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 a Democrat won the special election
Speaker 1: to fill the seat of assassinated Minnesota lawmaker Melissa Hortman.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today in
Speaker 1: the Nation's gene here stops by to talk about Cash
Speaker 1: Betel's jaw dropping congressional hearing. Then we'll talk to the
Speaker 1: Financial Times editor Ed Loose about how Trump's immigration war
Speaker 1: is hurting our economy. But first the news.
Speaker 2: We got a hotbed of RFK fuckery in our first
Speaker 2: segment today. First off, shout out to doctor Susan Monarez
Speaker 2: for being so good in this testimony, and really shout
Speaker 2: out to her for being a great American, being brave
Speaker 2: and saying what she needed to say in this hearing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look, that was really a great hearing. She gave
Speaker 1: a great speech. She talked about in integrity and again
Speaker 1: like this is this question of here are all of
Speaker 1: these billionaires, all of these captains of industry, lawyers, fancy
Speaker 1: people caving and then you have just she's just a
Speaker 1: doctor and she says what I think should be our
Speaker 1: watchword for this moment in American life. She says, I
Speaker 1: would have gone along was what RFK wanted, but then
Speaker 1: I would have given up my integrity. And the only
Speaker 1: reason that I'm doing any of this is because of
Speaker 1: my integrity. It's worth listening. And you know, we had
Speaker 1: Senator John Cassidy. He is the reason we are in
Speaker 1: this nightmare. So I don't have a lot of pity
Speaker 1: for him, but he's understood what he's done. And look,
Speaker 1: Democrats were worried that Susan Manair's would not be able
Speaker 1: to stand up to RFK, and she did. She stood
Speaker 1: up to arf Kay. She stood way up to arf
Speaker 1: Kay and Nat I think is really a testament to
Speaker 1: doctor Minera's and if nothing else, like she is a
Speaker 1: brave woman that we should all kind of being off of.
Speaker 2: I will go out of the lim and say when
Speaker 2: history is written of this time, what they'll talk about
Speaker 2: is some of the details of how she described the
Speaker 2: fealty he wanted and how she would not push back
Speaker 2: on it. That will be a detail that we will
Speaker 2: see over and over again in these hearings as this
Speaker 2: administration tries to make everyone bow to them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this moment we're in will not last forever. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and we will look back on this, and we will
Speaker 1: look back at the people who caved and the people
Speaker 1: who spoke truth to power. There were a lot of
Speaker 1: moments in that hearing it's really worth going back to
Speaker 1: because during that hearing we also saw urf Case had
Speaker 1: a lot of really unhinged stuff to her. He said
Speaker 1: that the CDC vaccine recommendations are based on science. That's
Speaker 1: not true. He just said a lot of things. He
Speaker 1: said the CDC is killing children. Not true. By the way,
Speaker 1: measles has killed two children. He really is probably the
Speaker 1: most dangerous member of Trump's cabinet. And again, vaccines are
Speaker 1: an eighty twenty issue. They are an eighty twenty issue.
Speaker 1: Trump maybe has decided that he thinks that RFK is
Speaker 1: good for him, but I think it's really worth realizing
Speaker 1: that RFK could really be the one of the many
Speaker 1: things that unravels this administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and now he wants to end mental health screetings
Speaker 2: in schools, which you know, in a mental health crisis,
Speaker 2: where all everybody talks about all day is how our children, us,
Speaker 2: every person of any status is not doing the best
Speaker 2: with mental health. This seems like one of the dumber
Speaker 2: ideas coming out of this administration.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's so hard to pick this one dumb
Speaker 1: idea to come out of this administry. I don't know
Speaker 1: if you have if you are familiar with how this
Speaker 1: administration works, but there are quite a few dumb ideas
Speaker 1: that this crew has.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't want to be the person wriking a top
Speaker 2: ten like David Letterban used to do of the top.
Speaker 3: Ten dumbest things.
Speaker 1: And the other thing I think it's worth realizing about
Speaker 1: Mineras is that doing these here and she and John
Speaker 1: Cassidy are doing these hearings right now because this week
Speaker 1: the group that RFK Junior has put together to make
Speaker 1: these new vaccine suggestions are going to make some pretty
Speaker 1: I think, probably pretty insane guidance for childhood vaccination, just
Speaker 1: like they did in Florida. So I think that what
Speaker 1: we're going to see, and we're already seeing it, is
Speaker 1: a lot of states blue states are getting together and
Speaker 1: having their own health groups.
Speaker 4: We see it.
Speaker 1: We're seeing insurance companies saying that they will cover these vaccines.
Speaker 1: These are not hugely expensive vaccines, but they're going to
Speaker 1: cover them even if the recommendations are changed. Which it
Speaker 1: looks like they will be. What's happening here is we're
Speaker 1: seeing a kind of soft secession, right. We're seeing blue
Speaker 1: states say like, we can't trust the health data we
Speaker 1: are getting from the federal government, so we're not going
Speaker 1: to use it anymore. There becomes a question of like
Speaker 1: large percentage of our tax dollars go to fund what
Speaker 1: is now like rfk's kind of personal fife job. And
Speaker 1: there's a real question about when you go down the
Speaker 1: road of this, where does this end? And I do
Speaker 1: wonder about that, SAMAI.
Speaker 2: The Fed cuts rates zero point two five points, and,
Speaker 2: reacting to the weak job numbers, tear.
Speaker 1: Ups have successfully weaken the economy to the point where
Speaker 1: the Fed is dropping interest rates. Trump wanted the Fed
Speaker 1: to drop interest rates because he thought it would turbo
Speaker 1: charge the public markets. What they're doing is dropping interest
Speaker 1: rates because they have to. Again, that works until it doesn't, right,
Speaker 1: and you still have inflation as a real thing. So
Speaker 1: in the eight months that Donald Trump has been president,
Speaker 1: we have gone from a economy that was the envy
Speaker 1: of the world, a soft landing, to an economy that
Speaker 1: is dabbed by both rising inflation weaker job numbers. And
Speaker 1: labor market. So here we are.
Speaker 2: So there's a bunch of handwringing on the different sides
Speaker 2: about Luigi Mangioni getting his terrorism charges thrown out, which
Speaker 2: I think is an interesting ruling by Justice Gregory Carroll.
Speaker 2: What do you think, Mollie.
Speaker 1: Look, there's a lot of wanting to kind of make
Speaker 1: everything something, but my sense is that this is not
Speaker 1: a terrorism issue. This is a guy who targeted an
Speaker 1: executive because he was unhappy with his healthcare git here
Speaker 1: is a contributor to the nation and the host of
Speaker 1: the time of Monsters.
Speaker 2: Jen here.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Sali Young Fast thanks for welcoming to Fast Politics.
Speaker 1: And from your perch in Canada, the fifty first state.
Speaker 1: It turns out that by calling Canada the fifty first state,
Speaker 1: he has enraged almost everyone in Canada and not so
Speaker 1: easy to do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, absolutely, getting Canadians bad is difficult, but he
Speaker 5: has a tie, great feet. I think even more remarkable
Speaker 5: actually is he got the Danes mad, which is even harder.
Speaker 3: I mean, those guys are like frozen icycles.
Speaker 1: But we but I digress. Let's talk. So we are
Speaker 1: in the middle of these hearings about these cash Battel
Speaker 1: hearings and Cash. Battal is the head of the FBI
Speaker 1: for now. He is a complicated fellow who lives in
Speaker 1: Las Vegas, which already is interesting because the FBI is
Speaker 1: in lack Lay, Virginia, so that already is perhaps a question.
Speaker 4: Uh.
Speaker 1: And then he's tasked with basically the two biggest stories
Speaker 1: of the news cycle, Epstein and the political assassination of
Speaker 1: Charlie Kirk. They're basically all anyone's talking about, right at
Speaker 1: least when it comes to law enforcement. And he has
Speaker 1: watched both in incredible way that only the Trump administration
Speaker 1: can discuss.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, I I mean the Epstein stuff. We saw
Speaker 5: some of this at the sort of like the hearings yesterday.
Speaker 5: This guy like does not know what's going on.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 5: I have to say I have like a particular thing
Speaker 5: with Castel, which is that he's a fellow South Asian male,
Speaker 5: He's a brother.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 5: I think there's an expression that we have in Punjabi
Speaker 5: called shanda for the gam that is to say, if it's.
Speaker 1: Pretty sure that's ours and not yours, but yes, go on,
Speaker 1: I won't I.
Speaker 3: Won't fight over a copyright here, but.
Speaker 5: Which is to say that if you see like you know,
Speaker 5: the South Asian you're doing well, you know, winning a
Speaker 5: Pulitzer Prize, do you feel proud? And yeah, if it's
Speaker 5: someone like you know, Denise de Susa going to jail
Speaker 5: or Castrattel doing all the clownish stuff that he's been doing,
Speaker 5: it fills it with a particular type of it's hard
Speaker 5: to explain, like he's like you feel like, you know,
Speaker 5: bad personally yourself, like he has brought shame onto your community.
Speaker 3: Uh so.
Speaker 5: So so this is like a very personal thing for me.
Speaker 5: And it is partially because you know, this guy, uh
Speaker 5: his only qualification for being head of the FBI, I
Speaker 5: was writing a children's book praising Tunneald Trump as a king.
Speaker 5: So yeah, we were the Epstein hearings. You know, like
Speaker 5: you know, very sort of forceful questions that they busted
Speaker 5: all along terms of you know, like saying what files,
Speaker 5: offering explanations they can't explain, like very simple questions, and
Speaker 5: he just sort of like blusters and starts yelling and
Speaker 5: he has this kind of weird bud eyed thing, which
Speaker 5: I also, I mean we were talking about like you know,
Speaker 5: sort of shame and cringe.
Speaker 3: Is it just it does not look good, brother.
Speaker 1: But look, let's work on the little public appearance stuff.
Speaker 1: So the questioning yesterday I thought was important for a
Speaker 1: number of reasons. Democrats have this has been we are
Speaker 1: a party in the wilderness right there is you know,
Speaker 1: it has not been a great couple months for Democrats.
Speaker 1: So I was really heartened by some of the questioning.
Speaker 1: There was questioning that was like bombastic but broke through
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking of Corey Buoker. But then I actually
Speaker 1: think the more effective questioning was the less dramatic questioning
Speaker 1: that just drew him out. So the freshman senator from
Speaker 1: Vermont is a guy, Peter Welch. He was a folk musician,
Speaker 1: as many senators are. And he gets Cash Bettel going
Speaker 1: on the FBI private jet, and he gets him talking
Speaker 1: about how he went to all these sporting events with
Speaker 1: Mel Gibson. So he says, you know, mister Patel, I
Speaker 1: see you took the private jet from Virginia to and
Speaker 1: he says, I fly out of Andrews and not out
Speaker 1: of Reagan, which saves the tax bears money. So clearly
Speaker 1: already you see see the guy knows this is not
Speaker 1: a great look. And then he says, well, you know,
Speaker 1: you flew to Las Vegas to do this fight with
Speaker 1: mel Gibson. And he says, well, I live in Las Vegas, okay.
Speaker 1: And he goes, well, you flew to Miami, you flew
Speaker 1: to like and he goes through New York and and
Speaker 1: you know, and and it gets to I think the
Speaker 1: gestault of it, which is that on the day that
Speaker 1: they were trying to find the killer of Charlie Kirk,
Speaker 1: he was at Rio's with Bo Didle in New York.
Speaker 5: You know, I mean, this is uh that there is
Speaker 5: something like kind of amazing that this guy's ahead of
Speaker 5: the FBI, and he's kind of treating that as like,
Speaker 5: you know, of the Behine Hustle podcast that he goes
Speaker 5: into like an iridy or whatever, we only act less
Speaker 5: serious than a podcast, just like a remarkable kind of thing.
Speaker 5: I also think, like in terms of his kind of reresponsibility,
Speaker 5: I mean, I thought one thing that really struck out
Speaker 5: was that been all sorts of stuff circulating on the
Speaker 5: right trying to link the trans roommate with the alleged
Speaker 5: killer of Charlie Kirk, and I saw cash for tail,
Speaker 5: like actually tweeting out one of these reports which is
Speaker 5: from a Fox News reporter but on her like Twitter
Speaker 5: account and something that actually, like as far as I
Speaker 5: can tell.
Speaker 3: Has not actually been verified.
Speaker 5: And I was actually like really troubled by that, Like
Speaker 5: the head of the FBI should not be like so circulating,
Speaker 5: you know, like rumors on Twitter in general only Charlie
Speaker 5: Kirk investigation. I mean I do think, like, you know,
Speaker 5: the one thing was, as with the earlier case with
Speaker 5: Luig g you know, the fact that they had a
Speaker 5: video and then family and friends recognized. I mean, that
Speaker 5: was the thing that turned it. But otherwise he was
Speaker 5: like stumping all over the investigation. They were like saying
Speaker 5: stuff that was not true. Actually, like very early on
Speaker 5: he was saying that we had a subject and thank
Speaker 5: you for all the great work, which is you know,
Speaker 5: someone who was Actually they had two people that were
Speaker 5: like totally not involved with the thing at all. One
Speaker 5: was a local crank who was to all political events,
Speaker 5: and the other one was actually like former Heritage intern
Speaker 5: who happens to be from the Middle East and had
Speaker 5: a released turned flag on his shirt, which is a
Speaker 5: case of racial profiling, so right, and he was like
Speaker 5: at the time treating us the case is closed so
Speaker 5: this is all like incredibly like like bumbling and shameful.
Speaker 1: I mean, the one thing that I think we should
Speaker 1: just segue here is that the Supreme Court has recently
Speaker 1: ruled that racial profiling is okay if it is in
Speaker 1: the service of harassing Latinos, a group that had voted
Speaker 1: for Trump.
Speaker 5: I was gonna that's gonna keep quick, because I'm looking
Speaker 5: at all the pulling of Latinos and there used to
Speaker 5: be like a huge amount of buyer's reverse there.
Speaker 1: But imagine why that would be, why you would have
Speaker 1: remorse from that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you know, like you know, like obviously.
Speaker 5: Like you know, like you know, as a principal person
Speaker 5: of the left, I you know, like racial profiling is bad.
Speaker 5: But I have to say, if you've got to be
Speaker 5: racially profiling minority members of the Heritage Foundation.
Speaker 1: You don't know, I mean, it does. You know. So
Speaker 1: much of this administration and so much of the moment
Speaker 1: we're in here is like this inability to learn the
Speaker 1: lessons of the past, And I'm struck by like racial profiling.
Speaker 1: I'm old enough to remember after nine to eleven, when people,
Speaker 1: you know, when there was a sheikh who was murdered
Speaker 1: because they thought he was you know, like I'm old
Speaker 1: enough to remember the reason we don't do this is
Speaker 1: because it doesn't because it doesn't work, and because it ultimately,
Speaker 1: you know, tramples on civil liberties. Now, this administration not
Speaker 1: super big on due process or civil liberties.
Speaker 5: But still yeah, but but still, I mean, they have
Speaker 5: not learned any lessons. I mean, it's interesting there there
Speaker 5: is a kinder tension a little bit between the more
Speaker 5: gun home members of the administration patl and Stephen Miller.
Speaker 5: I think, like, you know, in some ways, I mean,
Speaker 5: the Trump is almost the moderate of his administration because
Speaker 5: occasionally some I've be were seeing this with the case
Speaker 5: of the car plant in Georgia, where it seems like
Speaker 5: actually like they were, as is often the case, ICE
Speaker 5: was going in to go after Latino employees and they
Speaker 5: saw all these like Koreans and they said, like, you know, we're.
Speaker 3: All like legitimate visas and we're there to trade Americans.
Speaker 5: And you know, the state of Georgia spent a huge
Speaker 5: amount of effort to try to get the spot brought
Speaker 5: into their state, and southern really it's like this great
Speaker 5: you know, like as with a large patting ally for
Speaker 5: seventy years and now like you know, like basically, you know,
Speaker 5: like everything is going down the toilet. Now. I have
Speaker 5: to say, like Trump himself seems to like be thinking,
Speaker 5: like wait a minute, this is not actually something we
Speaker 5: should be doing, because he has these rich business friends
Speaker 5: who tell him that. But like as well as like
Speaker 5: you know, like someone like Stephen Miller, this is actually,
Speaker 5: this is actually what he wants.
Speaker 1: South Korea is an incredible story and I cannot stop
Speaker 1: talking about it for a number of reasons. But one is,
Speaker 1: you put the tariffs in place so that people will
Speaker 1: manufacture in America. So all you want is people to
Speaker 1: build plants in Georgia. Georgia's a red state. Donald Trump
Speaker 1: Republican governor. He is killing himself to get this investment.
Speaker 1: They are training Americans for high paying jobs, right not working,
Speaker 1: you know, not picking strawberries, but like really, job is.
Speaker 3: What everybody wants, is what Democrats were.
Speaker 1: Let's manufacturing job, good manufacturing jobs. And they arrest the
Speaker 1: people who are training them. They put them in they
Speaker 1: disappear them, okay, in a facility. Then they put them
Speaker 1: on a plane. Then they can't decide whether to send
Speaker 1: them back because remember this is always Keystone Pomps. They're
Speaker 1: back and forth whether or not to send them back.
Speaker 1: These people just want to go home because they are
Speaker 1: like successful professionals. They go on to South Korea. They
Speaker 1: do a media blitz where they have photographs of them
Speaker 1: being mistreated. They have bruises, there's a pregnant woman. I
Speaker 1: mean they are on the news twenty four to seven.
Speaker 1: The South Koreans now are talking about that they want
Speaker 1: some kind of like hey go like thing for this,
Speaker 1: that this may have been their right.
Speaker 3: Violation of like there you would right.
Speaker 5: So I wanted us to look at the pictures because
Speaker 5: as far as I can tell, those people actually were
Speaker 5: done perfectly legitimate.
Speaker 3: Reason them to be in Jorgia.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, I mean I haven't no geophilitical genius. Maybe
Speaker 5: like alienating one of America's closest allies in a region
Speaker 5: where you think it's going to be the sort of
Speaker 5: battleground of the twenty first century where you're gonna try
Speaker 5: to create an online system against China. Maybe that's a
Speaker 5: good policy. I don't know, but maybe there's a like
Speaker 5: five dimensional tails I've seen here. Maybe I should give
Speaker 5: him the benefit of the note.
Speaker 1: The other thing is that, And I think that we
Speaker 1: should talk about this in a minute. Tariff's inflationary, right,
Speaker 1: Trump gets back into office basically because voters, I mean,
Speaker 1: there are a number of other crosswinds, but voters are
Speaker 1: mad about inflation. Biden administration says inflation is transitory. The
Speaker 1: voters are like that not good enough. Okay, fast forward
Speaker 1: here we are, Okay, tariffs are inflationary, groceries going up.
Speaker 1: My man is not doing anything about it. And his
Speaker 1: I mean, the economist known woke paper. The economist has
Speaker 1: him down negative seventeen. Yeah yeah, and he's finally negative
Speaker 1: in the state of Texas.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: He goes back to this, I mean, and I think
Speaker 5: that Texas stuff was particularly driven by what we just mentioned,
Speaker 5: which is the Latino vote, which had gone for Trump.
Speaker 3: It is like an amazing thing.
Speaker 5: And this is actually I'm like, you know, you're talking
Speaker 5: about the Democrats being a straight but like I look
Speaker 5: at the polling number and I'm actually thinking, like, like,
Speaker 5: I'm actually puzzled by, well, you know, why they aren't
Speaker 5: more aggressively challenging Trump on every front because he is
Speaker 5: actually quite weak politically, and I feel like this is
Speaker 5: a uh they're pulling up training like I think he's
Speaker 5: actually lower now than he's ever been, which is kind
Speaker 5: of like amazing.
Speaker 1: And it goes back. I think I'd love to go
Speaker 1: back for a minute to this idea of Target. So
Speaker 1: Target went anti woke and they got you know, they said,
Speaker 1: we're not going to do performative allyship, We're just going
Speaker 1: to do no allyship. They were riding trump Ism, and
Speaker 1: they just did terrible numbers because people just were like,
Speaker 1: we're not going to go to you. So here's a
Speaker 1: question for you. It's not popular, right, it's not. It's
Speaker 1: not popular. Yeah, it's getting less popular. It's everything's getting
Speaker 1: more expensive. People are unhappier. This is just going to
Speaker 1: get I mean, if Nixon, if Nixon and the Fed
Speaker 1: is any history which we never learned from, but we
Speaker 1: will repeat and again and again. It looks like Trump
Speaker 1: pressuring the Fed to lower interest rates will likely get
Speaker 1: us very much, you know, into spaculation.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, absolutely, I think that that's kind of where
Speaker 5: we're heading. And again, I I do think that given
Speaker 5: all those things, I actually think like I was a
Speaker 5: bolder strategy against Trump and then more you know, more
Speaker 5: forthright willingness to speak out against it. The thing I think,
Speaker 5: like Target and all these other companies is I think
Speaker 5: that they're not driven by like polling or what is
Speaker 5: even popular. They're driven by fear, you know. As for
Speaker 5: Trump has both the ability and has shown the willingness
Speaker 5: to like you know, like Target anyone who sees as
Speaker 5: a political fo you know, no pun intended with Target, Yeah,
Speaker 5: and that like HERD companies. So I actually think, like,
Speaker 5: you know, all the stuff we're seeing with all the
Speaker 5: CEOs continuing to sort of butter up Trump, all the
Speaker 5: institutions and continuing now with like you know, the the
Speaker 5: academic institutions, like surrendering to him and providing lists of
Speaker 5: professors as they did in California.
Speaker 3: That's like such a short sighted thing.
Speaker 5: They're basically thinking about, you know, what's our like you know, future,
Speaker 5: the next two three years. But with your tires off
Speaker 5: with like this guy who's hu's the unpopular and there
Speaker 5: will be a reckoning.
Speaker 3: There will be a reckoning, like you know, like.
Speaker 5: Post Trump, and like we were like, uh, we'll remember,
Speaker 5: I hope, like all the people that were cowards.
Speaker 1: And I and I also think I think the add
Speaker 1: on here is like the the reason why Trump is
Speaker 1: focused on crime and sending the National Guard into cities,
Speaker 1: and the reason why the right all they want to
Speaker 1: talk about is crime is because they know that they're
Speaker 1: losing on everything else. Right, if he were winning on immigration,
Speaker 1: he'd be like, let's talk about immigration. But he knows.
Speaker 1: You know, you got these farmers in states, have no
Speaker 1: one to work for them. You have an inflation with
Speaker 1: the labor market. You have you know, these videos of
Speaker 1: people being dragged out of there, I mean Christine knows,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, yeah, poppy killer Christie.
Speaker 6: Actually show that immigration is not more popular legal immigration,
Speaker 6: say that immigration is good for a Verica. The Stephen
Speaker 6: Miller position, which is basically like you know, it is
Speaker 6: not increasing, like you know, like let's have a fortress,
Speaker 6: let's not let them in.
Speaker 3: It is like you know, like send them all back.
Speaker 3: That is like hugely unpopular.
Speaker 1: That's right, Yeah, I mean that is you know, Trump
Speaker 1: has made immigration popular and Stephen Miller has done it.
Speaker 1: The other thing that I think about when we're looking
Speaker 1: at this is that they just seem unable to get
Speaker 1: their footing and the Epstein stuff, The fact that they
Speaker 1: can't get a message on Epstein, which has been around
Speaker 1: now forever, right, Yeah, I mean this is like we're
Speaker 1: going on twenty more. The Epstein case has been going
Speaker 1: longer than Donald Trump has been president, and they can't
Speaker 1: get their footing on this. They can't get a story
Speaker 1: straight that's cohesive. And like I was shocked with Patel
Speaker 1: where he just couldn't he had no answer, and even
Speaker 1: like there was a question from Kennedy from Louisiana, like,
Speaker 1: my man is not a liberal. He said this thing,
Speaker 1: this very specific line about how Epstein didn traffic these women,
Speaker 1: which is obviously untrue. But also if you are the
Speaker 1: Trump Bays and you are looking, you are looking for answers,
Speaker 1: like you could not be less satisfied.
Speaker 5: Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean I mean the thing with
Speaker 5: like the FSC thing is like a kind of classic
Speaker 5: case where they got themselves in their own trap because
Speaker 5: they were they used it to try to like delegitimize
Speaker 5: the Democrats, And I mean that was interesting. The podcasters
Speaker 5: were more interested in this than Trump himself. Trump himself
Speaker 5: like you know, the and he had used Epstein initially
Speaker 5: in twenty fifteen, twenty sixteen, but after that time he
Speaker 5: became very quiet about it because he kind of knew that,
Speaker 5: like there are really no good answers and on that
Speaker 5: point of Keptley not doing trafficking, and what's this like
Speaker 5: you know for mainstream people as well, like someone like
Speaker 5: Ezra Klein saying like, well, you know, like I know
Speaker 5: Epstein hung out with these famous, powerful people, but like,
Speaker 5: you know, did they know about what was happening with
Speaker 5: the young women? You know, like maybe these two parts
Speaker 5: of Epstein's likee we separate.
Speaker 7: Like like we actually have many many birthday cards from
Speaker 7: like rich and powerful people to Jeffrey Epstein, and they
Speaker 7: all somehow have these incredibly weird and creepy pictures of
Speaker 7: Epstein with like young girls, and they all are making
Speaker 7: like these illusions to things that like basically do as
Speaker 7: they sound like incredibly predatory abusive children.
Speaker 3: So like it's kind of like how does that even
Speaker 3: like fly anymore?
Speaker 1: If nothing else? The birthday book is a shocking revelation.
Speaker 5: Gee, it was at the kind of shock like like
Speaker 5: I just thought maybe these guys were speaking code. They
Speaker 5: don't like no, it's like no, I'm gonna draw a
Speaker 5: little picture of my friend Epstein surrounded by young guy
Speaker 5: offering balloons to young girls.
Speaker 1: It's like what is with the dates and their ages?
Speaker 1: So if you're wondering, they're not trying hard to hide it.
Speaker 1: Jeet here, will you please come back.
Speaker 3: I'm always happy to be on this for Go.
Speaker 1: Financial Times, Chief US commentator and author of Ziggernou Brazinski,
Speaker 1: America's Great Power Profit. Welcome to Fast Politics, ed.
Speaker 4: Lous Calamony, lovely to be with you. As always, I'm.
Speaker 1: Such a fan of yours and I always am delighted
Speaker 1: when i get to talk to you on television, and
Speaker 1: I'm always delighted when I get to talked to you
Speaker 1: in podcasts and even in real life. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about this piece you wrote for the FT about sort
Speaker 1: of I think really about where we.
Speaker 4: Are right, yes, I mean where we are post to
Speaker 4: Charlie kirk killing. Yeah, but where we are more generally,
Speaker 4: I mean a lot of what we've all been saying
Speaker 4: since his killing, We were saying and could have been saying,
Speaker 4: just in slightly different ways before his killing. It's just
Speaker 4: a moment of shock, but it's actually nothing new. How
Speaker 4: the right of reacted to this nothing new whatsoever, which
Speaker 4: is to become champions of cancel culture, to weaponize language
Speaker 4: to I mean extraordinarily, any criticism of Charlie Kirk now
Speaker 4: is considered to be incitement to murder. This is by
Speaker 4: no means a First Amendment stance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, now, Donald Trump is going to the UK talk
Speaker 1: us through what's happening here.
Speaker 4: He was flattered by KOs Dama, the British Prime Minister,
Speaker 4: back in February. If you're remember, he handed Trump this
Speaker 4: invitation slightly sort of cringe worthy moment where he is saying,
Speaker 4: this is personally handwritten by King Charles and it's unprecedented.
Speaker 4: You're the only president who's had two state visits, which
Speaker 4: of course amazing. You know, with all the coaches and
Speaker 4: horses and pageantry, all of this will flat of Trump.
Speaker 4: And that's clearly the British strategy. But my problem is
Speaker 4: I understand why foreign countries flat of Trump, because you
Speaker 4: can avoid ten percent on your bottom line just by
Speaker 4: pure sucking up. But other countries, and I'm thinking of
Speaker 4: Canada in particular in terms of Western ones, and countries
Speaker 4: like India, have follow up strategies, which is to hedge
Speaker 4: against Trump, against the flattery wearing off within a few
Speaker 4: days and Trump trump volcano erupting again. And so what
Speaker 4: worries me about Britain. Is Britain has a mega problem.
Speaker 1: Right they really do. So talk us through that, because
Speaker 1: that's a real thing.
Speaker 4: So there was a march last Saturday called the Unite
Speaker 4: the Kingdom March in London, somewhere between one hundred hundred
Speaker 4: and fifty thousand and straitors far right, I mean, led
Speaker 4: by this guy called Tommy Robinson, who is a favorite
Speaker 4: of Elon Musk. He's an ex football who loore going.
Speaker 4: He was jailed for assulting a police officer, jailed for
Speaker 4: fraud jail, I mean he was. He's been convicted seven times.
Speaker 4: He is a fascist street thug and this was his
Speaker 4: march in his name, and Mask addressed it and said
Speaker 4: violence is coming to Britain. Get ready do violence to
Speaker 4: the people who are doing violence to you. It's a
Speaker 4: sort of transposing of the Charlie Kirk aftermath onto the
Speaker 4: British debate.
Speaker 1: What do you think about that moment with Mask? Because
Speaker 1: I saw that quip and I was pretty horrified, and
Speaker 1: I wondered, he is the richest man in the world. Still,
Speaker 1: I wonder what the thinking there is.
Speaker 4: So masque, you know, whatever the psychological origins of him
Speaker 4: turning on liberal democracy, and you know, parties that support
Speaker 4: liberal democracy, whether they be Democrats or the Labor Party
Speaker 4: or any of the non fascist parts. He's in Germany.
Speaker 4: What the origins are of that, or whether ketamine is
Speaker 4: a bigger explanation, I don't know, but is a very
Speaker 4: weird story because you know, he was the guy who
Speaker 4: was delivering the future to liberal car buyers the EV.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just a baffling situation.
Speaker 4: Right, It's very baffling. I mean, one thing is, you know,
Speaker 4: he felt snubbed because Biden had an EV summit to
Speaker 4: which Musk was conspicuously not invited because by that stage
Speaker 4: in early Biden he'd shown many of the obnoxious signs
Speaker 4: that we now no one loves so well. He'd you know,
Speaker 4: he'd tormented that school teacher in Thailand. You know, he'd
Speaker 4: been going off the rails a lot, and so Biden
Speaker 4: probably slightly unwisely didn't invite him. But nevertheless, it doesn't
Speaker 4: in any way explain the rage. The fact that he
Speaker 4: has a daughter while a son who has transitioned that
Speaker 4: sort of clearly triggered him. And then I think that
Speaker 4: the Biden administration turned down his offer of Starlink providing
Speaker 4: rural wife, basically rural connectivity to America. That pissed him off.
Speaker 4: But I mean of which remotely explains or justifies going
Speaker 4: full blown fascist.
Speaker 1: Rain and also encouraging. But the question I wonder with
Speaker 1: urging people to violence is there's a reason very wealthy
Speaker 1: people don't say things like that, And isn't there some
Speaker 1: culpability if somebody gets hurt?
Speaker 4: There is, and there are limits to free speech even
Speaker 4: under the First Amendment, inside the violence, shouting fire in
Speaker 4: a crowded theater, etc. I would submit that under American law,
Speaker 4: urging people as he did a year ago, when Britain
Speaker 4: had these horrible sort of race riot around the killing
Speaker 4: of three girls allegedly by a refugee. It turned out
Speaker 4: it wasn't a refugee. But there were mobs seeking hotels, hostels,
Speaker 4: looking to burn them. There's hostels with families in them.
Speaker 4: Mask was egging on people like Tommy Robinson, whose accounts
Speaker 4: he had restored to x they'd been banned from Twitter
Speaker 4: for very good reasons. They were directing mobs, bloodthirsty mobs,
Speaker 4: to these hostels. That surely is not protected speech. That
Speaker 4: is incitement of violence. And what he said last Saturday
Speaker 4: by video to this crowd in London was I believe incitement,
Speaker 4: which is they are coming for you and therefore preemptively,
Speaker 4: which is an exact replica of what we've heard in
Speaker 4: the wake of Charlie Kirk's murder. I'm not suggesting he
Speaker 4: you know, he'd be prosecuted for that, but he should
Speaker 4: be persona non grata in any self respecting liberal democracy
Speaker 4: that has a spine well.
Speaker 1: And also I think there's a larger question of like
Speaker 1: is he culpable, like financially like if somebody gets hurt
Speaker 1: because they are attacked by someone who does what Elon
Speaker 1: just told them to do, what does that mean.
Speaker 4: Here's where the Trump visit and the Trump sort of
Speaker 4: the trade UK US trade agenda intersects with this whole
Speaker 4: issue of magg Yeah please, And that is the real
Speaker 4: Trump line with Europe and with Britain is get rid
Speaker 4: of regulation of digit get rid of any rules on
Speaker 4: online speech and any constraints on big tech. Essentially, you're
Speaker 4: just trying to harm America and our champions, and eat
Speaker 4: On Musk is one of them. Sam Oltman is another.
Speaker 4: That is of course an attack on any consequences for
Speaker 4: incendiary so the violent inducing hate speech like ones that
Speaker 4: Musk is specializing in nowadays, I mean, seems to be
Speaker 4: really quite addicted to. You know, every day Trump wants
Speaker 4: Britain and the European Union to scrap and Canada and
Speaker 4: we're where he's had some success to scrap any limits
Speaker 4: on what you can do online and both commercial behavior
Speaker 4: and speech behavior.
Speaker 1: And then you'll give them trade good trade deals.
Speaker 4: Well then he just gives them less worse ones. All
Speaker 4: they're doing is avoiding bullet worse but bigger bullets. You know,
Speaker 4: there's no upside, is just to limit the downside to Trump.
Speaker 4: But that's the game.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: I'm just not confident that Kiirs Darma's government, or indeed
Speaker 4: the French government, or I am quite confident in Mark Carney.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, but most of these governments, Britain included, I
Speaker 4: have little faith in stealiness. And you need to be steely.
Speaker 4: We need to stand up to this.
Speaker 1: I do just think happened with the trade stuff because
Speaker 1: like at this point, we have these humongous trade humongous tariffs,
Speaker 1: biggest ever right basically since the Great Depression, and with
Speaker 1: these huge tariffs consumers are paying for them, some of it.
Speaker 1: Companies are paying for some of it. Some of it's
Speaker 1: just not priced in yet. Right the markets public markets
Speaker 1: have decided they're ignoring it largely. Do you think at
Speaker 1: some point we enter reality or do we just stay
Speaker 1: in this weird unreality.
Speaker 4: So the markets would be the sort of clearest administerers
Speaker 4: of reality. And Trump the phrase Trump or Taco Trump
Speaker 4: his chickens out comes from the bond markets. There is
Speaker 4: a real puzzle amongst economists as to why the markets
Speaker 4: still seem relatively happy. The dollar, by the way, been
Speaker 4: falling steadily for three months.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain why that is?
Speaker 4: Yeah? So I think that politics around the FED, the
Speaker 4: reduction and probably extinction of the Fed's independence in the
Speaker 4: coming months, has strongly reduced confidence in America's full faith
Speaker 4: and credit as the sort of chief sopeign credit in
Speaker 4: the world.
Speaker 1: So what we're watching is something called dollar flight.
Speaker 4: On a flight, and we're also of coursing a downgrading
Speaker 4: of American growth prospects. I mean, to most Americans it
Speaker 4: feels like a recession. The macro numbers don't show that
Speaker 4: because there is growth in AI and the markets, you know,
Speaker 4: are partly the markets are being held up by that.
Speaker 4: But I think the markets have got a bet going here,
Speaker 4: which is because the Fed's going to lose its independence,
Speaker 4: We're going to have an era.
Speaker 1: Of easy rally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we're going to have just easy money, and we'll
Speaker 4: get inflation down the line. We're already seeing some, but
Speaker 4: we'll get real inflation nineteen seventy style on the line
Speaker 4: because the last time the FED did what it was
Speaker 4: told and provide easy money was with and that created
Speaker 4: the statsay stagflation.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that is clearly and we talk about
Speaker 1: it all the time on this podcast. Because I was
Speaker 1: born in the late seventies, so much of my early
Speaker 1: childhood story is like my parents having these brown and
Speaker 1: Mercedes as with enormous gas tanks. The whole trunk of
Speaker 1: the car was a gas tank, so you didn't have
Speaker 1: to wait online for gas as long. I don't know
Speaker 1: how that is not a fire hazard, but I guess
Speaker 1: it's the seventies, so nobody cares. It's funny because it's
Speaker 1: like it's so many points Trump is doing. It's not
Speaker 1: always true, but it's often true that Donald Trump does
Speaker 1: things that Nixon, These sort of Nixonian problems. And you know,
Speaker 1: we've seen this how this worked with Nixon, and now
Speaker 1: we're seeing Trump do it, you know, I mean, this
Speaker 1: is just straight out of his play.
Speaker 4: We are. I mean, I think the difference at the
Speaker 4: moment is that Nixon was held to count and it
Speaker 4: was really his own party, and it was it was
Speaker 4: some key Republican legislators switching led to Nixon's resignation. I
Speaker 4: can't see that right now from any serious Republican and
Speaker 4: if it did happen, it would be an act of
Speaker 4: suicide at this point, of political suicide at this point.
Speaker 4: And what we've seen in the media I sort of think,
Speaker 4: I think reflects politics that you get kill Mead, you know,
Speaker 4: saying we can basically kill homeless people, and he gets
Speaker 4: away with an apology, and we see people contributors on
Speaker 4: the non Fox channels saying really basically speaking the truth
Speaker 4: that Kirk was not a lovely human being.
Speaker 1: Right, something Spencer Cox said, right.
Speaker 4: Right exactly. And I think, you know, politics reflects that
Speaker 4: You've got Democrats playing by the rules and like the
Speaker 4: Queensbury rules, and you've got the other side that has
Speaker 4: no rules. They'll bring out, they'll bring a you know,
Speaker 4: a machine gun to a sword fight. And there is
Speaker 4: no chance at the moment that that we'll see a
Speaker 4: Nixon ending to this. That I mean could change. If
Speaker 4: America really plunges into genuine official recession. You know, you
Speaker 4: could see some Republicans regaining their spine. But at the
Speaker 4: moment I'm touching at straws, I just don't see. I
Speaker 4: don't see Republicans. I think they're terrified of Trump, and
Speaker 4: I think they're terrified of MAGA, and I think they
Speaker 4: have reason to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, it does strike me that there's going
Speaker 1: to be a moment when this all terms. I mean,
Speaker 1: I don't know if it's six months, six years. If anything,
Speaker 1: If we've seen anything from the last ten years and
Speaker 1: the backlash to backlash to backlash to backlash, it's that
Speaker 1: there is going to be a moment where the American
Speaker 1: people are like, what has happened?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And last time it was COVID. You know, before
Speaker 4: COVID struck, Trump was cruising to reelection. I mean, the
Speaker 4: numbers showed them way ahead. So COVID was a big
Speaker 4: game changer. But because you can't predict all better on
Speaker 4: clobal pandemics and you certainly a wish for them.
Speaker 1: COVID did get us into a real moment where I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of how we got here is COVID.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and it both got rid of Trump but also
Speaker 4: seeded his return. Yeah, I agree with that. COVID is complicated.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think we can agree on it was
Speaker 4: a massive event we still don't fully understand.
Speaker 1: And RFK would not be destroying national health were it
Speaker 1: not for COVID.
Speaker 4: I think that's absolutely correct. I mean, I do think,
Speaker 4: and you know, I know some of them because my
Speaker 4: daughter's friends and stuff. I do think there are some
Speaker 4: young people who were and this surprised us how many
Speaker 4: young people voted for Trump last November, but who had
Speaker 4: had sort of really dead souls a year or two
Speaker 4: of not really learning in the zoomers, who got somehow
Speaker 4: turned off by teachers, unions and CDCs and regulators. When
Speaker 4: Trump was able to weaponize that into vote, and it
Speaker 4: really did take us by surprise. And I guess the
Speaker 4: maestro of that on TikTok was Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk
Speaker 4: was really good at reaping that harvest.
Speaker 1: Right. The fundamental problem was people went to the Internet
Speaker 1: for news and people who were producing news on the internet.
Speaker 1: Some were of the left, many were of the right.
Speaker 1: They were able to sort of game things to be
Speaker 1: stickier and have you know, part of it is talent.
Speaker 1: I mean, these guys all had talent and they connected
Speaker 1: with people. I wonder if we could just talk for
Speaker 1: a minute, sort of like, I don't think you get
Speaker 1: to this moment without a real consolidation of news media
Speaker 1: and print media. You know, we write for the FT.
Speaker 1: UK has a lot of newspapers. They're like America but
Speaker 1: in some ways not have a lot of newspapers. You
Speaker 1: have a lot of news, you have a lot of writers,
Speaker 1: you have a lot of it's just very culturally different, smaller,
Speaker 1: but more media. Do you think you guys are better off?
Speaker 4: I would hesitate to say that. I mean, I think
Speaker 4: there is still one factor that keeps the debate within
Speaker 4: slightly less insane parameters, and that is that the BBC
Speaker 4: is something everybody uses, have local news. And you have
Speaker 4: them arguing over representation on BBC, the right and the left,
Speaker 4: but they're arguing about their position in the same public square.
Speaker 4: There is no public square. There are many, many different squares,
Speaker 4: semi privatized squares in America. There isn't that sort of
Speaker 4: old fashioned network era that is totally dead in America.
Speaker 4: So in that respect, I mean it's a very negative
Speaker 4: plus point. But in that because the BBC is being
Speaker 4: sort of it's punch drunk, it just gets beaten up
Speaker 4: left right and center, particularly right they included because they
Speaker 4: got criticized Farage on so many shows. They boosted him
Speaker 4: in kind of the same way that Trump was boosted
Speaker 4: in twenty sixteen by having all is rallies film from
Speaker 4: beginning to end by CNN. And so you know, it's
Speaker 4: not really not an ideal counterexample to Britain. I really
Speaker 4: liked what Governor Cox of Utah said last week that
Speaker 4: social media is a cancer on our society and we
Speaker 4: know this, but we can't ignore it. We have to
Speaker 4: play in that space. But we're aware it's utterly top
Speaker 4: sick and it's bringing out the worst in this and
Speaker 4: slicon Valley and making out like bandits by algorithmrizing our
Speaker 4: most reptilian side of our brains. And we know all
Speaker 4: this is happening, and hopefully as time goes on, we'll
Speaker 4: grapple with it better because if we don't, then it's
Speaker 4: going to get.
Speaker 1: Worse ed loose.
Speaker 4: Thank you, thank you, thank you, such a delight money.
Speaker 1: No second, Jesse Cannon, I jump fast.
Speaker 2: So you know, one of the things, as we've heard
Speaker 2: about how the left is the violent party from people
Speaker 2: like Elon Musk, these studies, in fact show a totally
Speaker 2: different story, which is that the right wing, even when
Speaker 2: the DOJ is broken it down in a way that
Speaker 2: a lot of us question, which is right wing left
Speaker 2: wing in Islamic, the right wing wins by miles.
Speaker 1: Still, Yes, I did see that. It's funny. I saw
Speaker 1: that too, and I was right wing left wing Islamic.
Speaker 1: I was like, hmm, yes, I did see that.
Speaker 2: You know, would you clock it by amounts of attacks?
Speaker 2: And then a lot of people will be like, oh well,
Speaker 2: if you clock it by only measuring three weeks ago,
Speaker 2: then the left wing wins. It's like, okay, yeah, sure,
Speaker 2: every score can be divvied up by a different time.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much. But really, what we've seen is
Speaker 2: that this movement grows increasingly more violent, and now the
Speaker 2: DOJ is showing no study for it anymore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's shocking that the facts that do not care
Speaker 1: about their feelings they are getting rid of. There was
Speaker 1: a moment during the Cash Betel hearing when a Democratic
Speaker 1: congressman asked him about Dylan Roof and he did not
Speaker 1: know who he was, or he said, I'm sorry, Dylan Roof,
Speaker 1: can you give me more information? And the member of Congress,
Speaker 1: a woman called camal Or Doves, said, you're the head
Speaker 1: of the FBI, and you know, look, my man has
Speaker 1: been spending a lot of time at MMA fights, spending
Speaker 1: a lot of time with Mel Gibson. But that guy
Speaker 1: Dylan Roof was in fact a white supremacist who killed
Speaker 1: him on people at a black church. Yeah, he may
Speaker 1: or may not know who Dylan Roof is, but it
Speaker 1: behooves him to pretend not to know because then he
Speaker 1: doesn't have to answer. You know, remember Cash Batela is
Speaker 1: doing all of these hearings for an audience of one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is like me not knowing how many calories
Speaker 2: are at a stake.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Correct. That's it for this episode of Fast Politics.
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