know, it's
Speaker 6: like the thing with Trump is you're always going back
Speaker 6: and forth between like, God, this is a really scary
Speaker 6: situation and God, this contemptible fool who is a narcissist,
Speaker 6: who like just shouldn't be anywhere near a single lever
Speaker 6: of power. Like you can't have a president whose first
Speaker 6: thought when they get a bad set of jobs numbers
Speaker 6: is to shoot the messenger. And it's just it's just
Speaker 6: so pathetic. I mean, I can see the ways in
Speaker 6: which it could be really bad. You know, right, people
Speaker 6: stop trusting these numbers and they install you know whoever
Speaker 6: they install after you know this interim director.
Speaker 5: Mister wonderful, Yeah, mister wonderful.
Speaker 6: But even if they were just a person with perfect credentials,
Speaker 6: people won't trust it. People on the left won't trust it,
Speaker 6: and they and they have good reason that too, because
Speaker 6: why do you get rid of the person if not
Speaker 6: to install somebody who's going to fudge the numbers. And
Speaker 6: I just so I can see the path to it
Speaker 6: being ruinous. But at the moment, I just find myself
Speaker 6: being like, how can anybody think this is okay? How
Speaker 6: can you just be like, Yeah, that's my guy up there.
Speaker 6: When he gets bad news, he fires the person who
Speaker 6: gives him bad news.
Speaker 5: It's so pathetic.
Speaker 1: I think you have really explained a fascinating phenomenon as
Speaker 1: we round into a decade of dealing with Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: which is it's scary, slash, it's stupid, and I feel like,
Speaker 1: you know, the Venn diagram of like it's stupid, it's scary,
Speaker 1: and they are like not quite a circle. So like
Speaker 1: the Rose Garden redo is just stupid, Like who could
Speaker 1: you know? I mean, obviously whatever, there's some historical president
Speaker 1: for the Rose Garden, but it's largely just you know,
Speaker 1: but Bureau of Labor Statistics trying to redistrict your way
Speaker 1: into not losing the majority in the House. That kind
Speaker 1: of thing is actually quite scary.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, stupid and scary, that's the mix.
Speaker 6: That's the Trumpian stew at all times. And yeah, it
Speaker 6: can be hard to know just how to calibrate your
Speaker 6: own reactions sometimes. But I'm pretty I'm pretty I'm pretty
Speaker 6: fired up lately.
Speaker 2: Really tell us why?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 6: I the other thing Matt and I in my podcast
Speaker 6: Know your Enemy we were talking about.
Speaker 2: Explain, go on, you go ahead, now go.
Speaker 6: Just the sheer scale of the corruption in this administration
Speaker 6: has really started to get to me because I think
Speaker 6: it's the kind of story that's hard to keep in
Speaker 6: your mind or kind of like it's it's just by
Speaker 6: its very nature, would become numb to it and our
Speaker 6: standards change, you know. But Matt was just reading to
Speaker 6: me from, you know, a story from several months ago
Speaker 6: about you know, the crypto people who you know, somebody
Speaker 6: who invested twenty million dollars in Trump's personal crypto coin
Speaker 6: and therefore got to go, you know, to the meme coin.
Speaker 6: Meme coin, right, Yeah, I mean we how can we?
Speaker 6: That seems like, you know, an age ago, But it's
Speaker 6: still the case that any anybody, any individual in the world,
Speaker 6: any rich person, whether they're an agent of a foreign
Speaker 6: government government or not can give you know, fifty million
Speaker 6: dollars to Trump in secret for whatever reason. I mean
Speaker 6: these and you know, the fluctuations in the stock market
Speaker 6: that allow his cronies to you know, basically insider trade
Speaker 6: on the tariff negotiations. Like this kind of stuff would
Speaker 6: have been the one big scandal in any other administration
Speaker 6: that we would have talked about for weeks and weeks
Speaker 6: and weeks. But I find myself just being mostly disgusted
Speaker 6: by the fact that this administration is just like one
Speaker 6: giant machine for Mafio, so you know, rackets, basically making
Speaker 6: money for people that he's friends with.
Speaker 1: It feels like you get here by allowing members of
Speaker 1: Congress to continue trading stocks, by not regulating technology, by
Speaker 1: some of the feelings, and you know, I think I
Speaker 1: have old children because I had them when I was
Speaker 1: very young, like a tea smarter, just kidding, not a teenager,
Speaker 1: but pretty young. And they say I'm an neoliberal because
Speaker 1: that is the biggest insult they can think of, except
Speaker 1: my other kid, who's like, you're a communist, which again okay,
Speaker 1: but but there are feelings of neoliberals that got you
Speaker 1: like and you know, the sort of the sort of go.
Speaker 2: Along to get along and the and.
Speaker 1: I also think like trying to sort of emulate Reagan
Speaker 1: in the yeah It's section to thirty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can we talk about that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 6: Well, I mean I think that's true because I have
Speaker 6: this thought sometime about like how do we get back
Speaker 6: from this era where huge parts of the voting populace
Speaker 6: thinks it's fine for the for the president to basically
Speaker 6: make the presidency a personal project of his own wealth
Speaker 6: creation and his family's own wealth. Like it's it's disturbing
Speaker 6: that he does that. It's even more disturbing that it
Speaker 6: doesn't seem to be a problem.
Speaker 1: Is it the partisanship that has Like is it not
Speaker 1: a part is it? Is it not a problem for
Speaker 1: them because it's their team?
Speaker 2: I mean, is that why?
Speaker 5: I think largely?
Speaker 6: But what I what I what I think about in
Speaker 6: terms of your your question about like how we got here?
Speaker 6: Is that I think in order for if there's ever
Speaker 6: if a left party, say the Democrats, probably the Democrats
Speaker 6: ever becomes a kind of like, you know, the kind
Speaker 6: of cultural hegemonic leader in this country, it would be
Speaker 6: because they've been able to credibly you know, point out
Speaker 6: that it's wrong, evil, anti democratic for the Republicans to
Speaker 6: just use the machinery of government to make money for
Speaker 6: themselves at all times. And the reason that that doesn't
Speaker 6: really happen, or it hasn't really happened, or that isn't
Speaker 6: a winning issue for the Democrats, I think, is because
Speaker 6: they aren't credible on that issue, exactly for the reasons
Speaker 6: you're saying, because of insider trading, because of you know,
Speaker 6: just like that that that has the kind of populist,
Speaker 6: anti plutocratic message has been a minority voice in the
Speaker 6: party and in fact, you know, to kind of talk
Speaker 6: out of my own lefty book here, I mean, the
Speaker 6: one person who everybody agrees is credible on this issue,
Speaker 6: Bernie Sanders. Every time he got close to power, the
Speaker 6: Democrats did everything in their power to prevent him from becoming,
Speaker 6: you know, the leader of the party.
Speaker 5: I mean, not for nothing.
Speaker 6: And I hate to be like this kind of prototypical
Speaker 6: millennial leftist and my feelings about this, but Bernie Sanders
Speaker 6: is the most popular senator in America.
Speaker 5: And why is that?
Speaker 6: And he's including with independence, including with Republicans.
Speaker 5: Why is that?
Speaker 6: Because he does represent this other side of the coin,
Speaker 6: which is when Bernie Sanders says, I'm disgusted by you know,
Speaker 6: democrats making money from the stock market, just as I
Speaker 6: am about Republicans. I'm disgusted by Donald Trump using you know,
Speaker 6: the office of the presidency to extremely increase his wealth.
Speaker 6: You know, he seems credible, He really seems like he
Speaker 6: hates it, and he's not himself some kind of secret
Speaker 6: rich guy.
Speaker 5: The thing about Bernie.
Speaker 6: Sanders, he's not the only one, but he is the
Speaker 6: kind of prototypical figure who represents this credibility in his
Speaker 6: anti plutocratic message is anti oligarchy message, and he's been
Speaker 6: on that message, you know, since twenty sixteen, and it's
Speaker 6: not a coincidence. I think the Democrats haven't been able
Speaker 6: to adopt that message in a way that seems that's winning,
Speaker 6: because they also have tried to marginalize Bernie, you know,
Speaker 6: much less so than they did in Trump's first term.
Speaker 5: He's kind of on side now.
Speaker 6: But I just think in order for there to be
Speaker 6: you know, in order for the Democrats to benefit from
Speaker 6: the graft that this administration engages on a regular basis,
Speaker 6: they need more figures who seem like they mean it
Speaker 6: when they you know, as you know, Alex Koburn used
Speaker 6: to say that their hate is pure, right.
Speaker 1: Really, I think important and also true. I wonder though
Speaker 1: it's so so what you're saying is something that I
Speaker 1: actually spend a lot of time basically in my head.
Speaker 2: I spent almost eighty percent.
Speaker 1: Of my day worrying about all of this, right, I
Speaker 1: just like, you know, what's going to happen to d
Speaker 1: And it strikes me that Mondani has successfully channeled this
Speaker 1: populism in a way that is both the populism is
Speaker 1: a real thing, and he has gone to voters who
Speaker 1: are not the elites, who are the sort of because
Speaker 1: like the mayoral ship is always decided not in Manhattan,
Speaker 1: but really in the Bronx and Brooklyn, which are districts
Speaker 1: that are not afful you know, they're a mix, right,
Speaker 1: And so it strikes me that Mondani has managed to
Speaker 1: transmit that to working people, the populist message.
Speaker 5: I think to a significant degree.
Speaker 6: I mean, I also think it's true as much is
Speaker 6: I think it's tendentious the way that the right tries
Speaker 6: to use it against him, that there is a huge
Speaker 6: part of his coalition that is the kind of like
Speaker 6: downwardly mobile, professional middle class, the millennial socialist types. But
Speaker 6: I don't really have the same contempt for those people
Speaker 6: as people on the writer in the center of the
Speaker 6: party do because those are my friends.
Speaker 1: But that's not a huge But that's not I mean,
Speaker 1: unfortunately for all of us. That's not a huge group, right, Like, no, no, no,
Speaker 1: A huge group are working people. Like, if you're going
Speaker 1: to win a primary in New York as a mayor,
Speaker 1: you are getting voters that are working people from the
Speaker 1: outer boroughs.
Speaker 6: No, absolutely, I mean, I think I think you're totally
Speaker 6: right about Mom Donnie and the great irony contradiction. I think,
Speaker 6: you know, embarrassment for the leadership of the Democratic Party
Speaker 6: is that here's a candidate who ran on affordability, affordability, affordability.
Speaker 6: If you look at his campaign website, there is basically
Speaker 6: no single proposal that is not about lowering the cost
Speaker 6: of living for New Yorkers, except for when people were
Speaker 6: trying to goad him into talking about Israel.
Speaker 5: He only talked about affordability.
Speaker 6: He made that his whole project, and that was exactly
Speaker 6: what the Democrats said was the reason they lost in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty four. Yeah, because Trump credibly convinced people that
Speaker 6: he was going to lower prices he was going to make.
Speaker 2: Because he said that the lower prices, yeah, I said it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: And so Mom, Donnie built his whole campaign around exactly
Speaker 6: what the kind of Democratic post mortems said a Democratic
Speaker 6: candidate should build their campaign around. And now look at
Speaker 6: who has not endorsed the Democratic primary winner in New
Speaker 6: York City. Well, both the senators from New York, who
Speaker 6: one of whom is.
Speaker 5: The head of the Senate.
Speaker 6: As well as this as well as the head of
Speaker 6: the Democratic House Caucus, also from New York.
Speaker 5: I find it. How are they going to I mean,
Speaker 5: we know why they're not doing it.
Speaker 6: I think we can speculate, but I don't know how
Speaker 6: they're going to go around saying, like, the huge problem
Speaker 6: we have is that we can't appeal to working class
Speaker 6: people and we don't have a credible message about affordability.
Speaker 6: And then one when one candidate wins in a landslide
Speaker 6: on that message, they don't endorse him. I mean it's
Speaker 6: absurd or expected. Absurd or expected.
Speaker 1: Jilli Brand really did cover herself in glory when she
Speaker 1: came out and said that man Donnie was anti submitted
Speaker 1: because what did she say he did nine to eleven.
Speaker 2: I can't remember.
Speaker 6: She almost I mean, I think she said that he
Speaker 6: had had used the word jahad or something like that.
Speaker 6: She she got mixed up because she she you know,
Speaker 6: she wanted to talk about globalize the Intifada, which of
Speaker 6: course also Mamdani doesn't sing.
Speaker 1: Did not say, but he must disavow it despite not
Speaker 1: saying it, he must. No.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's.
Speaker 6: It's a really bleak it's a really bleak thing. I
Speaker 6: was talking to my podcast produce, Sir Jesse.
Speaker 5: I also have one of those you.
Speaker 1: Know that all podcast producers are named Jesse.
Speaker 6: But he was he was saying something interesting, which is
Speaker 6: that it's the Democrats. You know, maybe the Democrats just
Speaker 6: wish Mamdani was the same candidate without the position he's
Speaker 6: staked out on the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 6: But the thing is, you can't get you can't you
Speaker 6: can't get that guy, that guy who has the credibility
Speaker 6: with young people that he does, that would be able
Speaker 6: to turn out all these disaffected young people if he
Speaker 6: didn't have that message. I mean, the theory of the
Speaker 6: case for Cuomo was that the older people were going
Speaker 6: to be so scandalized by his my in my opinion,
Speaker 6: principled stand about Israel and it's brutal siege, that they
Speaker 6: were going to come out and he was going to
Speaker 6: lose for that reason. But actually he won for that
Speaker 6: reason because he was able to mobilize a group of
Speaker 6: Democratic voters or potential Democrat voters who wouldn't vote for
Speaker 6: any candidate who didn't separate themselves from the party's position
Speaker 6: on that issue.
Speaker 5: And so it's all part of the same package.
Speaker 1: And I think that's a really, really, really important point
Speaker 1: because Mondannie actually didn't win among Jewish voters. Now there's
Speaker 1: an incredible tweet that has him not I don't know
Speaker 1: if you saw that tweet if you're very online. There
Speaker 1: is a tweet where the where like Americans for Adams,
Speaker 1: shows who won what, and it doesn't have Mondani having
Speaker 1: won Jewish voters, But he did, in fact win Jewish voters,
Speaker 1: and he won this Jewish voter and he won it
Speaker 1: because I believe that Nat and Yahoo's genie side of
Speaker 1: the Palestinian people is not reflective on the many good
Speaker 1: Israelis who are just minding their own business like we
Speaker 1: Americans are, and.
Speaker 2: That quite a lot of them.
Speaker 1: I don't know if he saw the cover of the
Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal, the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Street Journal
Speaker 1: today had pictures of Israeli's protesting net Yahoo. And I
Speaker 1: don't think that any of us want to see any
Speaker 1: more children and women and men in palist On being
Speaker 1: starved to death or shot by idea like, I don't
Speaker 1: think that serves anyone.
Speaker 6: No, I don't think so either. And I think that,
Speaker 6: I mean, we are seeing somewhat of a changing tide,
Speaker 6: a damn breaking this week, it seems. I think within
Speaker 6: Israel you have a figure like David Grossman, who's you know,
Speaker 6: basically the biggest literary celebrity in the country, coming out
Speaker 6: and calling it a genocide. You have both the two
Speaker 6: top human rights organizations within Israel calling it a genocide.
Speaker 6: And then in this country, like you said, I mean,
Speaker 6: you see, you know Marjorie Taylor gu.
Speaker 5: Well, that's I think she.
Speaker 6: I think she has your dog's politics a little bit
Speaker 6: anti Zionist and anti Semitic, but it's true that she
Speaker 6: she has been right about what she said.
Speaker 5: What she said has been true, which she said is true.
Speaker 6: That you can say that October seventh was a disaster
Speaker 6: and awful atrocity.
Speaker 5: And what Israel is doing now is a genocide. Marjorie
Speaker 5: Taylor Voice of Reason. Marjorie Taylor Reason, Poice of Reason.
Speaker 1: She gave My favorite part of Marjorie Taylor Green moral
Speaker 1: arbiterre is that she came to Congress onto or not.
Speaker 2: So this has really gone full circle here.
Speaker 5: It's true, It's true. Yeah, everything Jewish space lasers. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 5: she is, I mean like anti she's I think she
Speaker 5: very much probably is. And you know, but I do.
Speaker 6: I think that what you could say for Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 6: Green is that she does seem to be uh loyal
Speaker 6: to the people who put her there. That I think
Speaker 6: that the sort of Republican primary voters in her district
Speaker 6: who are, you know, effectively the people who put her
Speaker 6: there workqan on people, are people who care about the
Speaker 6: Epstein story and are people who have I think, in
Speaker 6: principle in America first foreign policy view, which for which
Speaker 6: to give them credit, it does not make sense that
Speaker 6: our own foreign policy interests should be subordinated to a
Speaker 6: foreign country, even if that country is Israel. And so
Speaker 6: I think that's I think that's the stand that she's
Speaker 6: taking and yes, she's probably an anti Semite, but she's
Speaker 6: also a.
Speaker 1: Member anti Semite.
Speaker 5: Actually, I don't think she is. I don't think she is.
Speaker 4: She is.
Speaker 6: We can have fun, but yeah, but I think that's true.
Speaker 6: I mean that she is loyal to her constituents. In
Speaker 6: so far as you know her, probably her most loudest
Speaker 6: constituents are those who think that she shouldn't be in
Speaker 6: there to just do whatever Trump tells her to do.
Speaker 5: Either she should be in there.
Speaker 6: To uncover the Epstein files, to stop the pedophile cabal,
Speaker 6: and to actually make America, you know, America first and
Speaker 6: its foreign policy.
Speaker 1: And so, Sam Adler Bell, will you come back.
Speaker 5: I'm waiting for the call from Marjorie's office. I'll take
Speaker 5: a job anytime.
Speaker 2: You'll be your speech writer. Can you imagine?
Speaker 5: Would be great? Yeah, Like I know where all the
Speaker 5: bodies are buried. You know, Jewish space lasers.
Speaker 2: Wise, that's right, Jewish space lasers.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Sam Adler Bell.
Speaker 5: Thank you, Molli. This was fun as always.
Speaker 1: John Bisionano is the president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee.
Speaker 1: Welcome too Fast Politics, John Bisiano.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me, Mollie.
Speaker 2: So Texas redistricting. Are you in Texas right now?
Speaker 3: No, I'm not.
Speaker 1: Tell us where we are with the Texas redistricting. Start
Speaker 1: from the beginning, one state, yeah.
Speaker 5: Go for this.
Speaker 3: Let's start with the Alamo. Yeah, exactly. Really, I think
Speaker 3: the story of Texas, if you're going to look at
Speaker 3: it from a full perspective, starts with the census after
Speaker 3: twenty twenty. The census showed extreme growth in Texas, which
Speaker 3: we all know now, and it showed but it showed
Speaker 3: growth in the cities, and it showed growth with people
Speaker 3: of color. And Texas then went and redrew the map,
Speaker 3: dramatically decreasing the number of opportunity seats for people of color.
Speaker 3: So immediately there were concerns with Texas's jurymannered map even
Speaker 3: after twenty twenty, and we filed litigation after that. We've
Speaker 3: been in court for the past three years or five
Speaker 3: years now over that map. And now it's very clear
Speaker 3: that Donald Trump, and he said it this morning on
Speaker 3: TV that he felt entitled to five more congressional districts
Speaker 3: for Republicans in Texas. No veil of reality around what
Speaker 3: voters believe or care about. It's just simply partisan politics
Speaker 3: for him and a hatchet job to the state. So
Speaker 3: what we're now seeing in Texas is Donald Trump on
Speaker 3: high handing down Governor Abbott a new map. Most of
Speaker 3: the members sent, yeah.
Speaker 2: She said.
Speaker 1: In fact, the direct quote is, we are entitled to
Speaker 1: five more seats.
Speaker 3: Yes, go on right. Entitlements.
Speaker 2: Yes. In China they love entitled. Republicans love entitle.
Speaker 3: I love them. So yeah. So now Governor Abbot has
Speaker 3: this map. Most even Republican members of the legislature in
Speaker 3: Texas hadn't seen it. Many of the members of Congress,
Speaker 3: as I understand it, hadn't seen it. People are starting
Speaker 3: to get irritated, I imagine on the Republican side. And
Speaker 3: what we're now seeing happen is the legislature taking up
Speaker 3: this map, blind to their own realities or the people
Speaker 3: of Texas, but only through the will of Donald Trump,
Speaker 3: seemingly sitting around a room at the White House and
Speaker 3: telling people, Hey, I need to find more congressional seats.
Speaker 3: Where can we go? And so Department of Justice issued
Speaker 3: a directive to the state which is complete bogus legal language.
Speaker 1: And that was Alida Haba, everyone's favorite parking attorney.
Speaker 3: Right for sure, and she very eloquently and legally wrote
Speaker 3: a letter that made no sense and had no legal
Speaker 3: flegity to it, and then we found ourselves in the
Speaker 3: place where we are now, where they are trying to
Speaker 3: push through this map. They had public hearings for the
Speaker 3: past two weeks in which people have been I think
Speaker 3: it's been two weeks, man, it feels like a decade,
Speaker 3: but where people have been currently flooding those hearings, making
Speaker 3: their voices heard that they do not want this to happen.
Speaker 3: And Texas is looking to implement this new map, which,
Speaker 3: as I noted earlier, we've been in litigation over the
Speaker 3: prior Texas map. This is a jurymander on top of
Speaker 3: the git. I was looking for five seats, but this
Speaker 3: is like really set or more than that as you
Speaker 3: look at it from what a fair map would look like.
Speaker 3: As I'm sure everyone knows now, the Texas state legislators
Speaker 3: have left the state in protest over the reality that
Speaker 3: they're being forced to take up this map as opposed
Speaker 3: to focus on flood funding or any flood corrections. I mean,
Speaker 3: that's something that I keep hearing is absurd with this.
Speaker 1: Special session when it was brought in, when it was called,
Speaker 1: was it meant to be about flooding or I mean,
Speaker 1: they used the pretext of the flooding, but was it
Speaker 1: always meant to be Abbot pushing a new.
Speaker 3: I don't know the answer, only because I'm not in
Speaker 3: Greg Abbott's head. But only Greg Abbott could look at
Speaker 3: an absolutely catastrophic flood with hundreds found dead and say
Speaker 3: this is an opportunity. So this horrific event is an
Speaker 3: opportunity for political malfeasons and to try and force through
Speaker 3: a jurymannered map. The part that's really horrifying about the
Speaker 3: flood is, of course they're still trying to take up funding, which,
Speaker 3: as I understand that Abbot could push through either way.
Speaker 1: Right, he doesn't need a special session for the flood
Speaker 1: for the flood funding. In fact, he's historically not done that.
Speaker 3: They're not doing things to fix future floods either, right
Speaker 3: like that. People keep talking about the funding, right.
Speaker 2: Their hearing has been all on redistricting.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's been all about redistricting. And but they're
Speaker 3: talking about even funding reparations for the flood, but no
Speaker 3: one's talking about fixing situations so that there's not floods
Speaker 3: in the future. They're just pretending it's never going to
Speaker 3: happen again, which is, you know, horrific.
Speaker 1: Yes, So there's this whole pretext that it's about flooding.
Speaker 1: It's not about flooding, it's about redistricting. I want to know,
Speaker 1: and this is a question I've now asked a bunch
Speaker 1: of different everyone from Representative Kazar to Representative Crockett to
Speaker 1: that Texas State Representative James Tellerco, which is, do the
Speaker 1: people of Texas understand what is happening in their name?
Speaker 2: Is this breaking through to the people of Texas?
Speaker 3: I believe it is. I'd be interested obviously in their perspective.
Speaker 3: They are closer to the ground as always than anyone else.
Speaker 3: But the truth is, I do think people are trying
Speaker 3: to understand. You're seeing that in the hearings, the volume
Speaker 3: of people I couldn't have even anticipated. And you know,
Speaker 3: at this point, I've been doing jury rendering work since
Speaker 3: basically this organization started after Barack Obama ag holder Nancy
Speaker 3: Pelosi and Terry McColls started at twenty seventeen, so it's
Speaker 3: been quite some time. And one of our original principles
Speaker 3: and driving factors was elevating the narrative around redistricting and jurymandering.
Speaker 3: Maybe more people need to understand what this is. And
Speaker 3: we've seen tremendous growth in many states where people understand
Speaker 3: what it is more than they had before. It's still
Speaker 3: wonky and hard, and I acknowledge that, but I think
Speaker 3: what we're seeing right now in Texas is a dramatic
Speaker 3: shift in the way that people perceive this process. And
Speaker 3: I understand people look at Texas and see a red state, but.
Speaker 2: It's really not. I mean, that's what this is a response.
Speaker 3: To, right right, That's why they're doing this. But the
Speaker 3: important thing to remember, and as you look back at
Speaker 3: that census data, and we now have more up to
Speaker 3: date census data from five years of growth, which Texas
Speaker 3: is still growing rapidly. The places Texas is growing still
Speaker 3: are people of color and in urban areas. And so
Speaker 3: Texas now is sixty percent minority, right, forty percent white, which.
Speaker 1: Are very scary for the white Republicans.
Speaker 2: Yeah, not pleased.
Speaker 3: And that's just a truth.
Speaker 5: Now.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of folks and Donald Trump, I think
Speaker 3: is one of them that is living off this reality
Speaker 3: of the twenty twenty four election cycle is what's going
Speaker 3: to happen in Texas to move forward, and frankly, if
Speaker 3: you look at Texas history, I think twenty twenty four
Speaker 3: is a pre significant deviation from the way that you
Speaker 3: look at political data. So they're drawing maps on with
Speaker 3: the vision that they understand and are going to continue
Speaker 3: to grow, specifically with Latino voters, and I think that's
Speaker 3: not reality.
Speaker 1: I think this story is complicated to cover when you're
Speaker 1: on the side of democracy, as I am, because.
Speaker 2: There are two issues here.
Speaker 1: The first is the issue of Donald Trump is cheating
Speaker 1: because he's worried about accountability, and that needs to not
Speaker 1: happen because of American democracy and we want to keep
Speaker 1: this experiment going. The second is they may be wildly
Speaker 1: misreading what Americans are going to do in the midterms.
Speaker 1: And if you jerry mander like this, it means you
Speaker 1: have lower margins for your safe seats, which means that
Speaker 1: in the sixty to forty state you may end up
Speaker 1: actually just screwing yourself. And I think that's a really
Speaker 1: important part of the story that I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: especially because Trump was able to make inroads with Latino voters,
Speaker 1: and those Latino voters are now watching their friends and
Speaker 1: neighbors and children and whatever get arrested by Ice.
Speaker 3: Not for any reason other than being brown.
Speaker 1: Right, And in fact, the Supreme Court is saying, if
Speaker 1: you want to pick up a person who looks like
Speaker 1: they might be Latino, you're fine with it.
Speaker 2: So I would love you to talk us through that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think we've already seen in the
Speaker 3: past two months polling shifting. I mean, post the Ice
Speaker 3: raids and the way in which Donald Trump's implementing his
Speaker 3: vision of America with regards to immigration, We're seeing the
Speaker 3: polling shift with Latinos across the country but also into
Speaker 3: and so I think the way that you described it
Speaker 3: is true. Now, I want to be honest about the
Speaker 3: map that we've seen them, that they've produced in the
Speaker 3: state legislature. There's a word called the dummy mander, which
Speaker 3: people call when you jurymander so far that you end
Speaker 3: up having a blowback on yourself. It's basically what you're describing.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that the way that they drew this
Speaker 3: map looks like that is open to that. But what
Speaker 3: I do see happening in this map is a lot
Speaker 3: of the new Republican seats that this five in the
Speaker 3: five window that they're describing. Not all of those are
Speaker 3: going to be really safe seats. So there's a world
Speaker 3: in which they're not picking up as many seats as
Speaker 3: they claim to be, or at least pretend they are
Speaker 3: in their minds, But.
Speaker 2: It is ultimately cheating.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the real big picture of what you're talking
Speaker 3: about now is the longer term game. And so what
Speaker 3: I'm describing is what I understand from political data immediately
Speaker 3: for the twenty twenty six election cycle. But the way
Speaker 3: that they drew these maps, I don't know what it's
Speaker 3: going to look like in twenty twenty eight. With the
Speaker 3: way that Texas is growing twenty thirty for sure, So
Speaker 3: I do think they could be in an area the
Speaker 3: dummy mander over time.
Speaker 1: Right, But it doesn't matter because if you give Trumpet
Speaker 1: blind check, who even knows that we'll have elections? I
Speaker 1: mean right, Yeah, The idea that there's a long term
Speaker 1: proposition for this is overly optimistic.
Speaker 3: I think. I think that's right. But I do think
Speaker 3: you are very right, and I appreciate you raising it
Speaker 3: because not enough people are talking about it that the
Speaker 3: population shifts in Texas are happening very very rapidly. So
Speaker 3: the second prong to what you're describing is actually running
Speaker 3: really strong campaigns in Texas and registering voters that hadn't
Speaker 3: been historically voting. That could change everything. There's a huge
Speaker 3: population of people in Texas that don't vote.
Speaker 2: It's huge, right, it's fifty to fifty.
Speaker 3: Yeah, what you're looking at from a demographic perspective when
Speaker 3: you're talking about elections in Texas is going to change dramatically,
Speaker 3: and frankly, that starts with this process here, like more
Speaker 3: people seeing this at understanding that their state is being
Speaker 3: taken over by an authoritarian government in Washington. Like no
Speaker 3: one in Texas wanted this. It's been thrust upon them, frankly,
Speaker 3: to preserve or a House of Representatives that is completely
Speaker 3: complicit and everything Trump's doing and doesn't want to do
Speaker 3: oversight on anything. I understand he's scared of oversight in general.
Speaker 3: I'm sure he's scared that some files will get released.
Speaker 3: There's a lot to be scared of out there.
Speaker 1: What files could you mean? It's a mystery. I wonder
Speaker 1: if you could talk us through the possibility that there's
Speaker 1: other stuff happening in Texas at the state level with Paxton,
Speaker 1: the age there's just been a ton of fuckery there.
Speaker 1: Jesse wants to talk about New York redistricting in California redistricting,
Speaker 1: but I actually don't because I think, fuck it, let
Speaker 1: them do it.
Speaker 2: They have to do it. They have to play our ball.
Speaker 2: So that's what I used to say, is that, I mean.
Speaker 1: If you have something you want to say, but I
Speaker 1: think then God Governor Hokel and Governor Newsom are trying
Speaker 1: to push back thoughts, questions, comments go.
Speaker 3: Theater in general. You Holder, our founder and chairman, last
Speaker 3: week put out a statement in which he was very
Speaker 3: clear that he was comfortable with states for the first
Speaker 3: time moving forward with measures that were reciprocal and temporary
Speaker 3: to make corrective changes because of what we're seeing in
Speaker 3: Texas and frankly because of what we're seeing in other
Speaker 3: states now. This morning there were any reports of Indiana
Speaker 3: contemplating this. Missouri has had reports of contemplating it. So
Speaker 3: we can't just blindly walk into an authoritarian regime with
Speaker 3: no recourse, and so watching and engaging in California and
Speaker 3: New York is one of the ways in which folks
Speaker 3: are engaging right now. And the one point I would
Speaker 3: make that I've seen happen in the coverage over the
Speaker 3: past week or so, there has been a pretty heavy
Speaker 3: dose of it's harder for Dems to jerrymander in these
Speaker 3: states or redistrict in these states than Republicans. And that
Speaker 3: is true, that does not mean it's not going to happen.
Speaker 3: And what I've seen in the past week is things
Speaker 3: are getting very real, and I don't quite understand how
Speaker 3: Republicans sitting in California and New York aren't melting down
Speaker 3: and calling all of their friends in Texas, like these
Speaker 3: are folks that were sitting in their comfy districts. They
Speaker 3: had nothing to do with this. A couple of weeks ago,
Speaker 3: Donald Trump thrust them up on Texas, and now they're
Speaker 3: in the hot seat and they're about to get their
Speaker 3: seat and redrawn, and they're not gonna be coming back
Speaker 3: to Congress because of what happened in a different state.
Speaker 3: So it seems as though he's comfortable trading members in
Speaker 3: Texas for members in other states, and I would imagine
Speaker 3: that doesn't sit well with some of the folks in
Speaker 3: California and New York.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's game this out for a minute, because five
Speaker 1: seats in California that could be gone, and Gavin wants
Speaker 1: to do a special election. I am very happy to
Speaker 1: criticize my man, Gavin Newsom, but this strikes me as
Speaker 1: really both he and Hokel.
Speaker 2: I have been shocked by the level of like with it.
Speaker 1: And he is like a fighter, but Hokel often in
Speaker 1: my mind, is kind of a coward.
Speaker 2: But this I thought was good.
Speaker 3: I mean that in a very generous.
Speaker 1: Way, obviously, but I've been really pleasantly surprised by both
Speaker 1: of them. So some we'll do a special election in
Speaker 1: November if anything like what we saw in that Mike
Speaker 1: Flood town hall where people who were hundreds of people.
Speaker 2: Were yelling vote him out.
Speaker 1: And again, I think like Nebraska is instructive in certain
Speaker 1: ways because Nebraska is the state where Republicans tried to
Speaker 1: take away that one electoral vote in Nebraska's first Bacon
Speaker 1: has a has an electoral vote that tends to go blue,
Speaker 1: and Republicans tried to take it away right before the
Speaker 1: election in the hopes that it would help Trump. And
Speaker 1: I do think like that kind of stuff. Like when
Speaker 1: I was watching those that town hall this morning, I
Speaker 1: had this thought, which was, like, there's like ten people
Speaker 1: in the mainstream media now right, Like it's the New
Speaker 1: York Times in the Wall Street Journal, and then I
Speaker 1: buy the ft because I have nothing else to buy.
Speaker 1: But like, we have no fucking clue what the rest
Speaker 1: of the kind of is feeling. And like it was
Speaker 1: so clear to me watching that town hall just how
Speaker 1: removed we in the mainstream media are from what the
Speaker 1: fuck is going on on the street, because these people
Speaker 1: were so mad, and Republicans can tell themselves that this
Speaker 1: is just like, you know, some kind of act blue cabal,
Speaker 1: but they do that at their own peril because we're
Speaker 1: still going to have a midterm election cycle.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's real. The AG's adjustment last week is an
Speaker 3: indicator of how serious I think things are. But what
Speaker 3: you're described, like, we've done pulling over years, right, and
Speaker 3: we've seen people always despise jurymandering. Redistricting's fine, they know
Speaker 3: it has to happen, that's okay. The jurymandering component of it,
Speaker 3: people despise it like it's normally seventy to seventy five percent.
Speaker 3: It always almost always comes back at that level. And
Speaker 3: I think Republicans now both feel extreme fear and frankly,
Speaker 3: the way that they're handling the Epstein files shows that
Speaker 3: more complicit in some kind of cover up than just
Speaker 3: the president. You know, It's like there's a lot of
Speaker 3: things that are happening here that they're becoming more and
Speaker 3: more scared is going to become public if there is
Speaker 3: House scrutiny over any part of this administration's agenda. So
Speaker 3: I understand that they're concerned that the American people might
Speaker 3: actually have a voice in the process that they are running.
Speaker 3: This redistricting and jurymandering component of it has really bubbled up.
Speaker 3: I think a lot of that anger because you can
Speaker 3: feel it. Like I said, Republicans, they're not doing this
Speaker 3: for voters. They're not doing this even for Republican voters.
Speaker 3: No one's asking for this except for themselves. They're doing
Speaker 3: this for a small cabal of congressional Republicans sitting in
Speaker 3: the US House of Representatives to preserve themselves and maybe
Speaker 3: cut out some of their friends in places like California
Speaker 3: and New York.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: It's striking to me how this could all blow back
Speaker 1: on them.
Speaker 2: So if you're listening to this and you're furious, what
Speaker 2: should you do?
Speaker 3: You should text action to three six seven eight seven,
Speaker 3: Join our fight, try and engage. We can support engagements
Speaker 3: and new activism in places all across the country. So
Speaker 3: join that we can get you plugged in. Will help
Speaker 3: make sure that everybody has a place to volunteer, have
Speaker 3: your voice heard, and make sure that you know when
Speaker 3: and where town halls are being held, but also when
Speaker 3: and where redistricting is happening.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you, John, thank you, Molly.
Speaker 3: Great to be.
Speaker 4: Here, No moment exactly, Jesse Cannon, my junk fast. So
Speaker 4: FEMA disasteroid could now depend on if a state's policy
Speaker 4: towards Israel is BDS or not. This is seeming like
Speaker 4: when we talk about witness tests like the silliest one
Speaker 4: I've ever heard and ultimate poor performative moronics.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is very, very very stupid. And here's why
Speaker 1: it's stupid. Okay, you ready, because what.
Speaker 2: It doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you pay taxes, you pay federal tax
Speaker 1: is to pay for disaster aid.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is so ridiculous.
Speaker 7: This is like another trumpy thing that he is cooked
Speaker 7: up as a way to make it so that you
Speaker 7: can't get disaster right if you need it. US states
Speaker 7: and cities that boycott Israeli companies will be denied federal
Speaker 7: aid for natural disaster preparedness.
Speaker 2: Stupid, my man is having a war with FEMA. He's
Speaker 2: trying to take apart the federal government. This is ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's ridiculous.
Speaker 4: It's ridiculous, especially with you know, a state like South
Speaker 4: Dakota is estimated to have less than a thousand Jews.
Speaker 1: It's trying to control state legislature, and it's stupid.
Speaker 2: Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Speaker 5: That's it for.
Speaker 1: This episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday,
Speaker 1: and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics make
Speaker 1: sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.