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 PBS NPR mayrist Paul shows
Speaker 1: that Trump's support among rural voters is declining. Can't imagine
Speaker 1: why we have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: Talking Points Memo's own Josh Marshall stops by to talk
Speaker 1: about how Trump is failing to emulate Victor Orbond's playbook.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to Minority Whip Catherine Clark about how
Speaker 1: Dems continue to try and fight back against Trump's agenda. Plus,
Speaker 1: we have a special bonus from our YouTube channel with
Speaker 1: the Bulwarks Great Willsomer on the Mega Media clown Show
Speaker 1: being invited to the White House press room. But first the.
Speaker 2: News Smiley, we got to see Trump's budget. When I
Speaker 2: imagine the stupidity that awaits us each day, just the
Speaker 2: sheer grazing over this thing. The stupidity exceeds my expectations,
Speaker 2: which were are.
Speaker 1: Okay, this is your way of saying, there are five
Speaker 1: ways in which Trump's budget will affect everyday Americans. Now
Speaker 1: disclaimer here, high likelihood this budget will not get passed,
Speaker 1: will not get passed in this way. But if it
Speaker 1: were to get passed, it would fuck a lot of
Speaker 1: the people for whom Trump is their mango tinted god king.
Speaker 1: So I think this is really important that we go
Speaker 1: through this for a minute, and we are going to start. Look,
Speaker 1: this is all Project twenty twenty five. You'll remember Project
Speaker 1: twenty five as them slashing domestic spending, and that's where
Speaker 1: we are Trump enacting twenty twenty six. And so here
Speaker 1: are the ways in which this budget will completely fuck
Speaker 1: over our people, and especially people in red states. Number
Speaker 1: one is education. You'll remember tends to be red states
Speaker 1: have lower state taxes, and that means less money for
Speaker 1: education from the state, which means more money for education
Speaker 1: from the federal government. Well, guess what Trump's budget would
Speaker 1: decrease funding for programs meant to increase equity and education.
Speaker 1: By the way, equity means poor people, right, it doesn't
Speaker 1: mean white people, It means poor people. So that means
Speaker 1: forty nine million from the Education Department's Office of Civil Rights,
Speaker 1: which would be about finding racial quality but also economical quality.
Speaker 1: Funding underfunded schools, four point five billion for K to
Speaker 1: twelve and Title I programs by the way title I
Speaker 1: poor schools, schools where poor kids go, schools in red
Speaker 1: states where poor kids go. I bet you a gazillion
Speaker 1: dollars that many of those schools are in Trump districts.
Speaker 1: So then there's health. The big picture of the proposal
Speaker 1: would add five hundred million to Health and Human Services
Speaker 1: under Robert F. Kennedy Junior, and then three point five
Speaker 1: billion in cuts for the CDC. I'm going to say
Speaker 1: that again because that is fucking humongous. Three point five
Speaker 1: billion cuts to the CDC seventeen billion and cuts the
Speaker 1: National Institute for Health, so twenty five reduction from the
Speaker 1: past year. That means the cancer drug trials getting cut,
Speaker 1: the Alzheimer's drug trials getting cut, the melanoma trials getting cut.
Speaker 1: I mean, this will be huge, mangus. It will mean
Speaker 1: there will be much less scientific research conducted in America,
Speaker 1: and on and on and on. Another thing, which as
Speaker 1: RFK Junior is supposedly sober, he's cutting a billion dollars
Speaker 1: in substance abuse in mental health services. And then the veterans,
Speaker 1: of course get the shaft, and why wouldn't they, and
Speaker 1: Trump three point three billion in funding for veterans healthcare services,
Speaker 1: cut two point one billion to move medical records. Cut,
Speaker 1: cutting state rental assistance which would help poor people, cutting
Speaker 1: low income home energy assistance which helps poor people pay
Speaker 1: for heat, all the things you would think. And remember
Speaker 1: this is being done to pay for Donald Trump's tax
Speaker 1: cuts for very wealthy people. So if you are not enraged,
Speaker 1: you are not paying attention.
Speaker 2: Yeah, speaking of reasons to be enraged, Trump is calling
Speaker 2: for Democrats to be removed from Congress over their calls
Speaker 2: for impeachment of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, look, Trump does not like it. He's
Speaker 1: an autocrat, right, He's like Kim Jong, but not as
Speaker 1: good looking, and so that's an incest. Jesus, Kim Jong
Speaker 1: is a young and fit man in the prime of
Speaker 1: his life and happens to be a cousin. This is
Speaker 1: the same as that he doesn't like him. When people
Speaker 1: say stuff he doesn't like, it makes him upset. This
Speaker 1: is a case of that. So there's a Michigan Democrat
Speaker 1: introduced seven articles of impeachment targeting Trump. Now, the reason
Speaker 1: why no one in the Democratic Party in the House
Speaker 1: of Representatives is trying to impeach Trump is because they
Speaker 1: don't have the votes, right, They don't even have the
Speaker 1: votes to make an impeachment go. So the idea of
Speaker 1: doing this, and we've seen Algreen kept doing it in
Speaker 1: Trump's first two years, from twenty sixteen to twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: he kept introducing articles of impeachment. But until you have
Speaker 1: the numbers to get there, you don't have the numbers
Speaker 1: to get there. So this is sort of a fool's
Speaker 1: errand but Trump is still sensitive. He doesn't like being impeached.
Speaker 1: He doesn't like the poor poll numbers. Maggie Haberman writes
Speaker 1: about this really well this week. She wrote a lot
Speaker 1: about it. You talked about NCN. Trump is bothered by
Speaker 1: this stuff. He's an egomaniac, so he is not happy
Speaker 1: with all of this negative stuff and he would like
Speaker 1: to punish the people who criticize him. Thank god, we
Speaker 1: do have a first Amendment and as much as Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't like it, it still exists.
Speaker 3: YEP.
Speaker 2: So this week was rattled with the usual competence are
Speaker 2: they in they out that comes with the Trump administration,
Speaker 2: where we thought Mike Waltz was fired for a minute,
Speaker 2: but now he is the investor at the UN It's said,
Speaker 2: but one of the underdiscussed details was that in the
Speaker 2: cabinet meeting. He was using a signaled knockoff.
Speaker 1: In Israeli, a fake signal chat in Israeli company, which
Speaker 1: is easier to spy on. So let us say that
Speaker 1: it seems very likely that Israel is spying on Mike Walls.
Speaker 1: I think that's a fair assessment. Mike Walls is a moron.
Speaker 1: I think we can all agree that he is a moron.
Speaker 1: He accidentally added Jeff Goldberg to a group chat. At
Speaker 1: every point, my man has done the dumbest possible thing. Now,
Speaker 1: Trump does not want to fire people like the last administration.
Speaker 1: This is clearly what's happening here. Right. He keeps, you know,
Speaker 1: saying you're not going to get a scalp. You're not
Speaker 1: going to get his scalp. So now he's decided he's
Speaker 1: just going to move him to the job he was
Speaker 1: going to give to Stevanic. Now here's the thing about
Speaker 1: this United Nations job. Trump doesn't care about it because
Speaker 1: in New York, okay, But he also just doesn't really
Speaker 1: care about how government works. So he's like, we tried
Speaker 1: to give it to Stevonic. We can't give it to
Speaker 1: Stevonic because we need her vote. So let's just put
Speaker 1: walls in there. They're not the same job, right, It's
Speaker 1: just he just doesn't want to fire walls because he
Speaker 1: doesn't want it. He feels like firing walls will give
Speaker 1: his critics his scalp. And so here we go. He's
Speaker 1: going to put walls in this other job, which I
Speaker 1: guess he thinks is less important. Again, I think this
Speaker 1: all says more about Trump. Also, I just want to
Speaker 1: add that he keeps not firing people, and then he
Speaker 1: gave Rubio the job because Rubio seems like he's the
Speaker 1: least incompetent, which could actually be true.
Speaker 2: I think it actually is true.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can Rubio do all the jobs in the federal government? Maybe?
Speaker 1: Uh well, we'll see Health and Human Services secretary is next.
Speaker 2: Mister Trump. He always changes things around Washington. Let me
Speaker 2: tell you, you know, these ambassadorships, they used to be
Speaker 2: for big donors. Now it's like the consolation prize you
Speaker 2: get when they make you lose a congressional district at
Speaker 2: an election to save face.
Speaker 1: It's good, good stuff, good stuff.
Speaker 2: I'm sure he learned this on the Apprentice. Anyway, So Trump,
Speaker 2: another feature of his presidency is total lawless and stupid
Speaker 2: executive orders that are crossing borders that he's not supposed
Speaker 2: to cross. And here we have that with him saying
Speaker 2: to cease federal funding to PBS and NPR.
Speaker 1: All these executive orders are the dumbest use of anyone's
Speaker 1: time because they keep getting overturned in court. You'll remember
Speaker 1: Chris Krebs has been targeted by one Mark Elias. If
Speaker 1: you're on this podcast, you basically get targeted by a
Speaker 1: Trump executive order. It's kind of the present, no, I mean,
Speaker 1: so here's one where he and again this goes back
Speaker 1: to Trump not liking being criticized. Right, He's seen pieces
Speaker 1: in NPR and PBS which tell the truth. He doesn't
Speaker 1: like that, and so he wants to defund them. But again,
Speaker 1: this is why, in a world filled with Columbia you
Speaker 1: want to be at Harvard, is that this is not
Speaker 1: going to work. Right, There's no world in which he's
Speaker 1: going to be able to do this the way he
Speaker 1: wants to do it, and it's going to be in
Speaker 1: court forever, and by the time it gets through the court,
Speaker 1: he'll have lost the House and Democrats will be impeaching him.
Speaker 1: So again, like, I see that what he's trying to
Speaker 1: do here, but it's not going to work. Josh Marshall
Speaker 1: is the editor of Talking Points Memo. Welcome to Fast Politics, Josh.
Speaker 4: Marshall, thank you, thanks for having me here.
Speaker 1: We are day ten billion of Trump's second term discuss I.
Speaker 4: Feel like sort of the fates are going to come
Speaker 4: down on me, or at least a lot of my
Speaker 4: readers or doomers are going to come down on me.
Speaker 4: But I think we've actually seen some positive developments over
Speaker 4: the last ten days or so. I did a post
Speaker 4: just kind of sharing with readers my sense of the situation,
Speaker 4: and I think that Trump is kind of already lost. Frankly,
Speaker 4: Now that doesn't mean that like this is over. I
Speaker 4: think it's going to get a lot worse.
Speaker 1: Crashing the economy has maybe not.
Speaker 4: On so many other things, on so many, so many things.
Speaker 4: I mean it simply in this sense that Trump's plan
Speaker 4: in this second season of the series is basically to
Speaker 4: impose a Victor Orbon system on the United States. Victor
Speaker 4: Orbon the longtime prime minister of Hungary. And I think
Speaker 4: in that effort to impose that kind of system, or
Speaker 4: even an Orbon like system, something not Batriconian Orbonic as
Speaker 4: we see orbonic. Yes, yes, I think that game may
Speaker 4: already be over. That's not to say again that it
Speaker 4: won't get a lot worse, that there won't be a
Speaker 4: lot more damage. But I don't think he's going to
Speaker 4: succeed at that aim. So that is a positive thing
Speaker 4: in my mind.
Speaker 1: So let's talk through this because this is a very
Speaker 1: good thing that I actually want to talk about. So
Speaker 1: Republicans decide of Victor Orbon was a genius to be emulated.
Speaker 1: There's a book called Erica First, all about how much
Speaker 1: Republicans love dictators and how this has actually been like
Speaker 1: that they've always loved dictators, and that like you can
Speaker 1: trace their Republicans who loved Franco. You know that at
Speaker 1: every point they've been like, these guys have great ideas.
Speaker 1: So it makes sense. And they did bring Orbon to
Speaker 1: sea pack they had him do little talks. But what
Speaker 1: I think they didn't realize was that Orbon was ruling
Speaker 1: over a country the size of New Jersey.
Speaker 4: Yes, and that is a very big deal. And he's
Speaker 4: also ruling over a country that has had a couple
Speaker 4: brief periods of democratic governance, not lasting more than a
Speaker 4: decade or two, and that's different. Now there's an argument
Speaker 4: that you hear with some people saying, hey, we've been
Speaker 4: at this for almost two hundred and fifty years. The
Speaker 4: roots of democracy are super deep here. It's not like
Speaker 4: other countries. And that's true, but that doesn't mean things
Speaker 4: can happen. But that is a factor I think what
Speaker 4: people don't think enough about. And again I'm not saying
Speaker 4: it's a guarantee by any means. It's not that it
Speaker 4: can't happen here. It can, but you need to understand
Speaker 4: some of the reasons. And it's not just a matter
Speaker 4: of that, oh, people follow the Constitution, because obviously you've
Speaker 4: seen that doesn't necessarily apply anymore. And it's certainly not
Speaker 4: like the norms of government. But something I've been thinking
Speaker 4: a lot about recently is that they're One of the
Speaker 4: things about American political culture is there's something really deeply rooted,
Speaker 4: which is a basic I can say what I want, yeah, right,
Speaker 4: And that is something you see across the political spectrum,
Speaker 4: and you see it at what political scientists referred to
Speaker 4: as articulate communities, and that we're not talking here about
Speaker 4: like you know, what kind of the vernacular you use,
Speaker 4: but people who speak in big speak right and talk
Speaker 4: about the First Amendment and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 4: And it also applies to just people like, hey, no
Speaker 4: one's going to tell me what to say. I can
Speaker 4: say what I want and I can show up at
Speaker 4: a town hall. And if you're right wing left wing,
Speaker 4: that makes all of this more difficult. And paradoxically, it
Speaker 4: tends to be elites that are a little more cowable.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: That's sort of the big law firm that brings in
Speaker 4: billions of dollars and they're all kind of plugged into
Speaker 4: the state apparatus and stuff that they've got a lot
Speaker 4: on the line, and they can be calible. But average
Speaker 4: people tend not to be as cowable. Now, everybody's different,
Speaker 4: people have different places in society, but that basic impulse
Speaker 4: and that basic unfamiliarity with the idea that you might
Speaker 4: not be able to kind of sound off about what
Speaker 4: you think is something that is pretty deeply rooted in
Speaker 4: American political culture. And at a basic level, what Trump
Speaker 4: is trying to do is to say, Okay, here's some
Speaker 4: new red lines. You can go out to what restaurants
Speaker 4: you want, You can do this, you can do that,
Speaker 4: you can say I'm awesome, can root for different baseball
Speaker 4: and football teams, but in the political sphere, aside from
Speaker 4: saying I'm awesome, no, right, and that's a hard sell
Speaker 4: in this country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I would say, like, if we're just
Speaker 1: looking at where we are in this moment, it strikes
Speaker 1: me law firms really did shit the bad in a
Speaker 1: way that almost no one else did. That Law firms Columbia.
Speaker 1: Those guys every day look like bigger and bigger cowards.
Speaker 1: That's my take. People who've left the country because they're
Speaker 1: scared this is Trump is a we can push back
Speaker 1: in a peaceful way against it. And also these people
Speaker 1: are morons.
Speaker 4: I have always been on the skeptical end of the
Speaker 4: spectrum about whether Trump can pull this off from before
Speaker 4: the election and everything, but skeptical not saying it couldn't
Speaker 4: happen by any means. And what has kind of pushed
Speaker 4: me into this camp is, you know, to peace about this.
Speaker 4: A few days ago, kind of making the point that
Speaker 4: I've just made before that I think he's kind of
Speaker 4: already lost that fight. And a reader wrote back to
Speaker 4: me and was sort of saying, Oh, I've been thinking
Speaker 4: along the same lines, and the reader managed to summarize
Speaker 4: what I had said much more concisely than I had
Speaker 4: which is that there's a way you could turn this
Speaker 4: country into an autocracy. This ain't it. This is not
Speaker 4: how you do it. You don't crash the economy. At
Speaker 4: the same time, that's really basic. One other point, everybody
Speaker 4: talks about the authoritarian playbook, right and how it gets imposed.
Speaker 4: This is a thing that is out there in our
Speaker 4: political discourse now, that playbook that exists, and it does exist.
Speaker 4: But what doesn't get talked about a lot is there's
Speaker 4: one chapter that clearly Trump didn't read, but also a
Speaker 4: lot of the anti trumpers didn't read, and that is
Speaker 4: you got to keep the economy moving nicely during the transition,
Speaker 4: and you have to keep key constituencies onside. And those
Speaker 4: constituencies are I mean as they as they used to
Speaker 4: saying kind of in Eastern European or like Soviet Russian terms.
Speaker 4: You keep the pensioners and the power ministries on side, right,
Speaker 4: the old people who need to get their checks, and
Speaker 4: the military and the security services. He's doing that with Ice,
Speaker 4: but he's even antagonized what you know, our version of
Speaker 4: the security services and the military, and he certainly antagonized
Speaker 4: old people by like trying to blow up social Security.
Speaker 4: So there's an aspect of this. You can't go to
Speaker 4: war with everyone at once, right, you have to be
Speaker 4: strategic about it. And so paradoxically he's actually doing domestically
Speaker 4: what we are seeing is not working internationally, which is
Speaker 4: that you might say, oh, okay, we're going to really,
Speaker 4: you know, crack down on you folks in China, We're
Speaker 4: going to put big tariffs and blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 4: But you need to have get other countries to go
Speaker 4: along with that. And if you're doing it to every
Speaker 4: other country at the same time, it's all going to
Speaker 4: fall apart. And in a way, that's what he's doing domestically.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, if you were going to say there's one
Speaker 1: moment where he really fucked himself, I think it's the
Speaker 1: tariffs because you have people like Ken Griffin, right, Ken
Speaker 1: Griffin the largest donor to Republican politics that isn't a
Speaker 1: Trump donor, and he's on there going he's ruining the
Speaker 1: American brand. Now, is he doing it because he's disappearing
Speaker 1: grad students? I think so. But why Griffin is saying
Speaker 1: that is because he's killing the economy. I mean, so
Speaker 1: I do think he is on the fast track to
Speaker 1: alienating many of his allies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he is.
Speaker 4: And there's another kind of allies. And this goes to
Speaker 4: kind of like don't tell me what I can say
Speaker 4: kind of stuff that when you have people in parts
Speaker 4: of the country who are very red parts of the country,
Speaker 4: and they are very red sectors of society, rural America,
Speaker 4: a lot of what remains of you know, manufacturing, you know,
Speaker 4: the kind of the more male parts of the manufacturing economy,
Speaker 4: fairly trumpy, in some cases, extremely trumpy. When when you
Speaker 4: start kind of breaking those parts of the economy, you're
Speaker 4: gonna quickly get down to that true true believers. And
Speaker 4: there aren't that many true true believers. It's interesting you
Speaker 4: see this as some of the Wall Street people, and
Speaker 4: in some ways these are the most telling that you
Speaker 4: get people saying, man, I do love Trump, but this
Speaker 4: seems kind of messed up. But we sure about this,
Speaker 4: you know, you see it in the sort of the
Speaker 4: acman types. I mean, that guy is so all in
Speaker 4: yet and he's like, uh, I love Trump and Trump
Speaker 4: is a genius, but I feel like someone must be
Speaker 4: giving him bad advice because you know, like, okay, good good,
Speaker 4: good job Bill.
Speaker 1: Are you ever sort of surprised at how were they
Speaker 1: just a sleep for the last time he was president?
Speaker 1: Because I seem to remember like Bill Ackman being like
Speaker 1: what the fuck? Like, we've lived through twenty sixteen to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty and it every point there'd be moments where
Speaker 1: we'd be like, nah, he's not gonna do that, that
Speaker 1: would just be stupid, And at every point he has
Speaker 1: in fact done that very thing.
Speaker 4: I think if you were paying attention to politics in
Speaker 4: the first term, and you were paying attention to things that, well,
Speaker 4: if you're paying attention to politics at all, you know that.
Speaker 4: But you've got a lot of these two things. You've
Speaker 4: got a lot of these guys, like the whole kind
Speaker 4: of crew around Elon Musk and guy or what is
Speaker 4: his name?
Speaker 1: It sucks, right, it sucks, But we can pretty much
Speaker 1: say socks because a fucking guy. One thing you see,
Speaker 1: is it not all venture capitalists are smart.
Speaker 4: Yes, One thing you see is a lot of these
Speaker 4: guys they found out about politics in like twenty twenty two.
Speaker 4: And beyond what you and I may think about bad
Speaker 4: views are wrong views. They're really ignorant about politics. They
Speaker 4: don't know things that happened even a few years ago.
Speaker 4: So that's one part of it. The other part of
Speaker 4: it is, and I think this is something that liberals
Speaker 4: and anti Trump people have not been cognizant enough of,
Speaker 4: is that if you looked at the economy, Trump inherited
Speaker 4: a good economy. He juiced it with a big tax cut.
Speaker 4: Tax cuts have other bad things, but they do kind
Speaker 4: of rev the economy. He didn't really interfere much in
Speaker 4: the economy. I mean, he did do some things, but
Speaker 4: nothing like this. And so I think if you're really
Speaker 4: kind of on Wall Street and that's your world and
Speaker 4: your view of politics is just are they in our
Speaker 4: hair at all?
Speaker 3: Didn't seem so bad.
Speaker 4: Kind of like he basically just let the economy move along.
Speaker 4: He did a lot of deregulations, formal and informal deregulation stuff.
Speaker 4: And you know, there's a broader permutation of this, and
Speaker 4: that is if you just turned off the news in
Speaker 4: term one before COVID, right, if you just literally didn't
Speaker 4: listen to the news, people like you or I might
Speaker 4: be saying, oh my god, this is happening, Oh my god,
Speaker 4: that's happening. But like if you were just living your
Speaker 4: life absent the news, most things seem fine, right. I mean,
Speaker 4: there are some sectors of the economy where things we
Speaker 4: are of the country or communities we're thinks. But for
Speaker 4: most people you could just sort of kind of yeah,
Speaker 4: he's this kind of weird dude, and like whatever, not
Speaker 4: my problem. That is different this time. I mean, things
Speaker 4: are happening that you may never listen to the news,
Speaker 4: but you know, you see the most striking thing you
Speaker 4: see and it is a reality regardless of what happens
Speaker 4: to the real economy. People are really worried about losing
Speaker 4: their jobs right now, really worried about the economy, And
Speaker 4: those are the kind of things when you get people
Speaker 4: that worried, that takes on a reality of its own.
Speaker 4: If everybody gets worried and stop spending money, that's a
Speaker 4: recession right there, kind of regardless of what got you there.
Speaker 4: That's political. People don't like being worried, and whoever they
Speaker 4: blame for it can be in in you know, in
Speaker 4: real trouble.
Speaker 1: No, I know, and I think that's a real question.
Speaker 1: We are out of time, unfortunately, but I hope you
Speaker 1: will come back because this went by so fast.
Speaker 4: I always love coming back. It's so much fun.
Speaker 1: Catherine Clark is the Minority whip and represents Massachusetts fifth
Speaker 1: Congressional District. Welcome to Fast Politics, Representative.
Speaker 5: Clark, thank you, it is so good to be back
Speaker 5: on the show with you.
Speaker 1: First, we're going to start by debunking there was a
Speaker 1: story in the Bulwark today that the Minority leader had
Speaker 1: said that he didn't want people going El Salvador anymore.
Speaker 1: This has been debunked already to me privately, but I'm
Speaker 1: curious if you'd like to talk about that.
Speaker 5: I have not seen that report. Tell you that. Listen,
Speaker 5: we feel that we can do lots of things at once.
Speaker 5: We can talk about the importance of the economy of
Speaker 5: rise and costs for people, how they are being betrayed
Speaker 5: by this administration and the Republicans here in Congress. And
Speaker 5: we can stand up for rule of law in the
Speaker 5: fact that when you are denying to process anyone that
Speaker 5: impacts everyone. Those are the values that we hold and
Speaker 5: that we have to meet the full spectrum of the
Speaker 5: corruption and the unconstitutional behavior we are seeing from this
Speaker 5: president and make sure we're talking about all of it
Speaker 5: and that includes sometimes showing up in places to show
Speaker 5: people that we care and that we're going to continue
Speaker 5: not to forget about these people, because it all comes
Speaker 5: back to what we're fighting for for families, and that's
Speaker 5: a fair shot. And if you are giving up the
Speaker 5: rule of law, if you are giving up their shot
Speaker 5: at the economy, then then we are not doing our
Speaker 5: job and speaking up against the many atrocities of this administration.
Speaker 1: I really do, and I've argued this before, that the
Speaker 1: Democrats can walk into gum. They can point out that
Speaker 1: the tariffs are bad, and that not giving people to
Speaker 1: process also bad, that it's not choice.
Speaker 5: That's right. This is a whole American dream that is
Speaker 5: at stake. And you know, these all are interconnected. So
Speaker 5: we can't just say, oh, you know, we're not going
Speaker 5: to talk about this piece, or we're not going to
Speaker 5: emphasize this. We don't want to get sidetracked into deep
Speaker 5: arguments over the Gulf of Mexico being renamed. But these
Speaker 5: fundamentals to the safety and security of the American people,
Speaker 5: you bet we're going to show up and talk about that.
Speaker 1: A lot of the stuff now we are Trump is
Speaker 1: a little more than one hundred days there were some
Speaker 1: pretty devastating polls released that showed that he's pretty much
Speaker 1: squandered any kind of mandate he had. Do you think
Speaker 1: that this will make a Republicans stand up to him,
Speaker 1: the fact that they are all up for reelection, at
Speaker 1: least in the House in twenty six.
Speaker 5: His approval rating in some polls is down around thirty
Speaker 5: nine percent. If we want to give him a high,
Speaker 5: it's at forty four percent. But he's underwater, and he
Speaker 5: is the lowest at this point in his administration in
Speaker 5: recorded history. So I certainly hope that that gives the
Speaker 5: strength of conviction to some. We only need five at
Speaker 5: this point, five Republicans to say none of this taking
Speaker 5: away healthcare, veterans benefits, defunding public school, dismantling social Security,
Speaker 5: taking away headstart food programs. One of this is good
Speaker 5: for folks at home. None of this is good for
Speaker 5: my voters, and none of this is going to be
Speaker 5: good for my reelection. Because he is the one. Donald
Speaker 5: Trump is the one who is leading their whip operation,
Speaker 5: who's bringing on their votes. It is the power of
Speaker 5: his personality. It is fear of him turning on them
Speaker 5: that is driving this zombie like adherents to him and
Speaker 5: these incredibly damaging and dangerous cuts that we are seeing
Speaker 5: across the board. So I hope that as his political
Speaker 5: power arose with the very voters who voted for him
Speaker 5: in twenty four that this is going to finally give
Speaker 5: a handful of them, because that's all we need, the
Speaker 5: courage to stand up and do what's right.
Speaker 1: Disappearing grad students, Well, you saw video Massachusetts of a
Speaker 1: woman being disappeared by playing closed ice agents. There's this
Speaker 1: Garcia case, but then there really are these grad students,
Speaker 1: a lot of whom are locked up in Louisiana. I
Speaker 1: know there was one released. Do you have an insight
Speaker 1: into what's going on there?
Speaker 5: This case of Ramesa Ostok Toughs is in my district.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what I thought.
Speaker 5: She's a Fulbright scholar. She's studying the highly controversial topic
Speaker 5: of early childhood development. She is studying the impact of
Speaker 5: trauma on kids. She's kind of exactly who we want
Speaker 5: coming to our country, taking part in academia and contributing back.
Speaker 5: As far as we can tell, and people have looked
Speaker 5: into her background, the only thing that could be at
Speaker 5: the heart of this is that she co authored an
Speaker 5: op ed piece on divesting for the Tough Student newspaper.
Speaker 5: I mean, she does not even have a parking ticket.
Speaker 5: And I think what is so powerful about it is
Speaker 5: that we do have video and we can see that
Speaker 5: this isn't a deportation process, This isn't exercising the state
Speaker 5: department's rights over student visas. This was an abduction. She
Speaker 5: has been disappeared off the streets of our country. And
Speaker 5: as appalling as that is for her, if you can
Speaker 5: watch that video and not have a chill down your
Speaker 5: spine about where we are in this country, it is
Speaker 5: the ramifications and the implications for every single American when
Speaker 5: she has been sent to Louisiana, they've just gotten an
Speaker 5: extension on having to return her to Vermont, where they
Speaker 5: quickly moved her to avoid jurisdiction from a Massachusetts court.
Speaker 5: But this has implications for every single American because we
Speaker 5: have a president who is now also expelling American citizens
Speaker 5: and has threatened to do this same process that we
Speaker 5: saw in her case, that we saw with people sent
Speaker 5: to Al Salvador to a facility that is basically a
Speaker 5: torture camp without any due process. And I don't think
Speaker 5: that Americans disagree that if you illegally are here, if
Speaker 5: you did not go through an asylum process, if you're
Speaker 5: not a legal resident here or a citizen, and you
Speaker 5: have committed a serious crime, that you should be deported.
Speaker 5: I think people agree around that, But what strikes them
Speaker 5: as completely out of line, unfair, unconstitutional is deporting people
Speaker 5: without any way of appealing return ticket, without any proof
Speaker 5: that they are who he says he is. They may
Speaker 5: be gang members or they may not. That's why we
Speaker 5: have due process, so people have a day in qirk.
Speaker 5: And when we start erooting it for people that we're
Speaker 5: unsure of that we don't like their political opinions. We
Speaker 5: don't like a student op ed peek is that somebody
Speaker 5: wrote without any accountability. Then it gets very very dark quickly,
Speaker 5: and it's really hard to say we are going to
Speaker 5: stand up for American citizens, especially when Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: promising their.
Speaker 1: Next Oh giving me so bad.
Speaker 5: I am no longer welcome at dinner party's.
Speaker 1: Connelly has stepped off oversight. He is not well. He
Speaker 1: is an incredible member, stalwart, very great man. Now you
Speaker 1: have oversight, there is of race for ranking on oversight.
Speaker 1: Oversight is an incredibly important committee because part of what
Speaker 1: Oversight can do is get out what Democrats are doing,
Speaker 1: get the message out right, because these hearings are really
Speaker 1: they're televised, they're important, And I think a really good
Speaker 1: example is the Doge hearing. We saw representative from New Mexico, Stansbury.
Speaker 1: She did an absolutely great job on the Doage Committee.
Speaker 1: And what happened was there was real virality for some
Speaker 1: of those quotes and she was able to give as
Speaker 1: good as she got when it came to Marjorie Taylor Green,
Speaker 1: which is not nothing. So now we have Oversight, there's
Speaker 1: going to be a question of who is ranking member.
Speaker 1: There was a lot the public, not just me, feel
Speaker 1: that the party is not doing enough to elevate young people,
Speaker 1: not so much because they're young, but because of the
Speaker 1: communication issues that younger people tend to be. And this
Speaker 1: is not always true, but certainly on Oversight, the younger
Speaker 1: people like AOC and also Jasmine Crockett are really capable
Speaker 1: when it comes to social media in a way that
Speaker 1: maybe some of the older members aren't. So what do
Speaker 1: you say to Democrats who are frustrated that they feel
Speaker 1: that there's not enough of an effort to elevate younger
Speaker 1: people in these leadership positions. I think ultimately the big
Speaker 1: question is really just who can get the message out
Speaker 1: there louder, more than whether or not you know, sort
Speaker 1: of anything else. But you know, it is this idea,
Speaker 1: if we are in a democratic emergency, which I think
Speaker 1: all of us feel, should there really be an emphasis
Speaker 1: on trying to elevate people who can transmit that in
Speaker 1: a public forum.
Speaker 5: And so I'd love you to talk about that. Yeah, listen,
Speaker 5: I would say that we agree. And part of what
Speaker 5: I love about our caucus is that we really do
Speaker 5: reflect the American peaceeople, and when I look across the aisle,
Speaker 5: I don't see it. We are the most diverse caucus
Speaker 5: in the history of Congress. We look like people look,
Speaker 5: and we are of all ages, and I think there
Speaker 5: is a role for all of it. But I think
Speaker 5: you can look at we have internal elections for our
Speaker 5: communications team, the folks members of Congress that are part
Speaker 5: of the leadership team that really help us think about
Speaker 5: better ways to innovate, communicate using new media. You know,
Speaker 5: it's we are so beyond the newspaper cable news world.
Speaker 5: We have to be on YouTube, on social media, on podcasts,
Speaker 5: meeting people where they get their news. And that's why
Speaker 5: we elected Maxwell Frost, that's why Lauren Underwood is there.
Speaker 5: These new voices are very important, and those are just
Speaker 5: two examples. You know, Robert Garcia another really critical voice
Speaker 5: that sits on our leadership table, and Jasmine Crockett as well,
Speaker 5: like these are voices that are so central to our success.
Speaker 5: We want young people and we want every age, every
Speaker 5: American to be able to look at Congress and see
Speaker 5: themselves reflected back, not just in the policies, but because
Speaker 5: they see people talking to them who share their life experience.
Speaker 5: Because that's the idea that we come from different parts
Speaker 5: of the country, different ideologies, and different life paths and
Speaker 5: different glide paths, different ages, and we come together and
Speaker 5: we make a better product. And that is something that
Speaker 5: we take very seriously, and especially in these roles around communication.
Speaker 5: There has been a real elevation of those who who
Speaker 5: are younger, who are just very comfortable and understand social
Speaker 5: media and way that if you didn't grow up with
Speaker 5: it is a different understanding. And frankly, we just have
Speaker 5: some incredible political talents that happen to also be young members.
Speaker 5: So let's elevate them. It doesn't mean there isn't room.
Speaker 5: I am part of a leadership team that just moved
Speaker 5: in and relaced a very long so I think the
Speaker 5: Democratic Party is not only open to this, we're actively
Speaker 5: using our younger members and promoting them and strategizing with them.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump is crashing the economy. Tariffs are a real problem.
Speaker 1: There are legislative blocks to Trump's tariffs. They have the
Speaker 1: numbers in the Senate to block the tariffs. Do they
Speaker 1: have the numbers in the House. I think they probably don't.
Speaker 1: But I'm just curious if you think there's any sort
Speaker 1: of hail mary on the tariffs.
Speaker 5: There was a brief moment there when these years in
Speaker 5: the stock market was in an absolute free fall. I
Speaker 5: mean the fact that numbers came out today, our economy
Speaker 5: is actually contracted, and we know that over eleven trillion
Speaker 5: dollars has disappeared out of Americans pockets because of the
Speaker 5: actions that Donald Trump has taken. But it's far more
Speaker 5: than just the stock market going down. Even though that
Speaker 5: impact on four to one kes like, I am not
Speaker 5: under estimating that and that is a very real loss.
Speaker 5: But it's when I talked to like the small and
Speaker 5: micro businesses in my district that are so terrified to
Speaker 5: watch everything they have built feel is just slipping through
Speaker 5: their fingers. We did a round table last week with
Speaker 5: Hispanic small business owners in my district and the story
Speaker 5: is about the construction firms that have been built, but
Speaker 5: now their bids don't make sense anymore. They're not profitable,
Speaker 5: and they're locked in because the price of aluminum and
Speaker 5: lumber has all gone up and the job they bid
Speaker 5: is no longer going to make them money. Talking to
Speaker 5: a local fashion designer about how she needs to not
Speaker 5: only sell her beautiful designs, she needs to sell a
Speaker 5: story that makes people want to invest in her clothes
Speaker 5: instead of buying something mass produced. But when you are
Speaker 5: spending all your money on the increase in her inputs,
Speaker 5: in her fabrics, in the things she needs to make
Speaker 5: her clothes, she doesn't have a marketing budget anymore, and
Speaker 5: that is how she is able to sustain her business.
Speaker 5: And so these these tariffs are having impacts on the
Speaker 5: largest international companies that come and meet with me, but
Speaker 5: it's also affecting our main street. And my real concern
Speaker 5: is that with all of this, it is not an
Speaker 5: on and off switch that we can say, well, wait
Speaker 5: till Donald Trump is out of here, or wait till
Speaker 5: we win the midterms, and then we'll just turn it
Speaker 5: back on. One example, Molly from my district, I am
Speaker 5: so fortunate to sit in this cradle of innovation. We're
Speaker 5: the best in the world at taking ideas out of
Speaker 5: the academic lab and putting them into the marketplace, and
Speaker 5: that means delivering hope and cures for Alzheimer's, for cancer,
Speaker 5: for diabetes, for als.
Speaker 1: So you're affected by the NIH grants, the NIH friend.
Speaker 5: And we are going to lose these scientists to other countries.
Speaker 1: The NIH grants. From what I understand, Elon decided to
Speaker 1: cap indirect funding at fifteen percent because he didn't like
Speaker 1: the idea that these grant recipients were getting indirect funding
Speaker 1: that could be as high as eighty percent of the
Speaker 1: grant because he didn't maybe understand how grant funding works
Speaker 1: and didn't understand that this indirect funding is for microscopes,
Speaker 1: and you know the kind of people work in the
Speaker 1: labs and upkeep of the labs, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Now a lot of doge has been reversed. People have
Speaker 1: been rehired. Has that happened within AH funding or is
Speaker 1: it just frozen or where is it?
Speaker 5: Yeah? I mean that is an excellent question because a
Speaker 5: lot of it is in limbo and we have these
Speaker 5: champions historically on the other side of the aisle who've
Speaker 5: just gone mute. I mean it has been Republicans on Appropriations,
Speaker 5: which is committee I sat on for years before coming
Speaker 5: into this leadership position, who really understood that those you
Speaker 5: know we talk about indirect costs, they're really facility costs,
Speaker 5: and they are part of what we have decided as
Speaker 5: a federal government is good for making that investment and
Speaker 5: fundamental research that then we can partner with private entities
Speaker 5: and make sure that we are delivering cures, that we're
Speaker 5: delivering hope and research and technology that then we sell globally.
Speaker 5: So this is it's good for people, it's good for
Speaker 5: families searching for some cure for their child's cancer diagnosis,
Speaker 5: and it is good for our economy. Why would we
Speaker 5: seed that? But this is exactly what DOGE did. They
Speaker 5: came in, they broke things in order to rob you
Speaker 5: of that funding, and there was an absolute carelessness and
Speaker 5: casual cruelty to it all. That comes with people who
Speaker 5: are insulated by great wealth from anything bad happening to
Speaker 5: them or their family. And that the way they went
Speaker 5: in not only into our private data, but just treated
Speaker 5: things like clinical trials. We have heard stories of constituents
Speaker 5: who were scheduled for surgeries that have been canceled. So
Speaker 5: while they say, well, we're going to you know, this
Speaker 5: funding is technically may come once this court case is resolved.
Speaker 5: That surgery is over that trial. It's over those scientists.
Speaker 5: And there was a poll today of sixteen hundred scientists
Speaker 5: in Nature magazine. Seventy five percent of them are looking
Speaker 5: to move abroad because they can't see the future here.
Speaker 5: And that's what I mean by these impacts could be generational.
Speaker 5: And why would we take that innovation economy that Americans
Speaker 5: have always been at the cutting edge of and give
Speaker 5: that just give that away for some you know, ill conceived,
Speaker 5: not thought out, not data driven, set of hackers following
Speaker 5: Elon Musk into our systems, into the programs that people
Speaker 5: rely on. And this research and using research dollars as
Speaker 5: a way to sort of get into a power struggle
Speaker 5: with the universities around the country is just so misguided.
Speaker 5: And the impact of all of this comes back to
Speaker 5: people at home. To people at home are working hard
Speaker 5: and they frankly don't feel like the system works for
Speaker 5: them now, and they're looking for people to say we're
Speaker 5: going to do better, but breaking everything, holding up research
Speaker 5: dollars because you don't like a political opinion, abducting people
Speaker 5: off our streets, taking away jobs, ruining contracts for agriculture,
Speaker 5: and farmers facing great uncertainty. None of this is about
Speaker 5: building the American dream, about creating opportunity, about creating efficiency
Speaker 5: in the way we serve people. And it's just such
Speaker 5: a cruel, calculated assessment. We're going to take this away
Speaker 5: from you. We are going to create cynicism around government
Speaker 5: programs because when they break, they don't work well, and
Speaker 5: then we'll either privatize them or just cut them. And
Speaker 5: who is the only one who benefits The very, very wealthiest,
Speaker 5: the most powerful people. They'll be getting a tax cut
Speaker 5: that the rest of you are going to pay for.
Speaker 5: I mean, it's as dystopian as it comes. We have
Speaker 5: to look at who we are, and we've got a
Speaker 5: fight for this country, and we have to make sure
Speaker 5: that everything we do is centered around folks at home.
Speaker 5: You know, the ninety nine percent of us who work
Speaker 5: for a living and who feel real frustration about they
Speaker 5: work hard and they're not getting ahead. But they're certainly
Speaker 5: not going to have better luck if they don't have healthcare,
Speaker 5: if they don't have their veterans benefits, if social security
Speaker 5: is dismantled, and all these fundamental needs that people have
Speaker 5: to take it away in order to make the winner
Speaker 5: circle so small in this country for those who already
Speaker 5: have great wealth is so upside down in perverse and
Speaker 5: we just every day we are showing up and fighting back.
Speaker 1: Thank you, Representative Clark, thank you, thank you, thank you
Speaker 1: for joining us. That was great.
Speaker 3: Thank you.
Speaker 1: Mollie will Sommer is a reporter at The Bulwark. Welcome
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics.
Speaker 3: Will Sommer, Hey, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: We needed to talk about what the fuck is going
Speaker 1: on because the maga media industrial complex is so in
Speaker 1: the zeitgeist at this moment for a lot of even
Speaker 1: more dysfunction than the usual dysfunction. So I would love
Speaker 1: for you, I think of you as the guy who
Speaker 1: knows about the mega media complex to explain to us
Speaker 1: where are our favorite or in this case, least favorite players.
Speaker 1: Where do we find them in twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Five, they're thriving for the most part. I mean, I
Speaker 3: think they're enjoying more influence than we ever could have imagined.
Speaker 3: I mean, the White House now this week has held
Speaker 3: three influencer briefings where they kind of bring me three. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and they're probably another one, you know, another one coming
Speaker 3: this week. I mean it's like day to day and
Speaker 3: so they'd bring in you know, sort of a sideshow
Speaker 3: freak show.
Speaker 1: If I could say as much, it's Sobiac, it's who else.
Speaker 3: Well, they have a new cast every day, and they
Speaker 3: have a new at least one of them will have
Speaker 3: some sordid backstory, you know. Be They had a woman
Speaker 3: on Monday who this Texas woman who is most famous
Speaker 3: previously for thinking the moon disappeared. She had tweeted, anyone
Speaker 3: seen the moon in a while? It went away? Yeah? Yeah,
Speaker 3: we got Jack Pasobic. We've got c. J. Pearson, who's
Speaker 3: kind of like a young Naga guy. We've got this
Speaker 3: guy named Dom Luker who's like a conspiracy theorist who's
Speaker 3: very popular on Twitter. He famously was banned from Twitter
Speaker 3: for posting child porn. Uh you know that he got
Speaker 3: back on. I mean it's it's a real it's a
Speaker 3: real Rogues gallery.
Speaker 1: So this crew they do the MAGA briefings. And are
Speaker 1: they are the MAGA Briefings any different than the regular.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say the tone is different. I mean
Speaker 3: the you know, Caroline Lovitt acts like, you know, she's
Speaker 3: going over to her best friend's house. I mean, she's
Speaker 3: just she says, oh my gosh, I could go around
Speaker 3: with you guys all day. We're having so much fun.
Speaker 3: And then she poses for pictures with them, and they
Speaker 3: asked these questions, like you know, the famously I think
Speaker 3: the one a lot of people saw on social media
Speaker 3: with link Lauren, who's kind of like an RFK crony.
Speaker 3: He looks like Draco Malfoy, so he's got like the
Speaker 3: like the platinum hair, and he got up there and
Speaker 3: he said, you know, Caroline, like, you're such an inspiration
Speaker 3: for American moms by comparison.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so many parents were killing themselves under the Biden
Speaker 3: administration because he was such a bad president. How do
Speaker 3: you do it? It's a lot along those lines.
Speaker 1: But they also have during the regular briefings, they have
Speaker 1: a new media seat, which is a MAGA influencer seat
Speaker 1: to explain what that is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so the new media seat is this seat such
Speaker 3: as it is that they made, and it's weird, right,
Speaker 3: it's right by the press secretary. They claim it's to
Speaker 3: you know, open things up. But traditionally or you know,
Speaker 3: what it's been so far is I would say eighty
Speaker 3: to ninety percent maga, either from a right wing outlet
Speaker 3: or you know, even you know, more ridiculously, just like
Speaker 3: someone with a Twitter account or an Instagram account. And
Speaker 3: then every so often they'll put in like they put
Speaker 3: axios there the first day, they put the Philly Inquirer
Speaker 3: a few days ago, the Fame like two hundred year
Speaker 3: old newspaper. But like clearly they're trying to make it
Speaker 3: not just all maga, so they have a little plausible deniability,
Speaker 3: and so then those people ask questions like Timpoole famously
Speaker 3: was in it last week and he said, you know,
Speaker 3: wouldn't you say that, like, you know, the media is
Speaker 3: a bunch of scumbacks essentially, and that they're they're so
Speaker 3: rude to me and the rest of the new media crew.
Speaker 3: So you know, this is what we're what the press
Speaker 3: operation looks like at the White House.
Speaker 1: These days, timpoole like he's clearly losing his hair. Just
Speaker 1: we know the Beanie is not fooling anyone.
Speaker 3: He's not the first guy to go bald. And you know,
Speaker 3: it is fascinating that he's sticking with the beanie. I mean,
Speaker 3: he wore it Tamara Lago to some like gala. So
Speaker 3: he's wearing like a tux and a beanie and he
Speaker 3: doesn't even have a formal beanie. It's like always the
Speaker 3: same beanie.
Speaker 1: So summer, I feel like the Beanie when it hits summer,
Speaker 1: like you gotta there's no one else wearing a hat
Speaker 1: a winter hat.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean yeah, someone pointed out, like when he
Speaker 3: was at the White House wearing the Beauty, the temperature
Speaker 3: in DC was like eighty degree.
Speaker 1: I mean, it just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about what sort of where we are
Speaker 1: with this crew. We have Laura Lumer, who is pretty
Speaker 1: much in and out of this White House as far
Speaker 1: as I can tell. Mike Walls, I don't know if
Speaker 1: he got fired or if he left at his own volition,
Speaker 1: but he is out as we tape this. Talk to
Speaker 1: me about sort of Lumour's influence here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is an interesting one. I mean, so Laura
Speaker 3: Lumer has been on this campaign for a month or
Speaker 3: so to purge elements of the National Security Council. This
Speaker 3: was this started a few days after Signal Gate kicked off,
Speaker 3: and she was really successful and she got a bunch
Speaker 3: of people fired. She maybe got the head of the
Speaker 3: National Security Agency has also fired at the time. That's nice,
Speaker 3: and I mean she met with Trump to do all
Speaker 3: this stuff and then you know, and what's not saying
Speaker 3: to me is like, this is someone who a few
Speaker 3: years ago, even with Mago World, was like persona non grata.
Speaker 3: I mean, she chained herself to the door of Twitter.
Speaker 3: She did all these really desperate stunts that even those
Speaker 3: people were like, oh boy, I don't know, I want
Speaker 3: to associate with this person. And now she's I don't know,
Speaker 3: the most powerful person in the national security apparatus outside
Speaker 3: of government. I mean she so so today she got
Speaker 3: well who's to say why. We don't really know yet
Speaker 3: quite why Mike Waltz was fired, but his deputy now he.
Speaker 1: Was fired or do we think he just laughed.
Speaker 3: I don't think it's confirmed, but I think it's probably
Speaker 3: fair to say that he was fired his deputy, Alex Wong,
Speaker 3: who was Lumer's number one target, and so she tweeted Scalp.
Speaker 3: So she, obviously, I think, is trying to take credit
Speaker 3: at least for Wong getting fired. There's so much like
Speaker 3: criminology that goes into what's going on here. I mean,
Speaker 3: how much is she acting on behalf of like a
Speaker 3: rival faction within the Trump administration? Are they digging up
Speaker 3: this stuff? You know, it gets very complex, but we
Speaker 3: have to speculate a lot. But I think, you know,
Speaker 3: the idea that she has any sort of influence over
Speaker 3: the administration, especially this much influence, is really wild.
Speaker 1: It is wild.
Speaker 5: Wild is the word.
Speaker 1: So I just want you to kind of explain to
Speaker 1: us there is this same group of media influencers. There's
Speaker 1: a certain kind of trumpy. There's like a lot of
Speaker 1: money making going on here too. Can you talk us
Speaker 1: through like meme coins. You know, there's a lot of
Speaker 1: like Liberty I saw Liberty Financial has gotten involved again.
Speaker 1: I remember them from Seapack. Like, it seems like a
Speaker 1: lot of people are making money on this admin in
Speaker 1: ways they maybe didn't the first administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think that's right. I mean the one that's
Speaker 3: top of mind is The Times just has an article
Speaker 3: now about how Trump coined the Abu Dabi government is
Speaker 3: going to do a deal for two billion dollars involving
Speaker 3: trump Coin, involving the cryptocurrency change finance at the Times
Speaker 3: that like even in there's one and of course the
Speaker 3: guy announcing this it's the fun though wit cough So
Speaker 3: the Time says, you know, even within this sentence, there
Speaker 3: are so many conflicts of interest in this one or
Speaker 3: two lines that he said describing this deal. It's true.
Speaker 3: I mean there's just every which way. I mean, it's
Speaker 3: almost hard to keep your eye on all the conflicts
Speaker 3: of interests and all the grips. But I agree with
Speaker 3: you that it seems, you know, in the first administration,
Speaker 3: we were talking about like our foreign government buying rooms at
Speaker 3: the Trump hotel, and so what is that bringing in
Speaker 3: hundreds of thousands of dollars? And now we're talking about
Speaker 3: potentially billions of dollars.
Speaker 1: It seems like a lot more money. And it also
Speaker 1: seems like this crew is more embedded than they were
Speaker 1: last time. Wonder if you could talk about that, Like
Speaker 1: in twenty sixteen, there was a maga media, but it
Speaker 1: didn't have it was not as developed, and there still
Speaker 1: was a mainstream media. I feel like now there isn't
Speaker 1: as much mainstream media, and the mega media is so
Speaker 1: developed that they don't it's almost like they don't need
Speaker 1: the mainstream media anymore. So talk to us about that.
Speaker 3: I think that's right. I mean, I think the Trump
Speaker 3: White House is being very smart about giving a just
Speaker 3: a huge amount of access to these right wing media figures.
Speaker 3: You know, we mentioned the influencer briefing, but they're also
Speaker 3: bringing them in, I think at least twice a month
Speaker 3: at this point, bring people in to just interview cabinet
Speaker 3: secretaries and just do these kind of like very like
Speaker 3: messaging type things with radio hosts, Instagram influencers, whatever. I
Speaker 3: think the administration is sort of trying to edge out
Speaker 3: the mainstream media and just sort of issue more pronouncements
Speaker 3: through outlets that they control. And so you know, we're
Speaker 3: seeing that also. I mean a lot of these people
Speaker 3: literally in the government. You know, the FBI director Cash
Speaker 3: Bettel was a big right wing media figure, Dan Bongino,
Speaker 3: the deputy FBI director, I mean, Pete Eggsath, right, I
Speaker 3: mean there's so many examples of this. I just had
Speaker 3: a story today about Armie Dillon, who is sort of
Speaker 3: famous as like a maga media legal figure who's now
Speaker 3: the deputy of the or the head of the DOJ's
Speaker 3: Civil Rights Division and seems to spend most of her
Speaker 3: day just tweeting about you know, TWR followers about you know,
Speaker 3: what she's up to. In a way, it's like these
Speaker 3: right wing mediafigures are still in they're in the government,
Speaker 3: but they seem to still see themselves as rightly media
Speaker 3: figures with audience that they have to feed and stuff
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 1: I have two questions about Hamid Dylan and also Cash Patel.
Speaker 1: These guys were media people. Are they doing their jobs
Speaker 1: now like it seems like Cash Patel seems I mean,
Speaker 1: we probably shouldn't say it is, because we're all gonna
Speaker 1: end up in GIMO, but he seems awfully quiet.
Speaker 3: Yes, he does well. Famously, he doesn't live in DC.
Speaker 3: I believe he lives in Las Vegas, right and it's
Speaker 3: sort of commuting such as it is. You know, a
Speaker 3: lot of these people, I think they are they're doing
Speaker 3: the eye did the job with kind of an eye
Speaker 3: on the right wing audience and the MAGA base. You know,
Speaker 3: I think about Pam Bondi handing out those Epstein binders
Speaker 3: to the right wing influencers, supposedly because she felt like,
Speaker 3: you know, she she hadn't wooed them enough, which you
Speaker 3: know is like a legitimate concern for her. When we
Speaker 3: see that Laura Lumer can kind of chop heads off
Speaker 3: on the NSC, you know. Similarly, you know someone like
Speaker 3: Dan bongee know, who is constantly posting like, you know,
Speaker 3: stop bugging me. We're working on it, you know, just
Speaker 3: around the corner, big results ahead. So you know, these
Speaker 3: people are really like forward facing towards the public in
Speaker 3: a way that you know, he told all the FBI
Speaker 3: Field office directors that they need to get on social media,
Speaker 3: and so now they're all all these like old white
Speaker 3: guys in suits are recording like short form video content.
Speaker 1: How much of this is the actual job? Media influencer
Speaker 1: and the Civil Rights Division don't seem like a Venn
Speaker 1: diagram with a lot of mutual.
Speaker 3: You would think, I think traditionally, you know, I was
Speaker 3: thinking about it, and I was like, well, how did
Speaker 3: the previous heads of the Civil Rights Division act? And
Speaker 3: obviously it's no one we've ever heard of.
Speaker 1: Regrets.
Speaker 3: But when you think about I mean, in Harmy Dillon's case,
Speaker 3: I mean, she is turning this office into you know,
Speaker 3: what was once about police brutality, voting rights, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and now it's going to be about you know, focusing
Speaker 3: on quote anti Christian discrimination, trans women in sports, this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff. And so you know, it's more right
Speaker 3: wing culture war. That's why roughly half the lawyers are
Speaker 3: expected to quit there. So I think, you know, if
Speaker 3: you look at it from that perspective as like, how
Speaker 3: can I get on Fox News? How can I do podcasts?
Speaker 3: I mean that that all makes sense. She tweeted at
Speaker 3: one point, you know, okay, like first week on the job,
Speaker 3: what podcast should I go on? You know, and and
Speaker 3: a lot of her bands said, you know, hey, you're
Speaker 3: supposed to be sending Hillary Clinton to Guantanamo Bay. What
Speaker 3: are you doing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does seem like there's a real tension there
Speaker 1: between doing their job and delivering from MAGA. One of
Speaker 1: the things we're talking about these Epstein binders. When Bondi
Speaker 1: gave the Epstein binders to the influencers, some of them
Speaker 1: were actually pretty disappointed about what was in them, So
Speaker 1: talk us through that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you're exactly right. I mean there is
Speaker 3: a tension between they. I think the conservative base and
Speaker 3: the audience, and these personalities as well has been raised
Speaker 3: and taught to that they can basically whatever they want,
Speaker 3: and if they don't, it's because the deep state is
Speaker 3: betraying them, or the rhinos are after them or whatever.
Speaker 3: You know. We saw this in the in the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty election, where Fox is saying, oh my gosh, you know,
Speaker 3: we have to tell them the election was stolen because
Speaker 3: our audience is so that they believe it is. And
Speaker 3: so in this case, let's take the Epstein binders. I mean,
Speaker 3: Pambondi claimed at one point the Epstein client list was
Speaker 3: on her desk, but we're all getting ready to release it,
Speaker 3: you know, everyone who's familiar with Epstein and step says, well, actually,
Speaker 3: that client list probably is mythical, that doesn't really exist.
Speaker 3: So instead she gets some documents they're kind of already
Speaker 3: public or whatever. We can look at our Robert F. Kennedy,
Speaker 3: who is obviously a big anti vaccine guy. Then suddenly
Speaker 3: two children die in Texas of measles, and he has
Speaker 3: to come out and say well, yeah, I guess you should.
Speaker 3: You should take the measles vaccine, although he's now walking
Speaker 3: that back and saying, well, you know, it's reasonable for
Speaker 3: people not to want to take the vaccine, and you know,
Speaker 3: we need to take care of them in other ways,
Speaker 3: and maybe it's not that big a deal.
Speaker 1: That's sort of where I'm getting too with this. I
Speaker 1: would love to get back to this just the Epstein stuff.
Speaker 3: First.
Speaker 1: There is no there there. I mean, there's there there,
Speaker 1: but there's no new information there right as far as
Speaker 1: you can tell.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I think it's sort of like the
Speaker 3: JFK files. I think there's material that could come out
Speaker 3: that would be interesting. People who have followed the case
Speaker 3: really closely. It'say, oh, you know that that adds sort
Speaker 3: of a new detail we didn't know. But I think
Speaker 3: that that in terms of like yeah, right, I mean,
Speaker 3: they're expecting like Oprah and Tom Hanks and all these
Speaker 3: other people to be on this list. They expect like
Speaker 3: every prominent liberal to be on the list. And you know,
Speaker 3: so in Pam Bondi's case, I mean that means she
Speaker 3: has to you know, what's she going to do? I
Speaker 3: don't know. I mean I think she has tried to
Speaker 3: delay this as long as possible. You know. Recording from
Speaker 3: our reporting from our colleague Noah Shackman claims that the
Speaker 3: prosecutors in New York have basically all been detailed to
Speaker 3: redacting these files and getting them ready to release such
Speaker 3: as they are. You know, at the same time, we
Speaker 3: have someone like Anapoline a Luna and Congress the Republican
Speaker 3: putting pressure on and saying like, hey, Pam Bondi, it's
Speaker 3: time to put out the files. So, you know, I
Speaker 3: think Pam Bondi's in a tough spot there.
Speaker 1: And this is the RFK stuff. They're all in an
Speaker 1: impossible situation, right, RFK. Clearly we saw this today. They're
Speaker 1: making moves to try to go after vaccines. There's a
Speaker 1: new placebo testing way to test a vaccine, completely unnecessarily
Speaker 1: meant to make life harder for vaccine companies. It strikes
Speaker 1: me that that RFK Junior anything less than taking away
Speaker 1: vaccines will be a failure on his part, right, I
Speaker 1: think that's right.
Speaker 3: I mean, look, I mean, the the people have been
Speaker 3: taught that vaccines are you know, killing people and all
Speaker 3: this stuff, and so then the government to say, well,
Speaker 3: I don't know, maybe we'll just make the vaccine development
Speaker 3: a little slower. But yeah, the poisons took about, I mean,
Speaker 3: it doesn't make any sense, you know. I've been reading,
Speaker 3: you know, these RFK supporters and how they're grappling with it,
Speaker 3: and one of these influencers was saying, you know, well,
Speaker 3: RFK maybe doesn't have the political cloud to ban ban vaccines,
Speaker 3: but maybe he can kind of nibble at it around
Speaker 3: the edges, which sort of makes sense, I guess. But
Speaker 3: at the same time, I mean, if this situation is
Speaker 3: as dire as they claim it as, you would think that,
Speaker 3: you know, they'd be more aggressive. I think a lot
Speaker 3: of the anti vaccine people are also concerned that he's
Speaker 3: focused too much on these more palatable political goals like
Speaker 3: danning artificial dyes and foods, and from their perspective, like
Speaker 3: they couldn't care less about that. I mean, why did
Speaker 3: they care if you know, hot cheetos are a little
Speaker 3: less bright. I mean they think this is kind of
Speaker 3: this like huge struggle in terms of vaccines.
Speaker 1: Is there stuff getting accomplished on the foodside, the food
Speaker 1: die side.
Speaker 3: Well, it's very bigue. I mean, there's been a lot
Speaker 3: of you know, it's kind of a very Trumpian, you know.
Speaker 3: I think about the tariffs and that the oh we
Speaker 3: have a deal, No, we have a deal to discuss
Speaker 3: a deal, this kind of stuff, and so in the
Speaker 3: same way our case saying well, you know, I'm maybe
Speaker 3: meeting with these food companies and you know, meanwhile absolutely
Speaker 3: slashing the budget for researching and you know, finding out
Speaker 3: new medical cures and stuff like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just tell me what you're watching at this minute
Speaker 1: in MAGA, the Megamedia Industrial Complex.
Speaker 3: I'm always inn in these influencers that the White House
Speaker 3: is elevating. I think that that's interesting. I feel like
Speaker 3: there's there's going to be an appetite for as clearly
Speaker 3: if Trump sticks with the terrorists, I think the administration
Speaker 3: is about to hit a really rough patch, and I'm
Speaker 3: looking out for if there's going to be a new
Speaker 3: q Andon type thing that really takes things from the
Speaker 3: from you know, kind of Fox Move talking points into
Speaker 3: like a realm of new reality where you know, we
Speaker 3: can say, well, the real reason Trump is failing is
Speaker 3: because of this sinister cabal or something like that. Because
Speaker 3: I think obviously Trump will lose supporters, but I think
Speaker 3: the kind of the hardcore base is going to look
Speaker 3: for something that is so crazy that they can just
Speaker 3: ignore what's going on. And so what that looks like,
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I'm looking for it.
Speaker 1: So interesting.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Will somer Hey, thanks for having me no moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon, Molly Jungfest.
Speaker 2: So it's been a while since a profile really rocked
Speaker 2: the political world the way this one did today. Bed
Speaker 2: Terris first up, he's for New York magazine. Bed's a
Speaker 2: friend of the Pod.
Speaker 1: Of course, and used to be at the Washingbos.
Speaker 2: Yes, he did a profile where he talked to a
Speaker 2: lot of former John Fetterman staffers, and I have to
Speaker 2: say the tail it weaves does not sound good.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Again, I don't know what's happening with John Fetterman. But
Speaker 1: what this story seems to talk about is how much
Speaker 1: he is just not himself, right. I think that's that
Speaker 1: he's not the person he was, and that he's just
Speaker 1: not back to normal in the way that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of us hoped he would be, and just
Speaker 1: that he's had a real personality shift since his stroke. Again,
Speaker 1: I I don't know what happens now. I don't know
Speaker 1: what the story there is we hope that he gets better.
Speaker 1: We hope that he doesn't hurt himself or anyone else.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Pollings. Tune in
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