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 Marco Rubio says Europe and Ukraine
Speaker 1: will be a part of the Russian peace talks, though
Speaker 1: that actually is maybe not true. We have such a
Speaker 1: great show for you today. The Lincoln Project's own Rick
Speaker 1: Wilson joins us to discuss Trump's latest dictator language. Then
Speaker 1: we'll talk to former Consumer Financial Protection Bureau head row
Speaker 1: heat Chobra about the accomplishments of the organization and why
Speaker 1: Trump ended it. But first the news.
Speaker 2: So Malli RFK Junior got right to work dismantling the CDC,
Speaker 2: just as we feared he would. And I don't like this.
Speaker 1: You'll be shocked to know that RFK Junior is doing
Speaker 1: all the anti science stuff he has long advertised himself
Speaker 1: to be. By the way, I just want to pause
Speaker 1: for a minute here and say, like, we're basically in
Speaker 1: between pandemics. We have bird flu, we got birds dying,
Speaker 1: we got cows, a person got bird flu, they had
Speaker 1: pink eye. There are all sorts of reasons not to
Speaker 1: gut public health organizations, and yet here we are the
Speaker 1: Trump administration fired nearly half of the members of the
Speaker 1: vaulted public health program that works on the frontlines of
Speaker 1: disease outbreaks. You don't need it only a day after
Speaker 1: anti vax or conspiracy theorist and might add lover of
Speaker 1: many women who are not his wife.
Speaker 2: You could say it because it's true of a lot
Speaker 2: of people in this administration.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, and members of this intelligence service, which
Speaker 1: deals with etymology. Thirteen hundred layoffs there at the Center
Speaker 1: for Disease Control and Prevention. We don't have diseases, so
Speaker 1: that should be fine. Look, he is stripping the Health
Speaker 1: and Human Services staff. He's doing this. And look again,
Speaker 1: Remember there are two things to remember here. One is
Speaker 1: this is about this larger ethos of Project twenty twenty five. Right,
Speaker 1: dismantle the federal government, make it small, make it inefficient,
Speaker 1: make it not work so that the people don't believe
Speaker 1: in it. Right, that's part of it. And then part
Speaker 1: of it is you put someone who really is against
Speaker 1: almost all of the important and meaningful parts of public
Speaker 1: health in charge of the public health agency. So like
Speaker 1: the fact that this is happening, no one should be surprised. Right,
Speaker 1: this is exactly how we thought it would go. Some
Speaker 1: of the people that he laid off, experts from this
Speaker 1: EIS have been dispatched for decades to investigate disease outbreaks
Speaker 1: in the United States and abroad. Disease outbreaks. Well, it's
Speaker 1: good because we don't have diseases anymore, so that should
Speaker 1: be fine. And you know these are high paying jobs, right,
Speaker 1: millions of millionaires. Now, I mean, this is fucking ic right.
Speaker 1: These are the people who investigated anthrax, investigated.
Speaker 2: Abula, which we just got two cases of in New York.
Speaker 1: Right, this is absolutely insane. Stat News reports the entire
Speaker 1: incoming class, sixty to eighty people were told their positions
Speaker 1: have been canceled. This is so fucking stupid. This is
Speaker 1: cutting a tiny bit of money to cost a lot
Speaker 1: more money soon. And I want to add that we
Speaker 1: should not be surprised that these people are doing stupid
Speaker 1: destructive things. Stupid destructive things are what they said they
Speaker 1: would do, and now they are doing it. So welcome, welcome, welcome.
Speaker 2: So the Republicans have unveiled their budget, and I'm going
Speaker 2: to shock you here, Molly. The economists say it'll disproportionately
Speaker 2: benefit the one percent.
Speaker 1: Never what that's crazy talk. So House GOP's budget proposal,
Speaker 1: which ames four point five trillion dollar tax cut but
Speaker 1: only for a very very much people with roughly two
Speaker 1: trillion and spending cuts, but likely that those spending cuts
Speaker 1: will only affect the very poor and also the people
Speaker 1: who need healthcare and also people who are affected by diseases.
Speaker 1: This was always trickle down economics. None of us should
Speaker 1: be surprised that these people are trying to practice the
Speaker 1: sort of worst of Reaganism and the worst of Bannonism.
Speaker 1: So here we are. They want to cut two trillion
Speaker 1: in spending, cut taxes four point five trillion, and the
Speaker 1: good news is and also in top line numbers, Republicans
Speaker 1: are hoping to pay for their gigantic tax cut for
Speaker 1: very wealthy people by reducing spending between one point five
Speaker 1: and two trillion. By the way, Medicaid in case you're wondering, Medicaid,
Speaker 1: which is the healthcare for poor people that is in
Speaker 1: their crosshairs because it always has been. House Republican leadership
Speaker 1: has specifically asked the Energy and Commerce Committee to find
Speaker 1: eight hundred and eighty billion dollars in cuts over the
Speaker 1: next ten years. This is all I want to pause
Speaker 1: again to pay four tax cuts for very wealthy people.
Speaker 2: And funny enough, though US in the resistance have an
Speaker 2: ally in one Steve Bannon, who warns Trump and Musk
Speaker 2: that they shouldn't cut Medicaid because there's loads of mega
Speaker 2: that is on Medicaid.
Speaker 1: Yes, you will be shocked to know. Look, Steve Bannon,
Speaker 1: you may not agree with him, but he is very smart.
Speaker 1: I mean I don't agree with him, and nor should
Speaker 1: you agree with him. And we most people don't agree
Speaker 1: with him, but don't use a meat axe. Steve Bannon
Speaker 1: warns Trump and Musk that loads of megas are on Medicare. Again.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the things that we've seen with
Speaker 1: Steve Bannon is that he actually really is smart and
Speaker 1: pays attention to what's going on. I do not agree
Speaker 1: with him. I've said this before, but he said he
Speaker 1: warned that many of Trump's mega supporters rely heavily on Medicaid,
Speaker 1: a subsidy for low income Americans, and not to take
Speaker 1: a meat axe to the program more than six hundred
Speaker 1: billion dollars when to Medicaid last year. Bannon nevertheless wants
Speaker 1: to cut programs to help whack away at the one
Speaker 1: point eight trillion dollars in debt. I mean, yes, the
Speaker 1: whole goal here is to cut spending, is to cut
Speaker 1: the things that you have gotten from the government, right
Speaker 1: to cut away at that. So we shouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 1: But Bannon is smart, and Bannon wants to keep winning elections,
Speaker 1: and he knows if you do this to the people
Speaker 1: who voted for you, then they won't vote for you again.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just math. Right. One of the things
Speaker 1: that Trump was able to do in his first term
Speaker 1: was he was able to have set all this crazy stuff,
Speaker 1: but a lot of it didn't happen because Democrats were
Speaker 1: able to prevent him from doing it, so people didn't
Speaker 1: believe he would do it. This time, there are no
Speaker 1: checks and balances, and there's a real opportunity here for
Speaker 1: Donald Trump just to do the craziest stuff. And that's
Speaker 1: where we are.
Speaker 2: Fun times. Speaking of doing crazy stuff, Borders Are, Tom
Speaker 2: Homan has suggested that the DOJ should prosecut AOC.
Speaker 1: So this is one of these dumb things. It's dumb
Speaker 1: because it's just bullshit. Right. So Tom Holman, who was
Speaker 1: the Borders Are, he actually worked under Obama and had
Speaker 1: some kind of weird meltdown and now has become completely
Speaker 1: a zealot as zealot when.
Speaker 2: He's not embarrassing Eric Adams on air.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that amazing interview on Fox and Friends. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so that guy said that AOC could have broken the
Speaker 1: law by holding a webinar informing immigrants of the rights
Speaker 1: during encounters with ice. Now there's no law against that.
Speaker 1: It's covered under this amendment. That Republicans are so concerned
Speaker 1: about the First Amendment, the freedom of speech. I mean,
Speaker 1: they don't love it as much as the Second Amendment,
Speaker 1: but it still gets a lot of play. It's a
Speaker 1: stupid thing because it can't happen, and it's not true.
Speaker 1: This is this Republican bravado, this idea that if you
Speaker 1: say something we don't like, we think you should go
Speaker 1: to jail, or we think you should be prosecuted. And
Speaker 1: Dana Bash asked Tom Holman, do you think that she
Speaker 1: should be prosecuted about AOC, and he suggests he said,
Speaker 1: I am suggesting that I would ask the Department of Justice,
Speaker 1: where's the line on implementation. I think that that's a
Speaker 1: broad statute. I mean, look, it's so dumb. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's so dumb, and it is meant to be a distraction.
Speaker 1: But remember so much of the Sadman is about doing
Speaker 1: things to get attention. Maybe he wants to get the
Speaker 1: big guy to see it. Maybe he thinks that Trump
Speaker 1: will love him more if he picks on AOSA. Shouldn't
Speaker 1: be surprised about this. Rick Wilson is the founder of
Speaker 1: the Lincoln Project and the host of the Enemy's List
Speaker 1: Welcome Back, Too Fast Politics, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 3: Hello, comrade, this was the weekend when, even though what
Speaker 3: Trump is doing has been bad, I feel like this
Speaker 3: was the.
Speaker 1: Weekend where we were like, all my a month into
Speaker 1: this experiment, and this was a weekend where I was like,
Speaker 1: oh wait, what not me?
Speaker 4: I mean, look, I have expected this, this increasing tempo
Speaker 4: and the increasing outrageousness of it, and the increasing degree
Speaker 4: to which the Democrats have still yet to grapple with
Speaker 4: how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: Right, First, we need to talk about the Trump tweet
Speaker 1: that is Napoleonic. We need to talk about the providence
Speaker 1: of it. It's not actually Napoleon. It's a movie about Napoleon.
Speaker 5: Right, correct.
Speaker 4: It's from the nineteen seventy film Waterloo by Robsteiger.
Speaker 1: Say more. If you dare.
Speaker 4: This is the classic problem with Trump and his people.
Speaker 4: They find something superficial, like that famous quote from Abraham
Speaker 4: Lincoln about you can't trust anything on the Internet, and
Speaker 4: so they'll run with shit like that. They will not understand,
Speaker 4: and they still refuse to understand that the presidency of
Speaker 4: the United States, even with a crapulous fuck wit like
Speaker 4: Donald Trump in the office, that words matter, that assertions
Speaker 4: like that matter. And let's be very clear, Napoleon Bonaparte
Speaker 4: was a dictator. I've written I am unfortunately in one
Speaker 4: of one of my mani historical rabbit holes. I've studied
Speaker 4: a lot about the Napoleonic Wars, and I've written a
Speaker 4: lot about Napoleon. I've written a lot about the French Revolution,
Speaker 4: partly because Trump idolizes a person like Napoleon, because he
Speaker 4: believes he got away with things because he took power
Speaker 4: and no one could resist him taking power. This is
Speaker 4: what Trump idolizes most. This is why we're now on
Speaker 4: the wrong side of history. This is why our allies
Speaker 4: now are putin g mbs and Kim Jong un because
Speaker 4: he loves that quote. But let me tell you something.
Speaker 4: I read it, and I knew it's provenance, and I
Speaker 4: knew it was one of those famous sort of faux
Speaker 4: historical whatevers. What Donald Trump was doing there wasn't just
Speaker 4: asserting his own power. He was also sending a very
Speaker 4: very very loud dog whistle through a billion assholes. That
Speaker 4: was the moral equivalent of saying, we're going to march
Speaker 4: down to the Capitol because if you don't, you're going
Speaker 4: to lose your country.
Speaker 1: Right, And Nate got very excited by it. But I
Speaker 1: want to point out, just for two seconds, just back
Speaker 1: to this quote. So it's a line from a screenplay
Speaker 1: from a nineteen seventies movie which David from SAZ was
Speaker 1: funded by the Russian government and then Waterlieu with Rod Steiger,
Speaker 1: Christopher Blummer and sixteen thousand Red Army extras. But I mean, look,
Speaker 1: the message here is the same message we're hearing from JD. Ben's,
Speaker 1: is the same message we always hear from Trump, right,
Speaker 1: which is I am an autocrat and I the laws
Speaker 1: don't apply to me, which is, you know, none of
Speaker 1: this should be surprising, but all of it should be galvanizing.
Speaker 4: It should be I desperately need the folks out there
Speaker 4: to not normalize this in your head. I desperately need
Speaker 4: people out there to really think this through what it means.
Speaker 4: This is intentionality on his part. This is clarity on
Speaker 4: what he will do and will try to get away with.
Speaker 4: Napoleon inherited from the French Revolution an internal security mechanism
Speaker 4: that would persecute, prosecute, or kill opponents.
Speaker 1: Right, But there's no way that Trump knows.
Speaker 4: He knows that he defied convention, he defied law, he
Speaker 4: defied order, he defied the constitutional for what it was
Speaker 4: framework of how France was organized in or Trump knows
Speaker 4: those things at an ansert visceral level. But Molly, it's
Speaker 4: also an invitation to these assholes out there. Oh, if
Speaker 4: you attack Trump's opponents, now you're doing it for the country,
Speaker 4: so you're not breaking the law.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of wink wing, no, no, let's go,
Speaker 1: And that's always been true for Trump and iatarily worrying. Now.
Speaker 1: The problem on the other side is that Democrats are
Speaker 1: having real trouble breaking through. Some of them are out there,
Speaker 1: some of them are trying, but it's not connecting for
Speaker 1: whatever reason. So let's talk about what they could do
Speaker 1: to break through. Let's not even trash then, let's just
Speaker 1: get going on like solutions.
Speaker 4: Okay, here's a solution. Build an apatrol rapid response team
Speaker 4: of actual rapid responders. It's not members of Congress. Okay,
Speaker 4: more about that right now. The average age of the
Speaker 4: people on the Democratic rapid response team, a fucking kid,
Speaker 4: you not, is seventy seven years old. This is insane.
Speaker 4: You need a bunch of pipe swinging young people to
Speaker 4: get out there and be on the rapid response front
Speaker 4: every day, grinding out these messages, giving them to members
Speaker 4: and saying, hey, in your district, Congressman Smith, here's how
Speaker 4: many people are getting fucked by this tariff deal. Here's
Speaker 4: how many people are getting hurt by firing some government jobs.
Speaker 4: Here's how many veterans don't get suicide prevention care. Now
Speaker 4: they should be driving information into the hands of every
Speaker 4: member of Congress, and Hakeem Jeffries should be there with
Speaker 4: a baseball bat going to every member saying, have you
Speaker 4: communicated to your district every single one of these facts.
Speaker 4: Are you pushing this out to your local media, to
Speaker 4: local radio, to local newspapers, to local influencers. Are you
Speaker 4: blasting your email list every day? Not just asking for
Speaker 4: fundraising but telling people in your district, in your state,
Speaker 4: telling them, get on the phone to your Republican neighbor,
Speaker 4: get on the phone and spread this message. Here's how
Speaker 4: you're being hurt. Here's how Trump is fucking you. Here's
Speaker 4: how Trump is burning your community to the goddamn ground.
Speaker 4: That is a message out there. The rapid response faces
Speaker 4: need to be the members of Congress, and they need
Speaker 4: to be aggressive about it. The team needs to be
Speaker 4: a bunch of pipe swinging, vicious, bloodthirsty motherfuckers who are
Speaker 4: out there try to have the maximum pain on Republicans
Speaker 4: in their districts and their states. They should be laying
Speaker 4: in as much pain as they can. If Congressman Smith,
Speaker 4: a Democrat, is next door to Congressman Jones, a Republican,
Speaker 4: in their districts, he should be in that guy's fucking
Speaker 4: district saying you're getting screwed by this guy. You're getting
Speaker 4: screwed by this guy. Trump is hurting you. He is
Speaker 4: hurting you.
Speaker 1: But there's a ton to sort of work off of.
Speaker 1: For example, R. FK. Junior, you may have heard of him.
Speaker 1: Some of the people Trump has put in this cabinet.
Speaker 1: I don't even want to say they're crazy, because crazy
Speaker 1: is probably the wrong word for whatever it is.
Speaker 4: Evil Molly, evils, the what are you're looking for?
Speaker 1: Yeah? But RFK Junior, he has decided that he's going
Speaker 1: to target one of America's greatest problems, which is antidepressant Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: because depressed people are obviously much better for the country.
Speaker 1: And I mean, this is the problem antidepressants, right. RFK
Speaker 1: Junior is like an ad for Democrats right every single day.
Speaker 1: And the fact that Donald Trump put him in there,
Speaker 1: I guess because RFK got a lot of voters for
Speaker 1: Trump is insane. And I think there's a real question
Speaker 1: about why we are not talking about RFK Junior every
Speaker 1: minute of every day.
Speaker 4: We ought to be talking about RFK Junior every minute
Speaker 4: of every day. We ought to be targeting suburban mothers. Hey, Democrats,
Speaker 4: here's a free one for you. Get an ad campaign
Speaker 4: running right now into Republican districts for suburban mommies, and
Speaker 4: you tell them over and over again, RFK wants your
Speaker 4: daughter to get cervical cancer because he wants to ban
Speaker 4: Gardisil because he's in a lawsuit. One of his law
Speaker 4: firms is suing the manufacture of Gardazil, because that's what
Speaker 4: they do, that's their business model.
Speaker 1: Is to sue.
Speaker 4: But I think you should be telling Republican women out
Speaker 4: there in the country, they should be advertising because they're
Speaker 4: still sitting and they and future four it is still
Speaker 4: sitting on a giant mountain of money. They should be
Speaker 4: advertising to these people saying, say goodbye to your daughter.
Speaker 4: She may not died today, but there's a chance she'll
Speaker 4: die of cervical cancer. Preventable cancer, cancer that has a
Speaker 4: safe and effective medicine that treats it, but no longer
Speaker 4: because Robert F. Kennedy, Donald Trump's Health and Human Services secretary,
Speaker 4: is taking it away. Yes, I mean, it's not like
Speaker 4: I do this in my sleep or anything, but but
Speaker 4: I can't understand why they can't recognize you can't just
Speaker 4: go out there and say and I saw this the
Speaker 4: other day. It was like, what did Democrats do about
Speaker 4: on this day? And one of the two of the
Speaker 4: bullets were just like, we offered to continue to bring
Speaker 4: up a resolution to reintroduce the Veterans Nice Puppies and
Speaker 4: Kittens Act or whatever the fuck it was. It's just like,
Speaker 4: come on.
Speaker 1: No, I know, but they just need to be focused.
Speaker 1: And I think part of the problem is a lot
Speaker 1: of these people are very elderly, so they remember a
Speaker 1: time when there was a rich and robust mainstream media
Speaker 1: that would highlight abuses. That mainstream media is gone, right,
Speaker 1: that does not have the world works anymore. The media
Speaker 1: is of the New York Times and that is it.
Speaker 1: And so there is no one who is going to
Speaker 1: draw attention to these abuses if they don't do it.
Speaker 1: So if they ever want to win elections again, and
Speaker 1: it's not even just about winning elections, you have constituents
Speaker 1: in this country who are very angry as well, they
Speaker 1: should be right people in the federal government. I mean
Speaker 1: this weekend, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world,
Speaker 1: he fired the people who watch the nukes for ten hours. Okay,
Speaker 1: you need those people, you need those people, thank you.
Speaker 4: So in an area in which all the members of
Speaker 4: our family have had some encounters with the National Nuclear
Speaker 4: Surity Administration, I can tell you these people do something
Speaker 4: really important. They are folks who provide security and oversight
Speaker 4: for nuclear weapons.
Speaker 1: Preventing a nuclear holocaust. Like you just can't get people
Speaker 1: off the street to do that.
Speaker 4: And the purpose of nuclear weapons is to not use them,
Speaker 4: ironically enough, but you do have to monitor them and
Speaker 4: make them safe and keep them carefully locked away from
Speaker 4: idiots and make sure that they're all accounted for at
Speaker 4: all times.
Speaker 1: And yet, but the thing that gets me the most
Speaker 1: sort of agitated about all of this, if you can
Speaker 1: believe it, is like this is to pay for tax
Speaker 1: cuts for very much people. This is not because there's
Speaker 1: some huge financial crisis. This is not because there is
Speaker 1: some budget shortfall that none of us saw coming. This
Speaker 1: is because Donald Trump does not want the tax cuts
Speaker 1: to expire. I mean, you know, and I think there's
Speaker 1: like a real lack of understanding there, right, Like these
Speaker 1: are tax cuts that should expire that you know, their
Speaker 1: corporate tax cuts. No one wants a corporate fucking tax cut.
Speaker 1: Nobody wants that that's not for anyone but very rich
Speaker 1: people and tax cuts for billionaires. Let these fucking tax
Speaker 1: cuts expire. It is insane. I would also add that
Speaker 1: I think that this rabbit hole that we're in, like
Speaker 1: should be messaged as this is the richest man in
Speaker 1: the entire world. He is interested in keeping his taxes low.
Speaker 1: He is cutting cancer research period paragraph.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and he gets upset when you mentioned that he's
Speaker 4: cutting cancer research, which, by the way, guys, considering what
Speaker 4: a sociopathic weirdo he is, when even Elon Musk gets
Speaker 4: that imaging him with taking away kids cancer treatment is bad,
Speaker 4: you know, it's really bad.
Speaker 1: But it's also you know, it's like the right thing
Speaker 1: to be saying, right, because he has some sense of
Speaker 1: what is going to hurt him, and that is something
Speaker 1: that's gonna hurt him. But I want to like just
Speaker 1: pull back for a minute and pause and think about
Speaker 1: for a second sort of the unintended consequences we are
Speaker 1: hurtling towards here. There was a headline in the New
Speaker 1: York Post. Again, I do not, you know, Rupert Murdock
Speaker 1: owned New York Post, that there was an abola scare.
Speaker 1: I have a number of reasons not to believe this.
Speaker 1: Number one, it's the New York Post, number two, whatever.
Speaker 1: But the point is, like, there is a real pandemic.
Speaker 1: There's there's bird flu already, it's in the milk of
Speaker 1: the cows. So like, could be nukes, could be the economy,
Speaker 1: it could be bird flu, could be weather. I mean,
Speaker 1: there are so many things that could be terrorism. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's so many possible terrible things that could happen when
Speaker 1: you dismantle the federal government. And there's no reason to
Speaker 1: do this except for tax cuts for very rich people
Speaker 1: and ideological beliefs rich people. I mean, there is, as
Speaker 1: I see it, no other reason.
Speaker 4: The reason for the tax cuts is exclusively so that Elon,
Speaker 4: Peter Thiel, David Zas and a cluster of hedge fund
Speaker 4: bros and crypto bros can get their income tax burden
Speaker 4: down to essentially somewhere around zero. There is nothing built
Speaker 4: into this tax cut. If you make under three hundred
Speaker 4: and sixty some thousand dollars a year, you are going
Speaker 4: to pay more in taxes. If your kids get college loans,
Speaker 4: you're going to be taxed on those fucking college loans
Speaker 4: and scholarships. I mean, none of this is going to
Speaker 4: help anybody that is not in the eight zero's class
Speaker 4: of Americans. It also puts the lie to all there, Oh,
Speaker 4: we've got to go through the government and cut every
Speaker 4: job out because we're in such deep debt. Okay, right now,
Speaker 4: if you trimmed out every bit of what professionals think
Speaker 4: about at the fraud and waste level, you trim out
Speaker 4: a few billion dollars here in there. Okay, you trim
Speaker 4: out three to five percent of the budget, call it waste.
Speaker 4: They're asking for ten trillion dollars, four trillion dollars to
Speaker 4: keep up the Trump's spending plans, and then that additional
Speaker 4: load is going to go to pay for a tax
Speaker 4: cut for about two hundred and fifty people in this country.
Speaker 4: I know a lot of people they don't like thinking
Speaker 4: about the sort of Luigi problem. But we're going to
Speaker 4: enter into guillotine and tumbril territory if they pass this
Speaker 4: tax cut, because ordinary people are going they're going to
Speaker 4: end up in a situation where they completely are financially fucked.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, no, I mean, and they're already. I mean. Look,
Speaker 1: Trump was elected to make things less expensive, right, that
Speaker 1: was what he said. I'm going to make eggs, so
Speaker 1: I was sold. Right, if you can fucking find eggs,
Speaker 1: there is expensive. I spent sixty dollars on three things
Speaker 1: of eggs. Okay, thirty six eggs. Sixty dollars. Now that
Speaker 1: seems like a lot to me.
Speaker 4: I was told that prices were going to come down
Speaker 4: immediately because it was going to be so beautiful.
Speaker 1: Right, But so price is not going down, but you're
Speaker 1: getting less stuff from the government. Make it make sense.
Speaker 1: But I want to pause for a minute because I
Speaker 1: want We're going to spend two minutes talking about fifty
Speaker 1: million dollars to Gaza for condoms, okay, because that is okay,
Speaker 1: So that was the Elon lie. Then Donald Trump said no,
Speaker 1: actually it's one hundred million dollars for gozzen condoms.
Speaker 4: Like Jnald Trump discussing his penis, he doubles it at
Speaker 4: least any number.
Speaker 1: So fifty million dollars for condoms. The USAID, which has
Speaker 1: now been taken apart, because why would you do a
Speaker 1: nominal amount of money to countries we have bombed and
Speaker 1: destroyed they don't need it and saw power what is
Speaker 1: that usaid? Okay, condoms when they buy condoms, they are
Speaker 1: five cents apiece. Fifty million would be one billion condoms.
Speaker 4: Look, I don't care what level of fertility and ficundancy
Speaker 4: your people rock in any country. Nobody's fucking that much.
Speaker 1: Right. Well, and also let us pause for a second.
Speaker 1: And by the way, I love Elon Musk. So Elon said,
Speaker 1: not everything I say is going to be correct. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it turns out that this is not even close
Speaker 1: to correct, right. It turns out that it was not
Speaker 1: fifty million dollars for condoms for Gaza, but in fact,
Speaker 1: it was going to be sixty eight million dollars from
Speaker 1: USA to IMC, which has two field hospitals in Gaza
Speaker 1: offering surgical care, malnutrition treatment, and emergency newborn and mother care. Okay,
Speaker 1: so that's it, But.
Speaker 4: Molly more importantly, the actual program that sent condoms to
Speaker 4: Africa was part of PEPFAR, and they weren't sending that
Speaker 4: many condoms. They were mostly sending oral contraceptives. It was
Speaker 4: part of PEPFAR. The anti HIV program that is that
Speaker 4: is universally considered by Republicans and Democrats alike to be
Speaker 4: one of the best things we've ever done.
Speaker 1: Created by George W. Famous liberal George W.
Speaker 4: Bush, Like I said, no one left or right before
Speaker 4: Donald Trump Will could go, oh man, let's not try
Speaker 4: to prevent AIDS in Africa. That would be bad if
Speaker 4: we did that.
Speaker 1: And you know who loves this fucking program, the anti
Speaker 1: choice zalence. They love it because it's quote unquote life right,
Speaker 1: so they call it so they claim. So I mean, look,
Speaker 1: you know you got a country run by a guy
Speaker 1: who's a thrice married adulterer. He is being helped by
Speaker 1: the richest man in the world.
Speaker 4: A majority of the kids born by IVF, and several
Speaker 4: of them were born by surrogates.
Speaker 1: Right, and honestly, that's fine, except that the thing that
Speaker 1: in Trump worlds, which I think is incredible, is that
Speaker 1: they want to make it so that a fertilized egg
Speaker 1: has the same rights as a person, which is going
Speaker 1: to really mess up IVF, even if you're going to
Speaker 1: if you're allowed to even get it.
Speaker 4: Of course, look, and you know I'm not the first
Speaker 4: person to make this observation, but if Barack Obama had
Speaker 4: five kids by three different baby mamas, the Republicans would
Speaker 4: have never stopped calling him.
Speaker 1: The worst and had one even if he had just
Speaker 1: been divorced. I mean, you don't even have to have
Speaker 1: five kids. He could have just been divorced and they
Speaker 1: would have had a fit.
Speaker 4: Right. And if his chief advisor, who was running roughshot
Speaker 4: through the government databasis stealing your private information, had thirteen
Speaker 4: children by I don't know, five or seven whatever it
Speaker 4: is baby mama's and the most recent one was a
Speaker 4: maga influencer, which I guess would be the equivalent of
Speaker 4: she worked at the media matters or something. Right, They
Speaker 4: would be losing their goddamn minds over it, And yet
Speaker 4: there is this underpinning of well, they're just it's white
Speaker 4: replacement theory. So, you know, I mean some people, someone's
Speaker 4: got to step up and do it.
Speaker 1: Brohe chilbra is the former director of the Consumer Financial
Speaker 1: Protection Bureau and previous member of the Federal Trade Commission.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Fast Politics, Rowhead, Thanks so much, so explain
Speaker 1: to us what the CFPB is or was.
Speaker 5: So during the financial crisis, there was a huge realization
Speaker 5: that there was no agency that was actually enforcing the
Speaker 5: law when it came to predatory lending, when it came
Speaker 5: to banking and payments. So they set up a new
Speaker 5: agency fully responsible for making sure that people weren't cheated
Speaker 5: when they took out a loan or got a bank account.
Speaker 5: And over the years, the CFPP has recovered tens of
Speaker 5: billions of dollars, going up against some of the biggest
Speaker 5: and most powerful companies in America Wells Fargo, Navviant, JP,
Speaker 5: Morgan Chase, and the list goes on and on. And
Speaker 5: that money has made a big difference in so many
Speaker 5: people's lives.
Speaker 1: Can you explain to us for the people who are
Speaker 1: not just completely read in on the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight financial crisis. I personally lived through it, so I
Speaker 1: feel really clear on what happened, But explain what the
Speaker 1: sort of symptoms of the problem were that caused the
Speaker 1: CFPB to be created.
Speaker 5: Well, people might remember that in the years leading up
Speaker 5: to two thousand and eight, we saw an explosion of
Speaker 5: really sketchy mortgages. They were first pedaled in places like
Speaker 5: Nevada and Arizona and California and Florida, but it really
Speaker 5: infected the entire country, and Wall Street was profiting even
Speaker 5: when homeowners were set up to fail. We saw big
Speaker 5: financial firms take big bets that ultimately made them go
Speaker 5: belly up. The result was a lot of illegal foreclosures
Speaker 5: in communities across the country. We lost trillions of dollars
Speaker 5: in wealth. And you know what, people are still pretty
Speaker 5: angry that the banks and financial companies responsible many of
Speaker 5: them got bailed out, they got bigger, and almost no
Speaker 5: executive went to jail. There's a lot of residual anger
Speaker 5: about that from the families who were most deeply affected
Speaker 5: their kids who are about to go to college. They
Speaker 5: ended up borrowing big because their families couldn't afford it,
Speaker 5: and the effects of that financial crisis are still being
Speaker 5: felt today.
Speaker 1: So when the CFPB was formed, and it was formed
Speaker 1: by Congress, right, because that's how these things work, what
Speaker 1: were some of the tangible things that it did, like
Speaker 1: tell us about a lawsuit or something where pursued money
Speaker 1: and got it back for a consumer.
Speaker 5: Well, here's what Congress did. What they did is they
Speaker 5: shut down an agency that was clearly failing, and they
Speaker 5: set up a new agency that stripped a lot of
Speaker 5: authorities that were spread across the federal government, and they
Speaker 5: parked it in one place. And here was what was
Speaker 5: really important about the CFPB. Instead of just looking only
Speaker 5: at banks who are chartered by states in the federal government,
Speaker 5: the CFPP was on the hook for looking at all
Speaker 5: of the other financial companies too, payday lenders, the non
Speaker 5: bank companies offering mortgages that were often at the center
Speaker 5: of those subprime mortgages that went bad. And that's really
Speaker 5: the bulk of the work. So if you take a
Speaker 5: look during my time as head of the CFPB, we
Speaker 5: recovered billions of dollars. One was Wells Fargo, who we
Speaker 5: caught engaging in illegal auto repossessions double dipping of fees.
Speaker 5: We just a few weeks ago, in fact, just before
Speaker 5: Inauguration Day, found serious breakdowns a cash app, one of
Speaker 5: the most popular payment apps for many student loan barwers.
Speaker 5: They know the company Naviant that manages their student loans,
Speaker 5: and we permanently ban Naviant from bidding on contracts to
Speaker 5: manage federal student loans. And the list really goes on
Speaker 5: and on, and there's active litigation with companies like Capital Want,
Speaker 5: who we allege have taken billions of dollars in interest
Speaker 5: that they should have given to sabers. So it's so
Speaker 5: much standing up to these big companies that break the law,
Speaker 5: and the results have been really positive.
Speaker 1: So it sounds like this organization it's set up to
Speaker 1: stop big companies from taking advantage of the little people.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's really fighting crime against consumers all over the
Speaker 5: country and also making sure that new abuses can't spread.
Speaker 5: I mean, we've put a lot of work into stopping
Speaker 5: some of the worst abuses on junk fees, where you're
Speaker 5: charged three fees instead of just one, or when it
Speaker 5: comes to medical bills, So many Americans get these medical bills,
Speaker 5: they're double billed, or their insurance company already paid it
Speaker 5: and they're being asked to pay again, and they get
Speaker 5: coerced by deck collectors who park it on their credit reports,
Speaker 5: blocking their ability to get a loan or a job
Speaker 5: or an apartment. So the CFPP has been trying to
Speaker 5: stay ahead of what the next big problems are and
Speaker 5: ultimately serving as a police force against Wall Street and
Speaker 5: big tech companies that are breaking the law.
Speaker 1: So now what happened to CFPP, Well.
Speaker 5: Here's what we're hearing. What we're hearing is that the
Speaker 5: new leadership has issued a stomp work order, in other
Speaker 5: words words, turn off all law enforcement activity, all investigations
Speaker 5: of consumer complaints and everything else. We're hearing that thousands
Speaker 5: of people every day file complaints with the CFPB against
Speaker 5: companies that maybe have mistreated them. We're hearing that that's
Speaker 5: not necessarily working now for everybody. So it does seem
Speaker 5: that this is part of an initiative to defund the
Speaker 5: police that oversee some of these financial companies. And I
Speaker 5: just think that that is going to be a recipe
Speaker 5: for big problems not just for consumers, but for all
Speaker 5: those companies that are following the law and are going
Speaker 5: to need to compete with cheaters.
Speaker 1: And didn't rous Vatt say something about CFPB.
Speaker 5: Pi's now the head of the CFPB right, and my
Speaker 5: understanding is that the new leadership has really stopped all
Speaker 5: activity and has even begun to fire peace.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to reduce government waste and fraud, right,
Speaker 1: and you wanted to keep private sector companies from committing
Speaker 1: fraud against taxpayers, wouldn't CFP be the Consumer Protection Fraud
Speaker 1: Bureau be the place that you would focus, like, if
Speaker 1: you wanted to protect taxpayers. I mean, why would you
Speaker 1: disassemble something like this if you wanted to weed out corruption.
Speaker 5: Well, this is what's a little bit weird, is that
Speaker 5: there's lots of places where there are laws on the
Speaker 5: books that don't get enforced. We actually need law enforcement
Speaker 5: to root out fraud and abuse in our marketplaces because
Speaker 5: it costs It costs the public billions and billions of dollars.
Speaker 5: And I think that's everyone knows that Americans are struggling
Speaker 5: with the cost of living a lot, housing, auto insurance,
Speaker 5: credit card interest rates have shot through the roof, and
Speaker 5: this is an agency that really is about saving people
Speaker 5: money and making costs more competitive and upfront and fair.
Speaker 5: So I'm not sure what's going on here. What I
Speaker 5: think many businesses have reached out to me and others
Speaker 5: have wondered, is this really about the CFPB's work to
Speaker 5: look under the hood at the big tech companies that
Speaker 5: are increasingly getting into banking and to payments. You may
Speaker 5: remember Malli that Facebook wanted to create its own currency.
Speaker 5: Google and Apple now have extremely popular payment services that
Speaker 5: many people tap their phone with to make payments. And
Speaker 5: also we've heard that x or Twitter has entered into
Speaker 5: a new deal with Visa to really be trafficking more
Speaker 5: and more of our transactions and our payments, and those
Speaker 5: types of activities are really subject to a lot of
Speaker 5: federal laws to make sure that consumers aren't subjected to
Speaker 5: errors and fraud and hacks, and that certainly was a
Speaker 5: place we needed the CFPB to look closely at given
Speaker 5: the explosion of fraud and impersonation that was going on.
Speaker 5: So I'm not sure exactly what's going on, but we
Speaker 5: know that there is a lot of interest in stopping
Speaker 5: that oversight work from these powerful firms.
Speaker 1: Let's talk for a minute about why you think that
Speaker 1: Trump world. I mean, Elon Musk's whole thing is he
Speaker 1: wants to end fraud and waste. So if you want
Speaker 1: to end fraud and waste, wouldn't this be I mean,
Speaker 1: is this agency very expensive? Talk to me about that.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a smaller agency than most of the agencies
Speaker 5: people have heard of, and the amount that it has
Speaker 5: generated in savings for consumers has far outstripped its budget.
Speaker 5: You know, there's always room to make things work better.
Speaker 5: When I was there, I actually eliminated a lot of
Speaker 5: the senior positions that were created by my predecessor. We
Speaker 5: eliminated certain activities that just weren't serving consumer as well.
Speaker 5: But in some places we expanded. We increased the number
Speaker 5: of people conducting investigations and helping people who had complaints.
Speaker 5: So this is a really good bang for the buck.
Speaker 5: And let me just be CLEARBOLLI, it's not like there's
Speaker 5: any other regulator who's doing this. So by defunding it
Speaker 5: or even by killing it, that's just a green light
Speaker 5: for fraudsters. And frankly, I think it's begging for another
Speaker 5: financial crisis that targets homeowners or borrowers or consumers at large.
Speaker 1: Yeah, clearly, it is really important that these companies be
Speaker 1: hold to account. What about the argument that companies want
Speaker 1: to do that somehow they can hold themselves accountable. Talk
Speaker 1: to us about this idea, because you know, Trump world
Speaker 1: and Republicans more broadly hate government regulation. They tend to
Speaker 1: feel that any kind of regulation is an attack on capitalism.
Speaker 1: Explain to us why that's not true.
Speaker 5: Yeah, well, here's why you need some rules. In many places.
Speaker 5: You know, someone might argue, well, if people are getting
Speaker 5: bad service, they can just take their business elsewhere. You know,
Speaker 5: that's just not really true. In so much of our lives,
Speaker 5: we don't choose to do business with big credit reporting
Speaker 5: companies like Experience and Equifax and TransUnion. When we take
Speaker 5: out a mortgage, we don't choose who the mortgage servicer
Speaker 5: is who collects on our loan. So consumers are often
Speaker 5: captive and trapped. And we've all experienced this. We've all
Speaker 5: been in situations where big corporate monopolies have to do
Speaker 5: business with them and nothing really polices them. And in
Speaker 5: some cases, Molly, we may not even know when we're
Speaker 5: being screwed over. For example, our data might be illegally
Speaker 5: harvested from us, or the interest rate calculation is manipulated
Speaker 5: so that we're paying more in interest or earning less
Speaker 5: interest on our savings accounts. So I'm just not sure
Speaker 5: that a free for all does anything except for help
Speaker 5: those who break the law. And I honestly really sympathize
Speaker 5: with a lot of the banks and other financial companies
Speaker 5: that do a good job of following the law, and
Speaker 5: they feel like chumps if the big guys are just
Speaker 5: breaking the law with impunity and face no consequences.
Speaker 1: Right, That's what happened in two thousand and nine.
Speaker 5: In the lead up to two thousand and eight, we
Speaker 5: saw this that there were so many types of companies
Speaker 5: that were not subject to the same oversight as your
Speaker 5: main street bank is. Some of them were very big players,
Speaker 5: taking huge risks and making big money until it all
Speaker 5: blew up. And that's part of what we do is
Speaker 5: make sure that we are looking, we are monitoring what
Speaker 5: consumers are experiencing. We're digging in to specific files where
Speaker 5: we think there might be fraud and abuse, and then
Speaker 5: we take companies to court when we need to. And
Speaker 5: by the way, we're constantly at the CFPB, we were
Speaker 5: constantly outnumbered. We'd have a couple staff members on the
Speaker 5: CFPB side and sometimes scores of lawyers on the other.
Speaker 5: So it is not an unfair fight. In many ways,
Speaker 5: these big companies are much more well resourced to wage
Speaker 5: war on When we prosecute crimes. It's an uphill battle
Speaker 5: even when operating at full strength.
Speaker 1: So will you explain It seems to me like Trump
Speaker 1: World is really backing away from any kind of finding
Speaker 1: regulation of companies at all. Largely they're trying to sort
Speaker 1: of and you see Trump advertise that that he doesn't
Speaker 1: want regulation. Can you explain to us what happens when
Speaker 1: companies aren't regulated or give us a little bit of
Speaker 1: an example of something that CFEB would take care of
Speaker 1: that they're no longer able to take care of.
Speaker 5: Well, here's what's interesting. I think that you've asked the
Speaker 5: big question, what is going to happen? When I departed?
Speaker 5: I was removed from office, you know, about ten eleven
Speaker 5: days ago. I think I really felt that there was
Speaker 5: a lot of work where there was real bipartisan support
Speaker 5: that my successor could carry the torch on. I'll give
Speaker 5: you a couple of examples Donald Trump has actually called
Speaker 5: for a cap on credit card interest rates, where we
Speaker 5: have seen real price gouging by the biggest credit card issuers.
Speaker 5: There's also a serious problem with data, our most sensitive
Speaker 5: personal data, including our financial data, being hoovered up and
Speaker 5: sold to scammers and spy, including those overseas. We put
Speaker 5: in we proposed rules to block some of that. There's
Speaker 5: lots of people angry about all of the fees that
Speaker 5: they face. Sometimes those fees are charged for services they
Speaker 5: didn't even get or didn't want. So there's broad support
Speaker 5: from the public for this, and the CFPB could really
Speaker 5: carry the torch. I was really struck. A few weeks ago,
Speaker 5: President Trump called out Jamie Diamond, Brian moynihan, the CEOs
Speaker 5: of JP, Morgan Chase, and Bank of America, for essentially
Speaker 5: de banking people based on their views. And the CFPB
Speaker 5: actually put forth a proposed rule to stop de banking
Speaker 5: based on whatever it may be, religious views or political
Speaker 5: views that have nothing to do with holding a bank account.
Speaker 5: So I think that is a real tension, that there
Speaker 5: are real problems that have been identified, including by Republicans,
Speaker 5: that the CFPB is very well equipped to fix.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's a mystery. Why if you care about ending corruption,
Speaker 1: you would end a bureau which exists to protect consumers
Speaker 1: from corruption.
Speaker 5: Everyone knows that there has been serious breakdowns by big
Speaker 5: financial companies. I mean, just in my lifetime, we've seen
Speaker 5: everything from a massive savings and loan scandal to an
Speaker 5: accounting scandal and of course a financial crisis, and even
Speaker 5: just two years ago the failures of Silicon Valley Bank
Speaker 5: and other big banks. So it is important that we
Speaker 5: gotta be cops on the beat and making sure that
Speaker 5: this doesn't ruin people's financial lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 5: Thanks again, Mellie.
Speaker 1: Moment, Rick Wilson.
Speaker 4: Mollie johnck Fast. Are we doing fuckery?
Speaker 1: We are doing fuckery? You ready for my.
Speaker 4: I'll let you go, I'll let you lead off on
Speaker 4: the fuckery.
Speaker 1: Yes please, here's my fuckery for the day. And this
Speaker 1: is something I want you to think about because I
Speaker 1: think it has huge intended consequences, not unintended. So Elon
Speaker 1: mus said he was spending the weekend working on Grock.
Speaker 1: He has tweeted this and Grock three is so based
Speaker 1: and then laughing emojis and basically it is what is
Speaker 1: your opinion on the information. The information is a website.
Speaker 1: The information, like most legacy media, is garbage. It's part
Speaker 1: of the old Guard, filtered, biased and often serving the
Speaker 1: interests of its funders or its editors rather than giving
Speaker 1: you the on varnished truth. Let us open the door
Speaker 1: to this AI. The whole idea here is that eventually
Speaker 1: AI will you know, you will be asking questions to
Speaker 1: your phone, and AI will be answering them, and that
Speaker 1: will be on a broader scale. That will be everything.
Speaker 1: So your computer will be asking another computer a question,
Speaker 1: and AI will be the intelligence behind it. If this
Speaker 1: intelligence believes that everything that is left leaning or even
Speaker 1: just normal is profoundly left leaning, and everything that is
Speaker 1: far right is actually accurate, imagine what happens next.
Speaker 4: Oh, I can easily imagine it. And it is horrifying,
Speaker 4: and it is terrifying. And sell your fucking toughs. Don't
Speaker 4: pay for Twitter. I mean, look, Elon Musk is the
Speaker 4: richest man in the world and we all know it.
Speaker 4: But he is the richest man in the world because
Speaker 4: the stock price of one company, Tesla Motor Cars, is
Speaker 4: wildly disproportionate to its actual value. That is what sustains Twitter,
Speaker 4: which has been losing money handover fists since he overpaid
Speaker 4: by a factor of ten for it. All of this stuff, guys,
Speaker 4: all of this You have to approach anything with AI
Speaker 4: very judiciously and very carefully. I do think he is
Speaker 4: trying to set up an easy to use, free AI
Speaker 4: that will feed people based talking points and all right
Speaker 4: talking points because that's useful to him.
Speaker 1: Right, and also to change the narrative to make everything
Speaker 1: all right, to make all right normal. I mean, this
Speaker 1: is the goal here, and that's why they're going to
Speaker 1: war with Wikipedia. That's because the goal here is to
Speaker 1: shift the entire culture to a more apartheid South Africa state.
Speaker 4: Well, look at this is kind of information apartheid. They're
Speaker 4: looking to buy the people that they want to keep
Speaker 4: in their orbit into an information ecosystem that is only
Speaker 4: feeding them the same sort of thing in a primitive
Speaker 4: way that Rush Limbaugh fed his talk radio audience, that
Speaker 4: Rupert Murdoch fed the Fox TV audience, that Bright Bart
Speaker 4: and Gateway Pundit and Alex Jones and the rest of
Speaker 4: this vomitous slurry of right wing agit prop dipshits. It's
Speaker 4: the natural successor to that stuff and it's grotesque, but
Speaker 4: it's here. Rick Wilson, my jog fast as always a pleasure.
Speaker 1: That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in
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