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 Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green says peace
Speaker 1: is the answer, so nothing makes any sense.
Speaker 2: We have such a great show for you today.
Speaker 1: The Linked Project z own Rick Wilson joins us to
Speaker 1: talk about regime change and why it always works out great.
Speaker 1: Then we'll talk to the Brennan Centers Michael Waldman about
Speaker 1: protecting the vote in the midterms. But first the news.
Speaker 3: So, Mollie, while our Democratic leadership seems pretty neutered on
Speaker 3: the subject of opposing Trump's war with rn AOC is
Speaker 3: saying he must be impeached, what do you see him here?
Speaker 1: So a lot of people think that Donald Trump bombing
Speaker 1: Iran without asking Congress, which he's supposed to do, and
Speaker 1: then only notifying Republicans and not Democrats is impeachment worthy.
Speaker 1: This is the reason that I think people are so
Speaker 1: angry at Democrats. And they come over to me during
Speaker 1: my readings when I'm traveling and they say they're fearous,
Speaker 1: and you know why they're fears because they don't feel
Speaker 1: that leadership is as angry as they are.
Speaker 2: Right, that's why they're mad. They want the democratic leadership
Speaker 2: to be as galvanized as they are. You have Americans
Speaker 2: marching on the street, you have Americans saying this is
Speaker 2: not okay. So if you have that, then why do
Speaker 2: you have.
Speaker 1: Democratic leadership saying, oh, this is what Israel wants, so
Speaker 1: we have to go along with it. I think AOC
Speaker 1: is much closer to where are most of the democratic
Speaker 1: base is, and you really want leadership to reflect the
Speaker 1: feelings of the base, at least in a case like this,
Speaker 1: So I think this is a really good example. Now, also,
Speaker 1: there were members of Congress who put together a resolution
Speaker 1: against the war because they know that no nobody wants this.
Speaker 1: The polling on this is terrible. Literally, no one wants this.
Speaker 1: This is like one of the dumbest. At least with Afghanistan,
Speaker 1: you could at least make the case that nine to
Speaker 1: eleven was somehow tangentially involved in this. But with this,
Speaker 1: there is no fucking reason. But it is the dumbest,
Speaker 1: most pointless thing, and it has nothing to do with us,
Speaker 1: and it's just insane. Right Netnyahu has been saying that
Speaker 1: Iran has made nukes.
Speaker 4: Forever thirty three years.
Speaker 1: Right, we have never had a good experience trying to
Speaker 1: enact to regime change. There is zero reason for this.
Speaker 1: And let me tell you there are a lot of
Speaker 1: members of Congress and here there are fifty forty nine
Speaker 1: members of Congress who voted against Trump doing this unilaterally,
Speaker 1: and everyone from Rocanna to Thomas Massey to AOC and
Speaker 1: there are national security people on that list, people like
Speaker 1: Tim Kaine. This is not a lefty or a righty thing.
Speaker 1: This is a dummy or a smarty thing. And the
Speaker 1: reality is the only people who supported this strike were
Speaker 1: Trumpian sick of fans and John Fetterman, who is just
Speaker 1: wants to make people upset.
Speaker 4: Well and is also staunchly pro Israeli.
Speaker 2: But this isn't even pro Israel. It is just stupid.
Speaker 4: You say, dumb versus smart.
Speaker 3: But I was told by jd Vance today that the
Speaker 3: difference between past problems in the Middle East is that
Speaker 3: we had dumb presidents.
Speaker 4: This one's smart.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good hill for him to engage
Speaker 1: with the idea that Donald Trump is smarter than other presidents.
Speaker 1: That I think that's the play there. I like Jada
Speaker 1: Vance on the Sunday shows saying that we weren't at
Speaker 1: war with Iran, we were at war with Iran's nukes.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, because that distinction.
Speaker 1: I'm sure the Iranian people will well, absolutely, that will
Speaker 1: make a lot of sense.
Speaker 3: Meanwhile, little Marco could not even say that Iran was
Speaker 3: close to having nuclear power because even that was a
Speaker 3: bridge too far for his bullshit.
Speaker 1: But also like regime change, Meanwhile, we have we have
Speaker 1: ICE supporting people who are legal. My favorite ICE trope
Speaker 1: is that they keep arresting the same people and happy
Speaker 1: to let them go. Yeah, so our private military that
Speaker 1: wears masks so people can't identify them and arrest people
Speaker 1: who are recording them. Those guys, they had an ICE
Speaker 1: detainee die in transit.
Speaker 2: Okay, so that's they're also killing people. Okay. His six
Speaker 2: children have been frustrated. Two of the children said he
Speaker 2: had no health conditions before being detained. By the way,
Speaker 2: that guy is going to be able to sue. And
Speaker 2: it's not even I mean, he's dead, so his family
Speaker 2: will be able to sue. It's just this is so
Speaker 2: incredibly appalling and disgusting, and our country has just completely
Speaker 2: lost its mind, and it's just terrible.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 3: We had La City Council Member Hugo Soto Martinez this
Speaker 3: week saying that Ice was going to a battered woman's
Speaker 3: shelter and looking for immigrants like you want to talk
Speaker 3: about like going to the people at the worst moment
Speaker 3: of their life. Like this is beyond the cruelty is
Speaker 3: the point. This is just literally the most disgusting behavior
Speaker 3: you can imagine that no one voted.
Speaker 2: For Yeah, well, I think Steven Miller voted for well.
Speaker 4: I mean, it is his sick mind behind all this.
Speaker 4: Speaking of sick minds and the agenda of this administration,
Speaker 4: the Trump administration has ordered California to remove gender identity
Speaker 4: from sex ed.
Speaker 1: This is so stupid. This is like their favorite culture
Speaker 1: war issue. Nobody cares. Nobody cares. Why do you care
Speaker 1: what other people say about their gender? It's so I mean,
Speaker 1: it's literally like we're a decade into this fucking thing
Speaker 1: and all and Trump world has like three things they do,
Speaker 1: so here we go. They're punishing LGBTQ kids. The State
Speaker 1: Department receives five point eight million dollars, which is like,
Speaker 1: that's like how much the military spends on GOM under
Speaker 1: the program to teach safe sex practices, HIV prevention and
Speaker 1: abstinence to high need its populations, homeless, use minorities, migrant
Speaker 1: farm workers, incarcerated use s in foster. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is like they're just punishing the most vulnerable people because
Speaker 1: they know that that's what the base likes. I am
Speaker 1: so depressed every fucking day, and it's like it never
Speaker 1: gets better. Rick Wilson is the founder of the Lincoln
Speaker 1: Project and the host of the Enemy's List.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to Fast Politics.
Speaker 5: Rick Wilson, Molly John Fast how are you?
Speaker 2: I'm good enough, man?
Speaker 4: What good enough? Good enough?
Speaker 5: You're ready to face the new world we live in?
Speaker 1: Of h I found a very cheap dentist who works
Speaker 1: on the weekends, and God blessed.
Speaker 5: That's always a it's always a benefit, right.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about regime change.
Speaker 5: You know, it always works out pretty well. As a
Speaker 5: as a former fan of regime change, I've noticed over
Speaker 5: the over the decades, it rarely happens the way you
Speaker 5: think it's going to happen.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what you know. It's funny because McCrystal, mccraven,
Speaker 1: mra mc.
Speaker 5: McRaven, and there's a Crystal Bill there's.
Speaker 2: Bill Crystal, there's a Crystal, Yes, McCrystal.
Speaker 5: M H. Stanley.
Speaker 1: Stanley was on television talking about how it never goes
Speaker 1: the way you think it's gonna go. Correct, when you
Speaker 1: start bombing a country you have absolutely no business being
Speaker 1: in for any number of reasons.
Speaker 2: Discuss been to this.
Speaker 5: Rodeo, tried it before, it didn't work out. We have
Speaker 5: case A and case B. Case A George Herbert Walker
Speaker 5: Bush my old boss.
Speaker 2: And that one you were in, right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that was that was the one I was. I
Speaker 5: was around for that, for that festivity. That war was
Speaker 5: very carefully bounded. We had a bunch of rules where
Speaker 5: we said things like and by the way, because I
Speaker 5: was a young, hot headed, you know, young dumb ass,
Speaker 5: I was like, we should have gone all the way
Speaker 5: to beg dde.
Speaker 4: Well then we did.
Speaker 5: We did that the next time around and did not
Speaker 5: work out for us the way anyone wanted it to
Speaker 5: or thought it. And of course Iran makes Iran. Iraq
Speaker 5: is like the the starter level in the video game, uh,
Speaker 5: compared to Iran. And I do think it's important we
Speaker 5: all we all just acknowledge the Iranian government are some
Speaker 5: of the worst possible abusers of human rights in the universe.
Speaker 5: They are very, very shitty, horrible bad people, and cautioning
Speaker 5: against Donald Trump involving us in a open ended by
Speaker 5: the way, because it's never oh it's one and done right. No, no, no,
Speaker 5: bless your heart, it does not ever work that way.
Speaker 5: Now they get a vote. Now they get to go
Speaker 5: out and say, huh, okay, well you did you did
Speaker 5: to us with the B two and and these massive
Speaker 5: ordinance penetrating weapons. Now we're gonna well up an embassy
Speaker 5: or take hostages, or kill Americans or hijacked plane.
Speaker 2: But we don't know.
Speaker 5: They're going to do next, right, and the likelihood of
Speaker 5: what they do next sucks.
Speaker 1: I want it also caution that we cannot trust anything
Speaker 1: this administration does.
Speaker 5: Right the idea that Trump came out and said and
Speaker 5: said immediately and if it was funny because I got
Speaker 5: a text message from a former intelligence agency official, very
Speaker 5: high level person, who said Trump giving us a battle
Speaker 5: damage assessment within minutes after the raid is over, when
Speaker 5: the military doesn't know yet how effective it was. And look,
Speaker 5: the massive ordinance penetrator weapon is a very powerful device.
Speaker 5: We've never used them in combat before. We don't know
Speaker 5: what effectiveness they had at for now. They could have
Speaker 5: done they could have wiped out the whole thing, or
Speaker 5: they could have had an effect. We don't know they
Speaker 5: could have. You know, look, when you're fighting uranium with
Speaker 5: with you know you have uranium hexafluoride in the in
Speaker 5: the refining process, you you better hope that you not
Speaker 5: knock the whole fucking thing out, because if the waste
Speaker 5: product is splashing around, that's not great either. There's a
Speaker 5: lot of things here.
Speaker 1: There's a lock and go wrong. I mean, I think
Speaker 1: the top line from smart people is a lock and
Speaker 1: go wrong. You're opening the door to any number of
Speaker 1: unforeseen consequences.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, and the whole justification for doing it doesn't
Speaker 2: make a ton of sense.
Speaker 5: Look, I was a admittedly I was a skeptic of
Speaker 5: JCPOA at the time. A lot of serious people were.
Speaker 5: It wasn't just some of it was partisan, but it
Speaker 5: wasn't just partisan. But a lot of people looked at
Speaker 5: JCPOA and said, oh, this is explain what j JCPOA
Speaker 5: was the international agreement that was spearheaded by the United
Speaker 5: States while Barack Obama was president to stop Iranian enrichment
Speaker 5: of FISA materials, right, Because folks, it's easy to build
Speaker 5: the boss part of a nuclear weapon, building the mechanical
Speaker 5: part of the nuclear weapon, the the device is any
Speaker 5: any sophisticated country can do it, and Iran is quite
Speaker 5: a sophisticated country. Filling it up with all the fissile
Speaker 5: nuclear material to make it an actual nuclear weapon is really,
Speaker 5: really hard. So this JCPOA delayed that for five years,
Speaker 5: and Donald Trump, because he hates Barack Obama and did
Speaker 5: not want a deal with Barack Obama's name on it,
Speaker 5: killed JPOA, hoping that it would speed up the process
Speaker 5: of allowing either the US or Israel to strike the
Speaker 5: Iranian nuclear capacity. But what it did was delayed it
Speaker 5: so that Iran could build up its nuclear capacity. So
Speaker 5: I'm not really sure it worked the way they thought
Speaker 5: it was going to work. And now what we have
Speaker 5: is the there are some indications that the Iranians evacuated
Speaker 5: the ficile material that was absolutely now.
Speaker 2: Right, that they may have gotten their heads up.
Speaker 5: Right, And you know, we were we the administration was
Speaker 5: certainly flagging it to everybody who would listened for the
Speaker 5: few days before, right, But we don't know, we don't
Speaker 5: know how much facile material got out, like how much
Speaker 5: they were able to exfil trait. We don't know the
Speaker 5: severity of the damage yet. It will be severe. I mean,
Speaker 5: make no mistake, this is not going to be trivial.
Speaker 5: And the Runians are not going to be happy about
Speaker 5: this outcome. But we don't have a super clear read
Speaker 5: yet on on just how bad it is for them.
Speaker 1: And look, it's not like we have the A team
Speaker 1: in this administration, right we have a lot of very
Speaker 1: confident people were taken out because he got Pedro.
Speaker 5: Del Drunko and a bunch of these idiots. You've got
Speaker 5: his own head of the Director of National Intelligence, Gabbert
Speaker 5: has been completely sidelined. She's not involved in any of
Speaker 5: the discussions or meetings. You've got Marco Rubio looking like
Speaker 5: a hostage standing behind Trump today. By the way, I
Speaker 5: don't know if you noticed this today on on CBS
Speaker 5: Sunday CBS Show, but Marco is sporting a fabulous new
Speaker 5: hair piece.
Speaker 1: I did not notice that. What I noticed was Marco
Speaker 1: on CBS with the Margaret saying, you know, I thought
Speaker 1: that was a great moment.
Speaker 2: He said.
Speaker 1: She said, well, military intelligence that you know had you
Speaker 1: know assess is that they have no nukes and he says,
Speaker 1: he's he gets very haffy and he's like, how would
Speaker 1: you even know what military intelligence is? And then he
Speaker 1: goes you can see the wheels sort of turning, and
Speaker 1: then he's like, no, wait, He's like, I don't care
Speaker 1: about military and doubt intelligence doesn't mean any public intelligence
Speaker 1: doesn't mean there is no This is moving so stupidly,
Speaker 1: and you can watch it moving through their brains.
Speaker 5: And all their mental processes. You can tell from it
Speaker 5: from a distance. All their mental processes are Is Donald
Speaker 5: going to be mad at me?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 5: That's all they think. Will Donald'll be angry if I
Speaker 5: say something that happens to mistakenly be the truth. And
Speaker 5: you can see that with Marco today, he was very
Speaker 5: nervous about it. I think we all have sort of
Speaker 5: come to the conclusion. I think correctly that essentially what
Speaker 5: happened here was bib Datna who manipulated pressured Mojo Trump
Speaker 5: into doing this, and they're now all doing what they
Speaker 5: always do. They're having to go in reverse and reverse
Speaker 5: engineer explanations and excuses and reasons and blah blah blah
Speaker 5: for why this was a great idea, and yeah, and
Speaker 5: so they'll make up anything to not have to say
Speaker 5: the truth.
Speaker 1: I think that's a good point about reverse engineering the idea,
Speaker 1: because you know, it feels so much like weapons of
Speaker 1: mass destruction now, it feels so oh yeah.
Speaker 5: If you don't have that same vibe, if you don't
Speaker 5: have WMD vibes right now, you're not you haven't been
Speaker 5: around them, around in this campfire for a while. Because
Speaker 5: this is this is the structure, although it was different
Speaker 5: with the Bush administration in one key element. They got
Speaker 5: Congress to vote for an authorization, right, Donald Trump told
Speaker 5: the Republicans in Congress, but not the Democrats.
Speaker 2: Right, which is really.
Speaker 5: Which is like unprecedented in its duchiness.
Speaker 2: Imagine if a Democrat did that, but also.
Speaker 5: Much once again the counterfactual world of if a Democrat
Speaker 5: did this.
Speaker 1: But also Mike Johnson didn't call anyone back, right, and
Speaker 1: you had Thomas Massey. I'd love to have like two
Speaker 1: seconds with you about Thomas Massey. Here's Thomas Massey. And
Speaker 1: I understand that I do not agree with that man
Speaker 1: on almost everything. What I do think it's interesting that
Speaker 1: Thomas Massey is standing up to Trump more than pretty
Speaker 1: much anyone.
Speaker 5: Right, He's standing up to Trump more than a lot
Speaker 5: of Democrats to be.
Speaker 2: That's what I was thinking.
Speaker 5: Why, I mean, there are a lot of Democrats who
Speaker 5: are much more accommodated to Trump than Thomas Massey is.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Why, the guy's got nothing to lose, you know what.
Speaker 5: He's in a safe district. He's been reelected a couple
Speaker 5: of times against Trump's will, and he's kind of a
Speaker 5: contrarian dickhead, you know, and sometimes being a contrarian dickhead
Speaker 5: and you end up being somebody you don't want to
Speaker 5: have to dinner. But he is right, you know, you
Speaker 5: got to be honest. He's not wrong about absolutely right.
Speaker 5: He's not wrong about the constitutional you know principle here
Speaker 5: that you know now way in a worn out with
Speaker 5: Iran is out of their fucking mind.
Speaker 1: MAGA has launched from at CEOs a pack in efforts
Speaker 1: to oust Massy from Congress, of course, for being insufficient
Speaker 1: lay loyal to Trump.
Speaker 5: Naturally, this is my not shocked face. He's a guy
Speaker 5: who who you know, has a lot of name mighty
Speaker 5: in his district. He's probably not going to lose that seat.
Speaker 5: I think that he's a he's a he's a jackass.
Speaker 5: But you know, even even seeing one guy in the
Speaker 5: in the GOP who's saying the words, know, this is wrong,
Speaker 5: this is this is stupid, this is unconstitutional. I mean,
Speaker 5: I'm not saying it's some sort of like blessed sense
Speaker 5: of relief, but it's so unusual, so out of out
Speaker 5: of the normal bounds of the Republican world that you're
Speaker 5: kind of like, wow, this is weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's really important. So let's talk about
Speaker 1: where we are right now. Trump still has legislation, the
Speaker 1: one piece of legislation he's trying to pass. It is
Speaker 1: wildly unpopular. It is being wildly the Senate. What do
Speaker 1: you think now? I mean, there's a lot to not
Speaker 1: recommend there, but do you think and the House is
Speaker 1: sort of they're going back and.
Speaker 5: I think Trump interestingly right now has an excuse to say, oh,
Speaker 5: we're at war now you must pass the big beautiful bill. Yeah,
Speaker 5: and I think that may have upped its chances a
Speaker 5: little bit. But but you know, if there are a
Speaker 5: lot of economic externalities right now, if he closed the
Speaker 5: straight of hormone, if Iron closes the straight of hormas
Speaker 5: and gas prices start to spike and the bond market
Speaker 5: loses its mind. There are reasons to say this may
Speaker 5: not work out like we thought. I'm not very sanguine
Speaker 5: for the bill as it stands right now. If we
Speaker 5: weren't shooting game with Iran right now, the bill would
Speaker 5: probably be in more trouble. There is a rally around
Speaker 5: the flag effect from the anti war party suddenly very
Speaker 5: excited about going to war.
Speaker 1: It's just so incredibly stupid. But you think that this
Speaker 1: bombing Iran, even though it's so unpopular, the polling is
Speaker 1: so unpopular, you think it still has a rally around
Speaker 1: the flag effect inside MAGA.
Speaker 5: It does, and I, you.
Speaker 1: Know, everybody, even though MAGA Trump ran on not starting.
Speaker 5: You know, I said this to last week, like early
Speaker 5: or mid midweek last week, I guess I said to
Speaker 5: somebody or on the broadcast or something. I can't remember
Speaker 5: now it's all an old ones together. I said, this
Speaker 5: will end up being one of those things where MAGA
Speaker 5: they are absolutely positively against any kind of new war.
Speaker 5: They don't want any of this this neocon foreign policy,
Speaker 5: and the minute Trump attacks Iran, they're going to say, well,
Speaker 5: of course we had to attack Iran. We love This
Speaker 5: is a war worth fighting, right and they are and
Speaker 5: and a lot of them you know, you got, You've got,
Speaker 5: You've got a lot of these guys who on paper
Speaker 5: are the hardcore MAGA influencer types. That's where this fight
Speaker 5: is causing. The anxiety for MAGA is at the influencer level.
Speaker 5: It's not at it's not at the base, it's not
Speaker 5: at the like every day right, it's Tucker, it's Alex Jones,
Speaker 5: it's Steve Bannon, and they're all like playing this game,
Speaker 5: like Okay, shit, I hate this. But can I get
Speaker 5: away with hating it if Trump really wants it? And
Speaker 5: the answer is they cannot. If Trump wants a bass
Speaker 5: is gonna say I I captain whatever you want. So
Speaker 5: I think that's where we're at right now.
Speaker 2: Unbelievably shitty, Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And opens the door to all sorts of unknown unknowns.
Speaker 5: The the yes to quote Donald Rumsfeld, Yes, And I
Speaker 5: do think, Polly, there's a really realistic chance that Iran
Speaker 5: is going to do something truly fucking horrible, right right.
Speaker 5: I worry about that, and I and I think I
Speaker 5: think it was easy for a lot of these boga
Speaker 5: guys to go, Well, the Israel's already taken care of
Speaker 5: it and it'll be fine. Now. I don't share that view,
Speaker 5: I think. I think unfortunately, Iran still gets a vote
Speaker 5: in this fight.
Speaker 2: So who is keeping us safe right now?
Speaker 5: Rick Wilson, Well, you know, Molly, I don't know about you,
Speaker 5: but if I was looking for a senior national security
Speaker 5: official in the Department of Homeland Security, in the counter
Speaker 5: terrorism space, which is of course where Iran is extremely
Speaker 5: both dangerous and experienced, I would look for a twenty
Speaker 5: two year old guy who was deeply inexperienced and had
Speaker 5: obviously been like a waiter and a golf caddy or
Speaker 5: something like that. That's who I would pick. Oh wait,
Speaker 5: that wasn't who I would pick. That's who Donald Trump picked.
Speaker 5: We are literally dealing with a Doge style twenty somethingter
Speaker 5: dipshit who is in charge of our counter terrorism efforts
Speaker 5: these days because he was picked by Sergio Gore, possible
Speaker 5: Russian sleeper agent and Trump head of personnel.
Speaker 1: Yes, Sergio Gore has a lot of power in the
Speaker 1: Trump administration, a lot, and not for seemingly no reason.
Speaker 1: By the way, I do, I am curious, like I
Speaker 1: wonder what's happening with Elon.
Speaker 5: I think Elon has had a very bad week. His
Speaker 5: rocket went boom boom again, and so he I think
Speaker 5: has had He's having a world of no fun right now.
Speaker 5: The ship ten blew up on the stand. It was
Speaker 5: a terrible setback. It's going to set him back a
Speaker 5: year or more. From what people are saying. I think
Speaker 5: there's a sense in elon world that unless he can
Speaker 5: retrain his AI to stop the Wokesters, the world is
Speaker 5: collapsing around him a little bit. I don't think Elon's
Speaker 5: having a good time right now.
Speaker 1: I just want to go through a list of things
Speaker 1: that Trump promised during the campaign, the twenty twenty four campaign,
Speaker 1: and I just want for two seconds. Grocery prices would decrease. Nope,
Speaker 1: working families would get.
Speaker 2: A tax kis not happening.
Speaker 1: Entitlements, Medicaid, Medicare, social Security would be protected again.
Speaker 5: The opposite is true.
Speaker 1: Balance the budget and pay down the debt, hilarious, and
Speaker 1: end involvement in foreign wars.
Speaker 5: Well how's that going? Uh? Look, I often say to
Speaker 5: the maga types who who hate listen to my show
Speaker 5: and your show. You don't have to like us. But
Speaker 5: at some point you have to admit to yourselves you've
Speaker 5: been played, that you've been you've been pranked. And I
Speaker 5: think there is a is a an unwillingness of course
Speaker 5: for them to say, yeah, we've been played. The guy.
Speaker 5: The guys, you know, the guys lied to us. He's
Speaker 5: jerked us around, he's lied consistently. But after a while,
Speaker 5: you have to admit if the world is burning down
Speaker 5: around you, if everyone is is, you know, face with
Speaker 5: the evidence of the disaster, eventually you have to admit
Speaker 5: there's a disaster. And right now for them, this is
Speaker 5: this is exactly what they claimed they hated the most,
Speaker 5: the liberal international order, the deep state, telling people, you
Speaker 5: know what we're going to do in Iran or in
Speaker 5: the Middle East. They have gotten everything backward into Trump's
Speaker 5: indifference to them. They don't even They're like, it's like
Speaker 5: he doesn't give a shit about what they think. He's
Speaker 5: having fun right now. He's got bb Net and Yahoo going, yeah, boss,
Speaker 5: you did it, you did it. Great work. I mean,
Speaker 5: if you saw a net in Yahoo's remarks about Trump yesterday,
Speaker 5: I mean it was written by a team of Israeli
Speaker 5: psychologists who said, your goal is to is to fellate
Speaker 5: Donald Trump mentally so that he obeys everything we wanted
Speaker 5: to do forever, because it it's like the greatest president
Speaker 5: of all time has done something no one else could
Speaker 5: ever do. I mean madness. It was absolutely bonkers, how
Speaker 5: manipulative it was. And you know Trump took the bait.
Speaker 5: Of course, Bob said, I'm the best, the very best ever.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5: You are welcome, my friend as always.
Speaker 1: Michael Waldman is President and CEO of the Brennan Center
Speaker 1: for Justice at NYU School of Law.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Bad Politics, Michael.
Speaker 5: Great to be with you.
Speaker 2: So I've been on this book tour. My life has
Speaker 2: been crazy.
Speaker 6: Every time I go anywhere, all anyone asked me is
Speaker 6: how are we protecting the midterms?
Speaker 7: That's good because everywhere I go people ask about your book.
Speaker 7: I read the excerpt in Vanity Fair. It's extraordinary. I
Speaker 7: can't wait to read it.
Speaker 2: I can't wait offend you.
Speaker 5: So how will we.
Speaker 7: Protect the midterms? It's a good question.
Speaker 5: Right now.
Speaker 7: Of course, we're all seeing and facing this extraordinary effort
Speaker 7: to expand presidential power, and there are things Congress can do.
Speaker 7: It isn't There are things courts can do some of
Speaker 7: them have. We want to make sure those rulings stick,
Speaker 7: but ultimately, the voters have to have the last say
Speaker 7: and have to have the loudest voice. And you know,
Speaker 7: the midterm election is coming up very soon, and in
Speaker 7: the last few years there've been really encouraging results where
Speaker 7: groups like the Brandan Center, voting rights groups, law enforcement
Speaker 7: others have worked with election officials and states to sort
Speaker 7: of harden the system. The difference this time is, yeah,
Speaker 7: we're going to still have disinformation, We're still going to
Speaker 7: have threats of violence. People know how to handle that.
Speaker 7: But now we've got the federal government and the hands
Speaker 7: of election deniers being weaponized to try to affect and
Speaker 7: undermine the elections. So that's what we're really focused on,
Speaker 7: is this kind of new threat. I mean, I'll give
Speaker 7: you two things I think you know about. There's legislation
Speaker 7: in Congress called the Save Act, which would require you
Speaker 7: to produce a passport or a birth certificate to register
Speaker 7: a vote in the United States. And that's just something
Speaker 7: tens of millions of people don't have ready access to.
Speaker 7: You know, only half of all people have a passport.
Speaker 7: And then there's old women who've changed their names because
Speaker 7: they got married different from the birth certificate, all those
Speaker 7: kinds of things.
Speaker 5: We think we have the votes.
Speaker 7: We think there are even though it's past the House,
Speaker 7: we think there are the votes to block it in
Speaker 7: the Senate. So Trump then said, oh, you know, I'll
Speaker 7: just do this by executive order. He basically purported to
Speaker 7: take over the election system of the United States on
Speaker 7: his own. In addition to that stuff from the bill,
Speaker 7: it says things like states have to give their data
Speaker 7: over their voter rolls over to DOGE.
Speaker 2: That's wild, what could go wrong?
Speaker 7: So we and Elders went to court. We sued, and
Speaker 7: the court did a preliminary injunction blocking the worst parts
Speaker 7: of that. So that's one power grab. That's one way
Speaker 7: in which they're kind of grab for outlandish executive power
Speaker 7: and the election kind of together. The other big thing
Speaker 7: that's new with the federal government is they've fired only
Speaker 7: people who were working on election security, and so we
Speaker 7: need to we and others. It's kind of like the
Speaker 7: Soviet nuclear scientists. You need to find a place for
Speaker 7: these people, and so they can a lot of these
Speaker 7: people want to do the work of protecting elections that
Speaker 7: they were doing in the federal government, but they can
Speaker 7: do it outside the federal government. So it's sort of
Speaker 7: we and others are kind of amassing an operation with
Speaker 7: these folks, but it comes day after day. I read
Speaker 7: today that they made a point a special prosecutor will
Speaker 7: look at the twenty twenty election to try to prove again, Yeah,
Speaker 7: nearly one. He's pretty focused on all that stuff. So
Speaker 7: it's going to be harry between now an election day.
Speaker 2: Do you think we're going to have free and fair elections?
Speaker 7: So I would say I think we will have secure elections.
Speaker 7: I think we will can have smooth elections. I think
Speaker 7: we can have fair elections. But it's going to take
Speaker 7: a really big fight to make it happen. To push
Speaker 7: back against this new factor. And when we talk about
Speaker 7: free elections, my colleagues always remind me that, you know,
Speaker 7: there's a lot of ways in which they're already built
Speaker 7: in discriminatory, racially discriminatory things, and other things. So we
Speaker 7: shouldn't overly sugarcoat, you know, the elections. But I think
Speaker 7: we can have free and fair elections. The idea that
Speaker 7: oh Trump's just going to cancel the elections, he can't.
Speaker 2: Now he can't. He can't, and they won't let him
Speaker 2: do that.
Speaker 5: No, No, But the.
Speaker 7: One thing that people do worry about is David Frumm
Speaker 7: has written this in the Atlantic, you know, who's the
Speaker 7: conservative author who's very crupple of Trump, that the stuff
Speaker 7: Trump did with the troops in Los Angeles could be
Speaker 7: a sort of dress rehearsal for saying, Oh, you know,
Speaker 7: I see problems in the blue states around elections, and
Speaker 7: I'm going to send the troops in there. And and
Speaker 7: he said in the last week, Oh, we're not going
Speaker 7: to enforce the immigration laws with our masked men going
Speaker 7: in to hotels or restaurants, but we're going to do
Speaker 7: blue cities where the voters are illegal immigrants.
Speaker 2: Right, So you could see of thinking there.
Speaker 7: I mean, you know, the troops going to the polling
Speaker 7: places is something the state of local officials and law
Speaker 7: enforcement and everything have to be really strong about.
Speaker 1: So much of this is illegal what he wants to do,
Speaker 1: I mean, from.
Speaker 6: The executive orders down, it's just a.
Speaker 1: Question of whether you have the right people who can
Speaker 1: push back on it, right, right.
Speaker 7: I mean, in some cases it's the courts, and you know,
Speaker 7: there've been like something like one hundred and fifty rulings
Speaker 7: on the executive power questions by trial courts that have
Speaker 7: ruled against Trump. But now those cases are in the
Speaker 7: appeals courts and then up to the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 7: as we all know, those tend to be more political,
Speaker 7: more ideological.
Speaker 2: You're thinking about like the Ninth Circuit, right, right?
Speaker 6: Will you explain the story with the Ninth Circuit, because
Speaker 6: I don't think our listeners totally understand it.
Speaker 7: Absolutely. It's interesting too because for lawyers for a long time,
Speaker 7: the Ninth Circuit was this kind of mythically liberal court.
Speaker 7: It's a kind of a reminder of what the real
Speaker 7: real deal is now in the federal court. So Trump said, oh,
Speaker 7: there's disruption, there's people burning Waymos or whatever, and so
Speaker 7: I'm sending in I'm federalizing the National Guard as well
Speaker 7: as also sending in the Marines to as his Homeland
Speaker 7: Security Secretary Christinom said, to liberate Los Angeles from its
Speaker 7: political leadership. And people could say, well, wait a minute,
Speaker 7: how can the president do that with the National Guard. Well,
Speaker 7: actually the president can federalize the National Guard. It's very rare.
Speaker 7: I mean, basically, the last time that a president sent
Speaker 7: the National Guard into a state, took over the state
Speaker 7: military force under his command without the permission of the governor,
Speaker 7: without the governor requesting it of the state was in
Speaker 7: nineteen sixty five around Selma, right, they wouldn't protect John
Speaker 7: Lewis and doctor King on the march from Selma to Montgomery.
Speaker 7: Although it's really interesting I've been looking into Linda Johnson
Speaker 7: was so manipulated and George Wallace, the segregationist governor, was
Speaker 7: such a skunk that, like, it's a little hard to
Speaker 7: tell whether Wallace asked for it or not. And apparently
Speaker 7: Johnson went on TV announced that he'd asked for it,
Speaker 7: but he was lying. So anyway, it's since nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 7: Gavin Newsom government. Newsom said, this is terrible. It's going
Speaker 7: to inflame things. We have things, he said. Mayor Bass said,
Speaker 7: we have this under control. The LAPD no squishes said
Speaker 7: we have this under control. Trump said, no, I've got
Speaker 7: the power to do it. Newsom sued, and a trial
Speaker 7: court judge Judge Bryer, who is the brother of Stephen Brier,
Speaker 7: the former Supreme Court Justice. Judge Bryer ruled no, the
Speaker 7: law that Trump used does in fact require governors to agree.
Speaker 7: Newsom said, I'm going to take command at noon tomorrow.
Speaker 7: Then the appeals court ruled, and you know, with a
Speaker 7: trial court it's a single judge, and then it goes
Speaker 7: to a panel of appeals judges, and the appeals court ruled, actually,
Speaker 7: Trump does have the power to do this.
Speaker 6: And that's because it was the Ninth circ right, which
Speaker 6: are the very conservative A short.
Speaker 7: Cut, it's not so conservative, it's actually not. No, it's California,
Speaker 7: you know, kind of in the past that used to
Speaker 7: be viewed as kind of the hippie dippy circuit. What
Speaker 7: was the thinking, Well, the thinking was, look, the law
Speaker 7: gives presidents a lot of power here, and we judges
Speaker 7: have the power to make rulings on this. Trumpet said,
Speaker 7: the courts can't even make a ruling. But they said, oh,
Speaker 7: you know, the law gives the president this power. And
Speaker 7: it was discouraging but not entirely surprising, because one of
Speaker 7: the things we're facing is that the laws around presidents
Speaker 7: taking over domestic military, around the use of emergency powers,
Speaker 7: the Insurrection Act, all these other very scary tools in
Speaker 7: a present's toolbox, the laws are very weak, often in
Speaker 7: terms of constraining the present, and it's just self restraint
Speaker 7: in the past that has kept Presence from abusing it.
Speaker 7: When we come out of this, we need a moment
Speaker 7: of massive reform, massive response, massive construction. And part of
Speaker 7: the answer is to fix those laws so this doesn't
Speaker 7: happen again.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I definitely think this sort of anti
Speaker 6: corruption post Nixstonian, But boss, don't you think?
Speaker 5: Well?
Speaker 7: And those laws, there was a huge wave of laws.
Speaker 7: It wasn't just the campaign finance laws. It was the
Speaker 7: creation of special prosecutors. It was Freedom of Information Act,
Speaker 7: it was the Anti Impoundment Act, which is the thing
Speaker 7: they're going to be hearing cases on this year of
Speaker 7: Presidence cancers refused to spend money. Was a whole array
Speaker 7: of legal protections against an out of control president that
Speaker 7: were put in place after Nixon and Johnson too, in
Speaker 7: the seventies. For us right now, it's well, what are
Speaker 7: the problems we're seeing today, not in the seventies. How
Speaker 7: do you deal with the world's wealthiest man paying for
Speaker 7: the campaign of the winning presidential candidate, moving into the
Speaker 7: way all the contracts for himself, but also being given
Speaker 7: power to gut all the agencies. That's never happened before.
Speaker 7: What's a lot to stop that? You know, the Insurrection Act. Interestingly,
Speaker 7: and this is where you will hear me say something
Speaker 7: you won't hear much on this podcast.
Speaker 4: I'm betting.
Speaker 7: Let me say something nice about Mike Lee.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: Wow, Yeah, you'll remember Mike Lee.
Speaker 1: He recently was in the news for some really really
Speaker 1: bad tweets.
Speaker 7: Unbelievable. You know, much of the time he's a principal
Speaker 7: conservative libertarian, and then on Twitter he does these awful things.
Speaker 7: And he made fun of the shootings in Minnesota and
Speaker 7: said they were Marxists who did it and wouldn't apologize.
Speaker 7: It's like he's one of these people who are two
Speaker 7: different people, you know, when they are at social media
Speaker 7: and they think they have to act out. But he's
Speaker 7: really in political trouble at home because of it, because
Speaker 7: it was so ugly. Anyway, Mike Lee, Rand Paul, a
Speaker 7: number of these libertarian conservatives have worked with liberals over
Speaker 7: the years on trying to rein in these presidential powers.
Speaker 7: So you know, we all came fairly close to making
Speaker 7: greater restrictions on emergency powers, restrictions on how the Insurrection
Speaker 7: Act could be used, which has not been used. Yet
Speaker 7: that gives presence like practically nearly the ability to.
Speaker 4: Declare martial law.
Speaker 7: Not fully things are so scrambled the tariffs. In all
Speaker 7: the excitement about the tariffs and their impact economically, can
Speaker 7: be really easy to not say, hey, wait a minute,
Speaker 7: does the president have the power to do this? The
Speaker 7: answer is no, that they don't anymore than they can
Speaker 7: set the income tax rate. Trump just declared an emergency
Speaker 7: and set an economic emergency and said he could do it.
Speaker 7: So there was Among the lawsuits that were filed to
Speaker 7: block this, one of the most important ones was filed
Speaker 7: by a right wing group called the New Civil Liberties Alliance,
Speaker 7: backed according to the media by the Koch Brothers and
Speaker 7: our friend Leonard Leo and we at the Brent Center
Speaker 7: filed a brief in their.
Speaker 2: Ring of Liberals Everywhere.
Speaker 7: A new name for my holiday card lit. We filed
Speaker 7: a brief in their case. We thought it was a
Speaker 7: really strong case and also that it was really valuable
Speaker 7: when it kind of left and right and center can
Speaker 7: speak out unambiguously on this constitutional question that's going to
Speaker 7: be one of the big cases of the Supreme Court
Speaker 7: is going to have no choice but to decide.
Speaker 2: I think when is that coming up to the court.
Speaker 7: So not in that case, but in a different case
Speaker 7: also challenging these tariffs, the Court of International Trade, which
Speaker 7: is not hugely known court.
Speaker 6: Yes, please talk about the Court of International Trade, because
Speaker 6: I have read about this.
Speaker 2: It's an amazing bit of sorcery.
Speaker 7: Well you've just exhausted the entirety of my knowledge. But
Speaker 7: it's in Lower Manhattan. It deals with tariffs, and the
Speaker 7: Trump administration wanted these tariff cases to go to that
Speaker 7: court because they figured, oh, they'll they won't make some
Speaker 7: big ruling. And instead the Court of International Trade unanimously,
Speaker 7: one judge appointed by Obama, one judge appointed by Ragging,
Speaker 7: one judge appointed by Trump, said presidents don't have the
Speaker 7: power to do this. And another trial court in Washington,
Speaker 7: d C.
Speaker 4: Did the same thing.
Speaker 5: So this one's interesting. So.
Speaker 7: Michael McConnell is a well known conservative law professor. He
Speaker 7: was a federal judge. He wrote in The Times New
Speaker 7: York Times that this was going to be the most
Speaker 7: important case on presidential power since the nineteen fifties. He
Speaker 7: felt there was no way they were going to the
Speaker 7: Supreme Court would get away with ducking it, you know,
Speaker 7: they're trying to kind of like not make it back.
Speaker 7: I have to deal with that, and of course the
Speaker 7: impact is huge because we're negotiating supposedly trade deals with
Speaker 7: all these countries. There's tremendous economic uncertainty. This is one
Speaker 7: again where there's this sort of a scrambling of the
Speaker 7: ideological you know, alignments to Wall Street Journal strongly supports
Speaker 7: these lawsuits. Trump has decided, as he put it, that
Speaker 7: Leonard Leo is a quote sleezebag who hates America or
Speaker 7: probably hates America who helped him so much.
Speaker 2: The irony here is pretty amazing.
Speaker 7: You know, look in twenty twenty, when Trump was trying
Speaker 7: to lie and claim that he'd really want on the
Speaker 7: election and all those courts ruled against him. The number
Speaker 7: of the judges who ruled against him were very conservative
Speaker 7: judges from the Federal society deep bench, and they were
Speaker 7: very conservative, but they weren't bailing Trump personally out. And
Speaker 7: it now looks like he wants judges who will focus
Speaker 7: on that. I mean, he's nominated this guy, Emil Bouvay, who's.
Speaker 6: His personal well, he's nominated Emil bouv to be on
Speaker 6: this to be.
Speaker 2: A court, be a judge, an appeals court judge.
Speaker 7: Wow, he's running helping run the Justice Department. Part of
Speaker 7: me thinks like, well, ye know, maybe he'll do let's
Speaker 7: damage on the court. But you know, I mean it's
Speaker 7: a political loyalty rather than a ideological fealty to conservative
Speaker 7: political you know, legal about originalism or whatever. So the
Speaker 7: courts are part of this fight. But I think it's
Speaker 7: so important that we not like Congress off of the
Speaker 7: hook and we not forget that ultimately voters have to
Speaker 7: do this. I mean, the judges are not going to
Speaker 7: save us. They're really not. I mean, they're going to
Speaker 7: play a role.
Speaker 6: Isn't this the I mean we be of Congress, like
Speaker 6: how we bear with Congress refusing to exert their power.
Speaker 6: They have power when it comes to pay outs, and
Speaker 6: also they have power when it comes.
Speaker 2: To the money stuff.
Speaker 6: You know that money is allocated by that. I mean,
Speaker 6: they have oversight powers they're not using.
Speaker 7: Yeah, very much so. And as a broad mighter, this
Speaker 7: isn't this kind of congressional abdication didn't start yesterday. One
Speaker 7: of the reasons that the Supreme Court has itself kind
Speaker 7: of grabbed a lot of power and then now the
Speaker 7: presidency is also grabbing a lot of power. Is that Congress,
Speaker 7: which is supposed to have most of the power in
Speaker 7: our system, is paralyzed, can't act or won't act. And
Speaker 7: the whole notion of checks and balances in the Constitution
Speaker 7: is supposed to be based on the idea that there
Speaker 7: is institutional and even personal self interest. The members of
Speaker 7: Congress would want to stand up for their power the
Speaker 7: present and it's going to want to stand up for
Speaker 7: their power, and that they'll battle it out because they're
Speaker 7: sort of set up as competing forces. And what's happened,
Speaker 7: you know, in recent decades, in part, is that the
Speaker 7: political parties have become more and more important. When people say, oh,
Speaker 7: we have such weak parties in the United States, that's
Speaker 7: true in a lot of ways. But in Congress, when
Speaker 7: you're a person is in the White House, people don't
Speaker 7: stand up to them by and large anymore. And you
Speaker 7: would think that these freezes in spending, these cuts and
Speaker 7: spending which affect universities in red states, which affect you know,
Speaker 7: veterans programs all over the country, you would think these
Speaker 7: members of Congress would would find a way to stand
Speaker 7: up without breaking with Trump the leader of their own party.
Speaker 7: But sooner or later these Republicans maybe won't happen until
Speaker 7: they lose control one or both of the houses. But
Speaker 7: they're only you know, they've only got one or two
Speaker 7: vote majority in the House of Representatives. You would think
Speaker 7: that some of that would happen. The one place we've
Speaker 7: seen this play out now for the first time, where
Speaker 7: it really is actually shaking things up, is on the
Speaker 7: potential attack by the United States on Iran. Again, presidents
Speaker 7: have a lot of power when it comes to war
Speaker 7: and national defense, and presidence of both parties have wanted
Speaker 7: to use it all without Congress getting involved. But there
Speaker 7: are laws there too that say, in addition to the Constitution,
Speaker 7: that say that Congress has to pass up resolution, the
Speaker 7: War Powers Resolution. Remember George H. W. Bush went to Congress.
Speaker 7: George W. Bush went to Congress. Obama did not go
Speaker 7: to Congress when he started bombing. It's not one party
Speaker 7: or another. If we're going to get involved in this
Speaker 7: war and start bombing Iran, which is a big country
Speaker 7: with the ability to retaliate, you would think that would
Speaker 7: be something Congress should at the very least be asked
Speaker 7: to approve in advance. And it very well might, you know,
Speaker 7: and you're seeing a lot of fights among the Republicans
Speaker 7: and a lot of squishings and ducking under the table
Speaker 7: among the Democrats.
Speaker 2: On that, Michael, thank you so much for coming on.
Speaker 6: I really needed to sort of chop this through without
Speaker 6: can really appreciate it.
Speaker 7: Yeah, the answer to your very first question, we can
Speaker 7: have free and fair and secure elections in twenty twenty six.
Speaker 7: It's going to take more of a fight than it
Speaker 7: usually does, and that's the fight we've all got to wage.
Speaker 2: Yeah, such a good point. Thank you, Michael Walson.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: No moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 5: Wellie Jong fast is it that time?
Speaker 2: It's that time? Tell us what is your moment of fuckery?
Speaker 5: You know, I think my moment of fuckery is the
Speaker 5: fact that Donald Trump refused to brief Congress on these strikes.
Speaker 5: Oh I'm sorry, wait, let me rephrase that. He didn't
Speaker 5: refuse to brief Congress. He just refused to brief anyone
Speaker 5: in the in Congress from the Democratic Party. This is not,
Speaker 5: as the kids say, how it's done, how any of
Speaker 5: this works. He went and brief the Republicans, not the Democrats. Look,
Speaker 5: if we're going to have a constitutional order of any
Speaker 5: kind and you want to go to war, Okay, get
Speaker 5: an authorization because he went to war with a very
Speaker 5: partisan mix of telling the Republicans not the Democrats here.
Speaker 5: I mean, when this thing goes sideways. I don't know
Speaker 5: if you've heard about this, but war is in the
Speaker 5: Middle East occasionally go sideways. Yeah, when it goes sideways,
Speaker 5: he's going to say, oh no, everyone supported me. Oh no,
Speaker 5: you never called us motherfucker. Yeah, So that's my moment, fucker.
Speaker 2: Rick Wilson, thank you.
Speaker 5: As always, my friend. I'll see you next time.
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