Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and Kremlin spokesman Dimitri Paskoff says Trump's
Speaker 1: foreign policy largely coincides with our vision. Really, I'm shocked.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Lincoln Project z own Rick Wilson joins us to discuss
Speaker 1: Elon Musk's actual motives for hanging around the Capitol constantly.
Speaker 2: Owen, Molly, We're gonna have a special excerpt from our
Speaker 2: YouTube channel with former Labor Secretary Robert Reich, and he's
Speaker 2: going to tell us all about why Trump's economic moves
Speaker 2: are going to go very very badly form.
Speaker 1: And we'll talk to Wisconsin Democrat Chair Ben Wickler about
Speaker 1: democratic messaging.
Speaker 3: But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, Elon is now saying we need to withdraw
Speaker 2: from not just NATO but the UN as well. I say,
Speaker 2: why the fuck should we care what he thinks?
Speaker 1: Oh? No, well, look, I mean should we care? Absolutely?
Speaker 1: We should not care. But here's the thing, and I
Speaker 1: think this is pretty relevant and important. Donald Trump seems
Speaker 1: to mostly take many of his orders from Elon, So
Speaker 1: if we don't want obviously for the for America to
Speaker 1: leave NATO. It has been you know, especially because like
Speaker 1: NATO is paying more of their you know, the security money,
Speaker 1: I mean Trump's complaints, they're actually doing what Trump is
Speaker 1: asking them to do. So for Trump to leave now
Speaker 1: would just mean that he just wants to which again,
Speaker 1: as we've seen, he's very mercurial and he behaves in
Speaker 1: a very often in a pretty unpredictable way. But it
Speaker 1: would not make any sense and it would not make
Speaker 1: any sense for them to leave the UN which is
Speaker 1: maybe why they would. And also I want to add,
Speaker 1: like at this point, after the Friday's Lens meeting, we've
Speaker 1: really seen a lot of anti American sentiment out of
Speaker 1: this White House.
Speaker 3: So the idea that now they would leave.
Speaker 1: This what is arguably the most successful treaty in modern
Speaker 1: history is pretty out there.
Speaker 3: I hope they don't.
Speaker 1: Again, this is like where we put someone in as
Speaker 1: president who behaves just about as badly as anyone we've
Speaker 1: ever seen in history.
Speaker 2: Yeah, good stuff. So the one thing that is giving
Speaker 2: me a little hope in this week of extreme fuckery
Speaker 2: is Trump is getting a little bit of pushback from
Speaker 2: the normal sick Offhance's party, like Senator Jim Langford about
Speaker 2: the way he treated Zelenski.
Speaker 1: There clearly are a few people in the Senate, and
Speaker 1: they are Mitch McConnell, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and James
Speaker 1: Langford who are willing to push back against Trump. Now,
Speaker 1: does that mean that all of Trum's cabinet nominees have
Speaker 1: sailed through. Yes, So they're not pushing back in the
Speaker 1: way that they should be pushing back, but they're pushing
Speaker 1: back a little bit. Again, we are taking whatever we
Speaker 1: can get because the bar is so low. These Republicans
Speaker 1: are terrified of Trump. They are also wildly ineffective. The
Speaker 1: combination of the two has given Donald Trump basically a
Speaker 1: rubber stamp to do whatever the fuck he wants, so
Speaker 1: at least in this one moment, Langford said, I understand
Speaker 1: Zelensky is rightly concerned that Putin has violated every single
Speaker 1: agreement he's ever signed and can't be trusted again. That
Speaker 1: is an important thing because it's the truth. And you'll
Speaker 1: remember that after that Oval Office meeting, we saw there's
Speaker 1: been a lot on the right of sort of like
Speaker 1: maybe Ukrainon started the war, maybe you know, like there's
Speaker 1: been a lot of like revisionist history, right, just like
Speaker 1: they sort of COVID lockdowns were worse than COVID in
Speaker 1: their mind. We're getting some of that here. So I
Speaker 1: would say, look, there is no reason to think that
Speaker 1: Donald Trump will not do the worst possible thing. But
Speaker 1: let us hope that there will be some pushback. And
Speaker 1: this is so pathetic. I'm asking for the most pathetic
Speaker 1: things in the most pleading way. But please, if anyone
Speaker 1: has a conscience or a soul, this is not how
Speaker 1: any of this is supposed to work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'll see, so speaking of the way things aren't
Speaker 2: supposed to work. So Elon Musk went on Joe Rogan again.
Speaker 2: This is not the occasion where he smoked a blunt
Speaker 2: live on Joe Rogan. This is a different occasion, and
Speaker 2: it happened on Friday night. He called social Security a
Speaker 2: classic mantra of forty years of Republican talking points, the
Speaker 2: biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.
Speaker 1: Right, I mean, you pay into it and you get
Speaker 1: the money out. So technically it is not a Ponzi scheme.
Speaker 1: But Elon Musk has it absolutely in his crosshairs, and
Speaker 1: I think it's worth remembering that this is the richest
Speaker 1: man in the world. He desperately, desperately, desperately wants those
Speaker 1: tax cuts. He does not care how he gets them
Speaker 1: or what he cuts. Remember, he believes that the weather
Speaker 1: forecasting is too expensive. Right this is during a time
Speaker 1: of unprecedented wild weather and climate change.
Speaker 3: He really is absolutely.
Speaker 1: Just not thinking clearly and taking a chainsaw to the
Speaker 1: federal government. And also on stage, I have a late
Speaker 1: ad for the news cycle, which is the FDAs under
Speaker 1: the staunch leadership of one Robert F.
Speaker 3: Kennedy Junior.
Speaker 4: Oh can't wait to hear what he did.
Speaker 1: So this week the FDA can from the cancelation of
Speaker 1: a meeting of the Vaccine Advisory Committee to select a
Speaker 1: strain for this year's flu vaccine to target. It's the
Speaker 1: second disruption to this committee since Rfk's confirmation. Health groups
Speaker 1: and experts raised concerns that the lack of transparency and
Speaker 1: question the motives behind the decision. I think it's worth
Speaker 1: realizing that there's a real possibility that RFK Junior is
Speaker 1: going to stand in the way of vaccine development.
Speaker 3: Right now.
Speaker 1: Measles which was eradicated but is now back because of
Speaker 1: the scourge of anti vacs is ripping through Texas. It's
Speaker 1: already killed one child. It's also in New Mexico. There
Speaker 1: is a real chance that there is besides the fact,
Speaker 1: you'll remember that Elon has cut these funding grants and
Speaker 1: then the federal judiciary said they had to put them
Speaker 1: back on, and they haven't really been put back on,
Speaker 1: so they've been lying about whether or not the money's
Speaker 1: actually going to the recipients. So we have cancer research paused,
Speaker 1: we have universities in chaos, and then we have RFK
Speaker 1: Junior saying that he doesn't want to have this meeting
Speaker 1: or canceling twice now a meeting of the flu vaccine. Look,
Speaker 1: you and I are in our early fourties, well, mid forties,
Speaker 1: early forties. You and I are in our thirties, and
Speaker 1: we if we get the flu, it will be no
Speaker 1: big deal. But there are people have cancer, there are
Speaker 1: people who are elderly. There are people for whom getting
Speaker 1: the flu could be the end of their lives. And
Speaker 1: the blood will be on the hands of Robert F.
Speaker 1: Kennedy Junior. And it will not be the first time
Speaker 1: that he has deprived people of life saving vaccines. Just
Speaker 1: look at what happened in American Samoa.
Speaker 2: Yep, Smiley. One of the things I think gets us
Speaker 2: down regularly is that Trump will probably never be held
Speaker 2: accountable for much of his fuckery, and that is held
Speaker 2: an example of him taking the seized boxes back to
Speaker 2: Florida on Air Force one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump is taking those boxes back to Florida. Someday
Speaker 1: they'll be part of the Trump Presidential Library, which will
Speaker 1: be in a McDonald's. I actually think that the big
Speaker 1: problem with this sort of resistance to Trump is in
Speaker 1: one point zero was the idea that someone was going
Speaker 1: to hold him responsible.
Speaker 3: Wealthy white man get away with it.
Speaker 1: They always have, and I take no pleasure in reporting
Speaker 1: that they may always get away with that. This may
Speaker 1: be how it is in this country, and by the way,
Speaker 1: it's not new. This country has a long and storied
Speaker 1: history of white men getting away with unimaginable things. Look,
Speaker 1: no one is going to rescue us. Voters are going
Speaker 1: to rescue us, hopefully.
Speaker 4: I like that.
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln Project and
Speaker 1: the host of the Enemy's List. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Rick Wilson, Only.
Speaker 4: John Fast Happy Sunday as we record this to you.
Speaker 3: Happy Monday.
Speaker 4: Monday as y'all and the listening audience listen to this.
Speaker 1: That's right, you're driving to work and Rick and I
Speaker 1: are here to make sense of it all.
Speaker 3: Richard's man in the world.
Speaker 1: Bathrooms in public parks because he needs that tax cut.
Speaker 4: Discuss Look all of this bs about wave, fraud, waste,
Speaker 4: and abuse Elon Musk from the federal tax cut that
Speaker 4: he will receive if the White if the if the
Speaker 4: House passes their tax bill. They claim they found about
Speaker 4: two hundred billion dollars worth of tax cut so far,
Speaker 4: and it's really like sixty or something less than that,
Speaker 4: probably even lower than that.
Speaker 3: A lot of bitest stuff that was expired along, Yeah.
Speaker 4: Exactly, contracts have already led all that stuff. Anyway, let's
Speaker 4: say they found two hundred billion dollars. Elon Musk will
Speaker 4: personally benefit by over two hundred billion dollars from the
Speaker 4: tax cut that they're about to pass. So if we're
Speaker 4: looking for fraud, waste, and abuse, maybe we shouldn't pass
Speaker 4: a tax cut for dickheads.
Speaker 1: Yes, fraud, wasted abuse. So you're the richest man in
Speaker 1: the world. Okay, not a little, but by a lot. Okay,
Speaker 1: you have billions of dollars, You have multiple children by many, many.
Speaker 3: Women, fourteen as of you have decided.
Speaker 1: That the best use of your time is to sleep
Speaker 1: in the EEO B, which actually I think did we
Speaker 1: talk about the EOB that it's like a very beautiful,
Speaker 1: old but very dilapidated office BILB.
Speaker 4: I would not call it dilapidated, but I would call
Speaker 4: it a product of the late nineteenth century. Yes, and
Speaker 4: it is very cramped. I have been assigned over there
Speaker 4: for projects a couple of times when I was working
Speaker 4: in government.
Speaker 3: Drafty and called 's this way.
Speaker 4: There were eight of us in a little microscopically sized
Speaker 4: bullpen office. If I would guestimate that office was like
Speaker 4: twelve feet wide and sixteen feet long, with eight of
Speaker 4: us working in there. As they said, assholes and elbows.
Speaker 4: One of them's touching the other at any given time.
Speaker 1: Okay, well it doesn't matter. We don't know what he's
Speaker 1: doing there or how much he's there. But the point
Speaker 1: is he's large. He's often in Washington, DC with his
Speaker 1: crew of twenty something coders trying to figure out ways
Speaker 1: to cut fraud, waste and abuse or stuff.
Speaker 3: He just doesn't like.
Speaker 1: I just am surprised it didn't occur to him that
Speaker 1: this was like an incredibly bad look.
Speaker 4: I think you just said something interesting that I think
Speaker 4: we probably all need to take a deep breath and
Speaker 4: think hard about. Whenever he says fraud, waste, and abuse,
Speaker 4: it is actually about his aesthetic or business preferences. He
Speaker 4: doesn't like anything he considers woke because of his trans daughter.
Speaker 4: He doesn't like anything that is regulatory towards any of
Speaker 4: his massive corporate interests. With Musk being the biggest titty
Speaker 4: baby on the federal dole that has ever existed in history,
Speaker 4: he has received more money from the federal government from
Speaker 4: American taxpayers than any other individual person in history.
Speaker 3: Yes, so let's just talk about it. This weekend.
Speaker 1: What happened was on Friday we saw this Trump blow
Speaker 1: up where he and JD had a huge, I want
Speaker 1: to say embarrassing scene with the Zelensky Zelensky left. They
Speaker 1: didn't sign the minerals agreement. That is maybe over, maybe
Speaker 1: on hold. Then this weekend we saw more Republican town halls.
Speaker 1: We saw democratic town halls of voters freaking out. We
Speaker 1: saw protests at SpaceX and at Tesla in New York.
Speaker 1: We saw one thousand people in Vermont. I didn't even
Speaker 1: know there were a thousand people in Vermont protesting jd
Speaker 1: Vance's skiing vacation.
Speaker 4: Well, what we have here is a really I think indicative,
Speaker 4: long running signal that political markets give us. If you
Speaker 4: go back in nineteen ninety four, the town halls were
Speaker 4: a sign. In two thousand and six, the town halls
Speaker 4: were a sign in twenty and ten, the town halls
Speaker 4: were a sign in ninety four, and in ten they
Speaker 4: were a bad sign for Democrats. In two thousand and
Speaker 4: six and twenty eighteen they were bad signed for Republicans.
Speaker 4: So the town halls are a good early signal. And
Speaker 4: when Republicans are running away from their own town halls,
Speaker 4: and I don't mean just like not doing them, I
Speaker 4: mean physically fleeing.
Speaker 3: And stopping having them too.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, stopping having them is one thing, but physically
Speaker 4: running out of the room. As we saw with the
Speaker 4: Senator from Kansas yesterday, these guys understand and they know
Speaker 4: something's coming. They feel it in the wind. They know
Speaker 4: that the cuts now have cut into Maga country, the
Speaker 4: cuts now have cut deep into Red states.
Speaker 1: More coming, right, I mean they want to cut eight
Speaker 1: hundred and eighty billion dollars from medicaid.
Speaker 4: As we have reviewed a hundred times, there is one
Speaker 4: place where the money's at, and that money is in Medicaid, Medicare,
Speaker 4: social Security. You could cut all the discretionary spending you want,
Speaker 4: and you will not get to a two trillion dollar netcut,
Speaker 4: which is what they say they want, and servicing the debt,
Speaker 4: which you know, the social programs are what drove most
Speaker 4: debt anyway, So long story short.
Speaker 3: All the tax cuts too.
Speaker 4: I mean, well, that's what I'm getting to is these
Speaker 4: guys are now proposing in the short run, the Elon
Speaker 4: tax cut will cost four point nine trillion. With a
Speaker 4: T dollars, you could cut the government down to six
Speaker 4: guys working around a table in a Kinko's copy shop,
Speaker 4: and you will not have enough cuts to pay for
Speaker 4: the fact that this four point nine trillion dollar tax
Speaker 4: cut when it unfolds over four to five years after
Speaker 4: it's done, it costs US an additional five trillion dollars.
Speaker 4: On top of it, We're not going to be able
Speaker 4: to service the goddamn debt. We're gonna have to go
Speaker 4: to a more expensive debt option. This thing is a
Speaker 4: flaming shit show. It's the fire Festival of tax bills.
Speaker 4: It's a shit show on the peak of burning Tire Mountain.
Speaker 4: There's nothing good about this thing.
Speaker 1: Yes, it is pretty fascinating. So look, you and I
Speaker 1: were talking about this carvel op ad. I'm going to
Speaker 1: write a column about it in my Vanity Fair column.
Speaker 3: I assume you've written about it.
Speaker 4: Are will a little bit?
Speaker 3: So?
Speaker 1: Carville says the best thing Democrats can do is nothing. Now,
Speaker 1: clearly the Democratic leadership agrees with him, right, because we
Speaker 1: haven't seen them out there. But my hottest take is
Speaker 1: that this is a very optimistic assessment. What I feel
Speaker 1: like is so annoying about this take is that Carville
Speaker 1: is assuming we're going to have elections in two years.
Speaker 3: I am not.
Speaker 4: I would not make that assumption.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think if we are out there fighting,
Speaker 1: we will have elections in two years. I think if
Speaker 1: we roll over and play dead, Donald Trump will say,
Speaker 1: you know, they're not that upset.
Speaker 3: We can do whatever we want.
Speaker 1: The reason that Trump one point, oh, was such a
Speaker 1: failure was because people pushed back at every point.
Speaker 4: What happened in twenty seventeen and eighteen is that people
Speaker 4: went out every single day and beat the damn drum.
Speaker 4: We believe X, Trump believes Y. We will do a
Speaker 4: Trump believes B. And the things Trump believes and the
Speaker 4: things Trump will do will hurt you, we will help you.
Speaker 4: That is a simple construct. Look, I love James, but
Speaker 4: and my friend Evan Field's you know, he's like with
Speaker 4: respecting this is now's the time to shut the fuck up, bro,
Speaker 4: because fighting Trump it doesn't mean you have to swing
Speaker 4: at every pitch. Okay, it doesn't mean you have to
Speaker 4: follow every rabbit hole. Like, look, how much have you
Speaker 4: actually seen me like complaining about the Gulf of America bullshit,
Speaker 4: it's bullshit. You'll see me complain a lot about Donald
Speaker 4: Trump and jd Vance doing a strip tease for Vladimir
Speaker 4: Putin in the Oval Office with that shameful horseshit from Friday.
Speaker 4: You'll see me complain a lot about Elon Musk savagely
Speaker 4: going through without any comprehensive understanding or plan firing vital
Speaker 4: federal employees who do things like I don't know, deal
Speaker 4: with bird flu, I don't know, deal with radioactive waste
Speaker 4: or nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Well, what about during the cabinet meeting when Elon was like,
Speaker 1: by the way, when I saw that, I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this can't possibly be real, and he was like, the
Speaker 1: a Bola people, we accidentally fired them, but don't worry,
Speaker 1: we got them back.
Speaker 4: Well, and of course it was a lie. Right, of
Speaker 4: course it was a fucking lie.
Speaker 1: But even still, as soon as you say something like that,
Speaker 1: despite the fact that it was a lie, that is
Speaker 1: when you lose all credibility. And if a Democrat had said,
Speaker 1: we fired the a Bola people, but don't worry, we
Speaker 1: got them back, and actually it wasn't true.
Speaker 3: Like the world would be on.
Speaker 4: Fire right, Washington, DC would be an armed camp. There
Speaker 4: would be people with pitchforks and torches marching through the streets.
Speaker 4: The whole thing is such hot garbage. And again I
Speaker 4: know that at the Washington Post now we're focusing only
Speaker 4: on individual liberty and free markets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, it's suspiciously like the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Speaker 3: So it'll be interesting to say.
Speaker 4: And if you want a Wall Street Journal editorial page,
Speaker 4: there's a perfectly good one at the Wall Street Journal.
Speaker 4: But this idea that we're going to have a unconstrained
Speaker 4: lunatic hopped up on ketamine and adderall with a bunch
Speaker 4: of idiots.
Speaker 3: Allegedly.
Speaker 4: Okay, you know what he admits.
Speaker 3: He admits he's on the k allegedly.
Speaker 4: Okay, all right, Well, if we're going to have a
Speaker 4: guy who behaves as if he every morning gets up
Speaker 4: and does a booty bump of cocaine and then runs
Speaker 4: around the government with a flamethrower and a chainsaw, not
Speaker 4: cutting things that are necessarily wasteful, just randomly doing it
Speaker 4: for the purposes of terrorizing the federal workforce.
Speaker 1: And he also cuts things he doesn't like. I think
Speaker 1: that's important. These aren't necessarily real cuts into just that
Speaker 1: things he doesn't agree with he considers to be fraudulent.
Speaker 4: Right, So when he goes out and says, well, AI
Speaker 4: can forecast the weather better than the weather forecasters and fires,
Speaker 4: I think it was like two thirds of the folks
Speaker 4: that Noah are about to be shitcammed. What he fails
Speaker 4: to realize is that all that fucking data for the
Speaker 4: AI comes from really smart people at Noah. The cuts
Speaker 4: here agus like, we're saving so much money. We're all
Speaker 4: getting the five thousand dollars check. You are not.
Speaker 3: Nobody's getting any checks.
Speaker 4: Wrons you're not getting a five thousand dollars show.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I watch c SPAN because
Speaker 1: I have no life. Nobody's paying me for this, but
Speaker 1: if you want to send me another flea some here.
Speaker 4: My fiance's favorite sweatshirt is se Span and chill.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I was watching the hearing of the There's a person,
Speaker 1: an Army secretary who's sitting there for his hearing, and
Speaker 1: he's a mega mega donor, Trump megadonor who knows from
Speaker 1: Palm Beach.
Speaker 3: You know, this is the cabinet.
Speaker 1: This is the administration for the billionaires, by the billionaires,
Speaker 1: and the American economy is not working for a huge
Speaker 1: swath of the American people. And you have a government
Speaker 1: that is almost entirely made of very, very very wealthy people.
Speaker 4: Well, they are very wealthy, and yet they are also
Speaker 4: a proof point that just being a billionaire doesn't make
Speaker 4: you smart, and just being a billionaire doesn't make you
Speaker 4: have any moral grounding, and the few people that aren't
Speaker 4: billionaires seem to be even worse.
Speaker 3: Right, but it does make you very emboldened.
Speaker 4: Oh yes, and let's be quite real about it. This.
Speaker 4: They do live in a different world Molly. They don't
Speaker 4: work for much every day, and they don't wait for
Speaker 4: much every day, and they believe that they're going to
Speaker 4: ride out anything that happens in our economy without responsibility
Speaker 4: or damage to themselves.
Speaker 1: Right, we're seeing anecdotally and there was reporting too that
Speaker 1: there's you know, one hundred people in Staten Island, right,
Speaker 1: Staten Island.
Speaker 3: Because a red burrow, very very red, it's.
Speaker 1: Deeply red and they are out there protesting. So we
Speaker 1: are seeing this everywhere. So the question I think is like,
Speaker 1: when will democratic leadership engage with this?
Speaker 3: And also why are they not doing it yet?
Speaker 4: I have said this now probably forty eight different ways.
Speaker 4: But if they do not hold the line on the
Speaker 4: spending bill with with Johnson, they are funding Dose, they
Speaker 4: are funding Elon, They're funding Trump's bullshit, they are funding
Speaker 4: Trump's tax They're going to nudge up to being co
Speaker 4: conspirators if they take the bait from these these people.
Speaker 4: And I know and you know what's going on right now?
Speaker 3: Okay, wait, what's going on now?
Speaker 4: They're going behind the scenes to Hakeem Jeffries and say, well,
Speaker 4: your people need their funds for you, their districts, they
Speaker 4: need their programs and their projects for their districts, and
Speaker 4: we're going to make sure you're taken care of. And
Speaker 4: you know, we'll make sure Doz doesn't fuck you guys
Speaker 4: on this thing or that thing. If you'll just help
Speaker 4: us out this one time. Right, this is a trap.
Speaker 4: It is a trap. Do not follow in the trap.
Speaker 4: As they say in Ober, there were arthel do not
Speaker 4: seek the treasure.
Speaker 1: But it's also a lie, right like what we saw.
Speaker 1: And I think this goes back to the Zelenski meeting
Speaker 1: on Friday. What Zelensky needed, was wanted was a security guarantee.
Speaker 1: What Trump would not give him was a security guarantee. Now,
Speaker 1: behind the scenes, all of the soothers and smoothers, including
Speaker 1: Lindsay Graham, were like, you just need to be and
Speaker 1: do whatever he wants and not worry about the security guarantee.
Speaker 1: You can trust us. And here's the fundamental problem. If
Speaker 1: you are making a deal with Donald Trump, you really
Speaker 1: think you can trust him.
Speaker 4: First off, let's be very clear about one thing. Donald
Speaker 4: Trump from the very beginning was going to screw Zelensky over.
Speaker 4: And it's not just because he loves the taste of
Speaker 4: Putin's taint. Donald Trump was gonna Scowzelensky because Zelensky in
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen would not help Rudy Giuliani's drug deal, as
Speaker 4: John Bolton called it, to make up a false dossier
Speaker 4: about Joe Biden. He was never going to forgive that.
Speaker 4: Trump looks at that moment as where everything went off
Speaker 4: the rails for him and the impeachments and the criminal stuff.
Speaker 4: That's where Trump looks at the inflection point, and he
Speaker 4: blames Zolensky personally. So none of this in that meeting
Speaker 4: should have shocked anybody, I mean, except for the like
Speaker 4: over the top drama Queen jd Vance, you know, please Daddy,
Speaker 4: look at me, love me, SIMPI. But this was Trump
Speaker 4: having his petty vengeance. Yes, did Zelensky need a deal,
Speaker 4: he did. Did Trump want to make Putin happy? He did.
Speaker 4: But the pettiness of it, to put the security of
Speaker 4: the world behind Donald Trump needing to be a little
Speaker 4: bitch is exactly what you saw on display there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just don't totally understand what the point of
Speaker 1: that was, right, because it didn't get anyone anywhere they
Speaker 1: needed to be. It didn't help anyone.
Speaker 4: The hard fact underneath all of this Molly is they
Speaker 4: don't care. Everyone in that room, with a couple of
Speaker 4: the idiot exceptions, knew what they were doing. The White
Speaker 4: House planned this, they knew the harm it would cause,
Speaker 4: America's reputation in the world, and they didn't care because
Speaker 4: that's what Trump wanted from them. They are not about
Speaker 4: America or their constitutional oath. They are about making that
Speaker 4: more unhappy.
Speaker 3: See.
Speaker 1: I actually think, and I love you, but I actually
Speaker 1: think you're wrong. People have been saying this that they
Speaker 1: planned it, but I don't think they planned it. I
Speaker 1: think everyone told Zelensky how to behave the same way
Speaker 1: that they told maccrone, the same way that they told
Speaker 1: kier how to behave. Right, they said, this is what
Speaker 1: you do. You go in there, you suck up to him.
Speaker 1: I think Zelensky has always been very obstreperous, and remember
Speaker 1: we had reporting that he had been very tough with
Speaker 1: Biden too, right, he felt he could kind of boss
Speaker 1: Biden around.
Speaker 3: So I just want to add that again.
Speaker 1: I think what they did was appalling, But I'm just saying, like,
Speaker 1: I think Zelensky went in there and was like, I
Speaker 1: want a security guarantee and sort of thought he could
Speaker 1: get it. And then JD. Vance was like, I'll out
Speaker 1: Trump Trump and let's go. People want to at all
Speaker 1: times give Donald Trump more credit than he probably deserves.
Speaker 4: I will say this, there was no scenario where Zelensky
Speaker 4: walked in that office and there's another reporting about the
Speaker 4: White House staff like this is going to be great.
Speaker 4: We've got in said they knew what was coming, they
Speaker 4: planned this.
Speaker 1: But they wanted to sign this deal. I mean they
Speaker 1: thought they were making a deal.
Speaker 4: You know what. I have a theory of the case
Speaker 4: on the deal that they don't give a fuck about
Speaker 4: the deal. The deal was an excuse for them to
Speaker 4: blow this up. Because if you want to go and
Speaker 4: get the same quantity of rare minerals, we'll go to
Speaker 4: make a deal in Chile or Ecuador or Argentina. It
Speaker 4: was a lot of stuff closer to home less problematic.
Speaker 4: This was always an excuse, not a reason.
Speaker 1: In my view, certainly possible. Thank you, Rick Wilson every time.
Speaker 4: I'll see you next week. Thanks.
Speaker 1: Ben Wickler is the chairperson of the Wisconsin Democrats. Welcome
Speaker 1: back too Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Ben.
Speaker 5: Thanks Milli, it's great to be back with you.
Speaker 1: I'm so excited to have you here because I'm thinking
Speaker 1: a lot about the way in which Democrats engage with
Speaker 1: normal people. And you are in Wisconsin and you have
Speaker 1: had great success and then also a band cycle with
Speaker 1: interacting with normal people on the ground in Wisconsin.
Speaker 3: So we first kind of get us up to speed.
Speaker 1: What's Wisconsin like right now and what are you looking at.
Speaker 5: Well, it's interesting because Wisconsin is the first state that
Speaker 5: actually has a state wide election in this new Trump era.
Speaker 5: Last fall, we had the highest turnout in the country,
Speaker 5: and that's because Republican turnout rose everywhere. Wisconsin was one
Speaker 5: of the few states where Democratic turnout went up also,
Speaker 5: and so we had more Democratic voters for Harris than
Speaker 5: we did for Biden in most counties, rural areas, suburbs, cities.
Speaker 5: We had more young people voted for Harris than for
Speaker 5: Biden in Wisconsin. It's just that there's even more turnout
Speaker 5: on the Republican side. So there's a kind of a
Speaker 5: fever pitch of energy here. And now on April first,
Speaker 5: we have a state Supreme Court election, and we're getting
Speaker 5: our first taste of what politics is like in this
Speaker 5: new Trump era. And what we're seeing is on our side.
Speaker 5: After a kind of period of grieving and somewhat like
Speaker 5: curling up pine fetal position among Democrats, people are back
Speaker 5: out knocking on doors in the snow, and on the
Speaker 5: Republican side, Elon Musk is now personally flooding the zone
Speaker 5: with millions of dollars of his money to like Brad Shimmel,
Speaker 5: who's the maga can it for State Supreme Court against
Speaker 5: Susan Crawford, who's the kind of like common sense, fair
Speaker 5: minded judge who's running for Supreme Court that we're supporting,
Speaker 5: And it feels like a proxy for the national site,
Speaker 5: like are we going to have laws in this country
Speaker 5: or we're going to have judges who actually the out
Speaker 5: pay attention to what the constitution says? Will the public
Speaker 5: get to choose who our leaders are or will this
Speaker 5: basically a Trump Musk plutocracy or kleptocracy or whatever kind
Speaker 5: of autography if you want to call it.
Speaker 1: So Mosk has donated a lot to the race and
Speaker 1: then also has a pack, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he's doing it all through his own vehicle. So
Speaker 5: he has super called building America's future that I think
Speaker 5: is like two point six million so far at two
Speaker 5: million through America Pack.
Speaker 4: I might have those reverse.
Speaker 5: He added one of another million dollars in tv ads yesterday.
Speaker 5: At the moment we're recording this, and it doesn't seem
Speaker 5: like it's stopping. He tweeted about the race three times yesterday.
Speaker 5: Who is over two hundred and thirty million. I still
Speaker 5: call it Twitter Twitter followers. He's frenetically attacking social security
Speaker 5: and healthcare and trying to freeze cancer research and all
Speaker 5: that stuff. At the same time, he has enough time
Speaker 5: to try to buy the judiciary by trying to install
Speaker 5: Brad Schimmel, the mega judge in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: One of the things about Trump was that he was
Speaker 1: not very focused on elections that weren't his, and he
Speaker 1: got people out for this twenty twenty four election in
Speaker 1: ways we hadn't seen, perhaps because they just were sort
Speaker 1: of these low frequency voters who maybe had never voted
Speaker 1: or weren't planning on voting, but voted for him.
Speaker 3: Do you think Elon can get.
Speaker 1: Those people out for a judge election.
Speaker 5: Well, that's exactly the question. So Brad Schimmel is the
Speaker 5: former Republican attorney general in the state. He's been part
Speaker 5: of the kind of mega wing of politics for a while.
Speaker 5: He's very clear that his goal is not to persuade people.
Speaker 5: It's to turn out hardcore Republican voters, to turn out
Speaker 5: Trump supporters who might vote. And on our side, Susan
Speaker 5: Crawford the kind of judge the people across the political
Speaker 5: spectrum used to vote for it. Now there's still some
Speaker 5: slice of kind of moderate Republicans who are horrified by
Speaker 5: especially by what they're seeing now with must just like
Speaker 5: defunding medical research and.
Speaker 3: The NIH Fund, yeah.
Speaker 5: And iah, Yeah, huge cuts to universities in Wisconsin that like,
Speaker 5: so many people here are directly affected by this. We
Speaker 5: just got a breaking newslayer today that the VA had
Speaker 5: laid off disabled veterans who were working on buying veterans
Speaker 5: benefits in Wisconsin. That's happening in real time today. And
Speaker 5: so that guy coming in and buying the State Supreme
Speaker 5: Court that repels people too. And on our side, like
Speaker 5: we have to just make sure that anyone who doesn't
Speaker 5: like what they're seeing from DC turns out and votes
Speaker 5: for Susan Crawford to make sure that the State Supreme
Speaker 5: Court doesn't become a rubber stamp for this kind of
Speaker 5: internal coup that's operating nationally. The other big fight on
Speaker 5: this is and this is sort of feeded from the
Speaker 5: national spotlight, but we had an abortion ban here for
Speaker 5: four hundred and fifty one days. It was written in
Speaker 5: eighteen forty nine, before modern medicine. Brad Schimmel like talked
Speaker 5: about how there's nothing wrong with that law and there's
Speaker 5: no constitutional right to abortion in our state. This is
Speaker 5: something that's going to be decided by the state Supreme Court.
Speaker 5: There was actually a case when Red Shimbal was Attorney general.
Speaker 5: He went after Planned Parenthood and Planned Parenthood hired as
Speaker 5: its lawyer Susan Crawford. There's a case in Wisconsin called
Speaker 5: the Plan Parentood versus Brad Shimmel. And that question also
Speaker 5: one of the big defining questions in this in the
Speaker 5: Supreme Court race, which is will people vote for freedom
Speaker 5: in this moment as they did in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: And if you look at the Republican ads, they're just
Speaker 5: driving fear. It's like fear of crime, crime, crime, crime,
Speaker 5: fear for fear. And Jimble doesn't have a great record
Speaker 5: on that either, but his but that's the that's the card.
Speaker 1: That's yes, what does it look like on the ground
Speaker 1: when you talk to people, I mean Trump is sort
Speaker 1: of starting to dip in the polls. Elon is very
Speaker 1: unpopular polling wise. But is there a disconnect, Like Elon
Speaker 1: is doing these ads against this Wisconsin judge. Do people
Speaker 1: understand that it's Elon? Is it a proxy battle for
Speaker 1: Elon popularity or is it proxy battle for Trump popul.
Speaker 3: What is it?
Speaker 5: So it's starting to become a proxy for muss Trump popularity.
Speaker 5: Elon's ads don't mention Elon smartly Smartly, Yeah, It is
Speaker 5: essentially our job to make sure that people know that
Speaker 5: Musk actually has a lawsuit in Wisconsin courts around Tesla,
Speaker 5: so he also is trying to get as always his
Speaker 5: own bag. But so often when you're like talking to people,
Speaker 5: they're just starting to tune into the fact there is
Speaker 5: an election Aprile first, these typically have much lower turnout
Speaker 5: than November elections, and they're seeing all these ads and
Speaker 5: then explaining that this is Musk who is trying to
Speaker 5: buy the Supreme Court to remove an each check on
Speaker 5: his power. That is highly motivating to a ton of people.
Speaker 5: And so that's we have this for this month. We
Speaker 5: have this opportunity with our thousands of volunteers knocking on
Speaker 5: doors with you know, all the kinds of communication we
Speaker 5: can do to kind of democrats and moderates and people
Speaker 5: who just care about the American experiment and systim of
Speaker 5: government like that's that is a super motivating message. There
Speaker 5: are also some mega super fans of Musk, like no question,
Speaker 5: and then there's a kind of broader electorate that is
Speaker 5: generally dismayed about what's happening, but it's trying to make
Speaker 5: that of it all and different messages are probably going
Speaker 5: to move different people. But it's possible, I think over
Speaker 5: this month that this becomes a kind of referendum on
Speaker 5: what Musk and Trump are doing in a way that
Speaker 5: affects the national conversation. Because if given that we're being
Speaker 5: outspent now by Musk and Trump, like if we can
Speaker 5: defeat them in this moment, and I think the polls
Speaker 5: are getting more back soon that this is like a
Speaker 5: pretty tight race. If we defeat them, then that shows
Speaker 5: that Musk is not politically vulnerable. If we defeat Musk
Speaker 5: and Trump and bad shimmele in this moment, If Susan
Speaker 5: Crawford gets the tie breaking vote on the Wisconsin State
Speaker 5: Supreme Court, that shows that operation Musk is not politically
Speaker 5: and vulnerable, that there's actual price to be paid for this.
Speaker 5: And what we need most of all nationally now is
Speaker 5: for Democrats to feel the boldness to fight back and
Speaker 5: for Republicans to realize that they're tying themselves to a
Speaker 5: sinking ship if they if they back everything Musk is doing,
Speaker 5: Republicans to fear general election political consequences instead of just
Speaker 5: primary challenges funded by Musk from their right. My goal
Speaker 5: is that we support Susan Crawford to win an election
Speaker 5: for democracy and freedom and fairness and justice, and also
Speaker 5: shatter this idea that Musk is operating with total political
Speaker 5: impunity and put some energy into the much broader public
Speaker 5: that doesn't want to feel in us stopping their Social
Speaker 5: Security payments and firing the people who administer veterans benefits.
Speaker 1: Do you see on the ground, I mean, like what
Speaker 1: they're doing. It's five weeks into this shit show and
Speaker 1: already you know, they've slashed the federal government.
Speaker 3: They're talking about doing more. You know, you're seeing veterans.
Speaker 1: Laid off, Like do you see people like this story
Speaker 1: in the Washington Post about the woman who did it
Speaker 1: voted for Trump because she thought he was going to
Speaker 1: give her free IVF and then she got fired.
Speaker 3: I mean, are you seeing that kind of thing in
Speaker 3: Wisconsin or not yet?
Speaker 5: It's starting to spread pretty rapidly, fascinatingly week by week.
Speaker 5: This reminds me of this time in twenty twenty when
Speaker 5: the COVID pandemic had started. People paying a lot of
Speaker 5: attention were like hair and fire about it. The general
Speaker 5: public hadn't woken up, and then it started affecting more
Speaker 5: and more daily life to let up endit everything. And
Speaker 5: right now it feels like it's starting to reach that
Speaker 5: kind of proportion. It's a shockwave that hits different places
Speaker 5: at different moments. I can see the kind of energy
Speaker 5: on the ground is explosive. We're having more volunteers showing
Speaker 5: up for our door knocking than we did in twenty
Speaker 5: twenty three, which was a record breaking year for us.
Speaker 5: Right now, as we're recording this, my mom is at
Speaker 5: a protest at a Tesla supercharging station a couple of
Speaker 5: miles from here, with signs about Musk and Brad Shimmel
Speaker 5: and saying about for Susan Crawford that she made. There
Speaker 5: is a real sense, I think among Democrats across the
Speaker 5: country and people disaffected from the GOP that we're in
Speaker 5: an emergency moment and we have to figure out what
Speaker 5: to do. And the Supreme Court race in Wisconsin gives
Speaker 5: people a thing to do in a way that we're
Speaker 5: starting to see really bubble up. And this is not
Speaker 5: at all a slam dunk, like this is not a
Speaker 5: sure thing race. We're facing just a wall of the
Speaker 5: right wing machine. So this is kind of all hands
Speaker 5: on deck moment here.
Speaker 1: I was talking to a senator yesterday who was saying
Speaker 1: that he had had this call in town hall and
Speaker 1: they had had thirty six thousand people and their state
Speaker 1: barely has thirty six thousand people, like that's something like
Speaker 1: five percent of the state. And I said, what do
Speaker 1: you know? Are they angry are there? And he said,
Speaker 1: the overwhelming feeling they have is fear.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I believe that there's a real fear that the
Speaker 5: things that people have counted on, that their planes will
Speaker 5: land safely, that their food will be inspected, that they'll
Speaker 5: be able to get medicine if they're sick, that these things,
Speaker 5: the pillars that undergird this the basics of life, are
Speaker 5: being kicked out from under them by the richest people
Speaker 5: in the world for their own benefit, and no one
Speaker 5: knows how far this is going to go. There are
Speaker 5: rumors flying that Musk and Trump have a plan, and
Speaker 5: I think it's worth saying that the Republican Party has
Speaker 5: a plan because this is all Musk executing that have
Speaker 5: the total support of the entire Respublican Senate. Caucust is
Speaker 5: not just one dude.
Speaker 3: This was their wish lists.
Speaker 5: They're planning to fire half of the people who work
Speaker 5: for the Social Security Administration. It's like a hundred twenty
Speaker 5: thousand people, and we'd go to Social Security offices to
Speaker 5: work out problems with their benefits. If nobody's there when
Speaker 5: they show up, like people are going to die.
Speaker 3: That's the point.
Speaker 5: That's it. It comes back to people's lives. This chainsaw
Speaker 5: is not being applied to acronym agencies that do nothing.
Speaker 5: It's being applied to people's lives, to people. Nobody voted
Speaker 5: for this, nobody asking for this. This is a fringe extreme,
Speaker 5: you know, neo tech, monarchist like nightmare that's being imposed
Speaker 5: on the country without the country's consent, and a way
Speaker 5: to fight back that actually says something does something, It
Speaker 5: means something is something people are grief for because the
Speaker 5: antidote of fear is to realize that you actually have power,
Speaker 5: and this fight is a place where people have power.
Speaker 1: In twenty sixteen, what happened was that every election after
Speaker 1: twenty sixteen that was a low turnout election quote unquote,
Speaker 1: even though they had higher turnout than historically they might have,
Speaker 1: every single one, you know, Republicans just got shell act right,
Speaker 1: every special every you know, because they were just so
Speaker 1: you know, informed, voters were furious and even like you
Speaker 1: look at that polling right that Biden voters, you know,
Speaker 1: he did much better among people who read newspapers, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, like, so, are you worried that Elon's money
Speaker 1: has closed the gap? I mean that it's not going
Speaker 1: to be the same, or do you still think hope
Speaker 1: that there could be?
Speaker 4: I think there is hope here. There really is hope.
Speaker 5: And the reason is exactly what you're saying, that that
Speaker 5: people who are paying attention, who are the people who
Speaker 5: generally vote in Supreme Court races, see what's being done
Speaker 5: to them, to families across the state. They see that
Speaker 5: the world's richest man is trying to defeat Susan Crawford
Speaker 5: so he can have his personal bagman cast the deciding
Speaker 5: vote in Wisconsin's Apreme Court. And for people that are
Speaker 5: paying attention, there's there's a sense of urgency about voting.
Speaker 5: And the question mark is whether, if you're listening right now,
Speaker 5: can you volunteer for enough shifts, if you're in Wisconsin
Speaker 5: and you bring enough friends to the polls to outrace
Speaker 5: the impact of Elon Musk's millions. And I think there's
Speaker 5: reason to believe the answer is yes. This is I
Speaker 5: think a race that is within our power to win.
Speaker 5: But I think what I want to say, with a
Speaker 5: big blinking set of red lights around it, is we
Speaker 5: should not expect the kind of landslide that we had
Speaker 5: in twenty twenty three. We won that by eleven percentage points.
Speaker 5: Don't think that this will take care of itself because
Speaker 5: of asymmetric inversion and engagement exactly like, think of this
Speaker 5: as a job to be done. This is work that
Speaker 5: we have to do to make sure that that every
Speaker 5: friend and neighbor are that every kid who's away for college,
Speaker 5: that they all know that this is a must vote
Speaker 5: election and that they act accordingly.
Speaker 1: So I was in DC for a day and a
Speaker 1: half I made it back hoof and the big dinner
Speaker 1: party conversation in DC is what should democrats be doing?
Speaker 1: I think of you as like your ability to or
Speaker 1: rate has elevated you. I'm sorry to tell you, so
Speaker 1: what should it takes? I take no pleasure in saying
Speaker 1: this to you because I know how. But what is
Speaker 1: the message that Democrats should be doing? And are they doing.
Speaker 3: A good enough job? And what would you like to
Speaker 3: see them do? If not?
Speaker 5: So, when democrats are communicating, they're often doing a good job.
Speaker 5: To me, the volume of communication needs to go up
Speaker 5: as high as we can crank it because right now
Speaker 5: the other side that Trump and Musk are narrating this
Speaker 5: moment and they want to make this about the ravel rising,
Speaker 5: you know, pirates trying to mess up the deep state,
Speaker 5: as opposed to the reality that this is the richest
Speaker 5: people in the world, far right extremists who are attacking
Speaker 5: working people across the country, no matter you know what
Speaker 5: they look like, or where they live, or who they
Speaker 5: voted for. If you're somebody who doesn't have billions of
Speaker 5: dollars that are going to multiply if you get a
Speaker 5: giant tax cut, they're stealing from you. To benefit themselves,
Speaker 5: and these attacks on the on the government do nothing
Speaker 5: to help.
Speaker 3: This is this is a rich taking from the poor.
Speaker 5: Rich taking from the middle class, from the poor, even
Speaker 5: from you know, if you're a small business owner and
Speaker 5: suddenly the small business administration is gutted, like, this is
Speaker 5: not good for you either. This is a tiny group
Speaker 5: of people at the expense of everybody else, and they're
Speaker 5: breaking every rule and every law to be able to
Speaker 5: do it. But the key thing is to communicate about
Speaker 5: the impact on people's lives and to make the people
Speaker 5: who are affected the heroes. Make the people who just
Speaker 5: want to keep the forest from burning down, or the
Speaker 5: people who want to make sure plans land safely, or
Speaker 5: that we get the next cancer research breakthrough, or just
Speaker 5: people who get Social Security texture who rely on Medicaid
Speaker 5: because your kids have disabilities. In Wisconsin, thirty percent of
Speaker 5: rural kids are born covered by Medicaid, you know, any
Speaker 5: of the things Republicans try to paint it as this
Speaker 5: is a broad bust attack on just about everyone. So
Speaker 5: to me, the job one is to put the affected people,
Speaker 5: regular folks across this country, working people front and center
Speaker 5: in the communication tie back what they're doing constantly to
Speaker 5: who it hurts and what their motive is, which is
Speaker 5: to enrich themselves at the expense of everyone else, and
Speaker 5: do that through massive on every platform and channel and
Speaker 5: every state volume of communication. The kinds of town halls
Speaker 5: that Democrats are doing to their great credit, that are
Speaker 5: getting attacked by people, and the act that is showing
Speaker 5: up Republicans downhalls, that's exactly the right move. The second
Speaker 5: thing I think for all of us is to lift
Speaker 5: up people that are doing this well. So when when
Speaker 5: Democrats are communicating really effectively, let's make it go viral.
Speaker 5: When people are fighting back against the GOP, exposing something
Speaker 5: the Republicans are doing, when they're championing laws that can
Speaker 5: actually help to protect people. When you have Susan Crawford
Speaker 5: who's standing up like a David against this goliath of
Speaker 5: beingland Musk, let's make sure that they become heroes in
Speaker 5: the eyes of the public, that people find out about
Speaker 5: what they're doing. To be able to get the hope
Speaker 5: that comes for knowing that there actually are people fighting back.
Speaker 5: I think often we can slip into just being frustrated
Speaker 5: that we're not saying things we want to happen. But
Speaker 5: the most powerful force in behavior modification is positive reinforcement.
Speaker 5: You want to make it great for people to do
Speaker 5: the right thing and great things. And there are Democrats
Speaker 5: doing great stuff. Let's lift them up. And then the
Speaker 5: third thing is to win elections. It's to channel all
Speaker 5: this energy and fury and rage and fear that people
Speaker 5: have into elections where they're volunteering, they're donating. By the way,
Speaker 5: wisdoms dot organ slash volunteer with them that org slash
Speaker 5: donate or Crawford for wi dot dot com. I can
Speaker 5: chip in to help Susan Crawford by actually getting involved
Speaker 5: in elections and winning. We show that Republicans have made
Speaker 5: themselves politically toxic, and I think politicians pay attention to
Speaker 5: what happens in actual electoral outcomes even more than than
Speaker 5: polls or campaign contributions. A lot of people, a lot
Speaker 5: of Republicans right now, are just trying to figure out
Speaker 5: where the wind is blowing. And there are people who's
Speaker 5: incentive is to convince them that their biggest political risk
Speaker 5: for them is to not follow along with everything Musk
Speaker 5: and Trump try to do. They need to see vividly
Speaker 5: in electoral results that their jobs, their political careers are
Speaker 5: on the line, and that this will very quickly become
Speaker 5: a career ending mistake to just go along with this
Speaker 5: assault on the foundations of American democracy and freedom in
Speaker 5: the middle class. And if we can send that message electorally,
Speaker 5: that creates the conditions for Democrats to sweep in. There's
Speaker 5: thirty four governor's races in twenty twenty six, you know,
Speaker 5: to this November, there's chances to flip legislative chambers across
Speaker 5: the country. There's the House majority. If we have a
Speaker 5: twenty ten like cycle, we win the Senate majority in
Speaker 5: twenty twenty six as well twenty ten in reverse, and
Speaker 5: like with Republicans start realizing that they're sowing the wind
Speaker 5: and about to reap the whirlwind, then they might start
Speaker 5: cracking and actually, you know, back pedaling on the constant support.
Speaker 5: And if they don't, they're going to lose their jobs
Speaker 5: very soon. We need to accelerate that process, and to
Speaker 5: do it, races like Wisconsin Supreme Court race and New
Speaker 5: York's twenty six US House special election in Florida's first
Speaker 5: and six congrationial district special elections give us a chance
Speaker 5: to paint a giant warning sign on the canvas of
Speaker 5: American politics.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Ben, Thank.
Speaker 5: You Ben, Thanks to your listeners for helping with Susan Crawford.
Speaker 2: And now we have a special excerpt from our YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: It's a fantastic interview Molly did with former Labor Secretary
Speaker 2: Robert Reich. If you want to hear the whole thing,
Speaker 2: please head to our brand new YouTube channel, where we're
Speaker 2: dropping three videos every single week of interviews that you
Speaker 2: won't hear on Fast Politics.
Speaker 6: Well, hello, Ollie's awfully gotten nice to do this again,
Speaker 6: and also good to see you.
Speaker 1: It's good to see you and very you know, just delighted.
Speaker 1: So let's talk a little bit about where we are
Speaker 1: sort of. You know, this is like an incredible, strange,
Speaker 1: transformative moment for labor. Can we talk about this?
Speaker 6: Yes, well, it's it's strange and transformative for everything, but
Speaker 6: absolutely for American workers, for labor. It is particularly weird
Speaker 6: because here the president, who remember, was elected partly because
Speaker 6: he was going to be the voice, you know, your voice,
Speaker 6: the voice of working people who have been they've been
Speaker 6: shafted over the last it's not just the last ten years,
Speaker 6: twenty years, it's really forty years. I mean, the median
Speaker 6: wage in America of the typical worker, particularly the worker
Speaker 6: without a college degree, and that's you know, that's sixty
Speaker 6: percent of the workforce has barely moved adjusted for inflation. So,
Speaker 6: you know, you've got a lot of people out there
Speaker 6: who are justifiably frustrated, angry, feel like they've been working hard,
Speaker 6: haven't been you know, haven't been doing as well as
Speaker 6: they thought they should be doing. And we're promised to
Speaker 6: be doing the kind of you know, the social contract
Speaker 6: of America is basically that if you played by the
Speaker 6: rules and you work hard, you're supposed to be doing
Speaker 6: better and better as the economy does better. But these
Speaker 6: people have not. And Donald Trump said he would do
Speaker 6: great things for them, man, as he promised in Trump
Speaker 6: you know number one one, Yeah, point zero. Well, he
Speaker 6: didn't do much for them then, and he's doing even
Speaker 6: less for them now.
Speaker 1: You know, it's funny because I was listening to that
Speaker 1: hearing for Lori Chaves Dreamer.
Speaker 3: She's up for appointment.
Speaker 1: As maybe the Labor Secretary. Does that send right to you?
Speaker 6: Yeah, no, she is, And then Republicans are not completely
Speaker 6: sure she is with them because she actually was a
Speaker 6: backer of the pro Act, the act that gives labor
Speaker 6: unions and workers more power to form unions.
Speaker 1: And the pro Act I want you to talk about
Speaker 1: because it's like there's been so much, so much of
Speaker 1: this sort of undergirth of a lot of trump Ism
Speaker 1: two point zero is this sort of federalist society Project
Speaker 1: twenty twenty five kind of ideological framework that a lot
Speaker 1: of it is has been funded by the Koch brothers, right,
Speaker 1: this sort of anti you know, right to work laws,
Speaker 1: so you know, and of course right to work laws
Speaker 1: are anti union laws.
Speaker 3: So talk to me.
Speaker 1: About kind of where Republicans find themselves because Trump one
Speaker 1: a plurality of the kind of voters who usually go
Speaker 1: with Democrats, and those voters were promised that they would
Speaker 1: be you know, that he would help them, and all
Speaker 1: of this sort of ideological work that has gone into
Speaker 1: Trump two point zero is to crush them.
Speaker 6: Make it make sense, Molly, There's no question about it.
Speaker 6: I mean, and Democrats have not been screaming from the
Speaker 6: top of the rafters, from from every rooftop that in fact,
Speaker 6: the Trump administration, the Trump regime is not a pro worker,
Speaker 6: it's not pro labor. The people who are at the
Speaker 6: top of the Trump regime. I'm going to use the
Speaker 6: word regime rather than an administration. You know, they have
Speaker 6: a long history of being anti worker, anti labor. I mean,
Speaker 6: look at Elon Musk. Elon Musk is one of the
Speaker 6: most anti labor CEOs in America. He has crushed people,
Speaker 6: He's fired people illegally who have wanted to form unions.
Speaker 6: He's done it again and again. He's got twenty two
Speaker 6: labor charges against him pending in the National Labor Relations
Speaker 6: Board right now. And the board can't do anything about
Speaker 6: it because why because the chairman of the board was
Speaker 6: fired by truck and that means that the board is
Speaker 6: basically defanged. It can't work. But you have other people
Speaker 6: in the administration, in the regime who are also very
Speaker 6: anti worker, very anti labor. What they have done and
Speaker 6: what they had, the Koch brothers and I mean all
Speaker 6: of the people, the billionaires who have been supporting Trump.
Speaker 6: The way they've made so much money. One way is
Speaker 6: to suppress wages, to push wages down, to basically threaten
Speaker 6: workers that if they are trying to form a union
Speaker 6: or trying to get better wages, they're going to be fired.
Speaker 1: One of the things that I think a lot about
Speaker 1: when I think about the Biden administration, which I feel
Speaker 1: like people voters didn't understand because they were not spoken
Speaker 1: to about it at all. In fact, Biden world kind
Speaker 1: of hit it. But it's why so many rich people
Speaker 1: were so angry at the administration. And that is Lena
Speaker 1: Khan an anti trust So will you do like a
Speaker 1: minute or two on the sort of real fulsome antitrust
Speaker 1: legislation that the Biden administration tried to enact. And I
Speaker 1: would add their inability to message that to voters and
Speaker 1: to explain to them why that was good for them, Well, that's.
Speaker 6: A great tragedy, actually, I mean, the good news is
Speaker 6: that during the Biden administration there was a resurrection of
Speaker 6: antitrust law in America. Lena Khan at the Federal Trade Commission,
Speaker 6: a chair put in there by Joe Biden. Also at
Speaker 6: the Anti Trust Division of the Justice Department, an anti
Speaker 6: trust system Attorney General Jonathan Cantor put in by the
Speaker 6: Biden administration, who and both of them, Cantor and linikon
Speaker 6: the strongest most aggressive use of antitrust law we've seen
Speaker 6: in this country in fifty years. And it's appropriate because
Speaker 6: the whole industrial landscape, the entire economy has become much
Speaker 6: more concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer big corporations.
Speaker 6: They're using mergers and acquisitions and all sort of tactics
Speaker 6: to basically increase their market power. This is bad for America.
Speaker 6: It's bad for consumers. It means that workers have less
Speaker 6: a choice of whom to work for. It means that
Speaker 6: workers have less bargaining strength and bargaining ability because these
Speaker 6: giant companies have much more bargaining strength because they're so big.
Speaker 6: And they also, these giant companies have a lot of
Speaker 6: political power, which they wouldn't have if anti trust were
Speaker 6: actually once again as it used to be a real
Speaker 6: part of the American political system. So you've got this sad.
Speaker 6: I say, it's sad molly because the Biden administration Joe Biden,
Speaker 6: you know, bless his heart, he was you know, I'm
Speaker 6: going to use the past tense because he's no longer president.
Speaker 6: He was a strong union person, He walk the picket lines.
Speaker 6: He's the first Democratic president in thirty five, no, forty
Speaker 6: five years to staff his White House without any Wall streeters.
Speaker 6: I mean, with economists who were not from Wall Street
Speaker 6: who really understand that the goal of the economy is
Speaker 6: to help people get better wages, better working conditions, improve
Speaker 6: the quality of the life of most people in this country.
Speaker 6: But Joe Biden didn't get credit because he sadly could
Speaker 6: not communicate effectively what he was doing. And that's I
Speaker 6: don't know. I mean, historians will have to figure out
Speaker 6: exactly why that was the case. But it is a
Speaker 6: tragedy because as a result of that, people didn't know.
Speaker 6: Most workers didn't know what he was doing. Most people
Speaker 6: didn't know that he was breaking with years of Democrats
Speaker 6: who were not as nearly as strong on labor, or
Speaker 6: as on anti trust, or on investments in infrastructure and
Speaker 6: all sorts of things that people need. So it's a tragedy.
Speaker 4: No moment, Rick Wilson, while we jogged fast.
Speaker 1: It was a week filled with fuckery, so it should
Speaker 1: be no problem finding one.
Speaker 4: This week was basically fuck mus I mean.
Speaker 3: Jess, he is so happy with that.
Speaker 4: I was. I have rarely seen a week more chuck
Speaker 4: full of fuckery. So my pinnacle of fuck mountain this
Speaker 4: week was Marker Review. And I will say I could
Speaker 4: admit this because I'm a man. I was a huge
Speaker 4: supporter Marco. I helped push Marco from the very beginning
Speaker 4: when he's running. It's Charlie cristin Florida supported as presidential campaign,
Speaker 4: did a super pack for a bunch of wealthy Silicon
Speaker 4: Valley guys for his presidential campaign couch, and that little
Speaker 4: fuck sitting on that couch proves the point that if
Speaker 4: this was Cuba in the nineteen fifties, he'd be asking
Speaker 4: to polish Castro's shoes. This is a guy who absolutely
Speaker 4: knew what he was doing in there. He took his
Speaker 4: entire reputation for the last twenty years of being someone
Speaker 4: who advocates for liberty and against dictatorship, and he burned
Speaker 4: it to the ground. And you could see his soul
Speaker 4: withering inside his pitiful little frame in that room.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thoughts in prayers Marco.
Speaker 1: You know it is interesting that he always looks like
Speaker 1: the little guy in the big chair. My moment of
Speaker 1: fuckery is Donald Trump crypto king?
Speaker 4: Oh?
Speaker 1: Yes, Crypto Reserve will elevate the critical industry. Yes, won't
Speaker 1: someone pour one out for Crypto.
Speaker 4: Those struggling crypto guys.
Speaker 1: After years of corrupt attacks by the Biden administration, Why
Speaker 1: does the Biden administration hate cryptos so much? And by
Speaker 1: corrupt a taxi means no regulation whatsoever.
Speaker 3: Correct, Actually, that's centrue. There's a little regulation, but not
Speaker 3: nearly as much as it deserved.
Speaker 1: He's going to make a crypto strategic perserve because even
Speaker 1: though we can't afford park rangers to keep bathrooms open,
Speaker 1: we can't afford cancer research, we can't afford FDA, we
Speaker 1: can't afford the FAA, which keeps you safe in the air,
Speaker 1: we can afford to buy lots of crypto and g
Speaker 1: I hope everyone's least favorite.
Speaker 3: David Sachs is making a lot of money on this.
Speaker 4: Because he is the cryptos are and he will he's
Speaker 4: in crypto, but he's also the cryptos are.
Speaker 3: He's both an investor and a person who will marry money.
Speaker 4: That could go wrong with that.
Speaker 3: But also, what are the odds that a person and
Speaker 3: the Trump administration would both work in a company involved
Speaker 3: with something and also work with it on the government side.
Speaker 3: What are the odds? One and twenty percent a billion percent.
Speaker 1: If it smells like deep, deep, deep corruption, it is in.
Speaker 4: Fact probably deep corruption.
Speaker 3: That's right. Welcome to our Banana Republican.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
Speaker 1: every Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Saturday to hear the best
Speaker 1: minds and politics make sense of all this chaos. If
Speaker 1: you enjoy this podcast, please send it to a friend
Speaker 1: and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 3: Thanks for listening.