Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: where we discussed the top political headlines with some of
Speaker 1: today's best minds, and President Trump has revoked Biden's children's
Speaker 1: Secret Service production. We have a great show for you today,
Speaker 1: the Atlantics. Ron Brownstein stops by to talk about how
Speaker 1: Trump's unpopular policies could lead to a poor midterms Republicans.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to author and academic Jason Stanley about
Speaker 1: what he sees under the veil of Trump's authoritarian moves. Plus,
Speaker 1: we have a bonus from our YouTube channel where I
Speaker 1: Fight Fight Fight with Democratic strategist James Carvell on how
Speaker 1: Democrats fight and win.
Speaker 2: But first the news, Somalie, there's some friends of the
Speaker 2: show that have taken over the FBI. One's name is
Speaker 2: Bingo von Bongo Dan Maongino, and the other's name is
Speaker 2: Cash Patel. It sounds like things are going over in
Speaker 2: those parts. According to the New York.
Speaker 1: Times, Yeah, you know worth reading this piece in the
Speaker 1: New York Times. With the arrival of Bongino, there was
Speaker 1: an article yesterday or this morning about how Cash Battel
Speaker 1: has been spending a lot of time at the FBI
Speaker 1: going to fights in Las Vegas. He plans to split
Speaker 1: half his time between Las Vegas and Virginia. He is
Speaker 1: definitely spending a lot of time just sort of enjoying
Speaker 1: government work as an opportunity to, you know, not have
Speaker 1: to hustle so hard. Again, what is interesting about that
Speaker 1: piece in the Times is that it talks about this
Speaker 1: quote that the former head of the FBI used to use,
Speaker 1: which was, are you a workhorse or are you a
Speaker 1: show horse? It certainly seems as if mister Patel is
Speaker 1: more on the show horse side of the leisure there.
Speaker 2: That's sounds right to me. So I hate to discuss
Speaker 2: something that's so slippery slope, but it really seems like
Speaker 2: this is one of those cases where a slippery slope
Speaker 2: argument is very pertinent, which is that Elon Musk's Doze
Speaker 2: just keeps on inching a little bit further than they
Speaker 2: should every single week. And now they've seized an independent nonprofit.
Speaker 1: So the US Institute of Peace is not a federal
Speaker 1: agency or located in a federal building, but for whatever reason,
Speaker 1: Doge used the police to take it over. Police in
Speaker 1: private security to forcedly take over the US Institute of Peace.
Speaker 1: It's an independent nonprofit founded by Congress, It has a
Speaker 1: president and its board was fired last week by the
Speaker 1: Trump administration. The Appociated Press reported that DOGE workers on
Speaker 1: Monday had law enforcement escort them into the USIP, which
Speaker 1: is not located in a federal building, after being denied access.
Speaker 1: DOJ came into the building. Again, this is a wild
Speaker 1: story for any number of reasons, the illegality, the strangeness,
Speaker 1: and also why they're so set on getting into every
Speaker 1: bit of the federal government. DOAGE came into the building.
Speaker 1: They're inside the building, they're bringing the FBI, and they've
Speaker 1: brought a bunch of DC police. A USIP lawyer, Sophie
Speaker 1: Lindhall the New York Times. She said, what happened today
Speaker 1: is an illegal takeover by elements of the executive brands
Speaker 1: of a private nonprofit. You can't do that. It's very
Speaker 1: clear their desire part of the administration to dismantle a
Speaker 1: lot of what we call foreign assistance. But again sort
Speaker 1: of baffling as to why if it's not, if this
Speaker 1: is not government fraud, waste and abuse, then what are
Speaker 1: we doing here. The privately operated USIP works to maintain
Speaker 1: US diplomacy abroad, and as staff was doing all they
Speaker 1: could to emphasize that before the DoD break in. I
Speaker 1: can't imagine how our work could align more perfectly with
Speaker 1: the goals he has outlined keeping us out of four wars,
Speaker 1: which saves money, ultimately resolving conflicts before they drag us
Speaker 1: into these kind of conflicts. Mooset noted, Musk seems to disagree. Yeah, correct,
Speaker 1: fun stuff. The party never ends in Dogtown, Sabaia. The
Speaker 1: other night, one of Trump's late night truths, he decided
Speaker 1: that Biden using an auto pen for pardons means they're void,
Speaker 1: so that the January sixth committee can be prosecuted by him.
Speaker 1: I have bad news for all of the January sixth people.
Speaker 1: He pardoned that the autopen was also used there. So
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about this new precedent that I'm sure
Speaker 1: is going to be held to both sides. So Kinsinger,
Speaker 1: as a response to this, said, stop pretending like you're tough.
Speaker 1: Trump declared Sunday that many of Piden's pardons, which were
Speaker 1: just talking about we're autopend and therefore not valid. Again,
Speaker 1: this is so flimsy. Kinseger was told Jake Tapper, first
Speaker 1: of all, I'm trying to figure out what he's trying
Speaker 1: to distract from, because that's what all this is always
Speaker 1: a distraction to get people's attention. Sounds like Kenzinger knows
Speaker 1: what's going on here, and then he said or maybe
Speaker 1: he feels like he hasn't gotten enough attention. But look, Jake,
Speaker 1: it's like, bring it on, and he's right. The Oversight Project,
Speaker 1: a branch of the conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation,
Speaker 1: cast out on social media this month over the validity
Speaker 1: of documents that it claimed Biden had signed electronically. This
Speaker 1: is completely silly and totally nutty. While many conservatives argue
Speaker 1: that Biden's partons are invaluable, are invalid if an autopen
Speaker 1: was used, Obama used autopens, Trump used auto pens. Very
Speaker 1: stupid and makes no sense. Of course they'll try it.
Speaker 2: So in good news, the Trump Anddministration, for once, is
Speaker 2: actually obeying a judge and is moving to reinstate twenty
Speaker 2: four thousand federal workers after judges orders.
Speaker 1: Yeah, elon mush It turns out what you do at Twitter,
Speaker 1: you can't just do that in the federal government. Trump
Speaker 1: administration has taken a step to reinstate thousands of probationary
Speaker 1: workers by the way, the whole idea of firing all
Speaker 1: these probationary workers. You can be in a probationary period
Speaker 1: when you've just been elevated, when you've just had a promotion.
Speaker 1: Like the whole idea that somehow being in a probationary
Speaker 1: period would make you someone who should be fired is
Speaker 1: a fallacy. And you know this was done in such
Speaker 1: a slapshot way. No one is saying you shouldn't cut fraud,
Speaker 1: waste and abuse. We're just saying that what Elon says
Speaker 1: is fraud, waste, and abuse is just things he doesn't like.
Speaker 1: So that is I think an important data point here.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the people will come back,
Speaker 1: a lot of them are needed. And again, this is
Speaker 1: just cleaning up a mass that Trump World created itself,
Speaker 1: and we'll see more of that over the coming years.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: Ron Brownstein is a senior political analyst for CNN and
Speaker 1: a senior editor at The Atlantic. Welcome back to Fast Politics,
Speaker 1: Ron Brownstein, a.
Speaker 4: Molly good to be here.
Speaker 1: I just think of you as like very smart and
Speaker 1: also sort of you know what the framework is supposed
Speaker 1: to look like, so you can tell me how fucked
Speaker 1: up we are. Right now.
Speaker 4: Well, look, I think from you know, we're looking at
Speaker 4: a policy and legal point of view, we are at
Speaker 4: the outer edge of the challenges to the rule of
Speaker 4: law that people anticipated under Trump. You know, maybe we're
Speaker 4: beyond the outer edge.
Speaker 3: With the seemingly.
Speaker 4: Open defiance of a federal court order on these deportations,
Speaker 4: the detaining of a graduate student with a green card
Speaker 4: because of what he said, the targeting of law firms,
Speaker 4: the pardoning of the viol on January sixth rioters, half
Speaker 4: a dozen other things we could list. The challenge to
Speaker 4: the rule of law as we have understood it, I
Speaker 4: think is pretty sustained and serious and deep. But the
Speaker 4: likelihood is that that's not where the political fate of
Speaker 4: the Trump administration is going to be settled. You know,
Speaker 4: it's going to be I think, on the same kitchen
Speaker 4: table concerns that got him elected. And as I wrote
Speaker 4: last week, while the economy was his most consistent and
Speaker 4: probably his greatest first term strength, in his second term,
Speaker 4: it is looking very quickly to be his most conspicuous
Speaker 4: political vulnerability.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about that. Because in Trump one point zero,
Speaker 1: he did the tax cut, he juiced the economy, and
Speaker 1: then he did the tariffs right, so it was very
Speaker 1: juiced up economy tariffs Trump two point zero. He doesn't
Speaker 1: seem to care about the dow anymore, right, I mean
Speaker 1: all the sort of guardrails that we remember from Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero, mad about the daw grown up in
Speaker 1: the in the White House, saying you can't just do
Speaker 1: willie nilly tariff's all that's over.
Speaker 3: Right, you.
Speaker 4: No, It's really interesting. I wrote a piece in the
Speaker 4: Fall I Guess Winner after the election saying that, as
Speaker 4: you just noted, almost all of the constraints that limited
Speaker 4: Trump in his first term would not be there in
Speaker 4: his second term. He doesn't have those voices from other
Speaker 4: parts of the party inside the administration telling him, eh,
Speaker 4: maybe you shouldn't do this. He doesn't have McConnell and Ryan,
Speaker 4: who are much more skeptical of him than Thune and Johnson.
Speaker 4: He doesn't have the Supreme Court that existed then in
Speaker 4: twenty seventeen, and I wrote that this would not be
Speaker 4: an unmitigated blessing for him or the Republican Party because Trump, unbound,
Speaker 4: you know, goes to extremes that the country may not
Speaker 4: want to follow. And after I wrote that, a very
Speaker 4: senior official from an earlier Democratic administration called me up
Speaker 4: and to say, you know, I agree with everything you said,
Speaker 4: except you missed one thing that was still going to
Speaker 4: constrain Trump. The Dow, the stock market.
Speaker 1: Well we all thought that because of Trump one point.
Speaker 1: Now yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: So now I think, you know, as on the legal front,
Speaker 4: on the economic front, you are getting more of Trump unfiltered,
Speaker 4: which is not an unmitigated blessing, as I said, for
Speaker 4: him or for the Republican Party. You know, Trump has
Speaker 4: always talked about tariffs out of both sides of his mouth,
Speaker 4: but I think one of them is what he really
Speaker 4: believes he and particularly as defenders, you know, like the
Speaker 4: Treasury Secretary in the Commerce secretary, I will say the
Speaker 4: tariff threats are a brilliant negotiating tool. They how we
Speaker 4: break other countries to our will on whatever we're worried about.
Speaker 4: But you know, most of the time Trump also says
Speaker 4: tariffs are good in themselves, right, that will lead to
Speaker 4: this reshoring of American manufacturing might and he doesn't present
Speaker 4: them at all, And they will raise so much revenue
Speaker 4: that you can cut taxes on rich people even more,
Speaker 4: even though they are regressive.
Speaker 3: As we talk about.
Speaker 4: I think the latter is what he really believes. He
Speaker 4: keeps threatening these giant tariffs and then pulling back when
Speaker 4: the other countries give him even the best Garis fig
Speaker 4: Leaf to do so, and all the people in his
Speaker 4: administration where leary of tarots go. You know, he stepped
Speaker 4: back from the brink again, but sooner or later he
Speaker 4: is going to jump over the brink, because that is
Speaker 4: what he really wants to do deep down. I don't
Speaker 4: think Trump views tariffs as a negotiating tactic. I think
Speaker 4: he views them as a good in themselves. He wants
Speaker 4: to impose them and in ways we can discuss I
Speaker 4: think is by the way, I think I notice one
Speaker 4: thing before, jentlemen. His promotion of tariffs has oddly placed
Speaker 4: him in the same position on the economy as Joe Biden,
Speaker 4: where he is basically arguing that his agenda will lead
Speaker 4: to a lot of domestic investment and a lot more
Speaker 4: manufacturing jobs. But I think that like Biden, Trump is
Speaker 4: faded to discover a very hard lesson jobs are not
Speaker 4: in antidote to prices when people are learned about their
Speaker 4: cost of living.
Speaker 1: Right, No, and I agree, and I see the same thing,
Speaker 1: the exact same thing you're talking about with Chips and Science. Right.
Speaker 1: Trump is obviously speaking to this thing which Biden did too,
Speaker 1: which is the middle of the country wants its jobs back.
Speaker 1: It wants its jobs from the nineteen seventies and the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties back. And so while Biden had Chips and Science,
Speaker 1: which brought some jobs back, but again, you know, it's
Speaker 1: a real uphill climb to bring back manufacturing of the
Speaker 1: sort that we have not had in this country in
Speaker 1: fifty years. Right, I mean, that's what we're talking about doing.
Speaker 1: That is the goal.
Speaker 4: As they used to say on CBS, Let's go to
Speaker 4: the videotape. Right, So Biden says, Okay, I'm going to
Speaker 4: bring back manufacturing with these subsidies under the Chips Act
Speaker 4: and the Inflation Reduction Act, any infrastructure bill to promote
Speaker 4: more domestic manufacturing. It worked to a large extent. He
Speaker 4: got over one trillion dollars of private sector investment, and
Speaker 4: over his four years from January of twenty twenty one
Speaker 4: to December of twenty twenty four, I happened to have
Speaker 4: this right here. He freased the total number of manufacturing
Speaker 4: jobs from twelve point one million to about twelve point
Speaker 4: eight million. At the same time, he added about a
Speaker 4: million more construction jobs to build all of these plants
Speaker 4: that Intel was opening in Ohio. Our car companies were
Speaker 4: opening in North Carolina, on Alabama and Georgia mostly read
Speaker 4: right to work states. But that's a good issue.
Speaker 3: So now here.
Speaker 4: Comes Trump and says, I don't want to do any
Speaker 4: of those subsidies. But basically I have a different means
Speaker 4: towards the same end. I'm going to put up these
Speaker 4: big tariff walls, and I'm going to encourage companies to
Speaker 4: build new factories in the US, and I'm going to
Speaker 4: restore manufacturing jobs. So Joe Biden, as I said, I
Speaker 4: think was pretty darn successful at promoting these core blue
Speaker 4: collar jobs of manufacturing construction. One point six million more
Speaker 4: jobs combined in those two fields when he was done
Speaker 4: than when he started. And guess what he found out
Speaker 4: in twenty twenty four, It did not matter to the
Speaker 4: vast majority of Americans who don't work in construction or manufacturing.
Speaker 3: At best.
Speaker 4: There are twenty million people who work in construction and manufacturing.
Speaker 4: A lot more people buy eggs every week, hey for
Speaker 4: gas every week, And I think the bitter lesson for
Speaker 4: Biden and Harris, and Harris recognized this was that jobs
Speaker 4: is not an antidote to.
Speaker 3: Prices, as I said.
Speaker 4: And I think Trump is rumbling down the same track
Speaker 4: where you know, if you look at polling, Americans overwhelmingly
Speaker 4: say that prices are the principal metric by which they're
Speaker 4: judging the health of the economy, not jobs. Even if
Speaker 4: you build more manufacturing plants in the Midwest, not that
Speaker 4: many people will ever work in them, as I said,
Speaker 4: twenty million, right. And then you know we have in
Speaker 4: polling somewhere around sixty percent of the country saying they
Speaker 4: do not believe Trump is focused on the biggest problems
Speaker 4: facing the nation. And as I wrote, his economic approval
Speaker 4: rating is now in many polls lower than it was
Speaker 4: in any point in his first top term, his disapproval
Speaker 4: rating higher than any point it was in his first term.
Speaker 4: And maybe most significantly, you know, if you look at
Speaker 4: CNBC Gallop CNN, never did his economic rating come in
Speaker 4: below his overall appropriating his economic rating, and his first
Speaker 4: one was always a floor pushing him up. Now routinely Gallup, CNN, NBC,
Speaker 4: Quinnipiac his economic approprating is below his overall appropriating. It
Speaker 4: is a headwind pushing him down, not you know, a
Speaker 4: sturdying force pushing him up.
Speaker 1: So here we are right, we have Frump, unbound and unfettered. Right,
Speaker 1: he does not care about the markets, he doesn't care
Speaker 1: about the grown ups. He doesn't care. And then we
Speaker 1: have his approval rating. You know, he came in as
Speaker 1: much of a mandate as this guy has ever had. Finally,
Speaker 1: a Republican have won the popular vote. Congratulations to all
Speaker 1: who celebrate. And now here we are already just cratering
Speaker 1: his approval. The things that he has been popular for.
Speaker 1: He could solve the economy that's over. You got Vance
Speaker 1: being booed when he goes to hear music. You've got
Speaker 1: people protesting in the streets. It does not feel like
Speaker 1: the admin really cares. It seems like they are just
Speaker 1: as committed as ever. A going full doge creating.
Speaker 4: Ring might be a little strong. I think crediting is strong.
Speaker 4: I think it's dipping. He's a little higher in most
Speaker 4: poles than where he was at this point in the
Speaker 4: first term, but lower than any other newly elected president.
Speaker 4: And the trajectory is clearly tore down. The number among
Speaker 4: Independence is quite bad consistently. I mean, and we're looking
Speaker 4: I tweeted maybe what three weeks ago that there were
Speaker 4: seven or eight poles in a row where his approbating
Speaker 4: among independence was at least ten points underwater. I mean,
Speaker 4: now we're looking at twenty five and thirty in NBC
Speaker 4: and CNN. So there is definitely anxiety, right.
Speaker 1: And you invested a Trump going out saying no, we
Speaker 1: might have a recession, which is unprecedented for a president
Speaker 1: for any number of reasons, because you don't want a recession,
Speaker 1: and you don't want people saying we're going to have
Speaker 1: a recession. And when your people go out and say that,
Speaker 1: it tends to create a recession. It tends to be
Speaker 1: a self fulfilling prophecy.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, also the just the share uncertainty on the tariffs,
Speaker 4: and you know, and I said, eventually he's going to
Speaker 4: run through the play class window. He's not going to
Speaker 4: stop every time he's he's he is going to run
Speaker 4: through this window and impose significant tariffs and potentially slow down,
Speaker 4: you know, the economy substantially. But what I'm saying is,
Speaker 4: you know, in some ways Trump, unless he is serious
Speaker 4: about trying to undo the Constitution, in which case it
Speaker 4: wouldn't be a real election anyway. Trump is not going
Speaker 4: to face the voters again. What's more remarkable is that
Speaker 4: Republicans in Congress, who are going to face the voters
Speaker 4: in twenty six, you know, are showing no hesitation. Maybe
Speaker 4: a little on Doge here and there, but they are
Speaker 4: basically still running down this track and even toward what
Speaker 4: I think will be the defining political battle of twenty
Speaker 4: twenty five, which will be the effort to extend the
Speaker 4: tax cuts and tying that directly to cuts in federal spending,
Speaker 4: particularly on medicaid. As I've written, the Republicans haven't directly
Speaker 4: tied tax cuts and spending cuts since ninety five ninety six.
Speaker 4: Each of the subsequent tax cuts, the Bush ones and
Speaker 4: one and O three, the Trump tax cut in seventeen,
Speaker 4: that was sugar only, Molly. They only did the tax cuts,
Speaker 4: They kept the spending cuts years away. In fact, under Bush,
Speaker 4: they didn't push for them until Obama came into office.
Speaker 4: This is a replication instead of the Gingrich strategy in
Speaker 4: ninety five ninety six, where they're in one bill they
Speaker 4: are likely to say, Okay, we're going to cut taxes
Speaker 4: primarily for the rich, and we're going to cut programs
Speaker 4: primarily for the middle and working class Medicaid, ACA subs,
Speaker 4: and these other things like that. That's how Bill Clinton
Speaker 4: turned around his presidency by basically making that argument that
Speaker 4: Republicans were cutting programs that benefit you to fund tax
Speaker 4: cuts for their rich friends. We'll see, you know, right now,
Speaker 4: Republicans look thard their steaming toward you know, recreating that.
Speaker 4: We'll see if they kind of jump off the boat
Speaker 4: before it hits the falls and maybe try to dodge
Speaker 4: actually doing the cuts. But it's the congressional Republicans who
Speaker 4: will face the consequences here. And you know, while the
Speaker 4: Democratic image is very weak, I think it is weaker
Speaker 4: than at any point since before Bill Clinton. And that
Speaker 4: is a real issue for twenty twenty eight. It's probably
Speaker 4: not as big an issue for twenty twenty six, right.
Speaker 1: Because you're running again something. That's what Tim Miller said
Speaker 1: to me the other day.
Speaker 4: The critical variable of modern midterm elections is the president's appropriating.
Speaker 4: Over ninety percent of people who disapproved of Trump voted
Speaker 4: for Democrats in twenty eighteen. Nearly ninety percent of people
Speaker 4: who approved of him voted for Democrats in the House.
Speaker 4: In twenty eighteen, the ninety percent ratio held in virtually
Speaker 4: every major Senate race. If Trump's disapproval rating is at
Speaker 4: the fifty three level that CNN had last week, if
Speaker 4: that's what it is on election day in twenty twenty six,
Speaker 4: the odds are overwhelming that Democrats will take back the House.
Speaker 4: You know, the Republican image among voters in twenty fourteen
Speaker 4: and twenty ten wasn't really much better than Democrats. Now
Speaker 4: roughly thirty percent viewed them positively. In twenty ten and
Speaker 4: twenty fourteen, it didn't matter because people were casting a
Speaker 4: vote against the income and President. Tom Davis run the
Speaker 4: NRCC likes to say that in the midterm, voters usually
Speaker 4: now vote to put a check on the president, not
Speaker 4: to give him a blank check. And I still think
Speaker 4: that will be the controlling variable. I mean, not that
Speaker 4: the Democratic image problems are relevant. They are for twenty
Speaker 4: twenty eight especially, and they will probably hurt the party
Speaker 4: in purple areas that they're trying to contest in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty six, But overall, the key variable for Democrats is
Speaker 4: how popular Trump is and how effectively they can mobilize
Speaker 4: what is already there, which is public resistance to a
Speaker 4: lot of the things that he's doing.
Speaker 1: So here's what I would say, and I think that's right.
Speaker 1: But my question is this, So Doade seems to be
Speaker 1: doing the thing that is the third rail in American
Speaker 1: politics saying we're going to cut all of this federal
Speaker 1: government staff, right, and they're saying to their base it's
Speaker 1: ways for ourn abuse, but they're really saying, we're just
Speaker 1: going to cut it because it's expensive and we want
Speaker 1: to have tax cuts for our rich friends. So what
Speaker 1: you're saying is that there's no historical precedent for doing
Speaker 1: this right. Every time there's been tax cuts, it's never
Speaker 1: been like, we are cutting federal services to give tax
Speaker 1: cuts to wealthy people.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they did it in ninety five ninety six, they did.
Speaker 4: They tied it together the Gingrich Revolution. They passed the
Speaker 4: Reconciliation Bill that had large tax cuts and large cuts
Speaker 4: in spending, particularly block granting medicaid. That's how Clinton turned
Speaker 4: around his presence. I mean, he basically are you old
Speaker 4: enough to remember M two e two?
Speaker 1: Yes?
Speaker 4: M two e two was Clinton's mantra. It was Medicare medicaid,
Speaker 4: the environment, and education, and we are going to protect
Speaker 4: M to E two against the Republicans and their desire
Speaker 4: to cut them for their tax cuts. After the ninety
Speaker 4: four midterm, Clinton tried a lot of things to rebuild
Speaker 4: his standing with the public, and none of them worked.
Speaker 4: In the fall of ninety five, his approval was still
Speaker 4: way under fifty. Then he got into a fight with
Speaker 4: Gingrich over M two E two versus tax cuts, and
Speaker 4: his approval rating went back over fifty percent. He went
Speaker 4: past Dole in the polls. I mean, he never looked back.
Speaker 4: He won a pretty decisive reelection.
Speaker 1: Because voters hate having their stuff taken.
Speaker 4: Away and they don't like tax cuts for the rich.
Speaker 4: And when you put the two together, you know, it's
Speaker 4: like they used to say it, like it goes together
Speaker 4: like whiskey and second all that.
Speaker 1: But does everyone know what second all is?
Speaker 4: No, I don't think so, you know, second.
Speaker 1: All to and all they were I'm actually too young
Speaker 1: to have done them, but they were like first generation
Speaker 1: Baally and so powerful that they were taking off the market.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sadly, there you go. I mean, but that like, so,
Speaker 4: you know, tax cuts for wealthy people are not popular
Speaker 4: on their own spending. Cuts in programs that benefit the
Speaker 4: middle class, particularly healthcare programs, are not popular. Here's what
Speaker 4: I think is the risk, long term risk for Trump.
Speaker 4: Right now, voters believe he is largely slighting the problem,
Speaker 4: ignoring the problem that they elected him above all to
Speaker 4: solve inflation. The risk is that down the road they
Speaker 4: will view him as not so much ignoring inflation as
Speaker 4: compounding it. If the tariffs go into place, That's one prong.
Speaker 4: The other is if he pursues this budget fight that
Speaker 4: allows Democrats to say he is raising your healthcare costs
Speaker 4: to give tax cuts to his rich buddies and himself
Speaker 4: and to Elon, and he's imposing tarrifsts on you. Then
Speaker 4: you have a situation where not only do you swing
Speaker 4: voters think Trump kind of took his eye off the ball.
Speaker 4: They think he is actively, you know, making worse the
Speaker 4: problem they elected him to solve. And I think that
Speaker 4: would be a pretty dangerous place for Republicans to go
Speaker 4: into twenty six. You know, there are a lot of
Speaker 4: you know, look, the country's more polarized and locked in
Speaker 4: than it used to be. There are a lot of
Speaker 4: people who are deeply invested side of this fundamental cultural
Speaker 4: cold war civil war that we are living through. But
Speaker 4: the last ten percent of voters I think, are not
Speaker 4: really that invested in those issues. One lesson this election
Speaker 4: taught me is there are more people who are voting
Speaker 4: on current conditions than you might think given the polarization.
Speaker 4: And you know, we talk about how these are people
Speaker 4: who don't follow a lot of political news, but I'll
Speaker 4: tell you what, they are experts in their own lives,
Speaker 4: and if they don't feel their lives are getting better
Speaker 4: by twenty six, they are going to vote in a
Speaker 4: way that reflects that if they vote at all.
Speaker 1: You're talking about these voters who like the woman in
Speaker 1: the Washington Post who heard that Trump was going to
Speaker 1: make IVF free and decided to vote for him and
Speaker 1: then lost their job. What percentage of the voter public
Speaker 1: do you think that.
Speaker 4: Is a lot of the people who vote in presidential
Speaker 4: years and don't vote in the midterm would fall into that.
Speaker 4: I've talked to you about this before. You know, if
Speaker 4: you look at a variety of measures in exitpoles and
Speaker 4: the vote cast, is Trump to extreme? Is the authoritarian?
Speaker 4: Does he lacked the character to be president? Do you
Speaker 4: agree with mass deportation. Somewhere between fifteen and twenty percent
Speaker 4: of his voters gave him negative answers on all of
Speaker 4: those things and voted for him anyway because they thought
Speaker 4: he was he would be better for the economy. So
Speaker 4: that takes you to about ten percent of the electorate probably.
Speaker 1: Since that fifteen million people, Yeah, roughly, that seems like
Speaker 1: a crazy high number.
Speaker 4: I mean.
Speaker 1: The thing that I was struck by when you're talking
Speaker 1: about this, which I have been wanting to talk about,
Speaker 1: but I feel like I have not had the opening,
Speaker 1: is this idea that there were people Trump got out
Speaker 1: who left the bottom of the ticket blank, people who
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily like him but still believed he'd be better
Speaker 1: for the economy. And if you think about this with
Speaker 1: sort of a low turnout, like if you look at
Speaker 1: twenty twenty, right had about twenty million less voters in
Speaker 1: twenty four, would you say, no?
Speaker 4: I think it was No, It wasn't that many. I
Speaker 4: don't remember exactly, it was like five or seven.
Speaker 1: So you really do see that there's like a there's
Speaker 1: that percentage that didn't turn out right, like Harris. Harris
Speaker 1: had gotten eighty one million, she would have won, right
Speaker 1: if she had gotten what Biden got in twenty twenty,
Speaker 1: she would have won.
Speaker 4: One thing that David Shore argues that the Democratic data
Speaker 4: analyst and I think others have argued, is that the
Speaker 4: people who didn't turn out were very similar to the
Speaker 4: people who switched the Trump I mean, they were kind
Speaker 4: of lower income, lower from MEA. Voters were really unhappy
Speaker 4: with what they got out of the Biden administration. So
Speaker 4: they're not turning out was another reflection of the same
Speaker 4: dynamic that moved those other voters of Trump. And it's
Speaker 4: not clear at all if they did turn out, they
Speaker 4: would have stuck with the Democrats because they were the
Speaker 4: people who they lost on performance. The way I phrased
Speaker 4: it before is the shocking thing about this election was
Speaker 4: how normal it was. I mean, voters who were dissatisfied
Speaker 4: with the status quo voted for the opposition party candidate
Speaker 4: in the normal hydraulics of American politics, even though Trump
Speaker 4: is anything but a normal candidate. You know, sixty percent
Speaker 4: of the voters plus disapproved of Biden's performance, and eighty
Speaker 4: percent plus of those disapprovers voted for Trump. Seventy percent
Speaker 4: of people said the economy was in fair or poor shape,
Speaker 4: and seventy percent of those people voted for Trump. I mean,
Speaker 4: that's that's his vote. That's it. And all the reasons
Speaker 4: why Trump is not a normal candidate of which we
Speaker 4: are being reminded, you know, didn't matter as much to
Speaker 4: the last incremental voters as the thought that life was
Speaker 4: more affordable when he was president, and therefore they thought
Speaker 4: it would be more affordable again. Meanwhile, economists were warning
Speaker 4: all the way through that his second term agenda was
Speaker 4: more likely to accelerate than you know, control inflation. And
Speaker 4: now I think he faces that risk, you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: I think a lot of the things he is doing
Speaker 4: to disrupt government and to threaten the rule of law,
Speaker 4: you know, are going to matter to the people who
Speaker 4: turn out. Kind of people who turn out in twenty
Speaker 4: twenty six, no doubt about it. It's more college educated
Speaker 4: than overall. I think his numbers will decline among college
Speaker 4: white men and college white women Republican numbers in twenty six.
Speaker 4: But when you get back to twenty eight and this
Speaker 4: added pool of voters who just aren't that invested in
Speaker 4: that because they're really worried about just you know, keeping
Speaker 4: shoes on the kids' feat I think he's going to
Speaker 4: be judged on whether he delivered a better economy, you know,
Speaker 4: and right now people don't see that. They don't even
Speaker 4: see him trying. Really, you know, it's kind of a
Speaker 4: double whammy. And I said, the triple whammy would be
Speaker 4: if they think his agenda is actually making it worse.
Speaker 1: Ron Brownstean, thank you, thank you. Jason Stanley is a
Speaker 1: professor at Yale University as well as the author of
Speaker 1: a recent hit history, How Fascist Rewrite the Past to
Speaker 1: Control the Future. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Chasing Stanley.
Speaker 3: Great to be in conversation with you, Powis Molly.
Speaker 1: Academic institutions under attack, Let's talk about it. Colombia is
Speaker 1: number one because the New York Post covers it. Right,
Speaker 1: It's like, clearly the Trump administration has learned about Colombia.
Speaker 3: No, I don't think that's right. I think Tim Snyder,
Speaker 3: in a recent substock post, said that Colombia is number one,
Speaker 3: and this is going to be you know, this is
Speaker 3: intentionally ironic. Colombia is number one because it's located in
Speaker 3: New York City. It's most identified with cosmopolitan, leftist Jews.
Speaker 3: Twenty percent of its student population is Jewish. So you're
Speaker 3: taking down the most Jewish identified university in the country
Speaker 3: in the name supposedly of protecting Jewish students and faculty.
Speaker 3: The level of hypocrisy is amazing.
Speaker 1: I think it's because it gets the most coverage in
Speaker 1: the New York Post. I'll tell you why. Then, You're
Speaker 1: Post owned by Rupert Murnock. Local newspaper covered the Columbia
Speaker 1: stuff a lot, partially because they knew it was like
Speaker 1: a really good issue for them, right. I am not
Speaker 1: convinced that actually the Judaism plays I mean, obviously Judaism
Speaker 1: plays a huge role here in the macro, but I'm
Speaker 1: not sure in the micro it does.
Speaker 3: We're not disagreeing. I'm thinking it's an anti Semitic attack,
Speaker 3: and I think that's one thing to focus on. They're
Speaker 3: imitating Victor Bond's treatment of Central European University. They're showing
Speaker 3: Krussia University because they can. The pests are totally irrelevant.
Speaker 3: They just gave people an excuse. Notice that always says
Speaker 3: illegal protests. He doesn't say protests about what. So he
Speaker 3: knows that universities are where the democracy protests will occur.
Speaker 3: The just protests were anti war protests, so anti war protests.
Speaker 3: One of the largest identity groups in the protests at
Speaker 3: Yale were Jewish students, So you know this has nothing
Speaker 3: to do with Jewish students are protecting Jewish students and faculty.
Speaker 3: There's Jewish students and Jewish faculty on both sides. So
Speaker 3: it's just an excuse to crack down on universities. As JD.
Speaker 3: Vance said, the professors are the enemy, and it's juiced
Speaker 3: on by the mainstream media. The New York Times has
Speaker 3: spent a decade attacking universities for having too little free speech.
Speaker 3: You should allow racists, and now too much free speech.
Speaker 3: You can't allow criticism of Israel. So the New York Times,
Speaker 3: which is the media, has been attacking universities, and the
Speaker 3: Atlantic has been attacking universities. These two democratic institutions, the
Speaker 3: media and the universities should be allied. But the media
Speaker 3: has been just dupes for fascism, and so they've paved
Speaker 3: the road for what we see. In a sense, I'm like,
Speaker 3: why should I stand up for the media given what
Speaker 3: they've been doing to universities. So say more, well, the
Speaker 3: media completely handed Trump a bomb. Trump wants to destroy universities,
Speaker 3: every authoritarian wants to destroy universities. There are no liberal
Speaker 3: arts colleges in authoritarian countries, so one of the first
Speaker 3: things you do is attack the universities. The media has
Speaker 3: been creating a fake narrative about you know, anti black
Speaker 3: racists not allowed free speech, and then you know, and
Speaker 3: then turned around and was like, Okay, there's too much
Speaker 3: criticism of Israel, and all of this just handed fascism
Speaker 3: a weapon. And in moments you need democratic in institutions
Speaker 3: to ally with each other. The media is such a
Speaker 3: toxic enemy of universities at this point that it's a
Speaker 3: very difficult. We can't trust them. They've normalized this idea
Speaker 3: that universities are filled with dangerous pro Palestinian Marxists or
Speaker 3: what have you. And so it's a tricky time for
Speaker 3: democracy because at this time where all of our institutions
Speaker 3: are being attacked, the media has for ten years been
Speaker 3: part of this republican campaign against the universities.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about this so you feel and again,
Speaker 1: I know those think pieces, and I know all of
Speaker 1: those Connor Freed or whatever his name is, writes.
Speaker 5: Them, evens all a lot of conservative white people like
Speaker 5: during those pieces Basically, the theory of the case is
Speaker 5: that college professors are too liberal and their liberalism.
Speaker 1: Is oppressive students, right, that's the idea, is that these
Speaker 1: students are being oppressed by these very liberal academic institutions,
Speaker 1: very liberal professors, and that this liberalism creates an atmosphere
Speaker 1: that is unsafe for conservatives.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's the line. And then you know, so there's
Speaker 3: not enough free speech for conservatives, but at the same time,
Speaker 3: last year, suddenly, oh, there's too much free speech for
Speaker 3: people critical of Israel. So there's a kind of incoherence there.
Speaker 3: But if you so, first of all, the university is
Speaker 3: filled with anti woke white men. To give you an
Speaker 3: idea about how conservative the university is as an institution,
Speaker 3: my department hired its first black tenured faculty member last year.
Speaker 3: He started in twenty twenty four. So it's true we
Speaker 3: have one black faculty member, and that's a radical threat
Speaker 3: to Western civilization according to this lack But it's just
Speaker 3: an absurdity, and the evidence for it things like, oh,
Speaker 3: there are very few Trumphos in the academy. Well, guess what.
Speaker 3: The physics department is very few Trump supporters, The math
Speaker 3: department is very few Trump supporters. You're going to have
Speaker 3: to do affirmative action across STEM to get to ten
Speaker 3: percent of Trump supporters in engineering schools, maths department's physics department,
Speaker 3: maybe twenty percent. You know whatever. I'm not show the numbers,
Speaker 3: but they're tying their minuscule so has nothing to do
Speaker 3: with the humanities. The thing is is that this line
Speaker 3: and I said this, there's an Atlantic piece by Connor Friedsdorff.
Speaker 1: I think all he writes about our college campuses exactly.
Speaker 1: And actually you sent me a piece he wrote where
Speaker 1: he was like, the reason I write about college campuses
Speaker 1: is go So.
Speaker 3: The piece I sent you was in twenty nineteen, and
Speaker 3: he was responding to a tweet of mine saying, look,
Speaker 3: every fascist and far right authoritarian country in the world
Speaker 3: attacks universities for being too critical to left wing, too
Speaker 3: critical of the country. This right wing propaganda campaign paid
Speaker 3: for by.
Speaker 1: The code playing into Yeah, playing into and what do
Speaker 1: you say?
Speaker 3: He responded and said, oh, you.
Speaker 1: Know, indignantly, very angry.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And also it was twenty nineteen, and in twenty nineteen
Speaker 3: people regarded me and my warnings about this as unhinged.
Speaker 3: They're like, of course, this isn't authoritarianism. Of course, there's
Speaker 3: no authoritarian attack on the university. So it was also
Speaker 3: meant to be kind of making fun of me, that piece.
Speaker 3: It was meant to be like, But now we see
Speaker 3: the authoritarian attack that the media, and it's not just
Speaker 3: Connor Friedsdorffer, it's Jonathan Hait and Greg Lukianoff and you
Speaker 3: know it's The Atlantic published all these concerned pieces and
Speaker 3: with Friedstofer and the New York Times and so they
Speaker 3: published tons and tons not just from the conservative columnists,
Speaker 3: but they invited other people to write about it. Just
Speaker 3: concern trolling that set up the universities. And now we
Speaker 3: have another. So Trump is always saying, echoing this exact
Speaker 3: campaign run by the mainstream media. He's always saying he's
Speaker 3: going to bring free speech to campus, right by a
Speaker 3: rest protester. So's it's tapping into that. It shows you
Speaker 3: that we've had a decade long right wing attack on
Speaker 3: universities that was sane, washed, as they say in the
Speaker 3: New York Times. And now now it's this delicate moment
Speaker 3: when you know the media is being attacked, and the
Speaker 3: media is going to be attacked, and the universities are
Speaker 3: going to be attacked. But why should we trust the media?
Speaker 1: You and I are like, why should we trust the media?
Speaker 1: That's hey, that's me. One of the things as we
Speaker 1: talk about this that I wonder out loud is instead
Speaker 1: of talking about how bad everything is, and look, we'll
Speaker 1: agree to disagree on notitorial pages. Do I think that
Speaker 1: these editorials about the institutions of higher ed being filled
Speaker 1: with liberals are stupid? Yes? Do I agree with them? No?
Speaker 1: Do I think there are waste of time? Yes? Do
Speaker 1: I think that they may have opened the thought leadership door? Perhaps?
Speaker 1: Do I think that they are? Like? How powerful do
Speaker 1: I think they are? You know that crew? Again, there's
Speaker 1: a reason they go to war with the elites.
Speaker 3: Right, the cultural elites. The literature on elites in sociology
Speaker 3: dates back a century or more, and a very central
Speaker 3: point in the literature on elites is there's different kinds
Speaker 3: of elites university professors and teachers and K through twelve teachers.
Speaker 3: Because they're also attacking them viciously, even harder.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right?
Speaker 3: They're not elites in the financial certainly not. I mean,
Speaker 3: the vast majority of professors are making you know, somewhere
Speaker 3: between twenty five K and sixty K no in an
Speaker 3: immense amount grading, you know, and that's just going to
Speaker 3: get worse. And words, it's a working class job except
Speaker 3: for a choice few. So these are not elites.
Speaker 1: It's the illuminatis, right.
Speaker 3: The illuminati. You know, you can hear ju in the background, right,
Speaker 3: it is the leftist Marxist which like hilarious because I
Speaker 3: am surrounded in the university. Thing about this campaign, the
Speaker 3: campaign against universities, is that you had a lot of
Speaker 3: college professors buying into it too, because for note, just
Speaker 3: because they're kind of center left or just centrists. That's
Speaker 3: the value party of university.
Speaker 1: We've talked about this. We're talking about how do you
Speaker 1: protect universities from this authoritarian administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so one thing to see, they've jumped on anti semitism.
Speaker 3: So one thing I'm trying to do in my communications
Speaker 3: is emphasized that when you attack universities, and it's the
Speaker 3: point Tim Snyder made in his piece. Tim Snyder said
Speaker 3: he's a historian and he's not aware ever of universities
Speaker 3: and free speech being attacked to benefit Jews. Those attacks
Speaker 3: are usually to attack Jewish people, and of course the
Speaker 3: university is one of the most Jewish institutions in America
Speaker 3: in life. We are devastating universities in the name of
Speaker 3: protecting Jewish people.
Speaker 1: Right crazy. But so here's the question. If you wanted
Speaker 1: to create a ecosystem where you could protect the universities,
Speaker 1: wouldn't the first thing to set up a world where
Speaker 1: all these universities negotiate together, where you say, an attack
Speaker 1: on Columbia is the same as an attack on Yale
Speaker 1: is the same as an attack on Harvard. So talk
Speaker 1: me through how that would work.
Speaker 3: Molly, brilliant placing you in command of that. The fear
Speaker 3: is palpable in universities. America the greatest university system in
Speaker 3: the world and will not be true in a few years.
Speaker 3: Everyone in the world who can afford it sends their
Speaker 3: kids to American universities if they can get in. That's
Speaker 3: not going to happen anymore. You can't have universities teach
Speaker 3: patriotic education because that won't attract the world. Why should
Speaker 3: someone from jermy comment and learn some ridiculous story about
Speaker 3: the United States. That's the greatest country in history. So
Speaker 3: we have to work together. Unfortunately, each university president, especially
Speaker 3: the new university presidents, they've been told by boards to
Speaker 3: dock their hats so other universities get hit and they
Speaker 3: don't get noticed. That is implicitly what they're saying, Molly, Now,
Speaker 3: so the strategy has to be to work together. Unfortunately,
Speaker 3: if you are university presidents saying, well, we're hoping to
Speaker 3: escape relatively unscathed by keeping our heads down and letting
Speaker 3: other universities get hit, that's the opposite of working together, and.
Speaker 1: That ultimately is the problem. If we look at Columbia
Speaker 1: and sort of what's happened to them, they have acquiesced
Speaker 1: on each point, and Trump world has just kept going right.
Speaker 3: Cap Man, the philosopher cap Man at Cornell, has a
Speaker 3: piece where she talks about domestic abuse in the attack
Speaker 3: on universities. She's saying that it's it's the same you know,
Speaker 3: you think you can placate your domestic abuser, but you cannot.
Speaker 3: It's the same logic going on. I said recently to
Speaker 3: a friend of mine, I said, wow, they're like holding
Speaker 3: billions of dollars of federal funding against us unless we
Speaker 3: do what they say. And she looked at me like
Speaker 3: I was an idiot and said, no, they're holding billions
Speaker 3: of dollars. They're gonna slash billions of dollars no matter
Speaker 3: what you say. They don't air at all. And so
Speaker 3: Columbia's administration is now an international embarrassment and will go
Speaker 3: down in history as for its cowardice.
Speaker 1: But here's a question about Colombia. So what has happened
Speaker 1: now is they've they've lost four hundred million dollars in grants, right,
Speaker 1: so far A lot of these grants are for the
Speaker 1: medical school, right, I mean this is not even you
Speaker 1: know they have a big teaching hospital. It's pediatric cancer,
Speaker 1: it's autoimmune diseases, it's this, it's that it has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with woke anything, right, anything, nothing, And it's
Speaker 1: a lot of medicine stuff. Then we have other kind
Speaker 1: of forays into We don't know what the connection is
Speaker 1: between the university and what happened to Muhammad Khalil, right,
Speaker 1: Right do we know? We don't really know. We know
Speaker 1: he was the negotiator with the faculty. We know that
Speaker 1: ice showed up at his house. We know that he
Speaker 1: is now in a detention center in Louisiana, still not
Speaker 1: charged with anything.
Speaker 3: Well, how can you charge him with anything? If they
Speaker 3: can charge Khalil with something, they can charge any of
Speaker 3: us because he is he is a green card, he
Speaker 3: is the same rights. So if they charge him with something,
Speaker 3: they can charge any of us.
Speaker 1: I mean the question with Khalil is when does this end?
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 1: I mean, this is all opening the door to extra
Speaker 1: law full a new paradigm in American life that we
Speaker 1: go back to the red scare right where you can
Speaker 1: arrest people for thought crimes and bad opinions. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's what we're opening the door to.
Speaker 3: Here, opening the door. The door's already open. This is
Speaker 3: going to be worse than the McCarthy era, probably already.
Speaker 3: You know where it's. I know your grandfather, Howard Fast
Speaker 3: was a hero of that era, and so you know
Speaker 3: you have a particular legacy and a role to play
Speaker 3: at this time, Molly, given your personal history. I spoke
Speaker 3: to the Michigan Faculty Senate on Friday with Isaac Camola,
Speaker 3: or the Assembly of the Senate University of Michigan, when
Speaker 3: it was out in an arbor's but he asked me
Speaker 3: and Isaac Camola and I to come speak. Isaac Camola
Speaker 3: is at Trinity College. He's a scholar, among other things
Speaker 3: of higher education, and his talk was about the relationship
Speaker 3: between the current moment and the McCarthy era, so a
Speaker 3: sort of deep dive into that, and he was pointing
Speaker 3: out similarities and differences. One difference he pointed out is
Speaker 3: that it's not this attack is not associated with one
Speaker 3: person what we've had. So back then you could humiliate McCarthy,
Speaker 3: Joseph McCarthy, and then you could gain action against the
Speaker 3: red scale, but now it's the right wing. The Kochs
Speaker 3: and other foundations started funding this attack on the universities
Speaker 3: in twenty fifteen, really with a lot of funding. That's
Speaker 3: when you started to see all these concerned all this
Speaker 3: concern trolling in the media. And so we've had ten
Speaker 3: years of that attack. We don't have people understanding and
Speaker 3: valuing what universities do like other countries would kill for Harvard, Yale,
Speaker 3: Princeton and Columbia Michigan. And you know, we have the
Speaker 3: greatest universities in the world, and they produce an immense
Speaker 3: amount for the United States. And also they're symbols of
Speaker 3: our greatness. What else do we have that is as
Speaker 3: great is our universities.
Speaker 1: I want to pause here for sent because I spend
Speaker 1: a lot of time interviewing Clay Risen from the New
Speaker 1: York Times, who just wrote a book about McCarthy, which
Speaker 1: my grandfather is documented in. We have been having this
Speaker 1: conversation for the last week actually about whether or not
Speaker 1: this is worse than McCarthy is. It's stupid conversation because
Speaker 1: it is is what it is, right, But we both
Speaker 1: have gotten very stuck on this idea. Is it worse
Speaker 1: than McCarthyism? Is it?
Speaker 3: That's what a lot of people are talking about.
Speaker 1: My hottest take is that actually it's still better than
Speaker 1: McCarthy because I know here's why. Because during McCarthyism, you
Speaker 1: didn't really have a free press. You had network television,
Speaker 1: but it was still really controlled by the government, and
Speaker 1: they could still say standard says, you can't put this
Speaker 1: on the air. There was a lot more government control
Speaker 1: of media. And now even though people don't read, you
Speaker 1: have infinite you know, areas for context.
Speaker 3: But Molly, I already pre responded to you. What I
Speaker 3: said is the media has already saine washed the attack
Speaker 3: on the universities, and Times in the past had already
Speaker 3: stocked their opinion pages with the people who've done this
Speaker 3: sain washing. So who've done nothing but be dupes for fascism.
Speaker 3: So you know, the media is already committed to the
Speaker 3: line that the excuse is that the Trump regime is
Speaker 3: using to dismantle the universities. They're the ones who gave
Speaker 3: them the free speech thing and the anti Semitism thing,
Speaker 3: also McCarthyism, although it was directed against Jews of course.
Speaker 3: Right now I think is the worst time for American
Speaker 3: Jews in our history, not because of anti war protests
Speaker 3: and criticisms of Israel, but because we're being set off split.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well we're also being split.
Speaker 3: Well, it's not being split. Jews are always split, We're
Speaker 3: always split. It's we have never been this salient in
Speaker 3: American life. And the history books will look back and say, good,
Speaker 3: hook down. Never good to be this ailiate, to be
Speaker 3: responsible for the takedown of the American university systems. What
Speaker 3: are the history books going to say, we're being used?
Speaker 1: Jason Stanley, you and I are going to talk more
Speaker 1: about this on the phone. Yes, my body so good.
Speaker 1: Appreciate you, thank.
Speaker 3: You, I so appreciate you. Molly.
Speaker 1: And now we have a special clip from our YouTube
Speaker 1: channel where I Fight Fight Fight with James Carvell about
Speaker 1: how Democrats can fight back against the mega agenda. Hello, friend, Now,
Speaker 1: so let's talk about you and I have a disagreement.
Speaker 1: So let's what I mean. I don't know that we
Speaker 1: disagree as much as we think we disagree.
Speaker 6: Right, it's always generally that's the question that sometimes you
Speaker 6: fight over something and you stop and you think, wait
Speaker 6: a minute, it's not that big of a disagreement.
Speaker 1: But let's but let's talk us through. You wrote a
Speaker 1: piece for the New York Times opinion page. It's now
Speaker 1: three weeks ago? Is it three weeks ago or three
Speaker 1: years ago?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: Tell me what your thesis was.
Speaker 6: My thesis is this that there's genuine anger in the party. Yeah,
Speaker 6: genuine frustration is genuine, and everybody wants to do something
Speaker 6: and do something. Now, clearly I want to do something.
Speaker 6: I want to stop this insanity. Is the best and
Speaker 6: most effective I can. But you gotta let events come
Speaker 6: to you, and they're coming to you fast.
Speaker 3: Okay.
Speaker 6: I mean the Schumer thinks everybody's and then when you
Speaker 6: kind of read what his thinking was, you can disagree
Speaker 6: with it, but it's not insane, right.
Speaker 1: I think he made the wrong choice, but he did
Speaker 1: not have great choices.
Speaker 6: Right, What we know is we have there's one objective
Speaker 6: and we know this and that is winning the election.
Speaker 6: And anything that you can do to increase your chances
Speaker 6: of winning the election is exactly what you do. There's
Speaker 6: no other principle in politics. You can't destroy these people anymore,
Speaker 6: and they're destroying himself right. And for the action now caucus,
Speaker 6: my question is what action that we want to do?
Speaker 6: Goddamn it we want Okay, what are we going to do? Well?
Speaker 1: This is the big question.
Speaker 6: So if you're like I am. I spoke to the
Speaker 6: House Democratic Caucus yesterday. There are times Comperence and Gold
Speaker 6: mag and they're talking about the split between the younger
Speaker 6: Democrats who want more aggressive things and the older Democrats
Speaker 6: does not abide by shut learn other people that are
Speaker 6: advising strategic patients. I guess let's just call it that
Speaker 6: to give it a word. And I think it's not
Speaker 6: so much young and old. People that live in districts
Speaker 6: that are twenty six percent Democratic have a different world
Speaker 6: viewed and people that live in a district that is
Speaker 6: two percent of representative district, that's two percent in favoring
Speaker 6: And if we're about winning the election, then we have
Speaker 6: to play to the plus or minus four cook PVI.
Speaker 6: We have to play to that people in states where
Speaker 6: we have elections coming up that we went. We can't
Speaker 6: play to a district that's you know, Central Los Angeles
Speaker 6: that we couldn't lose if we tried.
Speaker 1: Okay, so I'm going to read you something from the
Speaker 1: chief of staff of my future husband. No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 1: Governor of Illinois JB. Pritzker, his chief of staff. The
Speaker 1: fight going on in the Democratic Right Party right now
Speaker 1: is not between hard left left and moderate. It's between
Speaker 1: those who want to fight and those who want to
Speaker 1: cave and team fight stretches across all the ideological aspects
Speaker 1: of the party. Misread this at your own peril.
Speaker 6: True or false, it's abundantly false.
Speaker 1: Oh oh interesting.
Speaker 6: Tell me why do you want to win or you
Speaker 6: don't want to win? The question is not do we
Speaker 6: fight or do we not fight? The question is do
Speaker 6: we win or not win? JB. Pritsker can't lose an
Speaker 6: election in Illinois. He would have a different view if
Speaker 6: it was Michigan, a different view if if it was made.
Speaker 6: You'd have a different view if it was North Carolina.
Speaker 6: When George Washington when the British landed at Long Island.
Speaker 6: You know what George Washington did, He would treating to Trenton.
Speaker 6: And you know what happened at Trenton treated the valley
Speaker 6: forge and ended up in Trenton and ended up went
Speaker 6: into war. So to the people who say we want
Speaker 6: to fight, great fight, How you don't have the votes.
Speaker 6: You can't pass gas. That's the consequence of losing an election.
Speaker 6: All right, get over it, dude. You're in a state
Speaker 6: that we can't lose. So you can send that out
Speaker 6: in all of the Democratic donors on the North side
Speaker 6: of Chicago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're right, God damn it, you're right.
Speaker 6: You know, tired of each goddamn fuzzy sitting around you
Speaker 6: don't know whether to you know, want to ask the
Speaker 6: scratch they watch?
Speaker 1: We got to go out and get them.
Speaker 3: How what right?
Speaker 1: If you were Mitch McConnell and you were in this situation,
Speaker 1: what would you do? It's a thought experiment.
Speaker 6: I say this jokingly. If I were miss McConnell, I
Speaker 6: was shot myself a long time ago, you know, right,
Speaker 6: But but but now there, if.
Speaker 1: You were Mitch McConnell, you would have an opportunity.
Speaker 3: What would you do again to the do something caucus?
Speaker 6: Do what?
Speaker 1: Well, then that's my question for you. What would Mitch
Speaker 1: McConnell do.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 6: I mean, he's compromised himself on so many different occasions.
Speaker 6: He he did not go through with the peatment of Trump,
Speaker 6: which would have prevented Trump from running again right time
Speaker 6: and time. You know, he had to stand down for
Speaker 6: his caucus. I'm sure that Trump people don't care what
Speaker 6: mich Cone does whatever he wants.
Speaker 1: Right, No, but my but the thought experiment here is,
Speaker 1: say you were you had the sheer cravenness of a
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell, and you were in the leadership of the
Speaker 1: Democratic Party.
Speaker 3: What would you do?
Speaker 1: I mean, because we know that if these situations were reversed,
Speaker 1: Mitch McConnell would be gumming up the works like you
Speaker 1: can't believe it. I mean, think about Tommy Tuberville when
Speaker 1: he prevented all of those.
Speaker 6: Do you think that that helped the Republicans? Well, that
Speaker 6: was Tommy Tulville, who Now we're going to take our
Speaker 6: cute from a guy who's got a fifty two IQ.
Speaker 1: All right, seems generous, But I'm just saying, coming up
Speaker 1: the works. There's ways to do it.
Speaker 4: How do you come them up?
Speaker 6: Give me a way that you come up the work
Speaker 6: so we have that.
Speaker 1: You come up the works, you do a talking filibuster
Speaker 1: for twenty four hours, and you make it so everybody
Speaker 1: can't go on vacation. To hear more of this conversation,
Speaker 1: please go over to YouTube and search for Molly Jong
Speaker 1: Fast Fast Politics, No Moment, Jesse.
Speaker 2: Mai. So I've decided I'm going to send you a
Speaker 2: shocker here that you may not have seen for a
Speaker 2: moment of fuckery. The listeners may remember this woman on
Speaker 2: the right named Valentina Gomez, who once ran for Missouri
Speaker 2: secretary of State and has now decided to move to
Speaker 2: another state and run against Texas's Congressman Dan Crudshaw. And
Speaker 2: she's been trying to get some attention. But I think
Speaker 2: that this is actually the funniest campaign out of the year.
Speaker 1: Let's hear exus.
Speaker 7: It's time you find out what district I chose to
Speaker 7: represent you in Congress. I've taken down pedophiles, criminals, corrupt politicians,
Speaker 7: and now I'm coming for the Joe Biden of the
Speaker 7: Republican Party and when you got me into Congress, I
Speaker 7: will become the greatest stock traitor of all time. And
Speaker 7: the best thing about it is that I will be
Speaker 7: sharing every single one of my traits on XO so
Speaker 7: you can get rich with me, and also to piss
Speaker 7: off every member of Congress that makes money from privileged information.
Speaker 1: They've been ticked tik.
Speaker 7: Let's see how fast the Bank Congressional stock Trading or
Speaker 7: puts her limits Texas thirty first Congressional District.
Speaker 1: Buckle up, because this time I'm.
Speaker 7: Coming with a warchest of cash and crypto.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus, She's coming with a word chest of cash
Speaker 1: and crypto.
Speaker 2: She ends the video with a picture of her with
Speaker 2: her automatic weapon and a cyber truck.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I was hoping excellent, as one does.
Speaker 2: You and I have pressured a lot of politicians that
Speaker 2: we don't think this stock trading should come through. Much
Speaker 2: like when I wanted an atheist president and I got
Speaker 2: Donald Trump. This is not the way I want this
Speaker 2: to happen.
Speaker 1: If her congressional run means that there is a congressional
Speaker 1: stock trading ban, I'll take it. If there's one thing
Speaker 1: I want in this world, If there's one present that
Speaker 1: you could give me for Christmas. It is a congressional
Speaker 1: stock trade.
Speaker 2: Van in mine. I'm not going to stay on air.
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. Thanks for listening.