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 the Democratic primary to fill Arizona's
Speaker 1: seventh congressional district seat vacated by the death of Representative
Speaker 1: Raoul Grijalva has been won by his daughter, at Elita Grihava.
Speaker 1: We have such a great show for you today. The
Speaker 1: Nation Zone ged here stops by to talk about how
Speaker 1: Trump's economic chaos is affecting the market and our upcoming
Speaker 1: war with Canada. Then we'll talk to Congressman Jared Moskowitz
Speaker 1: about the BBB and how the GOP is twisting itself
Speaker 1: and not trying to defend their unpopular legislation, and Trump's
Speaker 1: possible Epstein cover up. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So, Molly, I love this chart front of the show
Speaker 2: Justin Wolfers made where he shows Trump Ruber's about fire
Speaker 2: Jerome Powell making the market crash and then him saying
Speaker 2: I'm not going to do it and that the market
Speaker 2: goes back up. Is a real, real, great picture of
Speaker 2: the stupidity that goes on with this volatile, volatile man.
Speaker 1: So Trump wants to fire Drome Pal why does he
Speaker 1: want to do this. Also, does he remember that he
Speaker 1: in fact hired Drome Pal in his first administration.
Speaker 3: He does not, judging by his remarks today, he does not.
Speaker 1: He wants to fire him because he wants to lower
Speaker 1: interest rates. He wants to lower interest rates because he
Speaker 1: wants a Banana Republic, and also because he thinks it'll
Speaker 1: juice the economy. Here's the big problem that Trump has.
Speaker 1: Trump cannot fire drome Pal, and he's sick of fans
Speaker 1: at the Supreme Court who will pretty much sign off
Speaker 1: on anything. Thank you Dahlia for explaining that to us
Speaker 1: last episode. Will not and they put a little note
Speaker 1: like you can't fire You can do anything you want,
Speaker 1: but you can't fire drome Pal. Well, that crew has
Speaker 1: said he can't do it, there's no legal justification for it,
Speaker 1: and he can't do it now. That said, he wants
Speaker 1: to do it, and telling Trump he can't do something
Speaker 1: is a pretty good way to get Trump to do something.
Speaker 1: So he wrote a letter about a sort of Dear
Speaker 1: John letter to Jerome Pale. He showed it to Republicans
Speaker 1: in Congress. By the way, I just want to point out,
Speaker 1: like everyone involved in this story is of is both
Speaker 1: a coward and a moron. So I don't want to
Speaker 1: put too fine a point on it here. But Republicans
Speaker 1: in the House have completely forgotten that they're a coequal
Speaker 1: branch of government. So they're just scared that Trump is
Speaker 1: going to fire Jerome Pale, which he can't do, so
Speaker 1: Bloomberg reported this. CBS reported that Trump is circulating the
Speaker 1: idea to Congressional Republicans on Tuesday because those are his buddies, right,
Speaker 1: the dumbest members of Congress. Trump wants a three percent
Speaker 1: point rate cut. It will be so, I mean, already
Speaker 1: are dead. Okay, we have huge debt in this country.
Speaker 1: We borrow it at the pleasure of being this currency.
Speaker 1: You can see a world where the skittish bond market says, Okay,
Speaker 1: Trump's going to be an emerging market dictator. That's fine,
Speaker 1: We're going to treat your debt like emerging market debt.
Speaker 1: And that means, you know, it becomes significantly more expensive
Speaker 1: to borrow to pay off the debt that we can
Speaker 1: never pay off as a country, And it means that
Speaker 1: we just are crushed under American debt because servicing the
Speaker 1: debt gets more and more expensive and we get more
Speaker 1: and more fucked. We are just running head straight into
Speaker 1: a brick wall, as often we see in Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: and I want to reduce something which I think is
Speaker 1: like so trumpy. Right, Andrew Jackson's were with the Second
Speaker 1: Bank of the United States in the eighteen thirties is
Speaker 1: how we got here. Right, This Treasury Fed a court
Speaker 1: of nineteen fifty one that delineates the roles of the
Speaker 1: two institutions at managing government debt. But you know, Trump
Speaker 1: doesn't like checks and balances. So the guy who has
Speaker 1: neutered the judiciary, who has you know, created a Congress
Speaker 1: that is basically just a you know, a bunch of
Speaker 1: guys who don't do anything well that he now wants
Speaker 1: to get rid of the last kind of check and balance.
Speaker 1: It's going to be terrible for the economy. And by
Speaker 1: the way, part of why this is coming is because
Speaker 1: Trump sees this inflation data which shows shockingly that the
Speaker 1: thing we said about the tariffs, which was always true,
Speaker 1: which is that their inflationary, is actually true. They are
Speaker 1: in fact inflationary. He sees that tariffs are growing inflation.
Speaker 1: He realizes that the FED is never going to cut
Speaker 1: rates the way he wants them to, and so he's
Speaker 1: trying to go around them. But what is so stupid
Speaker 1: is that the reason the Fed won't cut rates is
Speaker 1: because they don't want more inflation. Like there's actual reasoning
Speaker 1: behind what they're doing here.
Speaker 2: Sobley RFK Junior or another person who's really stable, genius
Speaker 2: is what comes to mind when I think of him.
Speaker 2: He has more shakeups at the staff at the Health Department.
Speaker 2: I'm really shocked to hear this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're I'm shocked to hear the people hate working
Speaker 1: for the guy who does not believe in in basically
Speaker 1: any of the normal tenants of medicine. Yeah, so he
Speaker 1: is firing people, They are quitting. You know, he's fighting
Speaker 1: with the White House. I don't know why the White
Speaker 1: House is fighting with him. We've got the biggest measles
Speaker 1: outbreak of modern you know, since there was a vaccine
Speaker 1: caused almost entirely by his terrible misinformation. So this week
Speaker 1: his chief of staff and deputy chief of staff for
Speaker 1: policy are both fired, according to CNN. By the way,
Speaker 1: I just remember why there's so much stuff about this administration,
Speaker 1: and we talked about it a couple episodes ago. But
Speaker 1: like the everyone is leaking. Okay, everyone in this administration
Speaker 1: is leaking. You're if you're unhappy with your you know,
Speaker 1: like the FBI is leaking. This one's leaking. That one's leaking.
Speaker 1: So you'll see tons and tons of really bad stories
Speaker 1: about Kennedy coming out, and quite frankly, you should. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So in other stories about not being able to maintain
Speaker 2: staff the Trump administration, their Supreme Court lawyers are quitting.
Speaker 2: In mass almost seventy out of one hundred and ten
Speaker 2: have quit.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So this is one hundred and ten lawyers in the
Speaker 1: federal branch, sixty nine have departed or signaled their intention
Speaker 1: to depart. I'm not a math person, but that seems
Speaker 1: like a lot.
Speaker 4: As a math person up and say, it's a lot.
Speaker 1: You're coming from an administration where you did things like
Speaker 1: fought discrimination and fought, you know, for clean water and
Speaker 1: fought for people's rights, to an administration where you are
Speaker 1: fighting to jail people, fighting to send people to countries
Speaker 1: they'd never been to, you know, to deport Mexicans to
Speaker 1: the South Sudan. There's a reason people keep quitting. It
Speaker 1: is because this administration is asking them to do things
Speaker 1: that are morally incorrect. And again this goes back to
Speaker 1: this whole idea that people work in the government are
Speaker 1: not people who couldn't get better jobs. Those are people
Speaker 1: who work in the Trump administration. People work in the
Speaker 1: government are people who consider the government's work to be important,
Speaker 1: and so they take less money because they want to
Speaker 1: serve their country.
Speaker 3: And what I.
Speaker 1: Think Trump world does not get is that these people
Speaker 1: can just go get better jobs, and that is what
Speaker 1: is happening everywhere.
Speaker 4: Yep.
Speaker 2: So, speaking of friends of the show, Josh Marshall is
Speaker 2: a very big regular here in his uh out at
Speaker 2: TPM has an amazing investigative reporting article on the contracts
Speaker 2: that show millions of dollars diverted from disaster resources of Florida.
Speaker 2: We're used to build Desantas Alligator Alcatraz that is already
Speaker 2: a disaster waiting to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so, my god, detention camp in Florida in the Everglades,
Speaker 1: a place with a lot of flooding, a lot of alligators,
Speaker 1: very hot. So it turns out that money that was
Speaker 1: meant to be for disaster relief. By the way, it
Speaker 1: is herhurricane season just about to start.
Speaker 4: What could happen?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: What's the worst.
Speaker 1: So hurricane season's about to start, and Trump has said
Speaker 1: he's going to you know, eviscerate FEMA. Basically that's part
Speaker 1: of Project twenty twenty five. You can see where this
Speaker 1: is going, right, Florida tax payer money being spent to
Speaker 1: create Alligator Alcatraz. Why because Desanta's wants Trump to love him,
Speaker 1: and because DeSantis knows his only path to ever being
Speaker 1: president is to go extreme maga. So there's a part
Speaker 1: in this that Talking Points memo has in here that
Speaker 1: says they've identified contracts and invoices totally about nineteen million
Speaker 1: dollars in the Florida Accountability tracking system.
Speaker 3: By the way, I love that.
Speaker 1: You know, there's still like this weird tech thing where
Speaker 1: they're like, we're going to show what we're doing. But
Speaker 1: you guys like it's cute that you want to show
Speaker 1: what you're doing, but you're doing crimes, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's no world in which this is okay to use
Speaker 1: money for disaster or relief. I mean, maybe it's not
Speaker 1: crime per se, it's certainly Malfeasan's right almost twenty million
Speaker 1: dollars to issued to nine different firms. In one instance,
Speaker 1: the chief executive of a company contacted by TPM. Was
Speaker 1: he was unaware that his business products were being used
Speaker 1: for the detention camp. Yeah, sure, I'm sure there'll be
Speaker 1: more on this. It was completely clear that that was
Speaker 1: what this was going to happen, that this was how
Speaker 1: it was going to go. So DeSantis, of course, and
Speaker 1: Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who you may remember is being herself, said,
Speaker 1: they are essentially packed into cages wal to while humans
Speaker 1: thirty two detainees per caved cages in a high flooding area. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is going to end in tears. Geet here is
Speaker 1: a contributor to the nation and the host of the
Speaker 1: Time of Monsters. Welcome back to Fast Politics, Geat, good
Speaker 1: to be on the show. Are we going to war
Speaker 1: with Canada?
Speaker 4: Possibly? Although I actually what I'm hearing now is a
Speaker 4: more likelihood, for better or words, of going to war
Speaker 4: with Mexico. There's a pretty good reporting and I think
Speaker 4: in a Mexican newspapers that there's a lot of chatter
Speaker 4: in Washington that Trump wants to make an excursion into
Speaker 4: Mexico and he's asking Republicans and as is there want
Speaker 4: the Republicans in Congress are saying, yeah, go for it.
Speaker 1: You know, really, I didn't see this reporting, but I
Speaker 1: don't like it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I could send it to you, but I
Speaker 4: was in a Mexican newspaper. But it's for somebody who's
Speaker 4: like a very well regarded curious And there have been
Speaker 4: this chatter before, I mean like Trump, and Trump has
Speaker 4: said so before, like he wants to send in you know,
Speaker 4: he's the Marines against the cartels. So Canada is a possibility,
Speaker 4: but I think Mexico is also like all the neighbors.
Speaker 1: Greenland New York magazine had a big piece about how
Speaker 1: much Canada is mad at.
Speaker 4: Us on the level of public sentiment. Yes, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of Canadians that are are mad. Now. I have
Speaker 4: to say the Carnegie government has been like being cautious
Speaker 4: as I think a lot of the Europeans are where
Speaker 4: I think they're trying to see how much they can flatter.
Speaker 4: Yeah and yeah, and I think a lot of that's acts.
Speaker 4: He's driven by Ukraine, where they I think they may
Speaker 4: maybe have had some success in trying to get him
Speaker 4: to reverse his policies. But yeah, I mean, like on
Speaker 4: the level of public opinion, yeah, I know, I mean
Speaker 4: I don't think i've seen every seen anti Americanism this high.
Speaker 4: I mean, I think the longer run trendancy beyond like
Speaker 4: this manipulation strategy. I think it's just a short run
Speaker 4: thing to see what they can get. I think in
Speaker 4: the longer run, you know, what you're hearing in both
Speaker 4: Canada and in Europe is people talking about like, you know,
Speaker 4: like a sort of post America future, the globe, the
Speaker 4: global mail, which is like a very like Canada's New
Speaker 4: York Times is a very sort of conservative business complication.
Speaker 4: But they had an op ed saying, well, you know,
Speaker 4: kind of I should look towards China as a future
Speaker 4: trading partner and it's more reliable than the US at
Speaker 4: this point. You see that with like like Brazil and
Speaker 4: in France, like there's been a lot of sort of
Speaker 4: talking the sort of the technocratic policy elite about you know,
Speaker 4: weaning away from NATO. What we're seeing right now as
Speaker 4: a short trend of you know, let's see how much
Speaker 4: like with the Taco stuff, you know, you feel like
Speaker 4: a lot of people feel like they can manipulate Trump
Speaker 4: and get them to do it. But the more long
Speaker 4: run thing is that this is you know the fact
Speaker 4: that Trump was elected twice as a sign of irresponsible
Speaker 4: country and that if you were thinking about, you know,
Speaker 4: was you know, what other options are are there out there?
Speaker 1: Always good to hear that that our country is regarded
Speaker 1: well overseas and that our electorate is considered to be
Speaker 1: quite moronic and stupid by our peers. Thank you, gee,
Speaker 1: good reality checks there to talk about.
Speaker 4: Jeff App Yes, the New York financier Jeffrey Epstein.
Speaker 1: Yes, perhaps you've heard of him, Jeff App Like, this
Speaker 1: is not the way I thought Epstein would unraveled Trump discuss.
Speaker 4: The thing is, I think that there actually has been
Speaker 4: if you go look back, this kind of rift has
Speaker 4: always been there in the sense that it was a
Speaker 4: qute on people and people like Vance who like really
Speaker 4: talked up Jeffy Epstein thinking you know, like not without justice,
Speaker 4: that this is a good way to be an anti
Speaker 4: establishment person and to really, you know, go against it.
Speaker 4: Trump has always been a little bit more cautious, like
Speaker 4: if you go back, remember you know Gislayne Maxwell.
Speaker 3: Right, I wish her well, he said, like, I.
Speaker 4: Wish her well. Yes, And apparently, according to reporting in
Speaker 4: the Daily Beast, like you know, he had to even
Speaker 4: thinking about giving her, a part of which is like
Speaker 4: a really remarkable thing. Even more recently, like there were
Speaker 4: like these interviews why which like you know, thank you CBS. Uh,
Speaker 4: they did not see air it at the time, but
Speaker 4: where like you know, Trump was saying, you know, like
Speaker 4: he wasn't sure they would release the f Steve fileser,
Speaker 4: you know, like keep being asked. I think there's that
Speaker 4: famous interviewer.
Speaker 1: Right, that's right, they edited, yes, say more on that.
Speaker 4: First of all, Like there's a news where the.
Speaker 1: So Trump sued CBS for editing a question that Harris
Speaker 1: got by sort of editing to a clearer answer. One
Speaker 1: part they played was her sort of more gargled, and
Speaker 1: a different show they played her clearer answer. Now it
Speaker 1: turns out that there was the same thing. They did
Speaker 1: the same thing with Trump, and there's a whole sort
Speaker 1: of a couple of minutes of him being like maybe
Speaker 1: I would, maybe I wouldn't, I don't know what I
Speaker 1: would with Epstein and that stuff never got shown. And aka,
Speaker 1: Harris should sue CBS.
Speaker 4: She should because CBS also, I mean, the other kicker
Speaker 4: on all this is that like they basically surrender to Trump.
Speaker 4: They're gonna like give him like a huge payout for
Speaker 4: like standard journalistic procedure. But the Trump thing is like
Speaker 4: much worse candalous than like editing for clarity, which like
Speaker 4: journalists always do. With the Trump thing, you know, like
Speaker 4: it was a newsworthy thing. And there was like another
Speaker 4: interview that did at the air where he was asked,
Speaker 4: like jeff he said, sure, where were released at UFOs?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, absolutely Jeffrey Epstein. He said, well, I don't
Speaker 4: know about Epstein, you know, yeah, so he'd always been
Speaker 4: reluctioned to do so. And I think, you know, like
Speaker 4: there's a number of obvious reasons why. I mean, like
Speaker 4: when can you know rehearse the fact that he and
Speaker 4: Epstein were like on both accounts, very close friends for
Speaker 4: like a decade and a half from sorry, from the
Speaker 4: late nineteen eighties, still around two thousand and two. I
Speaker 4: believe Jeffrey Epstein actually had like a was a member
Speaker 4: of mar Lego and like would stay there all the time.
Speaker 4: There's a famous video of them partying. Trump told The
Speaker 4: New York Magazine in two thousand and two, Yo, Epstein's
Speaker 4: a hell of a guy. I mean, like beautiful woman
Speaker 4: almost as much as I do sometimes on the younger side,
Speaker 4: you know, like it's just like to.
Speaker 1: Be right sometimes on the younger side. Yeah.
Speaker 4: See, it's just like the incredibly damning statement, you know,
Speaker 4: given that this guy was later convicted the trafficking in
Speaker 4: young women and as well as you know, all the
Speaker 4: connections with kislne Maxwell. But even in addition to like
Speaker 4: Trump himself, Like, you know, one thing we know about
Speaker 4: Jeffrey Epstein is that he's very well connected with like
Speaker 4: the American financial elite. I don't know if you know this,
Speaker 4: but you know who Jeffrey Epstein's next door neighbor was,
Speaker 4: you know, because Jeffy had like one of the biggest
Speaker 4: mansions in New York and he had a next door neighbor.
Speaker 4: So that is like the guy who's doing all the
Speaker 4: terrifs lit neck Oh yeah, who now owns Jeffrey Epstein's house.
Speaker 4: Then after his neighbors and now is the owner of
Speaker 4: the former Epstein estate.
Speaker 1: Did he buy that house? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Why not?
Speaker 3: Like what why not?
Speaker 4: Yeah, buy this house where all these creepy things happened,
Speaker 4: and that there were secret recordings in the Furthermore, I
Speaker 4: mean Trump would know in his social circles, especially if
Speaker 4: Epstein had been a member of mar Lego and then
Speaker 4: you know, like often kept company with New York financial people.
Speaker 4: Trump basically would know. I would have to guess, like,
Speaker 4: you know, fifty percent at least of the people on
Speaker 4: any sort of like Epstein a Black Book list or
Speaker 4: whatever you want to call it, any any sort of
Speaker 4: like network that you drop of who was Epstein's inner circle,
Speaker 4: that would be pretty heavy with people that Trump would know.
Speaker 4: And I think that in and of itself, in addition
Speaker 4: to whatever personally incriminating things happened, Trump has a lot
Speaker 4: of reasons for not wanting to release US, and so
Speaker 4: it's actually put him into conflict with his base. And
Speaker 4: Political have a good art article about this, But like,
Speaker 4: this is one time where I think the Democrats are
Speaker 4: doing the intelligent thing. Who are because they have fully
Speaker 4: that shows that Trump's base is actually very upset of this.
Speaker 4: They actually had believed that against all reasons, like why
Speaker 4: would you think Trump with all people, would release any
Speaker 4: incriminating stuff on jeffy Epstein, But they actually believed that,
Speaker 4: and so like now it's actually going forward. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you saw in Congress they have Republican They're
Speaker 4: gonna they're gonna get others to have their Democrats unified,
Speaker 4: so they will be able to get like a very
Speaker 4: strong statement from Congress to release all the Epstein files
Speaker 4: with with you can redact the names and information with
Speaker 4: the victims, because that's how what we're conservatives, right, We're
Speaker 4: concerned with who Epstein knew. So Trump it's an incredible
Speaker 4: self owned and I think that one reason it's a
Speaker 4: cell phone, and one reason I think that it has
Speaker 4: like a deeper damaging thing is that the way people
Speaker 4: like Vans were using Epstein was very much in keeping
Speaker 4: with Maga ideology, which is a sert of anti systems politics,
Speaker 4: to say the whole system is corrupt. We're the only
Speaker 4: honest guys. This is like sort of Qune on Maga
Speaker 4: at its most like you know, philosophical level, like this,
Speaker 4: this is what they actually believe. And then to suddenly
Speaker 4: turn around and suddenly say, you know, like oh yeah,
Speaker 4: there's nothing to see here, you know, like Epstein, who's
Speaker 4: that guy? Why are we still talking about Epstein? That
Speaker 4: does not sit well with you know, at least enough people.
Speaker 4: And I think that, yeah, I think that like Trump
Speaker 4: is actually quite vulnerable on this. Actually a little bit
Speaker 4: uncomfortable to even talking about this on a political level,
Speaker 4: you know, like the whole TYPECD is like incredibly sick
Speaker 4: and twisted, and we should actually know the facts. We
Speaker 4: should actually know who he was concerting with, who he
Speaker 4: did business with. And I think the line now is
Speaker 4: that like there was no trafficking and there's no blackmail.
Speaker 4: But like to believe that because Epstein, when he was
Speaker 4: in jail and he died under whatever circumstances, he was
Speaker 4: like on charge for trafficking, and Gislam Maxwell was like
Speaker 4: convicted onto trafficking charges. So you have to believe that
Speaker 4: these people were trafficking, but not trafficking to anyone it
Speaker 4: was like except themselves, Right, It's absurd. I mean, even
Speaker 4: beyond that, we know, like we actually have very specific
Speaker 4: cases where Bill Gates his divorce. We know because this
Speaker 4: came out in interviews and testimony, Epstein had released some
Speaker 4: information to Bill Gates's wife and that led to the doors.
Speaker 4: So so so to be that indicates that like of
Speaker 4: course Epstein was trafficking and information uh and using it
Speaker 4: like to whatever advantage he could have. So so so
Speaker 4: this is like there's actually a real legitimate public interest
Speaker 4: in knowing this, even if no one goes to jail
Speaker 4: or Phy don't have to convict this. I lows this
Speaker 4: is like a bit like the GfK assassination stuff, where
Speaker 4: like you know, like, are you gonna find a smoking gun?
Speaker 4: Is just gonna like incriminate Trump or other people. I
Speaker 4: don't think that's a relevant question. The relevant question is
Speaker 4: does the public have a right to know this stuff? Right?
Speaker 4: Because we now know, you know, this is one thing
Speaker 4: that Trump actually did and actually Biden did to some degree.
Speaker 4: You know, we know we have a lot more information
Speaker 4: about the Kennedy files, and we know that the CIA
Speaker 4: was lying to the American people like until like now,
Speaker 4: like they've been lying for sixty years about now they've
Speaker 4: been lying, and they actually gave a medal to the
Speaker 4: guy who's the chief liar, who was like the CIA
Speaker 4: agent who's involved with the fair play for committed with
Speaker 4: various Cuban organizations and who had been monitoring Lee Harvey
Speaker 4: Oswald along with like apparently like fifty other CIA agents.
Speaker 4: We're like keeping crack of Oswald before he committed the assassination.
Speaker 4: So that's actually you know, whether there's a smoking gun
Speaker 4: or not, it's actually really worth knowing, you know, like
Speaker 4: how how closely the CIA was monitoring him and whether
Speaker 4: they like messed up or anything else happened. So in
Speaker 4: the same with this situation, like there's actually a really
Speaker 4: pressing public interest to know, you know, like what what
Speaker 4: what was this Jeffrey Epstein thing? Like it's just like
Speaker 4: it stinks to high even and we should know as
Speaker 4: much as one the one can legitimately know. And to
Speaker 4: suddenly say like you know, like yeah, Trump's literal thing
Speaker 4: is like move on. And you you actually hear this
Speaker 4: from like Charlie Kirk saying like whoa you know, Trump
Speaker 4: said there's nothing here, and I crusted the Trump administration
Speaker 4: like why like how is not a legitimate position that
Speaker 4: someone in power says, you know, there's nothing here, move on?
Speaker 1: Right one? The boy is you know you elected him
Speaker 1: to bring down the deep state. He is now the
Speaker 1: deep state.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, He's absolutely the deep state in the I mean,
Speaker 4: you know a lot of ways I would argue, you know,
Speaker 4: he's always kind of been the deep state. I mean
Speaker 4: Trump is part of the elite system of elite immunity
Speaker 4: as much as anyone is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm for sure.
Speaker 4: So I mean That's why that was always the absurd
Speaker 4: feature of not that people were wrong to think, like,
Speaker 4: you know, like it would be great to have a
Speaker 4: president who takes on the establishments, like that's a legitimate thing.
Speaker 4: The joke was at the time Donald Trump, of all people,
Speaker 4: was going to be that hero. So actually, I think
Speaker 4: in that level, this is actually very significant and like
Speaker 4: a real point of vulnerability because it really goes to
Speaker 4: it's his kryptonite. It is like this is the thing
Speaker 4: that like can illustrate to not all but many Trump
Speaker 4: believers like wait a minute, this guy is not quite
Speaker 4: who he said he was, you know. So yeah, I think, yeah, like, uh,
Speaker 4: it's been great. I mean like just you know, like
Speaker 4: I think, you know, the way that Trump has messed
Speaker 4: us up, as you said, like you couldn't even begin
Speaker 4: to imagine. We're not even talking about the the cover
Speaker 4: up with they released this video of like the jail cell,
Speaker 4: and like you know, like now it turns out there's
Speaker 4: like almost three minutes missing from that, Like well you know,
Speaker 4: like right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that didn't solve anyone's problems. That was the metadata
Speaker 1: shows three minutes lost, yes.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, So I never want to say like oh yeah,
Speaker 4: we got old Donnie now. But yeah, like I think
Speaker 4: it has always been a sort of you know, one
Speaker 4: of these like boxing midges, like Ali versus Apartman, where
Speaker 4: you gotta keep punching, you gotta keep punching, and I
Speaker 4: gotta say, if that'll knockout, it's a strong punch, right.
Speaker 1: And it also is it's sort of the end of
Speaker 1: the line, right. You see him trying to obfuscate and pivot,
Speaker 1: and he's saying things like this is Comy by the way, Okay, sure,
Speaker 1: I don't care, never liked Comy.
Speaker 4: It makes no sense. Like, okay, let's say, like Obama
Speaker 4: and Kobe fabricated the stuff the file did, why did
Speaker 4: they use that?
Speaker 3: Look?
Speaker 1: You know, yeah exactly, and they did use it. And
Speaker 1: I think so you have you have Trump blaming Obama
Speaker 1: and Comy. You have this sort of reflexive you know,
Speaker 1: it's a hoax, just like Russia, Russia, Russia. What's so
Speaker 1: interesting about Trump two point zero is besides the fact
Speaker 1: that we just our lives are passing us bar and
Speaker 1: we've spent all this time writing about the dumbest person
Speaker 1: in the world. I mean, just I mean, don't you
Speaker 1: feel like as a writer at the beginning of Trump
Speaker 1: one point zero, you thought, wow, this is so insane.
Speaker 1: It's sort of interesting, like it's terrible for all of us,
Speaker 1: but it's so interesting. And now you're just like, oh,
Speaker 1: it's just it's stupid. He's gonna do something stupid. Here's
Speaker 1: what's going to happen, something stupid.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I mean, I mean, I know. The
Speaker 4: circus has lost its thrills a long time ago.
Speaker 1: And people don't tune in for it because they know
Speaker 1: it's just going to be stupid, Like you might as
Speaker 1: well just watch Love Island.
Speaker 4: No, absolutely, absolutely don't know. It's also that the limits
Speaker 4: of his act reappaired intellect Yeah. Yeah, like he's kind
Speaker 4: of really stuck in the past in a way that fight.
Speaker 4: You know, like he is still very much, you know,
Speaker 4: a creature of prevents, still obsessed with stuff that happened
Speaker 4: five ten years ago. He's ever like willing to let
Speaker 4: anything go. And also like it's totally these are all
Speaker 4: irrelevant things, Like it's actually not like resting. This is
Speaker 4: to do with rest.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nothing, not even a little. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about just for a minute here. There are a number
Speaker 1: of big problems that Trump has right inflation, wants to
Speaker 1: fire the chairman of the Fed. The Ukraine stuff. He
Speaker 1: told PUNI had fifty days again Putin. Supposedly, there's some
Speaker 1: Putin had said you needed another fifty days, right like that.
Speaker 1: There's some sense in which maybe Trump is not I'd
Speaker 1: be shocked to hear this acting on the level when
Speaker 1: it comes to Putin. Tell us what you sort of think,
Speaker 1: the kind of you think it's more sort of obfiscating
Speaker 1: and heading into more trade wars. I mean, yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Mean, or whatever the hell this is. I don't know
Speaker 4: if you. I mean, it's sort of like trade wars
Speaker 4: and then not trade wars.
Speaker 1: And infrastructure remember infrastructure week.
Speaker 4: That's very exactly Yeah, yeah, I know. I mean he's
Speaker 4: just like he likes to kick the ball down the
Speaker 4: road a little bad, you know, like he's kind of
Speaker 4: really tready. I mean that he basically ran again out
Speaker 4: of revenge. His ego had been heard by losing to Viiden.
Speaker 4: He could never accept the fact that he lost to Vidin.
Speaker 4: You know, he came back to show that he could
Speaker 4: come back. And he has a bunch of these obsessions,
Speaker 4: like let's make a deal with Putin, and let's do
Speaker 4: trade wars, I mean, and but a lot of it,
Speaker 4: the stuff that he's doing that way, he's had I
Speaker 4: wouldn't say success, but it's done a lot of damage.
Speaker 4: Is where he can offload it to someone who does care,
Speaker 4: like Steven Miller really does care about like you know,
Speaker 4: creating Mickey America as white as possible and like deporting
Speaker 4: everyone and so so yeah, Miller's in charge of immigration,
Speaker 4: doing immense amount of damage on the trade stuff he has.
Speaker 4: Trump has his preferences, but he still keeps going back
Speaker 4: and forth on all this, you know, Like so I
Speaker 4: think a lot is gonna be credit water and on
Speaker 4: the rush, on the Ukraine, on on foreign policy in general.
Speaker 4: He has no idea, no clue, so he'll just like
Speaker 4: waiver back and forth between different factions of his government,
Speaker 4: you know, some of whom want to withdraw from Europe
Speaker 4: and some of whom are like, you know, like want
Speaker 4: to keep going. And it's the same as amilies. So
Speaker 4: it's gonna be it's he started like flaying a lot.
Speaker 4: I mean, I actually think that on the issue that
Speaker 4: he's like done the most is also the most vulnerable,
Speaker 4: which is immigration. Well, I think a lot of sort
Speaker 4: of middle of the royal people did think like, oh,
Speaker 4: he's just gonna get rid of the bad people, the
Speaker 4: gang members and whatnot. And yeah, like you know, every
Speaker 4: day we're seeing like, you know, like just ordinary you know,
Speaker 4: people who've been there for ten twenty years, have lots
Speaker 4: of family here, I've been working here, you know, being
Speaker 4: deported and it's it's you know, it's number one. Immigration
Speaker 4: are like terrible, and support for like amnesty, powerway immigration
Speaker 4: has never been higher. I'm a little bit puzzled by
Speaker 4: like why some Democrats have really step out of the play,
Speaker 4: but a lot of them are like reluctant on this,
Speaker 4: and I think that's a mistake because you know, as
Speaker 4: Carl Rope taught us, you attack your enemy on where
Speaker 4: they're the strongest. And Trump had used to be the
Speaker 4: strongest on immigration. And if you can really hammer home
Speaker 4: that he sold the Bill of Goods on immigration and
Speaker 4: he's like watching this and on the trade stuff, then
Speaker 4: I think, you know, he and the propokas are very vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, cheat here least come back.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I was happy to be a Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 4: could become a war for their Trump does play and
Speaker 4: does lots wear against CANDADALLC.
Speaker 1: Congressman Jared Moskoodz represents Florida's twenty third district. Welcome back
Speaker 1: to Fast Politics, Congressman.
Speaker 3: What's going on, Molly? How you doing good?
Speaker 1: What's happening with the Epstein files? Let's talk about that first.
Speaker 1: Let's start with that.
Speaker 3: Well, I don't know what you're talking about. Is has
Speaker 3: been in the news.
Speaker 1: No, it has not been in the news. But if
Speaker 1: it were to have been in the news, why can't
Speaker 1: you just get over Epstein?
Speaker 3: Because I'm weak in listening to the Democrats, right, That's
Speaker 3: why I mean, first of all, let's go let's go
Speaker 3: to the beginning, right, Yes, people forget when he was
Speaker 3: running against Hillary, President Trump was the one who brought
Speaker 3: up Epstein. He was when he was running against the
Speaker 3: other Republicans in the primary. He was saying, well, you know,
Speaker 3: it's being very bad for Bill Clinton because you know,
Speaker 3: he went to the island just to ask Prince Andrew, right,
Speaker 3: and that's kind of where where it all started. And
Speaker 3: from that day on, right, he's been talking about, you know,
Speaker 3: Epstein and his whole movement's been talking about the deep state.
Speaker 3: How you know there's a list and how they're how
Speaker 3: they're gonna take it to high society and that it's
Speaker 3: all these Democrats, including the Clintons on this list, right,
Speaker 3: and they're gonna expose it and they're gonna go after
Speaker 3: the deep state and take it down. Now, you know,
Speaker 3: there's other people that thinks like, oh, the CIA is
Speaker 3: involved or foreign countries involved. Right, And you got Dan
Speaker 3: Bongino and Cash Mattel who made it, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: made their career online with this stuff.
Speaker 1: They wind up government gangsters, government gangsters.
Speaker 3: They wind up in the administration, in the in the
Speaker 3: Department of government to go after this. Pam Bondi, who
Speaker 3: was the Attorney General of Florida who dealt with Epstein there,
Speaker 3: becomes the attorney general here. She's dealing with Epstein. What
Speaker 3: does she do. She releases binders with nothing in them,
Speaker 3: beautiful nice white binders. I have one for you if
Speaker 3: you'd like one.
Speaker 1: Phase one, Phase one, Phase one, what was gonna be
Speaker 1: phase two?
Speaker 3: Well, this is like this is like the Avengers movies,
Speaker 3: multiple phases. Okay, So so she does this binder there's
Speaker 3: nothing in them, complete embarrassment. You would think at that
Speaker 3: point maybe pivot, maybe figure out how to land it. Nope,
Speaker 3: she comes on Fox and she says, the list is
Speaker 3: on my desks, right as if there was a list
Speaker 3: and it was on her desk, and now that then
Speaker 3: they do a memo and she says, guess what, no
Speaker 3: list and no desk. I don't even have a desk.
Speaker 1: So let's just pause for a minute in the interests
Speaker 1: of just dis secting the stupid heir, what do we
Speaker 1: think you think she was talking about the phone book
Speaker 1: like there has been a follow.
Speaker 3: At this point, who the fuck knows? Right, Look like
Speaker 3: I have no idea?
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, member of Congress here, man, what member of
Speaker 1: our government?
Speaker 3: Yes, well most members of Congress probably, yeah. But at
Speaker 3: the end of the day, I mean, we have no
Speaker 3: idea what's going on? This has been a one eighty
Speaker 3: that is not just confused Democrats MAGA themselves have no
Speaker 3: fuse and bewildered. I'm watching Benny Johnson, Mike Flynn, the
Speaker 3: guy from VERITASO Keith, like they don't even know what
Speaker 3: to do here. They're still siding on you know, they're
Speaker 3: still opposing the president, wanting to release because they feel
Speaker 3: like this pedophile who hurt children had people from high
Speaker 3: society and that there are names, there.
Speaker 1: Are a lot of reasons to want to release this.
Speaker 3: Now Trump says that this is all the Democrats fault,
Speaker 3: where the one who came up with this, We're the one,
Speaker 3: I mean talk about projection, I mean the Lord. So
Speaker 3: now this now he's trying to get people to believe
Speaker 3: like for the last several years, this hoax that they've
Speaker 3: been talking about, this conspiracy theory that they talked about
Speaker 3: that they believe in, either is either true or a hoax.
Speaker 3: The Democrats created Biden in the basement. Clearly Barack Obama
Speaker 3: were still blaming him for stuff. Yeah, okay, and James
Speaker 3: it is and Komy it is absolutely wild. But this
Speaker 3: is really the first instance we're seeing where the MAGA
Speaker 3: base ain't buying it. They're not buying it, right, And
Speaker 3: so you have to ask yourself a question. Were they
Speaker 3: lying then or are they lying now?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Is there is there no there there and it was
Speaker 3: all a lie? Or is it so bad? Is so
Speaker 3: bad that it would take down the president and other
Speaker 3: people in the government.
Speaker 1: On Earth one where we I guess live. It's the
Speaker 1: federal government in a normal federal government. The reason why
Speaker 1: they wouldn't release a list of anything, and we don't
Speaker 1: even know if there is a list. Clearly, we know
Speaker 1: there's a phone book because we've seen reporting of people
Speaker 1: calling the numbers in the phone book, so we do
Speaker 1: know there's a phone book. But if there was something
Speaker 1: like that, the reason why you can't release something like that,
Speaker 1: if you're not going to press charges, is because you
Speaker 1: are then liable for all you know, ruining these people's lives,
Speaker 1: and they can sue you.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, one hundred percent. But also we got Jilane
Speaker 3: Maxwell in prison. Yeah, she's in jail. The Department of
Speaker 3: Justice is asking the Supreme Court to deny her appeal.
Speaker 3: There are Republicans who want to bring her to Capitol
Speaker 3: Hill so she can testify. The administration opposes that.
Speaker 1: Why and let let's get back for a second, because
Speaker 1: yesterday you guys in the House brought explain to us
Speaker 1: what happened yesterday and why Republicans blocked it, and who
Speaker 1: the Republicans were who blocked it.
Speaker 3: Sure, so there was a there was a rule vote
Speaker 3: in the Rules Committee with an amendment. Only one Republican
Speaker 3: voted for that, Ralph Norman Okay, which would have forced
Speaker 3: the release of the Epstein Files or other Republicans on
Speaker 3: the Rules Committee voted against it. Then there was a
Speaker 3: previous question where this language was tied in okay, and
Speaker 3: Republicans voted against it. In fairness to Republicans, they would
Speaker 3: never have allowed us to win the previous question. Anyways.
Speaker 3: These are like rule fights anyways. But yeah, it was
Speaker 3: the first time to put them on the board. Now
Speaker 3: you have a discharge petition with Thomas Massey, Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 3: Green and Democrats. What a weird soup of that.
Speaker 1: You have the numbers for that to get to pass, right,
Speaker 1: because Thomas max do.
Speaker 3: In fact, in fact, the rumors are they're gonna send
Speaker 3: us home. Before we actually signed the petition.
Speaker 1: Johnson just said yesterday, release it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, listen, Like Mike Johnson, he's a nice guy, he's
Speaker 3: a pleasant guy to have a conversation with. He's not
Speaker 3: in charge of the House, Molly, okay, he can say
Speaker 3: whatever he wants. But this is Trump's house, okay. And
Speaker 3: and so at the end of the day, I don't
Speaker 3: care what Johnson says to Manu, right, I care what
Speaker 3: the President is saying. And that's what you have to
Speaker 3: listen to. And the President's telling is move on, Move
Speaker 3: on the guys. The guy's dead. Forget about it. There's
Speaker 3: no there there. It was a hoax, it was Russia Gate,
Speaker 3: it was you know, the the Steel dossier. Good god,
Speaker 3: that's gonna go away. Telling people like, if you still
Speaker 3: believe in the Epstein thing, I don't want your support.
Speaker 3: Your weak He's willing to burn his own base over Epstein.
Speaker 3: And so look, I was never like a big believer
Speaker 3: in this whole thing. Obviously this Efstein was a terrible person.
Speaker 3: That he rotten.
Speaker 1: Hell.
Speaker 3: We obviously have to make sure his victims are protected,
Speaker 3: of course, but the over the top protection of by
Speaker 3: the president from that's what is intriguing strange. That is
Speaker 3: what is intriguing people.
Speaker 1: And there is also alex Acosta giving him this sweetheart
Speaker 1: deal the first time, and that costa goes into the
Speaker 1: Trump admin.
Speaker 3: That's right, it's.
Speaker 1: Not, this is not There is definitely a lot of
Speaker 1: smoke here.
Speaker 3: Oh, there's definitely a lot of smoke And we know
Speaker 3: that Trump knew him and had a relationship with him,
Speaker 3: and Trump's probably all over a bunch of stuff, right
Speaker 3: that we know that's been well well reported. They knew
Speaker 3: each other for a long period of time. What we
Speaker 3: don't know is who went to the island. That's what.
Speaker 3: Who was there? That's the list, right, But even if
Speaker 3: it's not a one sheet of paper, list, right, who
Speaker 3: are the people who went to the island? And that's
Speaker 3: what people want to know, and that is what At
Speaker 3: this point it appears the President is trying to protect
Speaker 3: that list of names. But why don't we let why
Speaker 3: don't we let her come testify, Let her come testify
Speaker 3: to Congress. Let's see what she has to say.
Speaker 1: But there are also hundreds of videos, thousands of videos
Speaker 1: and documents, and I mean.
Speaker 3: If it wasn't destrip Molly, if it wasn't destroyed, Hold
Speaker 3: on a second, there were at some point we were
Speaker 3: told videos.
Speaker 1: FPI sent it to the DJ, didn't they? So she said,
Speaker 1: so she.
Speaker 3: Said, okay, we I mean, you know, if you look
Speaker 3: at the poli, the American people don't believe a word
Speaker 3: that's coming out of DJ on this. So look, as
Speaker 3: Donald Rumsveld used to say, there are unknown unknowns, right,
Speaker 3: May he rest in peace.
Speaker 1: I don't want to say you're my favorite member of Congress,
Speaker 1: because there are members of Congress that I am actually
Speaker 1: very friendly with. You are but right now you are
Speaker 1: my favorite member of Congress.
Speaker 3: It was the Donald rumsveld quote that got you. Love that, oh,
Speaker 3: love that corupt You ever see the letter he sent
Speaker 3: to the I R S about his taxes by the way, no, oh,
Speaker 3: you've got go google it when we're done. He sent
Speaker 3: a letter when Donald Rumsfeldt one year sent a letter
Speaker 3: to the I R S. And the letter, the gist
Speaker 3: of it was something like, you tell me that I
Speaker 3: owe X amount of dollars this year. I'm gonna send
Speaker 3: you that amount of money, but I actually think you're wrong.
Speaker 3: I owe you more. You have no idea. You have
Speaker 3: no idea how much I owe you. I really have
Speaker 3: no idea how much I owe you. I'm gonna send
Speaker 3: you what you're telling me. It's a very funny letter.
Speaker 1: It is about to be hurricane season in Florida. You
Speaker 1: guys climate change. I live in New York. We just
Speaker 1: had flooded subways, very scary, lots of flooding. We've seen
Speaker 1: a lot of flooding already. Your governor Ron DeSantis may
Speaker 1: have spent quite a lot of there's reporting from Talking
Speaker 1: Points Memo that he may have spent quite a lot
Speaker 1: of FEMA money on Alligator Alcatraz, not FEMA money, but
Speaker 1: state money for hurricanes. Now we have this hurricane season coming.
Speaker 1: Trump is trying to dissolve FEMA. Talk us through this
Speaker 1: incredibly bad situation that's about to hit Florida.
Speaker 3: Sure, so let me go through the whole thing. So
Speaker 3: on Alligator Avatraz, there's a grant that's within homeland, about
Speaker 3: six hundreds that's in account that FEMA is going to
Speaker 3: process for reimbursement. So the governor is spending state money
Speaker 3: while he will then wait for a FEMA reimbursement. Who
Speaker 3: knows how long that'll take or if it'll come at all, Right,
Speaker 3: because FEMA, FEMA is reimbursing at the crosshairs. Still is
Speaker 3: right possible? That being said, the state of Florida has
Speaker 3: the money. We're not Alba or Mississippi or Louisiana. They
Speaker 3: do have the money. So from a fiscal issue, right,
Speaker 3: even though they have spent way too much money building
Speaker 3: Alligator Alcatraz, right, it will not impact the state's ability
Speaker 3: to respond in a hurricane.
Speaker 1: But let's talk too, you think, but also is this
Speaker 1: legal to move around these funds like this?
Speaker 3: Well that look, I don't know the fund that it's
Speaker 3: rumored that Homeland is using was actually a fund that
Speaker 3: they froze that was being used being used to reimburse
Speaker 3: New York for that for the immigration issues there that
Speaker 3: they then criticized and fired someone at FEMA for reimbursing
Speaker 3: New York. But now they're taking the money and reimbursing Florida.
Speaker 3: Is it legal? It appears to be a legal grant
Speaker 3: right and having FEMA process it is also legal, although cumbersome,
Speaker 3: and so you know, from a federal government grant perspective,
Speaker 3: it appears to be legal. What Florida is doing with
Speaker 3: Alligator Alcatraz is a whole different story. But I want
Speaker 3: to I want to folk on FEMA because the situation
Speaker 3: can't be more dire. Molly okay. I believe FEMA is
Speaker 3: in worse shape than any other agency in all of
Speaker 3: the federal government right now. It started with talk about reform,
Speaker 3: FEMA reform, FEMA reform, and the agency. The industry has known,
Speaker 3: We've needed FEMA reform for years. Democratic, you know, FEMA administrators,
Speaker 3: Republican FEMA administrators, the industry, everyone knew FEMA needed rough form.
Speaker 3: One of the reforms is to get FEMA out of
Speaker 3: Homeland to get out of this big bureaucratic mess. Homeland
Speaker 3: has been disabusing FEMA for years, making FEMA run all
Speaker 3: of the grants of the other twenty two agencies there
Speaker 3: and bogging FEMA down in bureaucratic red tape rather than
Speaker 3: getting them to focus on response. In fact, I have
Speaker 3: that bill for the last three years to get FEMA
Speaker 3: out of the Homeland Security Department. What does Christy Nome do.
Speaker 3: She doesn't do reform, she does deletion there. Okay, she's
Speaker 3: literally dissolving this thing from within. Twenty percent of the
Speaker 3: workforce is gone. They're holding ten They're holding ten billion
Speaker 3: dollars worth of previously declared presidential disaster aid for billion
Speaker 3: dollars for just Florida. They got rid of BRICK, which
Speaker 3: was a program that helped counties and cities and states
Speaker 3: build resiliency. There's a federal grant that helped states build
Speaker 3: capacity emergency management capacity. Right, they're holding that grant money back,
Speaker 3: so they're saying, build your capacity, but we're not going
Speaker 3: to send you the money to do that that we
Speaker 3: usually send you. Got They forced people to take buyouts,
Speaker 3: some of the most senior people with the most amount
Speaker 3: of experience took those buyouts. You've got regional offices that
Speaker 3: are twenty thirty percent empty, right, and we have.
Speaker 1: The phone number problem right with Texas where they couldn't did.
Speaker 3: The resign the contracts. Yeah, they didn't resign the contract
Speaker 3: with the call center. With the call centers, they're not
Speaker 3: putting people in the field to go door to door,
Speaker 3: which is what they usually do. So in the in
Speaker 3: the year of doge E efficiency, they've actually made FEMA
Speaker 3: slower and less efficient. Okay, we got an administrator with
Speaker 3: no FEMA experience at all, this guy, David Richardson. I
Speaker 3: can't even remember a time in the history of FEMA
Speaker 3: where the FEMA administrator didn't go to a disaster area
Speaker 3: that the President and the Homeland Secretary went to. David
Speaker 3: Richardson wasn't there. He didn't come for several days later.
Speaker 3: Why he knows nothing, and he couldn't add anything to
Speaker 3: the equation, but I could. It's unimaginable. And then what
Speaker 3: you have in Texas, Christy Nome didn't activate the swiftwater
Speaker 3: rescue crews for three days. FEMA would usually just start
Speaker 3: pushing those crews. They would get them, get them on
Speaker 3: the road and reposition them so when then when they
Speaker 3: were needed and ready to go, that it would only
Speaker 3: take an hour or two to get them in the water. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is unconscionable. I don't care what they say. This
Speaker 3: is the fastest response in the history of not Okay,
Speaker 3: this is the slowest response since Katrina.
Speaker 1: Slowest response since Katrina's pretty damning. There's also a problem
Speaker 1: with the weather balloons, right well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're they're not doing the weather balloons anymore because
Speaker 3: they defund.
Speaker 1: It so that it would be your first line of
Speaker 1: defense against a hurricane, right well.
Speaker 3: Making sure we have accurate information to know the intensity
Speaker 3: of the hurricane, the track of the hurricane. There are
Speaker 3: dramatic concerns right that that information is not going to
Speaker 3: be reliable. You get a change in the track, and
Speaker 3: we've talked about this. I mean, look, I'm the former
Speaker 3: director of Emergency Management from the state of Florida, right
Speaker 3: for a Republican governor, Which shows you that I don't
Speaker 3: look at this in a partisan way when it comes
Speaker 3: to emergency management. This is the time to help Americans
Speaker 3: and their time of need. Hurricanes. Don't care you know
Speaker 3: how you vote it but there's a real sense that
Speaker 3: you know, hurricanes could shift and they do it, you know,
Speaker 3: fifty miles this way, sixteen miles that way, that changes evacuations,
Speaker 3: that change flood models. We may not have the same data,
Speaker 3: reliable data that we've had in the past.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it seems like this is spiraling towards the disaster.
Speaker 3: Look, my hope now, obviously is that we have a
Speaker 3: light hurricane season and we have time to rebuild FEMA.
Speaker 3: Because even though that we have great people there, first responders,
Speaker 3: fantastic peop will care about this, FEMA is not ready, okay.
Speaker 3: And states that rely on FEMA to assist them that
Speaker 3: don't have big emergency management departments, like California or Texas
Speaker 3: or Florida, they're not ready to do this without a
Speaker 3: FEMA okay. Yeah, And so we should be concerned. We
Speaker 3: should be worried that if we get a big disaster
Speaker 3: into a state that needs FEMA help, that this situation
Speaker 3: will be a disaster within a disaster.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like the weather stuff, the FEMA stuff,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't seem like there has been an event
Speaker 1: like that. You would think what happened in Texas where
Speaker 1: obviously had they had more a better, more organized warning,
Speaker 1: less people would have died.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean so similar to like the shooting at
Speaker 3: my high school, right Martin Stoneman Douglas, where a bunch
Speaker 3: of kids were killed and teachers. When an event like
Speaker 3: that happens, we have multiple levels of failure and in
Speaker 3: this is in this instance in Texas. The reason you
Speaker 3: do you do an investigation, you do an after actor review,
Speaker 3: is to learn what worked what didn't work to make
Speaker 3: those changes. Right, there are gaps in time between that
Speaker 3: last warning please go, you're gonna die versus when they
Speaker 3: started evacuation. We need to know, We need to know
Speaker 3: what worked and didn't work. We need to know where
Speaker 3: the gaps were, right, Right, I think you're gonna find
Speaker 3: that there were gaps at the local level. There's gaps
Speaker 3: at the warning. We might find gaps with FEMA's response.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It's not going to be one silver bullet how did
Speaker 3: this happen. It's gonna be a lot goes wrong town,
Speaker 3: and some of it may be as simple, Molly as
Speaker 3: this was in the middle of the night, and they
Speaker 3: couldn't reach people in the city, in the county, and
Speaker 3: they couldn't reach the first responders, Right, they weren't ready
Speaker 3: to go, and that's why from four four am in
Speaker 3: the morning till seven am, they didn't start evacuation until
Speaker 3: seven am.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: It may have just been you know, this is not
Speaker 3: this is a r rural area.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: There could be some just regular stuff that got in
Speaker 3: the way. I was on a city commission at county commission,
Speaker 3: and they're not just like sitting around waiting to go.
Speaker 3: Was it a volunteer fire to apartment?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Were those were those folks worried about their families? I mean,
Speaker 3: there's a lot of different moving pieces. That's why you
Speaker 3: do an after action review.
Speaker 1: Are they not doing it?
Speaker 3: I don't know, But I've called for investigation. I've called
Speaker 3: for hearings. That's what I want to do in both
Speaker 3: Homeland and Transportation, which has oversight of FEMA.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: For me, this isn't about gotcha. It's about did something
Speaker 3: different in FEMA? And what were what was the repercussions
Speaker 3: of that?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Did it impact it? It did it not impact it?
Speaker 3: We we don't know. Okay, what I can tell you
Speaker 3: is it didn't help Molly. Clearly wasn't a positive.
Speaker 1: Yes, Trump still seems like he's pretty interested in getting
Speaker 1: rid of FEMA.
Speaker 3: No, they're pivoting. No, okay, yeah, yeah, they're pivoting. So there.
Speaker 3: I actually believe there's a disconnect between the West Wing
Speaker 3: and Christy Nome on this interesting. Yeah, I think it
Speaker 3: was all fun in games, like you're gonna get rid
Speaker 3: of it, and she's like, yep, mister presient, we're gonnat
Speaker 3: rid of it. We're getting rid of it. Now now
Speaker 3: they're pivoting. No, we're going to rebrand it. We're going
Speaker 3: to reform it. We're getting rid of it as you
Speaker 3: previously knew it, like you know the artists formerly known
Speaker 3: as Prince.
Speaker 1: So it's going to be FEMA two point Oh it's actually.
Speaker 3: There's a great room symbol. No, no, you're gonna love this.
Speaker 3: There's a rumor going on, you know what, you know
Speaker 3: what some people are saying it's gonna be called what
Speaker 3: the National Office of Emergency Management. You know what the
Speaker 3: acronym is NATO No no, oh no, yeah no, yeah, yeah, anyways,
Speaker 3: back to Earth one.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that would be amazing, amazing. I mean, I can't
Speaker 1: believe post do. But everything is like at all points
Speaker 1: in this administration.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, by the way, I did have a
Speaker 3: thought like maybe the swift water rescue crews that we
Speaker 3: were waiting for, maybe they were on Pambondi's desk.
Speaker 1: Karen, Yes, will you come back?
Speaker 3: Of course, I'll always come back.
Speaker 1: Okay, good.
Speaker 4: Moment.
Speaker 1: Jesse Cannon Smiley.
Speaker 2: A few weeks ago, Josh Holly, he was putting up
Speaker 2: all this resistance to Medicaid cuts. Some of our people
Speaker 2: who do punitorary like us said, maybe we can get
Speaker 2: him to be a Democrat, and you and I on
Speaker 2: an episode said, well, Josh Holly does what he is
Speaker 2: best for him. And here we have another case of
Speaker 2: that where he's introducing a bill to repeal the Medicaid
Speaker 2: cuts in the big bullshit bill that he voted the pass.
Speaker 1: You know, this is the thing about all of this.
Speaker 1: These people, and this is true with the people like
Speaker 1: in the Freedom Caucus too. All these people are full
Speaker 1: of shit.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 1: They want to seem like moderates, but when it's time
Speaker 1: to stand up for stuff, they will not. So don't
Speaker 1: let yourself get played these people. All they care about
Speaker 1: is winning their primaries. All they care about is not
Speaker 1: getting Trump's people calling them on the phone and saying
Speaker 1: mean messages.
Speaker 2: Could I add though, I think Josh Holly has an
Speaker 2: added third one, which is that he still delusionly believes
Speaker 2: he'll be president one day.
Speaker 1: Sure, they all are like this. Susan Collins voted against
Speaker 1: this bill because they knew they had the votes. Okay,
Speaker 1: she is not a good person who's disturbed. She is
Speaker 1: just a craven politician like the rest of them. By
Speaker 1: the way, Lisa Murkowski voted for the BBB, you know why,
Speaker 1: because they figured she could get reelected in Alaska. This
Speaker 1: has been gamed out, like you can't believe. So none
Speaker 1: of these people are trustworthy. None of these people are
Speaker 1: good people. None of these people are moderates. Okay, we've
Speaker 1: been down. This has been almost a decade of trump Ism.
Speaker 1: There are no moderates here. Everyone is a you know,
Speaker 1: either a craven opportunist or absolutely pathetic sickophant. That's it
Speaker 1: for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday,
Speaker 1: Thursday and Saturday to hear the best minds and politics
Speaker 1: make sense of all this chaos. If you enjoy this podcast,
Speaker 1: please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.